Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
Interpretation
Cruelty can justify divorce, but its interpretation can lead to unreasonable situations.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell suggests that while cruelty can be a valid reason for ending a marriage, the way people interpret and apply this concept can sometimes lead to absurd conclusions. This highlights the complexities and subjective nature of human relationships and the challenges in defining what constitutes cruelty in the context of marriage.
In practice
In a discussion about difficult marriages, this quote can highlight the importance of understanding nuances in relationships.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Every child needs to have for itself not only its loving parents and siblings and friends of its own age, but a grown-up friend.
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
In any case, community is not about perfect people. It is about people who are bonded to each other, each of whom is a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate.
People come, people go β theyβll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past.
Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.
The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
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