"The thing that damages many marriages," said Rose, "is the fact that
people have got to see so much of each other. What people really want is a
holiday from each other."

"Yes, but that is impossible financially," said Father Payne. "Apart from
love and children, marriage is a small joint-stock company for cheap
comfort. But it is of no use to go vapouring on about these big schemes,
because in a democracy people won't do what philosophers wish, but what
they want. Let's take a notorious case, known to everyone. Can anyone say
what practical advice he could have given to either Carlyle or to Mrs.
Carlyle, which would have improved that witches' cauldron? There were two
high-principled Puritanical people, which is the same thing as saying that
they both were disposed to consider that anyone who disagreed with them did
so for a bad motive, and exalted their own whims and prejudices into moral
principles; both of them irritable and sensitive, both able to give
instantaneous and elaborate expression to their vaguest thoughts,--Carlyle
himself with eloquence which he wielded like a bludgeon, and Mrs. Carlyle
with incisiveness which she used like a sharp knife--Carlyle with too much
to do, and Mrs. Carlyle with less than nothing to do--each passionately
attached to the other as soon as they were separated, and both capable of
saying the sweetest and most affectionate things by letter, which they
could not for the life of them utter in talk. They did, as a matter of
fact, spend an immense amount of time apart; and when they were together,
Carlyle, having been trained as a peasant and one of a large family,
roughly neglected Mrs. Carlyle, while Mrs. Carlyle, with a middle-class
training, and moreover indulged as an only daughter, was too proud to
complain, but not proud enough not to resent the neglect deeply. What could
have been done for them? Were they impossible people to live with? Was it
true, as Tennyson bluntly said, that it was as well that they married,