it's hard to be a faithful wife, in short,
To certain husbands of a certain sort

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.

There may be good but there are no pleasant marriages.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.

Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).

Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.

Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so.

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

It is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best

Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women
Are the most wretched. When, for an extravagant sum,
We have bought a husband, we must then accept him as
Possessor of our body. This is to aggravate
Wrong with worse wrong. Then the great question: will the man
We get be bad or good? For women, divorce is not
Respectable; to repel the man, not possible.

It's a rare thing not to have been bonny — once.

Uncommon people take longer to find love because they need uncommon partners.

Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.

Marriage, it's like roulette: Sometimes one wins, often one loses. Even if you're very in love, it can still go bad.

The latter was in praise of the virtuous wife, rarer than a pearl.