Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse; Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, l.64^76.

Mydefinition of marriage† It resembles a pairof shears, so joined that theycannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

-Smith, Rev Sydney
Quoted in Lady Holland Memoir (1855), vol.1, ch.11.