Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

Immanuel Kant has the best insights into the gay-marriage de­bate — he argues that, once you have stripped away the nonsense, marriage is nothing more than a contract for the mutual use of

the sex organs.

For those not naturally well endowed, breast implants may make eco­nomic sense: going from flat-chested to a D-cup increases hourly rates by approximately $40, meaning that at a typical price of $3,700, surgery could pay for itself after around 90 hours.

It does seem that the little darlings really are good for your health — something to remember next time your children's be­havior makes you want to scream.

Plato described love as a serious mental disease. Aristotle saw it as a single soul inhabiting two bodies. Tina Turner dismissed the feeling as a second-hand emotion. The nature of love — how and when and why and with whom humans fall for each other — has preoccupied thinkers through the ages.

Shakespeare mused that "it is beyond the power of man to bring love and wisdom to an union."

A newly-discovered scrap of one of holy texts which seems to quote Je­sus speaking of "my wife." Karen King of Harvard University presented a translation at a conference in Rome on September 18th. Churches that believe their priests must be celibate in order to be like Jesus are not about to change their rules, though. Assuming the fragment is genuine, it shows only that others talked about Jesus using that word. The definition of "wife" is open to question too: Gnostic writing also features terms such as "bridal chamber", used without any connotation of sexual intimacy.

The vagina is not nearly as free today in the West as we are led to believe.

The problem with penises, as Richard Rudgley, a British anthropologist, admitted on a television programme some years ago, is that once you start noticing them, you "tend to see willies pretty much everywhere".

The euro was supposed to be the manifestation of a grand politi­cal project. It feels more like a loveless marriag e, in which the cost of breaking up is the only thing keeping the partners together.

When he reads obituaries he looks not for the age of the deceased but the length of their marriages, and envies those who had more time than he did.

After all, whose spam filter does not groan with ads for suspi­ciously cheap "Viagra"?

One Chinese billionaire has particular requirements for a matchmaking agency: suitable candidates should be aged 20-26, weigh less than 50kg (110lb) and have no sexual experience. So far more than 5,000 young women have applied.

"Customer 360" is due to be tested in the new London store next spring. It will mean that Burberry keeps a detailed database on each customer's spending habits. That could cause embarrass­ment, for example if a customer who has bought racy gifts for his mistress enters a Burberry store with his wife and is enthusiasti­cally ushered to the skimpy bikinis.

Are there no American children who have broken a leg at camp, suffered psychological trauma by coming last in a race, or been discriminated against by competing against stronger boys?

Finding a nice Jewish girl in Mississippi isn't easy.

Beautiful flowers — like beautiful women — can separate the most sen­sible men from their money. In the 17th century Holland, tulips grew so expensive that people exchanged them for houses.

In early imperial Rome, when the emperor Augustus put a tax on celibacy in response to anaemic marriage rates, he faced a spate of betrothals to underage women, an open revolt from his sena­tors — and a decline in his citizens' conjugal appetites.

Are you cheating on your spouse? If so, please stand up and declare it. Total silence? What virtuous readers The Economist has.

The latest survey of time use in America suggests women still shoulder most of the housework, spending on average an hour a day scrubbing, hoovering and shopping, compared with barely 20 minutes for the unfairer sex.

Performing a Mozart quartet takes just as long in 2012 as it did in the late 18 th century.

Defining rape, or trying to, is a sure-fire way to start a row. Does age matter? (In some countries, sex with minors is automatically rape; in others, it is not.) Must it involve violence? What kind of sex is involved? Is the victim by definition a woman and the perpetra­tor a man? Do time, location or the parties' sexual histories play any role?

I don't know any successful women who haven't had a powerful sponsor in their organisation to give them their first big break.

Marriage is a surprisingly good predictor of management style, reckon Nikolai Roussanov and Pavel Savor of Wharton Business

School. The average unmarried boss invests 69% more than his married counterpart, they find.

Lillian Hellman was a hypocritical "bitch with balls", in the words of Elia Kazan.

When Theits, Achilles's mother, dipped her baby in the river Styx to give him her gift of invulnerability, she had to hold him some­where.