Cannot put a finger on what precedes the other, bachelor/spinsterhood or self-obsession.

The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.

Better die an old maid, sister, than marry the wrong man.

Don't be fretting...about me marrying. Marrying's a trouble and not marrying's a trouble and I sticks to the trouble I knows.