Bachelorhood Quotes

“It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong. And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person. I’ve been in business without being a businesswoman, I’ve loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I’ve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I’ve done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice.”
― Coco Chanel

“I'm single because I was born that way.”
― Mae West

“Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.”
― Mae West, The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

“There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.”
― Greta Garbo, Greta & Cecil

“The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.”
― Nora Ephron

“If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married.”
― Elizabeth I, Collected Works

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“[I]n the end this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.”
― Elizabeth I, Collected Works

“LADY BRACKNELL

Algernon is an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire?”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“If [God] send me no husband, for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening ...”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“Those who don't have a wife should sublimate their sexual energies with outdoor sports or long walks.”
― Samael Aun Weor, FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS OF ENDOCRINOLOGY AND

“[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I always continued in this determination ... yet is it most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present.”
― Elizabeth I, Collected Works

“(Response to King Erik XIV of Sweden's proposal of marriage:)

"[W]hile we perceive ... the zeal and love of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene Highness with the same kind of affection. And that indeed does not happen because we doubt in any way of your love and honour, but, as often we have testified both in words and writing, that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that kind of affection towards anyone.

We therefore beg your Serene Highness again and again that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship for the present nor disregard them in the future. ...

We certainly think that if God ever direct our hearts to consideration of marriage we shall never accept or choose any absent husband how powerful and wealthy a Prince soever. But that we are not to give you an answer until we have seen your person is so far from the thing itself that we never even considered such a thing. I have always given both to your brother ... and also to your ambassador likewise the same answer with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do not conceive in our heart to take a husband but highly commend this single life, and hope that your Serene Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us.”
― Elizabeth I, Collected Works

“you are
as fleetingly beautiful

as a mother’s tears
and a father’s pranks

a brother’s bachelorhood
and a best friend’s bad mood

a bride’s glittering jitters
and a handsome stranger’s smile.”
― Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence

“They say bachelors have all the fun. Not so. You just get old and full of sand, nasty.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Chemistry has energy and it's meant to be felt.”
― Stacy Snapp-Killian aka StacyK

“The best thing for a bachelor is to get a wife who will really cooperate in the great work.”
― Samael Aun Weor, FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS OF ENDOCRINOLOGY AND

“It seems hard to remain a bachelor...to model your appearance and behaviour on one or two bachelors remembered from your youth.
That is how it will be, only that in reality it will be you yourself standing there, today and later, with a body and a real head, and so with a brow too, to strike with your hand.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“...and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.”
― Wodehouse

“Which crime has the female sex committed to be sentenced to the harsh necessity which consists of being locked up all life either as a prisoner or a slave? I call the nuns prisoners and the married women slaves.”
― Christina Queen of Sweden

“I say this explicitly, that it is impossible for me to marry. That is the way it is for me. My temper is a mortal enemy to this horrible yoke, which I would not accept, even if I thus would become the ruler of the world.”
― Christina Queen of Sweden

“The encrusted habits of long and self-indulgent bachelorhood were reasserting themselves.

[Edgar Hopkins]”
― R. C. Sherriff

“The four food groups of bachelorhood: Frozen, Cold Cuts, Breakfast Cereal, and Takeout.”
― Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire

“The celibate must firmly keep himself in Brahma Charya (i.e. chastity) until his wife arrives, he has to firmly establish himself in Brahma Charya and it is not possible to remain in Brahma Charya if we do not know how to transmute the sexual energy.”
― Samael Aun Weor

“Cannot put a finger on what precedes the other, bachelor/spinsterhood or self-obsession.”
― Sandeep Sahajpal

“This is not an apartment in which fresh vegetables are consumed. It smells like a dead spice rack.”
― Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!

“Eighty-three years old. A lifetime of being a bachelor. This extended life of aloneness might have an effect on a man's character, might it not? Independence might have rusted into obstinacy.”
― Jonathan Lee, The Great Mistake

“Let me add quickly that I like women, but am a bachelor by choice. While bachelors are lonely people, I’m convinced that married men are lonely people with dependents.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction