quotations about marriage
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
Marriage, rightly concluded, is an incarnation of love--poetry expressed in action--a sweet embellishment of an otherwise prosaic existence.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all.
QUEEN VICTORIA
letter to her daughter, May 3, 1858
A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
Newsweek, March 28, 1960
That little ditty about love coming first, then marriage, then the baby carriage--it's history. Over the past few decades more and more single people have been having children, and more and more married couples have not been.
BELLA DEPAULO
Singled Out
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
Marriage is like life in this -- that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Virginibus Puerisque
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.
ROBERT FROST
The Master Speed
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
The key to a successful marriage is picking up your husband's socks.
PIERS MORGAN
Good Morning Britain, November 29, 2017
Possibilities for the success of a marriage are endless. But you have to be willing to search for them.
JASON R. REDMOND
Are You Talking?
Marriage is punishment for shoplifting in some countries.
GARTH ALGAR (DANA CARVEY)
Wayne's World
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Scarlet Letter
I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth--that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence--for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. These are the only purposes for which persons of rank ever think of marriage.
SUSAN FERRIER
Marriage
A woman ... all beautiful and accomplished will, while her hand and heart are undisposed of, turn the heads and set the circle in which she moves on fire. Let her marry, and what is the consequence? The madness ceases and all is quiet again. Why? Not because there is any diminution in the charms of the lady, but because there is an end of hope.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Eleanor Parke Custis, January 16, 1795
Today's concept of marrying for love is a relatively new phenomenon. Historically, unions were transactional and women had no say in the matter. In colonial America, for example, there was no dating; fathers arranged their daughters' marriages with the goal of combining wealth and property. What's more, once married, women were prohibited from owning property. They were merely their husband's possession and lost all individual legal rights.
MAUREEN SHAW
"The Sexist and Racist History of Marriage That No One Talks About", Teen Vogue, November 28, 2017
Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Marriage that daily doom.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary