Marriage Quote by F. H. Bradley

Bradley takes a Biblical euphemism and uses it as a scalpel. In Genesis, “knew” is a discreet stand-in for sex; Bradley reactivates the literal meaning of knowledge only to show how thin that knowledge can be. The punchline lands because it forces the reader to hear the line two ways at once: Adam “knew” Eve in the carnal sense, and too many men, Bradley implies, never get past that level of familiarity.

The intent is less prudish moralizing than a cool indictment of masculine complacency. “It is a pity” is weaponized gentility, the sort of Victorian phrasing that pretends to sigh while actually condemning. Bradley isn’t merely saying men are sexually selfish; he’s suggesting an epistemic failure: wives reduced to functions (sex, reproduction, household labor) rather than apprehended as full subjects with inner lives, desires, intelligence, and autonomy. That word “arrive” matters, too. It frames intimacy as a destination some men never reach, as if marriage grants proximity without requiring curiosity.

Contextually, the jab fits a late-19th-century Britain where marriage was a legal and economic institution before it was a psychological one, with women’s personhood constrained by custom and law. Coming from a philosopher, the irony sharpens: Bradley spent his career parsing what it means to know anything at all. Here he applies that scrutiny to domestic life, implying that some men can theorize about mind and reality while remaining willfully ignorant of the person across the table. The wit stings because it exposes how “knowledge” becomes a convenient alibi when power doesn’t need understanding.