1
" Blest who was youthful in his youth;
blest who matured at the right time;
who gradually the chill of life
with years was able to withstand;
who never was addicted to strange dreams;
who did not shun the fahsinable rabble;
who was at twenty fop or blade,
and then at thirty, profitably married;
who rid himself at fifty
of private and of other debts;
who fame, money, and rank
in due course calmly gained;
about whom lifelong one kept saying:
N. N. is an excellent man.
But it is sad to think that to no purpose
youth was given us,
that we betrayed it every hour,
that it duped us;
that our best wishes,
that our fresh dreamings,
in quick succession have decayed
like leaves in putrid autumn.
It is unbearable to see before one
only of dinners a long series,
to look on life as on a rite,
and in the wake of the decorous crowd
to go, not sharing with it
either general views, or passions. "
― Alexander Pushkin , Eugene Onegin
2
" Blest who was youthful in his youth;
blest who matured at the right time;
who gradually the chill of life
with years was able to withstand;
who never was addicted to strange dreams;
who did not shun the fashionable rabble;
who was at twenty fop or blade,
and then at thirty, profitably married;
who rid himself at fifty
of private and of other debts;
who fame, money, and rank
in due course calmly gained;
about whom lifelong one kept saying:
N. N. is an excellent man.
But it is sad to think that to no purpose
youth was given us,
that we betrayed it every hour,
that it duped us;
that our best wishes,
that our fresh dreamings,
in quick succession have decayed
like leaves in putrid autumn.
It is unbearable to see before one
only of dinners a long series,
to look on life as on a rite,
and in the wake of the decorous crowd
to go, not sharing with it
either general views, or passions. "
― Alexander Pushkin , Eugene Onegin
8
" Doing a geographic” is a term alcoholics often use for acting on the impulse to start over by moving to a new town, or state, instead of making any internal changes. It’s the anywhere-but-here part of the disease that says, “Remove yourself from this, go someplace new, and everything will be better.” Two years into our Florida stint, my mother pulled a geographic as radical as the move from Rochester. The new plan was to head for California. She enrolled in the mathematics graduate program at the University of California’s shiny new campus in San Diego, and as soon as our elementary school let out for the summer, she put us into a new Buick station wagon – a gift from her parents – and drove us across the country. You’d think we’d have protested at yet another move. After all, having been duped before, we were in no position to believe that the next move would be any different. But I have no memory of being unhappy about the news. Because that’s what often happens when an alcoholic parent is doing a geographic. She pulls you in and, before you know it, you, too, believe in the promise of the new place. "
9
" We have looked at some of the things that a female might do if she has been deserted by her mate. But these all have the air of making the best of a bad job. Is there anything a female can do to reduce the extent to which her mate exploits her in the first place? She has a strong card in her hand. She can refuse to copulate. She is in demand, in a seller's market. This is because she brings the dowry of a large, nutritious egg. A male who successfully copulates gains a valuable food reserve for his offspring. The female is potentially in a position to drive a hard bargain before she copulates. Once she has copulated she has played her ace — her egg has been committed to the male. It is all very well to talk about driving hard bargains, but we know very well it is not really like that. Is there any realistic way in which something equivalent to driving a hard bargain could evolve by natural selection? I shall consider two main possibilities, called the domestic-bliss strategy, the he-man strategy.
The simplest version of the domestic-bliss strategy is this. The female looks the males over, and tries to spot signs of fidelity and domesticity in advance. There is bound to be variation in the population of males in their predisposition to be faithful husbands. If females could recognize such qualities in advance, they could benefit themselves by choosing males possessing them. One way for a female to do this is to play hard to get for a long time, to be coy. Any male who is not patient enough to wait until the female eventually consents to copulate is not likely to be a good bet as a faithful husband. By insisting on a long engagement period, a female weeds out casual suitors, and only finally copulates with a male who has proved his qualities of fidelity and perseverance in advance. Feminine coyness is in fact very common among animals, and so are prolonged courtship or engagement periods. As we have already seen, a long engagement can also benefit a male where there is a danger of his being duped into caring for another male's child. "
― Richard Dawkins , The Selfish Gene