It is a terrible thing to be obliged to love by contract. [ Bussy-Rabutin ]

Unless the habit leads to happiness the best habit is to contract none. [ Zimmermann ]

Marriage in our days? - I would almost say that it is a rape, by contract. [ Michelet ]

Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest, and some by souls. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

The bigot is like the pupil of the eye, the more light you put upon it, the more it will contract. [ O. W. Holmes ]

If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. [ Plutarch ]

We value the devotedness of friendship rather as an oblation to vanity, than as a free interchange of hearts; an endearing contract of sympathy, mutual forbearance, and respect. [ Jane Porter ]

As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it. [ Ben Jonson ]

Some women have in the course of their lives a double engagement to sustain, equally difficult to break or to dissimulate: in one case the contract is wanting, in the other the heart. [ La Bruyere ]

It is the work of fancy to enlarge, but of judgment to shorten and contract; and therefore this must be as far above the other as judgment is a greater and nobler faculty than fancy or imagination. [ South ]

A frequent intercourse and intimate connection between two persons make them so like, that not only their dispositions are moulded like each other, but their very face and tone of voice contract a certain analogy. [ Lavater ]