MARRIAGE QUOTES IV
quotations about marriage
In courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight--that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
If men were wise they would see that the affection that God has implanted in us is amply sufficient, when not weakened by artificial aid, to ensure permanence of union; and if they would have more faith in this all would go well. To tie together by human law what God has tied together by passion, is about as wise as it would be to chain the moon to the earth lest the natural attraction existing between them should not be sufficient to prevent them flying asunder.
HERBERT SPENCER
An Autobiography
Marriage is a three-ring circus--engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering.
DAVID MINKOFF
Oy!
For what is wedlock forced but a hell,
An age of discord and continued strife?
Whereas the contrary bringeth forth bliss,
And is a pattern of celestial peace.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry VI
Marriage, far from being an end in itself, is a key part of God's plan to fill the earth with a demonstration of who he is. Marriage belongs to God and exists for his glory.
GARY & BETSY RICUCCI
Love That Lasts
Many marriages would be saved if we would only listen with the same passion that we feel about wanting to be heard.
HARRIET LERNER
Twitter post, February 8, 2014
A man should have two wives: one to love and one to sew on his buttons.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
Love in the Time of Cholera
I have mentioned how the Church--in part influenced by that clinging to primitive conceptions which always marks religions and in part by its ancient traditions of asceticism--tended to insist mainly, if not exclusively, on the animal object of marriage. It sought to reduce sex to a minimum because the pagans magnified sex; it banned pleasure because the Christian's path on earth was the way of the Cross; and even if theologians accepted the idea of a "Sacrament of Nature" they could only allow it to operate when the active interference of the priest was impossible, though it must in justice be said that, before the Council of Trent, the Western Church recognised that the sacrament of marriage was effected entirely by the act of the two celebrants themselves and not by the priest. Gradually, however, a more reasonable and humane opinion crept into the Church. Intercourse outside the animal end of marriage was indeed a sin, but it became merely a venial sin. The great influence of St. Augustine was on the side of allowing much freedom to intercourse outside the aim of procreation. At the Reformation, John à Lasco, a Catholic Bishop who became a Protestant and settled in England, laid it down, following various earlier theologians, that the object of marriage, besides offspring, was to serve as a "sacrament of consolation" to the united couple, and that view was more or less accepted by the founders of the Protestant churches. It is the generally accepted Protestant view to-day. The importance of the spiritual end of intercourse in marriage, alike for the higher development of each member of the couple and for the intimacy and stability of their union, is still more emphatically set forth by the more advanced thinkers of to-day.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
"The Objects of Marriage", Little Essays of Love and Virtue
That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. One has but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how bitter a failure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped Philistine argument that the laxity of divorce laws and the growing looseness of woman account for the fact that: first, every twelfth marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8 per cent.; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Marriage and Love", Anarchism and Other Essays
The game of chess. Supposedly men made it up, and it's about war and men and the ravages and the bravery and the genius of commanding and moving pieces and ... No. It's marriage. The Queen moves anywhere she wants.
BILL COSBY
Far from Finished
It is a mistake to think that marriage is unique to the human species. While, of course, some of the specific accoutrements of human marriage--such as the wedding ceremony--is unique to humans, the institution of marriage itself--the predictable and regulated patterns of mating between a male and a female--is shared by many other species, particularly birds.
ALAN S. MILLER
Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters
Marriage always demands the greatest understanding of the art of insincerity possible between two human beings.
VICKI BAUM
And Life Goes On
The marriage state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of Heaven and Hell we are capable of receiving in this life.
RICHARD STEELE
The Spectator, September 1712
I'll wager my life there are millions of men
Who wish that their wives were their sweethearts again
IRVING BERLIN
"After the Honeymoon"
What more degrades woman today than that she so often seeks marriage as a support? Why is the holy sacrament of love, the sanctity of the family state, so often prostituted and destroyed, but because marriage is entered upon as a necessity or a convenience? And what can so place marriage on its only true basis of mutual love, mutual fitness, mutual esteem, as for woman to make herself independent of it as a mere means of subsistence?
MARY CLEMMER AMES
Outlines of Men, Women, and Things
Oh, hi. I been married thirteen years, and lemme tell you, it's a thrill to be out of the house. I never get out of the house. I stay home all the time. I never do anything fun 'cause I'm a housewife. I hate the word "housewife." I prefer to be called "domestic goddess."
ROSEANNE BARR
The Tonight Show, 1985
People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it's no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman.
ERMA BOMBECK
I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression
Some people put up and shut up and give their life into a miserable future in a marriage. This is not healthy for all who are connected with the marriage be it the couple, children and the external family. The ultimate problem lays in the couple who stick it out for all those years for the sake of the kids, money, time invested in each other, social, religious or family commitments, status or whatever their reason may be to hold that marriage together ignoring their own feelings for the external feelings and commitments. Then comes a time that we get all the freedom and the money we want to live comfortable but your heart is not comfortable because the dreams, goals and senses are lost and there is no vision for tomorrow.
JEANETTE DE JONK
Unconventional & Spiritual Marriage
Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire. You may as well take a pop-gun to a python.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
I never did, nor do I believe I ever shall, give advice to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage; first, because I never could advise one to marry without her own consent; and, secondly, I know it is to no purpose to advise her to refrain when she has obtained it. A woman very rarely asks an opinion or requires advice on such an occasion, till her resolution is formed; and then it is with the hope and expectation of obtaining a sanction, not that she means to be governed by your disapprobation, that she applies.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Lund Washington, September 20, 1783