Quotes: Weddings. Whitman. Widows. Will.

Weddings
Honeymoons isolate the couple from others to be in their own world.
Weddings 196 …wedding journey, the express object of which is to isolate two people on the ground that they are all the world to each other…. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

Whitman
Whitman taught us to see the world around us.
Whitman 479 Whitman…intensely conscious…open-eyed….tremendous eyes to see everything—he taught us to see things. Bloom, Western Canon.

Widows
To cure the gout, marry a widow with a loud voice and the gout, by comparison, will be a minor concern to you.
Widows 273 Mr. Weller: If ever you’re attacked with the gout, sir, jist you marry a widder as has got a good loud woice, with a decent notion of usin’ it, and you’ll never have the gout agin...a capital prescription...to drive away any illness as is caused by too much jollity. Dickens, Pickwick.

Will
The toughest will breaks like steel when fresh from the forge.
Will 180 Creon: The toughest will is first/ To break: like hard-tempered steel,/ Which snaps and shivers at a touch when fresh/ From off the forge. Sophocles. Antigone.

The leading cause of strife and misery is the will.
Will 308 Schopenhauer: …the leading conception of the world is will, and therefore strife, and therefore misery. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer.

We don’t have reasons for wanting something; we want something and think up reasons for why we want it.
Will 312 Schopenhauer : We do not want a thing because we have found reasons for it, we find reasons for it because we want it; we even elaborate philosophies and theologies to cloak our desires. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer.

Even when we are awake, we are partly asleep.
Will 315 Schopenhauer : Even when we are awake it [sleep] possesses us partly. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer.

Having insight does not assure the will to do something about it.
Will 957 But insight is not will…. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Fate.

The most serious and formidable thing about men is the will.
Will 957 The one serious and formidable thing in nature is a will. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Fate.