Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
Interpretation
Discussing marriage can often lead to conflict rather than resolution, suggesting it's a delicate topic.
H. L. Mencken's quote humorously compares marital discussions to a coroner's inquest, implying that examining the state of a marriage can often feel like an investigation into a failed relationship. This metaphor suggests that like an inquest, these discussions can uncover problems and dissatisfaction, which can feel somber and potentially detrimental to the bond between partners, rather than fostering understanding and love.
In practice
During a wedding ceremony, one might quote this to highlight the challenges of marriage.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
No shame in saying that I felt a loneliness drifting through me. Funny how it was, everyone perched in their own little world with the deep need to talk, each person with their own tale, beginning in some strange middle point, then trying so hard to tell it all, to have it all make sense, logical and final.
Because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you.
Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.
A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.
She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.
If you can find your footing between two cultures, sometimes you can have the best of both worlds.
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