quotations about marriage
I always compare marriage to communism. They're both institutions that don't conform to human nature, so you're going to end up with lying and hypocrisy.
BILL MAHER
Rolling Stone, August 24, 2006
Marriage is a matter concerning the whole of life, whilst love aims only at pleasure. On the other hand, marriage will remain when pleasures have vanished, and it is the source of interests far more precious than those of the man and woman entering on the alliance.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Bad husbands will make bad wives.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Newcomes
Marriages are like diets--they can be ruined by having a little dish on the side.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
Marriage is the comfort of the considerate and prudent; but the torment of the inconsiderate and self-willed.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
No greater evil can a man endure
Than a bad wife, nor find a greater good
Than one both good and wise; and each man speaks
As judging by the experience of his life.
SOPHOCLES
fragment
Ah, traditions. They carry with them a sense of nostalgia and solidarity. And, in the case of some wedding rituals--a bride literally being handed over to her groom by her father (or other male figure), vowing to "love, honor, and obey," male-dominated speeches--sexism. Considered individually, these customs may seem innocuous. But taken collectively, they reflect the sexist roots of the institution of marriage, when women were voiceless and goods to be traded and acquired.
MAUREEN SHAW
"The Sexist and Racist History of Marriage That No One Talks About", Teen Vogue, November 28, 2017
One hundred percent of divorces start with a marriage.
MARK GUNGOR
Laugh Your Way To a Better Marriage
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
Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State- and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
EMMA GOLDMAN
Anarchism and Other Essays
There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"The Old Scout", The Writer's Almanac, October 4, 2005
Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age -- as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.
PHYLLIS DILLER
attributed, Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women
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
Marriage is only another word for irremediable slavery.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
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
There is a connection between what you are putting into your marriage and what you are getting out of it.
MARK GUNGOR
Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage
Life throws something different at every couple. I've noticed that even just with the small things, we have a choice on how we will face the good times and bad, plus everything in between. Sometimes these experiences leave lasting marks that help us hone certain skills that wouldn't naturally appear in a vacuum. Along the way, you will develop the rituals, traditions, habits, and values that make your marriage unique.
LAURA TRIGGS
"Why I Stopped Comparing My Marriage to My Parents' Marriage", Verily Mag, November 30, 2017
"Happy marriage" is a contradiction in terms.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
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
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