"Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hide" を書いた Robert Kouis Stevenson の結婚観。男は、結婚すると、
その安楽さのあまり、心身共にダメになるという考え方を述べた一節。その考え方が
正しいかどうかはともかくとして、言い得て妙な部分もあるので、笑ってしまった。

But marriage, if comfortable, is not at all heroic. It certainly narrows and damps the
spirits of generous men. In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes
a fatty degeneration of his moral being. It is not only when Lydgate misallies himself
with Rosamond Vincy, but when Ladislaw marries above him with Dorothea, that this
may be exemplified. The air of the fireside withers out all the fine wildings of the
husband’s heart. He is so comfortable and happy that he begins to prefer comfort and
happiness to everything else on earth, his wife included. Yesterday he would have shared
his last shilling; to-day “his first duty is to his family,” and is fulfilled in large measure by laying
down vintages and husbanding the health of an invaluable parent. Twenty years ago this man
was equally capable of crime or heroism; now he is fit for neither. His soul is asleep, and you
may speak without constraint; you will not wake him. It is not for nothing that Don Quixote was
a bachelor and Marcus Aurelius married ill.

"Virginibus Puerisque" という彼の評論より
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/386/386-h/386-h.htm