Women's tongues have been the eternal theme for men's sarcasms. Yet, for the gift of the gab, for gossip and scandal, give me a few old men together in the smoke-rooms of their clubs. Women are not in it!
I see no difference between women who marry for money and women who sell their favours, except one to the advantage of the latter, who may have been prompted by love, temptation, or poverty to commit actions which the former have the impudence to ask the Law to sanction and the Church to sanctify.
A man who marries for money is still much more despicable, because he has not the excuse of many women, who may not have been able to discover any other way of getting a living.
A woman cannot love or respect a man who allows himself to be purchased for a title of nobility, and a man cannot love or respect a woman who buys him, and thus degrades him in his own eyes. There is no possible element of happiness in such marriages. If there is something in nobility, it should be nobleness of character in those who belong to it. What has become of the old motto Noblesse oblige?
The only chance of success in matrimony is that there should not be one single reproach which, in the inevitable moments of friction, may ever be hurled by one at the face of the other.
A marriage is called a match. The parties who contract it should be matched, and should therefore choose and accept partners of their own rank. Handsome people should not marry ugly ones. They should be equal, with perhaps a touch of superiority in age, size, fortune, and intellectual attainments to the man's credit—to atone for all his shortcomings.
Mésalliances always turn out badly.