quotations about marriage
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
Well-married, a man is winged--ill-matched, he is shackled.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
Newsweek, March 28, 1960
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
One of the most common problems in marriage occurs when she wants empathy and he's trying to fix things. Tell your partner what kind of listening you want ... Treat your mate as if he wants to make you happy but doesn't know how. You love him, after all. You picked him. Help him out.
TERRENCE REAL
O Magazine, January 2007
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
A true Christian marriage proposal is an offer, not a request. Rather than saying in effect, "Will you do this for me?" when we invite another to enter the marriage relationship, the real question should be, "Will you accept what I want to give?"
GARY THOMAS
Sacred Marriage
I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all.
QUEEN VICTORIA
letter to her daughter, May 3, 1858
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
Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.
ELLEN KEY
"The Morality of Woman"
Marriage is like life in this -- that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Virginibus Puerisque
Married people, for being so closely united, are but the apter to part; as knots the harder they are pulled, break the sooner.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
The key to a successful marriage is picking up your husband's socks.
PIERS MORGAN
Good Morning Britain, November 29, 2017
Marriage ... has historically been a battlefield, the site of collisions within and between governments and religions over who should regulate it. But marriage has weathered centuries of skirmishes and change. It has evolved from an institution that was imposed on some people and denied to others, to the loving union of companionship, commitment, and caring between equal partners that we think of today.
EVAN WOLFSON
Why Marriage Matters
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
attributed, And I Quote
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
Spend time, talk it out before you get married. And figure it out. Make sure your really big issues you agree on. How you're going to raise your kids. If you're going to have kids. Your religion. All this kind of stuff. What do you think about money? Your morality? All these things. The big shit. Make sure you talk this stuff out, because this is the stuff that counts, not whether or not he picks up his clothes.
PAT BENATAR
interview, The Believer, May 1, 2003
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
I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one's life, the foundation of happiness or misery.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Burwell Bassett, May 23, 1785