Advice to a Young Wife from An Old Mistress Quotes

“People, especially wives, imagine a wandering husband is temporarily obsessed by other company, but that somewhat misstates the case. Love heightens one's sense of particularity, of being somebody, and one strength of a mistress is her paradoxical gift of restoring native loneliness. For this a man gives up an empire and sails the open sea.”
― Michael Drury, Advice to a Young Wife from An Old Mistress

“the fully realized personality is what attracts and for mature people, nothing less is desirable.”
― Michael Drury, Advice to a Young Wife from An Old Mistress

“I came to believe that love is not so much an event as a disposition, not something forthcoming from others but within one's own power to pour out. We deserve the kind and amount of love we get, not in any moralistic sense but by the quality of our being.”
― Michael Drury, Advice to a Young Wife from An Old Mistress

“There is no need to make heavy weather of keeping house, or even of raising children, and only a mind otherwise unengaged would whip up a storm around it. A wife does not have to be a career woman, but she does need to be a woman, a whole person with a brain and hands. One is born female, but being a woman is a personal accomplishment.”
― Michael Drury, Advice to a Young Wife from An Old Mistress

“If you would be loved, don't help. Too many wives fancy the role of aide to their husband's careers, and are dismayed and stunned when it is not appreciated. Any man worth his salt wants to get there on his own volition.”
― Michael Drury, Advice to a Young Wife from An Old Mistress

“Men must be bold or die inside and nobody was ever bold without being sometimes wrong. Marriage produces it's own downfall when it tries to prevent boldness and sew up the future, and hope, and daring, in a bag.”
― Michael Drury, Advice to a Young Wife from An Old Mistress