The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
Interpretation
Marriage's true value lies in how children help adults mature and grow.
Peter De Vries highlights the idea that marriage is less about the act of having children and more about the transformative journey that parenthood offers to adults. Through the responsibilities and challenges of raising children, adults often discover deeper layers of themselves, fostering personal growth and maturity that can only be achieved through the experiences of parenting.
In practice
This quote would be perfect for a speech at a wedding, emphasizing the deeper meaning of marriage.
We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other. It may be the very recognition of all men as our brothers that accounts for the sibling rivalry, and even enmity, we have toward so many of them.
I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best -- it's all they'll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money -- provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don't need it.
There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy.
It’s like when you’re excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you’re happy, too.
Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.
The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth.
I've felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father's family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.
Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.
There were many times when I had to emotionally come to terms with the fact that maybe I wasn't ever going to get married. And I started getting comfortable with that.
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