A Quote by Rudyard Kipling

Literature is a splendid mistress, but a bad wife.

Rudyard Kipling

Quote Topics

Bad Literature Mistress Splendid Wife

Quote Author

Rudyard Kipling
English - Novelist
December 30, 1865 - January 18, 1936

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.

Anton Chekhov

I enjoy going back and forth between plays and novels. It`s like having a wife and a mistress. Books are the wife; plays, the mistress.

Stephen King

Don't say 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable… .

F. Scott Fitzgerald

In France, for example, it is not unusual for a husband to have a wife and a mistress. However, if in addition to these two he's also having a fling with a fringe tootsie, both the wife and the mistress are outraged and the combination lover, husband, and cheat may well wind up with a large French bread knife between his ribs.

Groucho Marx

A husband can commit no greater blunder than to discuss his wife, if she is virtuous, with his mistress; unless it be to mention his mistress, if she is beautiful, to his wife.

Honore de Balzac

This was a splendid life. Splendid in its obscurity and humility, splendid in its strength and charity, splendid in its achievements.

Robert Mortimer

Truly color is vice! Of course, it can be, and has the right to be one of the finest virtues. Controlled by the strong hand and careful guidance of her Master drawing, color is a splendid Mistress, with a mate worthy of herself, her lover, but her Master likewise, the most magnificent Mistress possible, and the result is evident in all the glorious things that spring from their union.

James Whistler

England is my wife, America my mistress. It is very good sometimes to get away from one's wife.

Cedric Hardwicke

I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity.

Anton Chekhov

As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.

Julian Barnes

In the beginning there was Isis: Oldest of the Old, She was the Goddess from whom all Becoming Arose. She was the Great Lady, Mistress of the two Lands of Egypt, Mistress of Shelter, Mistress of Heaven, Mistress of the House of Life, Mistress of the word of God. She was the Unique. In all Her great and wonderful works She was a wiser magician and more excellent than any other God.

Merlin Stone

When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign - a bad sign mostly for literature. But it is also a bad sign when they don't want to hear the word mentioned.

Italo Calvino

Do you ask why I am unwilling to marry a rich wife? It is because I am unwilling to be taken to husband by my wife. The mistress of the house should be subordinate to her husband, for in no other way, Priscus, will the wife and husband be on an equality.

Martial

Tonight was the CNN primary debate with the four remaining candidates. It was kind of a change for Newt Gingrich. Usually when he's arguing with three people at once, it's his wife, his ex-wife, and his mistress.