MARRIAGE QUOTES XVI

quotations about marriage

Marriage is not a word, it's a sentence--a life sentence.

DAVID MINKOFF

Oy!


In that family where the husband is pleased with his wife, and the wife with her husband, happiness will assuredly be lasting.

BRAHMA

The Laws of Manu


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

Tags: Jeremy Taylor


Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull Play.

WILLIAM CONGREVE

The Old Bachelor

Tags: William Congreve


A little weeping, a little wheedling, a little self-degradation, a little careful use of our advantages, and then some man will say--"Come, be my wife!" With good looks and youth marriage is easy to attain. There are men enough; but a woman who has sold herself, even for a ring and a new name, need hold her skirt aside for no creature in the street. They both earn their bread in one way. Marriage for love is the beautifullest external symbol of the union of souls; marriage without it is the uncleanliest traffic that defiles the world.

OLIVE SCHREINER

The Story of an African Farm

Tags: Olive Schreiner


In the choice of a wife, we ought to make use of our ears, and not our eyes.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine

Tags: Wellins Calcott


Marriage is a pretty amazing thing when you think about it. For two people to live together for so long under the same roof is a big accomplishment. Fifty-year anniversaries are becoming extinct, yet again proving that long marriages deserve awards and praise. Sometimes I see old people in restaurants sitting together eating their meals and I watch them. Sometimes it makes me sad. They don't even talk. Is it because they have nothing else to say, or can they simply read each other's mind by now?

JENNY MCCARTHY

Life Laughs

Tags: Jenny McCarthy


A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's too late.

FRANK SINATRA

The Joker Is Wild

Tags: Frank Sinatra


People marry with a deep longing that their partner will tend to their wounds, not throw salt in them. Honor your partner's vulnerability.

HARRIET LERNER

Twitter post, November 2, 2014

Tags: Harriet Lerner


It's terribly hard to be married ... harder than anything else. I think you have to be an angel.

AUGUST STRINDBERG

A Dream Play

Tags: August Strindberg


Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman's premium is her husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, "until death doth part." Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains more in an economic sense.

EMMA GOLDMAN

"Marriage and Love", Anarchism and Other Essays

Tags: Emma Goldman


If love be not thy chiefest motive, thou wilt soon grow weary of a married state, and stray from thy promise, to search out thy pleasures in forbidden places.

WILLIAM PENN

Some Fruits of Solitude

Tags: William Penn


Ask any woman in an arranged marriage. Love is the least stressful way out.

FAY WELDON

The Spa

Tags: Fay Weldon


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

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If you exchanged wedding vows, tape them to your bathroom mirror and read them aloud to yourself every morning along with the ritual brushing of teeth. It's not realistic to believe that you will live your promises as a daily practice -- unless you're a saint or a highly evolved Zen Buddhist. Not where marriage is concerned. But you can make a practice of returning to your vows when the going gets rough.

HARRIET LERNER

"Returning To Your Wedding Vows", Huffington Post, April 2, 2012

Tags: Harriet Lerner


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


No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that.

ANTHONY KENNEDY

Supreme Court of the United States ruling on the legality of gay marriage, June 26, 2015


When most people enter marriage, they have only had an "up close and personal" view of a small number of marriages, perhaps only one (i.e., their parents' marriage). Although you likely have known many married people throughout your lifetime, your vision of most marriages is limited to the images that the couples project to the world. You can never really know what another person's marriage is like behind closed doors. Therefore, most people enter into marriage with gaps in their understanding of what marriage entails.

CHRISTINE E. MURRAY

Just Engaged

Tags: Christine E. Murray


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

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The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

Letters to a Young Poet

Tags: Rainer Maria Rilke