"What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married." ― Alain de Botton Topic(s): Marriage Tags: about, fascinating, marriage More From Alain de Botton "The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it’s a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil." "We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us." "Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them." More In Marriage "How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being."― Oscar Wilde "Catharsis isn’t art. You can’t rely on catharsis to get a laugh. Because guess what? People do laugh when something’s shocking, but that is, to me, the absolute fakest of laughs. That’s not something that sustains a television series, or a movie, or even 45 minutes of a stand-up set at Carolines."― Mindy Kaling "After marriage, a woman’s sight becomes so keen that she can see right through her husband without looking at him, and a man’s so dull that he can look right through his wife without seeing her."― Helen Rowland