Confirmed Bachelor Quotes

She threw her hands up. 'Honestly, Clifford, it's uncanny how you understand women. I thought confirmed bachelors were supposed to find us a completely unfathomable mystery.

For a confirmed bachelor, you have a remarkably good grasp of what it means to love so entirely.

If ever I’d seen a confirmed bachelor, I would

The weightiest objection to the mode of life of the confirmed bachelor: he eats by himself. Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse—it is only in company that eating is done justice.

As a confirmed bachelor I was an outsider, a nonperson within my own family. If I wanted that to change, I had to get hitched. That simple. All of which made my twenty-ninth birthday a complex milestone, and some days a complex migraine.

What did we ever do to him?” Jefferson asks. “We exist,” Tom says simply. “Look at us. Look at who we are.” We’re a half-Cherokee boy, a one-legged war veteran, three confirmed bachelors, and two uppity women. Little does Frank know we also have a runaway slave with us, but I’d die before I told.

So how about you?" she asked. "Why did you and your" - she broke out the air quotes again - "'life partner' decide to move to Clam Bay?" "Not really a good reason for it, I guess. Just bad judgment on... Wait. What did you call us?" "Oh, I'm sorry." She blushed. "Was that the wrong term? I didn't mean to offend." "You think... Uh, we're not gay." She laughed. "Oh, it's all right. Nobody here cared about something like that. We're pretty tolerant of alternative lifestyles." "We're not gay," he said with a little more force than intended. "We're just friends." "Are you married?" "No." "Girlfriends?" "Not at the moment." "Confirmed bachelors?" She raised an eyebrow/ "Not confirmed," he replied. "So two single guys from the big city move to our little town and open a bed-and-breakfast. But you're not gay." "We're just friends," he said. "Right. Because straight men open bed-and-breakfasts all the time." "These straight men did." "Straight men names Philip and Vance." He wanted to argue, but he was suddenly beginning to question it himself.

He had pursued his strikingly beautiful, spirited, fashionable wife for years and years before marrying her in mid-Channel aboard a man-of-war: for so many years indeed that he had become a confirmed bachelor at last, too old a dog to give up his tricks of smoking tobacco in bed, playing his 'cello at odd untimely moments, dissecting anything that interested him, even in the drawing-room; too old to be taught to shave regularly, to change his linen, or to wash when he did not feel the need - an impossible husband. He was not house-trained; and although he made earnest attempts at the beginning of their marriage he soon perceived that in time the strain must damage their relationship, all the more so since Diana was as intransigent as himself and far more apt to fly into a passion about such things as a pancreas in the drawer of the bedside table or orange marmalade ground into the Aubusson.

I’m educated,” Parks tells her, nose in the air. “You’ve got a Bachelor of Arts,” Bridge scoffs, “which we all know is just higher-education speak for ‘not knowing what you’re doing with your life’ and you paid Imperial College a considerable amount of money to confirm that for you on a piece of paper.

The sight of a pretty girl provokes in him an overwhelming reaction of appreciation and approval, and correlatively his acquisitive instinct, but he has never married. Why not? Because he knows that if he had a wife, his reaction to pretty girls, now pure and frank and free, would not only be intolerably adulterated but would also be under surveillance and subject to restriction by authority. So the governor always stops him short of disaster.

But whatever awkwardness it’s occasioned me is nothing compared to the suffocating societal pressure that women who don’t want children are subjected to. After all, there’s a sort of role model or template for a man who doesn’t want kids—the Confirmed Bachelor, roguish and irascible in the W. C. Fields tradition. At worst, we’re considered selfish or immature; women who don’t want to have children are regarded as unnatural, traitors to their sex, if not the species. Men who don’t want kids get a dismissive eye roll, but the reaction to women who don’t want them is more like: What’s wrong with you?

There’s Tom,” Becky says. He’s been tromping around the city half the day, but I don’t see a speck of mud on him. Though he dresses plain, it always seems he rolls out of bed in the morning with his hair and clothes as neat and ordered as his arguments. We walk over to join him, and he acknowledges us with a slight, perfectly controlled nod. He’s one of the college men, three confirmed bachelors who left Illinois College to join our wagon train west. Compared to the other two, Tom Bigler is a bit of a closed book—one of those big books with tiny print you use as a doorstop or for smashing bugs. And he’s been closing up tighter and tighter since we blew up Uncle Hiram’s gold mine, when Tom negotiated with James Henry Hardwick to get us out of that mess. “How goes the hunt for an office?” I ask. “Not good,” Tom says. “I found one place—only one place—and it’s a cellar halfway up the side of one those mountains.” Being from Illinois, which I gather is flat as a griddle, Tom still thinks anything taller than a tree is a mountain. “Maybe eight foot square, no windows and a dirt floor, and they want a thousand dollars a month for it.” “Is it the cost or the lack of windows that bothers you?” He pauses. Sighs. “Believe it or not, that’s a reasonable price. Everything else I’ve found is worse—five thousand a month for the basement of the Ward Hotel, ten thousand a month for a whole house. The land here is more valuable than anything on it, even gold. I’ve never seen so many people trying to cram themselves into such a small area.” “So it’s the lack of windows.” He gives me a side-eyed glance. “I came to California to make a fortune, but it appears a fortune is required just to get started. I may have to take up employment with an existing firm, like this one.” Peering at us more closely, he says, “I thought you were going to acquire the Joyner house? I mean, I’m glad to see you, but it seems things have gone poorly?” “They’ve gone terribly,” Becky says. “They haven’t gone at all,” I add. “They’ll only release it to Mr. Joyner,” Becky says. Tom’s eyebrows rise slightly. “I did mention that this could be a problem, remember?” “Only a slight one,” I say with more hope than conviction. “Without Mr. Joyner’s signature,” Becky explains, “they’ll sell my wedding cottage at auction. Our options are to buy back what’s ours, which I don’t want to do, or sue to recover it, which is why I’ve come to find you.” If I didn’t know Tom so well, I might miss the slight frown turning his lips. He says, “There’s no legal standing to sue. Andrew Junior is of insufficient age, and both his and Mr. Joyner’s closest male relative would be the family patriarch back in Tennessee. You see, it’s a matter of cov—” “Coverture!” says Becky fiercely. “I know. So what can I do?” “There’s always robbery.” I’m glad I’m not drinking anything, because I’m pretty sure I’d spit it over everyone in range. “Tom!” Becky says. “Are you seriously suggesting—?” “I’m merely outlining your full range of options. You don’t want to buy it back. You have no legal standing to sue for it. That leaves stealing it or letting it go.” This is the Tom we’ve started to see recently. A little angry, maybe a little dangerous. I haven’t made up my mind if I like the change or not. “I’m not letting it go,” Becky says. “Just because a bunch of men pass laws so other men who look just like them can legally steal? Doesn’t mean they should get away with it.” We’ve been noticed; some of the men in the office are eyeing us curiously. “How would you go about stealing it back, Tom?” I ask in a low voice, partly to needle him and partly to find out what he really thinks. He glances around, brows knitting. “I suppose I would get a bunch of men who look like me to pass some laws in my favor and then take it back through legal means.” I laugh in spite of myself. “You’re no help at all,” Becky says.

She will always only see the world through the lens of how it affects her. I do not mean that she is unkind, only that she will always be unable to fully understand or interest herself with anything that does not directly concern her. I thought that I would like to protect her innocence and shield her from every ill wind that blew, but it is just such treatment that has moulded her. She is a stunted flower, a bud half-opened that will never fully unfurl its petals, and I would not have been able to respect such a creature in the end.

Jacques crooked a finger to lift Ginkgo’s face. “Lord, you’re stunning.” “You think? I feel ridiculous.” “The pressed powder Anjou used has a hint of shimmer. Very moonbeam. Perfect for snaring the regard of a wolf.” “Pretty sure that happened months ago. And without any of this frou-frou stuff.” Ginkgo grumbled, “I want my denim back.

Oh.” Isla looked away. She’d set her heart on a confirmed bachelor, so she never noticed the entirely available, hopelessly smitten bachelor right in front of her. Lapis had to concede that it was a classic trope. Really, the only saving grace in his situation was that it would never develop into a love triangle. Tiresome things.

So you were lured by the flute? By the Bamboo Stave?” “How would a child know about something so rare?” “I am a rare child.” Stray raindrops slipped under the tarp and smacked Kyrie’s face. “My family says I am loved by winds.” “I do not love you.” “Are you certain?” “If I did, I cannot imagine admitting it.” “That, at least, is honest.

This year, Kyrie’s present from his parents had come as a surprise, probably because his father had settled on something at the last minute. He was to be given a room of his own, outside his parents’ suite. Because he wasn’t a little boy anymore. Dad had probably expected gratitude, not the opening of negotiations.

Your mother gave you your name. “Your father gave you a house. “Your sire gave you a clan. “Your tree gave you victory. “Your siblings give you purpose. “But I am Anan Eldermost—darkener of lands and harrower of hearts. I am he who was and is and has become music incarnate. And I will give you the sky.

And without a backward glance, he strolled toward a knot of ambassadors, beginning his evening’s rounds. Leaving Isla in a state of unaccustomed disarray. Was she really going to let Lapis Mossberne seduce her? Some shred of feminist pride rebelled, but her romantic inclinations put up a good fight. In the end, she decided that yes, courting games appealed. She wanted to be adventurous for once.

Jacques lifted a hand. Boniface blinked. “Non.” “Oui.” “Bloody hell.” Suuzu slouched back into the sofa cushions and watched the brothers sending silent messages for several moments. “Right then,” Boniface finally managed. “Lord, I hope you don’t expect me to pitch in. I’m pants at kids.” “I’d settle for your not telling Maman.” “I blocked her.” “Brave man.

Isla’s first waking thought was that Ginkgo would be terribly disappointed in her. She’d been raised by a trickster, for pity’s sake. Foxy pranks were nothing new. At home, she was always on guard. But away? What a mess.

ARNOLD WEBB - "While Arnold remained a confirmed bachelor, it was said his heart had been broken once. A woman of means and spirit who had turned his head and rendered him love struck. The grand house he had built had been for her and he'd decked it out with all the accoutrements she had asked for. He'd even positioned the master suite so that it overlooked the valley - the best view in the district. But she didn't stay. No one was quite sure why. Rumour had it that she had lost a baby. That she'd had second thoughts about country life and returned to the City. Suffice it to say, after she'd gone, Arnold closed his heart and never spoke of her again

Agatha Christie’s tales were aggressively anti-intellectual and crueller for it; hers was a world where confirmed bachelors committed suicide out of shame.

Make me a promise, Camden Dalton, that my friends are forever and ever off-limits.” Shit, she was being serious. But just to confirm, I said, “All of your friends?” “Just my super-close ones, like Oaklyn, Suz, Tracy, and Justine.” Fuck.

always think too much explanation of a thing, no matter how beautiful or impressive, makes it less so somehow. I like to look at the stars, but it is how they make me feel or the thoughts they provoke that interest me.

There will be those who’ll criticize ….” “That is like saying there will be those who sneeze.