I'm old fashioned. I don't believe in extra-marital relationships. I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.

-Allen,Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg
  Manhattan (with Marshall Brickman).

As I was walking all alane, I heard twa corbies making a mane; The tane unto the tother say, 'Where sall we gang and dine to-day?' 'In behint yon auld fail dye, I wot there lies a new-slain knight; And naebody kens that he lies there, But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair. 'His hound is to the hunting gane, His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame, His lady's ta'en another mate, So we may mak our dinner sweet.'

-Ballads
'The Twa Corbies', opening stanzas.

Of Consciousness, her awful Mate The soul cannot be ridö As easy the secreting her Behind the Eyes of God.

-Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
c.1864  Complete Poems, no.894 (first published1945).

Here lies, bowl'd out by Death's unerring ball, A cricketer renowned, by name John Small; But though his name was small, yet great was his fame, For nobly did he play the'noble game'. His life was like his inningsölong and good; Full ninety summers had Death withstood, At length the ninetieth winter cameöwhen (Fate Not leaving him one solitary mate) This last of Hambledonians, old John Small, Gave up his bat and ballöhis leather, wax and all.

-Egan, Pierce
  Epitaph on cricketer  John Small. Pierce Egan's Book of Sports.

Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walked without a mate.

-Marvell, Andrew
c.1650^1652  'The Garden' (published1681), stanza 8.

   Love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges, hath his seat In reason, and is judicious, is the scale By which to heav'nly love thou may'st ascend, Not sunk in carnal pleasure, for which cause Among the beasts no mate for thee was found.

-Milton,John
  Raphael to  Adam. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.8, l.589^94.

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better Knowledge, sent to where I met him, down the Lachlan, years ago. He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him, Just 'on spec', addressed as follows: 'Clancy, of the Overflow'. And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected, (And I think the same was written with a thumbnail dipped in tar) 'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it: 'Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

-Paterson, Banjo (Andrew Barton)
  'Clancy of the Overflow', first published in the Bulletin, collected in The Man from Snowy River and OtherVerses (1895).

The recruiting field for the militant suffragists is the million of our excess female populationöthat million whichhad better long ago have gone out tomate with its complement of men beyond the sea.

-Wright, SirAlmroth Edward
  Letter to TheTimes, 28 Mar.