The Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistress.
--
"A Young Turkish Catastrophe"Saki
Wit may do very well for a mistress, but [I] should prefer reason for a wife.
Charles Caleb Colton
Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental?
Thomas Carlyle
Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.
Anton Chekhov
[He was] delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the Queen of Hierocles. ~ Harry Benjamin in The Transsexual Phenomenon (1966)
Elagabalus
Parents fear lest the natural love of their children may fade away. What kind of nature is that which is subject to decay? Custom is a second nature which destroys the former. But what is nature? For is custom not natural? I am much afraid that nature is itself only a first custom, as custom is a second nature. 93
Blaise Pascal
Saki
Sala, George Augustus Henry
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