He was himself a homeless bachelor with a past, much in debt, and nothing gave more pleasure than to envy his friends their wives and comforts and to speak of them intimately and disparagingly.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor.

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

The bachelors admired freedom is often a yoke, for the freer a man is to himself the greater slave he often is to the whims of others.

Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese and kisses.

He's such an old bachelor that the way he cleans out his fireplace is to carry the ashes through the house, shovel-load at a time, and dump em out through the front door.