quotations about marriage
Marriage is the comfort of the considerate and prudent; but the torment of the inconsiderate and self-willed.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship--only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.
ERICA JONG
How To Save Your Own Life
A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
Newsweek, March 28, 1960
There is something pathetic in the spectacle of those among us who are still only able to recognise the animal end of marriage, and who point to the example of the lower animals--among whom the biological conditions are entirely different--as worthy of our imitation. It has taken God--or Nature, if we will--unknown millions of years of painful struggle to evolve Man, and to raise the human species above that helpless bondage to reproduction which marks the lower animals. But on these people it has all been wasted. They are at the animal stage still. They have yet to learn the A.B.C. of love. A representative of these people in the person of an Anglican bishop, the Bishop of Southwark, appeared as a witness before the National Birth-Rate Commission which, a few years ago, met in London to investigate the decline of the birth-rate. He declared that procreation is the sole legitimate object of marriage and that intercourse for any other end was a degrading act of mere "self-gratification." This declaration had the interesting result of evoking the comments of many members of the Commission, formed of representative men and women with various stand-points--Protestant, Catholic, and other--and it is notable that while not one identified himself with the Bishop's opinion, several decisively opposed that opinion, as contrary to the best beliefs of both ancient and modern times, as representing a low and not a high moral standpoint, and as involving the notion that the whole sexual activity of an individual should be reduced to perhaps two or three effective acts of intercourse in a lifetime. Such a notion obviously cannot be carried into general practice, putting aside the question as to whether it would be desirable, and it may be added that it would have the further result of shutting out from the life of love altogether all those persons who, for whatever reason, feel that it is their duty to refrain from having children at all. It is the attitude of a handful of Pharisees seeking to thrust the bulk of mankind into Hell. All this confusion and evil comes of the blindness which cannot know that, beyond the primary animal end of propagation in marriage, there is a secondary but more exalted spiritual end.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
"The Objects of Marriage", Little Essays of Love and Virtue
It's a funny thing, but when a guy asks for your hand in marriage, he wants to hear the actual word yes escape from your lips. For him, that's the moment when he can celebrate. The longer you sit there speechless, the quicker he'll go into a panic. So say yes, aloud, and then you can start to hyperventilate with joy.
JANIS SPINDEL
How to Date Men
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
She is always married too soon, who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late, who gets a good one.
DANIEL DEFOE
Moll Flanders
Well-married, a man is winged--ill-matched, he is shackled.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
If sex is supposed to be satisfying and anxiety-free once we are safely ensconced in marriage, how come that's when many of us stop wanting it?
DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH
Passionate Marriage
People who have found everything disappointing are surprised and pained when marriage proves no exception. Most of the complaints about ... matrimony arise not because it is worse than the rest of life, but because it is not incomparably better.
JOHN LEVY
attributed, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from "loving" parents, to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it! Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put him in convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child? If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to "justice," to put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the State. The child receives but a blighted memory of his father's stripes.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Marriage and Love", Anarchism and Other Essays
Ultimately, our marriage is what we make it--both intentionally and unintentionally.
LAURA TRIGGS
"Why I Stopped Comparing My Marriage to My Parents' Marriage", Verily Mag, November 30, 2017
There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
MARTIN LUTHER
Table Talk
I don't know why some people get worked up about gay people marrying. It's not gay people who are "ruining the sanctity of marriage," it's celebrities.
CRAIG FERGUSON
The Late Show with Craig Ferguson, November 1, 2011
You're married, and suddenly you have your own family. There's a nice comfort in that. That part of your life is certain ... You've got your home in that other person.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Good Housekeeping, October 2010
We only attain the true idea of marriage when we consider it as a spiritual union--a union of immortal affections, of undying faculties, of an imperishable destiny.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.
ELLEN KEY
"The Morality of Woman"
I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all.
QUEEN VICTORIA
letter to her daughter, May 3, 1858
The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open.
GROUCHO MARX
attributed, Wise Words and Quotes
I fall in love easily. I love the marriage ceremony. I love the honeymoon phase. I just don't want to be married. I'm not marriage material, but I am a very good honeymooner.
FERN MICHAELS
The Marriage Game