Two gold rings lie across a sheet of paper torn down the middle on a dark wooden table.

Original artwork, not a still

Samuel Johnson

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

Marriage gets a fair hearing here: it comes with real pains. But the speaker says staying single offers no pleasures at all. It's a dry, lopsided comparison, and in their view the trade-off favours trouble over emptiness.

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