quotations about marriage
Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different thing because women have become human beings.
HERBERT GEORGE WELLS
Marriage
Ask any woman in an arranged marriage. Love is the least stressful way out.
FAY WELDON
The Spa
Marriage is generally used as a term for a social institution. As such it may be defined as a relation of one or more men to one or more women which is recognized by custom or law and involves certain rights and duties both in the case of the parties entering the union and in the case of children born of it. These rights and duties vary among different peoples, and cannot therefore all be included in a general definition: but there must, of course, be something which they have in common. Marriage always implies the right of sexual intercourse: society holds such intercourse allowable in the case of husband and wife, and, generally speaking, even regards it as their duty to gratify in some measure the other partner's desire. But the right to sexual intercourse is not necessarily exclusive. It can hardly be said to be so, from the legal point of view, unless adultery is regarded as an offense which entitles the other partner to dissolve the marriage union, and this, as we know, is by no means always the case.
EDWARD WESTERMARCK
The History of Human Marriage
Matrimony is an engagement which must last the life of one of the parties, and there is no retracting ... therefore, to avoid all the horror of a repentance that comes too late, men should thoroughly know the real causes that induce them to take so important a step, before they venture upon it; do they stand in need of a wife, an heiress, or a nurse; is it their passions, their wants, or their infirmities, that solicit them to wed?
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
When is it right to marry, and when, after that, is it right to have children? Those are personal questions, and they have personal answers. Answers that are different for different people. But there are rules of thumb, generalizations that hold true more often than society thinks. Our grandparents knew that, but modern America has largely forgotten. Forgotten that the best things in life are actually the purpose of life, and that there is no wisdom in delaying what on our deathbed we will consider the jewels of our existence.
BOB LONSBERRY
A Various Language
Marriage problems are relationship problems, they are the result of how two people interact with each other. You may abandon a troubled marriage, but you will still bring the way you interact with others along with you.
MARK GUNGOR
Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage
Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.
G. K. CHESTERTON
What's Wrong with the World
It's terribly hard to be married ... harder than anything else. I think you have to be an angel.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
A Dream Play
Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull Play.
WILLIAM CONGREVE
The Old Bachelor
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
OSCAR WILDE
A Woman of No Importance
Marriage is divine in its institution, sacred in its union, holy in the mystery, sacramental in its signification, honourable in its appellative, religious in its employments: it is advantage to the societies of men, and it is "holiness to the Lord."
JEREMY TAYLOR
The Marriage Ring
The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you begin.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
Marriages are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find ourselves in winter--discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of summer--comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the seasons repeat themselves in nature.
GARY D. CHAPMAN
note to readers, Summer Breeze
Marriage is commonly a meal wherein the soup is better than the desert.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
When a Man has married a wife
He finds out whether
Her knees & elbows are only
glued together.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Poems from Blake's Notebook
Marriage has some thorns, but celibacy has no roses.
VERNON K. MCLELLAN
Wise Words and Quotes
Marriage is an economic arrangement in many ways, let's face it.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Period of Adjustment
Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You can't have one without the other.
SAMMY CAHN
"Love and Marriage"
Men and women are natural enemies, like cat and dog--only more so. They are forced to live together for a time, or this wonderful race couldn't go on.
NEITH BOYCE
Enemies
That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.
JOHN UPDIKE
foreword, Too Far To Go