FAMOUS QUOTES ON THE ISSUE OF DIVORCE

A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there’s less of you. MARGARET ATWOOD, Time Magazine, Mar. 19, 1973 Divorce these days is a religious vow, as if the proper offspring of marriage. TERTULLIAN, Apologeticus The happiest time of anyone's life is just after the first divorce. JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH For a couple with young children, divorce seldom comes as a “solution” to stress, only as a way to end one form of pain and accept another. FRED ROGERS, Mister Rogers Talks With Parents Divorce is the psychological equivalent of a triple coronary bypass. MARY KAY BLAKELEY, American Mom Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do. ZSA ZSA GABOR Divorce is a declaration of independence with only two signers. GERALD F. LIEBERMAN, attributed, Divorce: It's All About Control In our family we don't divorce our men -- we bury them. RUTH GORDON 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, A Guide to Men I’ve given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can’t divorce a book. GLORIA SWANSON, New York Times, Mar. 10, 1979 Any woman who votes for no-fault divorce is like a turkey voting for Thanksgiving. PAT ROBERTSON, The 700 Club If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based. BETTY FRIEDAN, speech, Jan. 20, 1974 I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters. SUSAN B. ANTHONY, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population. DENIS DIDEROT, Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws Marriage problems are relationship problems, they are the result of how two peopleinteract with each other. You may abandon a troubled marriage, but you will still bring theway you interact with others along with you. MARK GUNGOR, Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship--only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier. ERICA JONG, How To Save Your Own Life A society's apprehensiveness about divorce is an expression of its fear of change and of its resulting desire that personality remain unvarying. ELSIE CLEW PARSONS, Fear and Conventionality Divorce is an embarrassing public admission of defeat. TRACY LETTS, August: Osage Country Divorce is one of the most stressful life events anyone goes through. Only the loss of a loved one and moving are even in its class, difficulty-wise--and divorcing generally involves both of those as well. Even when you are the one initiating the divorce, the enormous changes that result are bound to throw you off and leave you feeling, at the very least, a bit lost. EMILY DOSKOW, Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce Divorce is a failed challenge, which leads to a broken life. It is a socially transmittable disease that can transfer from one generation to another, and it is spreading fast. SIA F. DEAN, Divorce Is Not an Answer Grown-ups are worried that they're going to ruin their children's lives, but divorce is just a life experience and you learn from it. EVAN STERN, Divorce Is Not the End of the World The thing that experts agree on is that although divorce is difficult and stressful for kids no matter what, the real harm to kids comes from being subjected to conflict between parents. The longer that lasts, and the more severe it is, the worse it is for your children. If you truly want to shield your children from the pain of divorce, recognize that the more you take the high road with your spouse, the better job you'll do. EMILY DOSKOW, Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce I've been through divorce and will always be a "divorced kid".... For me, my parent's divorce was hard at first, but I overcame my sadness and my fears about it. I know that my parents are happier apart. And I'm happy with the way things are, too.... Divorce can sometimes be for the better. You may end up with happier parents, and you will definitely learn a lot about yourself! And that's the whole point of growing up. So if you think about it, there are reasons to be happy about this experience, if you can learn and grow from it. ZOE STERN, Divorce Is Not the End of the World Asking the legal system to resolve divorce is like asking a boxing coach to be our marriage counselor. WARREN FARRELL, foreward, Make Any Divorce Better Many divorces are not really the result of irreparable injury but involve, instead, a desire on the part of the man or woman to shatter the setup, start out from scratch alone, and make life work for them all over again. They want the risk of disaster, want to touch bottom, see where bottom is, and, coming up, to breathe the air with relief and relish again. EDWARD HOAGLAND, Red Wolves and Black Bears No matter how you slice it, divorce is expensive and time-consuming. The most important variable is how well you and your spouse are able to put aside your anger and grief and cooperate on the big issues of money and children. The better you are at working together to make decisions for your changing family structure, the better for your bank account and for your chances of emerging from the divorce with a decent relationship with your ex. EMILY DOSKOW, Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce Marriage is the chief cause of divorce. GROUCHO MARX I don't think I'll get married again; I'll just find a woman I don't like and give her a house. LEWIS GRIZZARD, attributed, Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations