Many people make virtue consist more in repenting faults than in avoiding the commission of them.
What makes true friendship, and even more, happy marriage so delightful, is the extension of one’s ego over a field, indeed, which no single individual can create by any art. After all the union of two souls is never so complete as not to leave that mutually advantageous difference between them which makes communication so agreeable. Whoever laments his own troubles will unquestionably do so in vain; whoever unbosoms himself to his wife does so to a second self who not only can help, but helps in merely sympathizing with him. And whoever likes to hear his praises sung also finds in his wife a public he can take pride in without fear of making himself ridiculous.
