quotations about marriage
Marriage is a fight to the death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven, because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love; the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty, remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Happiness in marriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair. Hence it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself bound by certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the benefit of the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he must obey also the secret laws of nature by which sentiments unfold themselves. If he stakes his happiness on being himself loved, he must himself love sincerely: nothing can resist a genuine passion.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
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
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
Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.
JAMES THURBER
Is Sex Necessary?
You shouldn't marry anyone you have to try hard for.
RACHEL RAY
Good Housekeeping, July 2010
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
Some women marry for love, some for money, and some for a home. It is not known why men marry.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
The present relationship existing between husband and wife, where one claims a command over the actions of the other, is nothing more than a remnant of the old leaven of slavery. It is necessarily destructive of refined love; for how can a man continue to regard as his type of the ideal a being whom he has, be denying an equality of privilege with himself, degraded to something below himself?
HERBERT SPENCER
An Autobiography
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
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
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
Were the husband as blind to the faults of the wife, as the lover to the faults of the maiden, few unhappy marriages would follow happy courtships.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
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
A summer breeze can be very refreshing; but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely to ourselves, the breeze will die. Our beloved is the same. He is like a breeze, a cloud, a flower. If you imprison him in a tin can, he will die. Yet many people do just that. They rob their loved one of his liberty, until he can no longer be himself. They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying.
THICH NHAT HANH
Teachings on Love
Marriage may be polygamic, monogamic, polyandric, complex according to the Oneida pattern, or other, and is true marriage (I do not say perfect marriage) so long as it promotes the happiness of the persons married, and the procreation, support, and education of children, and so long as it is founded on the joint free contract of the persons married, and remains under the sanction of the organic society of which those persons are members.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments
Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow in both cases, excludes us from all enquiry.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
notes, Queen Mab
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 cures nothing--and least of all does it solve anyone's emotional problems.
SMILEY BLANTON
Love or Perish