Edith Wharton, novelist (1862-1937)

I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them: children, duties, visits, bores, relations, the things that protect married people from each other. -Edith Wharton, novelist (1862-1937)

It is sad that anyone would come to this conclusion about marriage, especially someone as influential, at least in her own time, as Edith Wharton. In Christian marriage, at any rate, husband and wife become one flesh, and not just physically but one in mind and heart. The danger in a Christian marriage is precisely that children, duties, and other such things will come between them.