quotations about marriage
The secret to a long and healthy marriage is to work at it and don't try and change each other.
JACK LALANNE
interview with James Marshall, September 16, 2007
Yet, from, an early period in human history, a secondary function of sexual intercourse had been slowly growing up to become one of the great objects of marriage. Among animals, it may be said, and even sometimes in man, the sexual impulse, when once aroused, makes but a short and swift circuit through the brain to reach its consummation. But as the brain and its faculties develop, powerfully aided indeed by the very difficulties of the sexual life, the impulse for sexual union has to traverse ever longer, slower, more painful paths, before it reaches--and sometimes it never reaches--its ultimate object. This means that sex gradually becomes intertwined with all the highest and subtlest human emotions and activities, with the refinements of social intercourse, with high adventure in every sphere, with art, with religion. The primitive animal instinct, having the sole end of procreation, becomes on its way to that end the inspiring stimulus to all those psychic energies which in civilisation we count most precious. This function is thus, we see, a by-product. But, as we know, even in our human factories, the by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product. That is so as regards the functional products of human evolution. The hand was produced out of the animal forelimb with the primary end of grasping the things we materially need, but as a by-product the hand has developed the function of making and playing the piano and the violin, and that secondary functional by-product of the hand we account, even as measured by the rough test of money, more precious, however less materially necessary, than its primary function. It is, however, only in rare and gifted natures that transformed sexual energy becomes of supreme value for its own sake without ever attaining the normal physical outlet. For the most part the by-product accompanies the product, throughout, thus adding a secondary, yet peculiarly sacred and specially human, object of marriage to its primary animal object. This may be termed the spiritual object of marriage.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
"The Objects of Marriage", Little Essays of Love and Virtue
Marriage is not something that can be accomplished all at once; it has to be constantly reaccomplished. A couple must never indulge in idle tranquility with the remark: "The game is won; let's relax." The game is never won. The chances of life are such that anything is possible. Remember what the dangers are for both sexes in middle age. A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
speech, spring 1875
Before marriage a woman may procure some éclat by pretending to believe in the fiction of her ascendancy; but after marriage, the worshipped beauty becomes a very plain every-day sort of person, and the poetry of the sex's power is at an end for ever!
ROBERT BELL
Marriage: A Comedy in Five Acts
The key to a successful marriage is accepting that you're not going to change the other person. And the words "Yes, dear. Whatever you want."
PATRICK DEMPSEY
Good Housekeeping, July 2011
The secret to a good marriage, as far as I am concerned, is a joke I make: Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty.
MICHAEL J. FOX
Good Housekeeping, April 2009
The expectations you bring to your partnership can make or break your marriage. Don't miss out on the sterling moments of marriage because your ideals are out of sync with your partner's. Don't believe the myth that you and your partner automatically come with the same expectations for marriage. Instead, remember that the more openly you discuss your differing expectations, the more likely you are to create a vision of marriage that you agree on--and that is unique to the two of you.
LESLIE L. PARROTT
Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
Our parents' marriage makes a huge impact on our own marriage. Our parents teach us what relationships are and give us scripts for the way we understand love. What's more, we are drawn to the familiar. This is why people who resemble our parents feel like home and, in effect, why many of us marry someone like our opposite-sex parent. While this seems like great news for those of us who grew up with positive experiences of love, it might be a little disheartening for those who didn't.
LAURA TRIGGS
"Why I Stopped Comparing My Marriage to My Parents' Marriage", Verily Mag, November 30, 2017
Until we have a natural, that is, a conscientious world, it cannot be known by experience what natural law will do for the gratification of a supreme affection; but, if you will give me that world, there will be in it very few not called to marriage, provided society allows proper opportunities for acquaintance between marriageable persons.
JOSEPH COOK
Marriage: With Preludes on Current Events
The appropriate age for marriage is around eighteen for girls and thirty-seven for men.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The concerts you enjoy together
Neighbors you annoy together
Children you destroy together
That make a marriage a joy.
STEPHEN SONDHEIM
Company
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend -- perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Epipsychidion
Marriage is a land mine. A really intimate land mine. Adultery to kitchen fires. Never a dull [moment].
NORA ROBERTS
Blue Smoke
Getting married is like permanently grafting your hand to the cookie jar. No matter how sweet those cookies may taste, you can't help but wonder what would have happened if you'd chosen some other dessert--brownies, for instance, or frozen yogurt ... or maybe chocolate strudel.
JEROME P. CRABB
Marriage Quotes and Quibbles
Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
What are the legitimate objects of marriage? We know that many people seek to marry for ends that can scarcely be called legitimate, that men may marry to obtain a cheap domestic drudge or nurse, and that women may marry to be kept when they are tired of keeping themselves. These objects in marriage may or may not be moral, but in any case they are scarcely its legitimate ends. We are here concerned to ascertain those ends of marriage which are legitimate when we take the highest ground as moral and civilised men and women living in an advanced state of society and seeking, if we can, to advance that state of society still further.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
"The Objects of Marriage", Little Essays of Love and Virtue
I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.
G. K. CHESTERTON
What's Wrong with the World
Without sounding pessimistic, I learned that I don't believe in marriage. I believe in a commitment that you make in your heart. There's no paper that will make you stay.
DIANE KRUGER
Glamour Magazine, February 2011
Marriage is for woman the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Marriage and Morals