Life & Wisdom Quote by John Fowles

Fowles nails the cruel arithmetic of long-term desire: the moment you get the thing you ache for, the ache itself collapses. The line moves like a trap door. It starts in the domestic, almost clinical register of "most marriages", then snaps into philosophical cruelty: passion is self-sabotaging, not because lovers fail, but because wanting has a built-in expiration date.

What makes it work is the reflexive loop in the second clause. "We want what puts an end to wanting what we want" is a sentence that eats its own tail. Fowles isn't just describing a relationship problem; he's diagnosing a psychological engine. Desire thrives on distance, uncertainty, and the imaginative space between self and other. Marriage, at least as a social contract of access and routine, promises to close that distance. The subtext is bleak but precise: intimacy can become a kind of annexation. When the beloved is no longer partly unknown, the mind loses one of its favorite fuels - projection.

Context matters because Fowles is a writer obsessed with freedom, gamesmanship, and the stories people tell themselves to avoid the terror of choice. Across his work, love is rarely a stable destination; it's a test of autonomy, a stage where people negotiate possession versus permission. Here, he punctures the romantic myth that fulfillment is a permanent state. He suggests marriage is where modern culture tries to institutionalize an emotion that is, by nature, restless - and then acts surprised when the paperwork doesn't preserve the fire.