Ugo Bettie
I think the family is the place where the most ridiculous and least respectable things in the world go on.
Samuel Butler
Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
DetailsNothing new under the sun
A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, ‘Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful? holding out his shoe asked them whether it was not new and well made. ‘Yet’ added he, ‘none of you can tell me where it pinches me.’Plutarch
DetailsStill nothing changes!
When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn’t a sign that they don’ understand one another, but that they have, at last begun to. Plutarch
DetailsBooks by Henry Cecil
Fantastic books to read: Anything by Henry Cecil such as Brothers in Law, Daughters in Law, Fathers in Law and pretty much anything else he wrote. Henry Cecil was a Judge in the County Court many many years ago: his books have an old-world charm but help anyone to understand the social ins and outs…
DetailsNorman Mailer
“You don’t know a woman until you’ve met her in court”
Parental Irresponsibility
Well I thought it was worth waiting 17 years for and with a lovely little jibe at the new parenting truths. Classic line from Bart: “I want one of those dads who – you know – what’s the word? Is the same in the evening as he was in the morning? I know : consistent”.
DetailsLove, marriage & divorce
Love, the quest, marriage, the conquest; divorce, the inquest. Helen Rowland
DetailsOther people’s money
Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else’s cash. Helen Rowland
DetailsWhat marriage means
To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties. Reflections of a Bachelor, 1878
DetailsThe institution of marriage
Marriage is a wonderful institution… but who wants to live in an institution. William Carlos Williams
DetailsIncompatibility
The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, one is male and the other female. Karl Kraus
DetailsA clean break
A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, anymore than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table. Jean Kerr
DetailsMy wife doesn’t understand me
When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn’t a sign that they “don’t understand” one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to. Helen Rowland
DetailsLove & friendship
Marriage was contrived for ordinary people, for people who are capable of neither great love nor great friendship, which is to say, for most people—but also for those exceptionally rare ones who are capable of love as well as of friendship. Nietzsche
DetailsThe sentence of marriage
I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. Groucho Marx
DetailsThe inevitability of a court case
A reasonable man can get out of most any trouble, except marriage, without going to law. Charles Darling, Scintillaw Juris, 1877
DetailsBoston Legal’s Denny Crane
My current legal hero, Denny Crane whose motto is :”pull a rabbit out of your hat. That’s the secret both to trial law and life.” I could have done with that rabbit today. Mr Blog and I are working our way through the first series on dvd & he is back from his travels tonight…
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