MARRIAGE QUOTES VIII

quotations about marriage

A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.

ZSA ZSA GABOR

Newsweek, March 28, 1960

Tags: Zsa Zsa Gabor


Marriage is often like Procrustes' famous code of hospitality. Procrustes built a bed for his guests the same way we build a marriage: according to his own expectations. Shorter visitors were stretched to fit; taller folks were surgically shortened. Likewise, your spouse will try to change you into what he or she thinks you should be, just as you have fine-tuning in mind for your partner.... Marriage is the procrustean bed in which we can develop and enhance our psychological and ethical integrity. It can be the cradle of adult development.

DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH

Passionate Marriage

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Well-married, a man is winged--ill-matched, he is shackled.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

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She is always married too soon, who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late, who gets a good one.

DANIEL DEFOE

Moll Flanders

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Marriage, rightly concluded, is an incarnation of love--poetry expressed in action--a sweet embellishment of an otherwise prosaic existence.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The Scarlet Letter

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Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary

Tags: Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort


The key to a successful marriage is picking up your husband's socks.

PIERS MORGAN

Good Morning Britain, November 29, 2017


Let your love advise before you choose, and your choice be fixed before you marry: Remember the happiness or misery of your life depends upon this one act, and ... nothing but death can dissolve the knot.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine

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Marriage is like life in this -- that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Virginibus Puerisque

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Many brief follies--that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with a single long stupidity.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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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

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Possibilities for the success of a marriage are endless. But you have to be willing to search for them.

JASON R. REDMOND

Are You Talking?

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Our expectations for what we want the marriage to provide us have gotten higher in a lot of ways, more sophisticated in a number of other ways, more emotional, more psychological, and because of this additional complexity, more of our marriages are falling short, leaving us disappointed.

ELI FINKEL

"A relationship psychologist explains why marriage seems harder now than ever before", Business Insider, November 14, 2017


There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.

MARTIN LUTHER

Table Talk

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Those marriages generally abound most with love and constancy that are preceded by a long courtship.

JOSEPH ADDISON

The Spectator, December 29, 1711

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Marriage that daily doom.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit is Rich

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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

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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

Tags: Terrence Real


Today's concept of marrying for love is a relatively new phenomenon. Historically, unions were transactional and women had no say in the matter. In colonial America, for example, there was no dating; fathers arranged their daughters' marriages with the goal of combining wealth and property. What's more, once married, women were prohibited from owning property. They were merely their husband's possession and lost all individual legal rights.

MAUREEN SHAW

"The Sexist and Racist History of Marriage That No One Talks About", Teen Vogue, November 28, 2017