quotations about marriage
The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you begin.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
Husband and wife did not need to speak words to one another, not just from the old habit of living together but because in that one long-ago instant at least out of the long and shabby stretch of their human lives, even though they knew at the time it wouldn't and couldn't last, they had touched and become as God when they voluntarily and in advance forgave one another for all that each knew the other could never be.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Go Down, Moses
Much of the quarrels and hatred which arise between married people come, in my mind, from the husband's rage and revolt at discovering that his slave and bedfellow, who is to minister to all his wishes, and is church-sworn to honour and obey him--is his superior; and that he, and not she, ought to be the subordinate of the twain.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Esmond
Marriage is commonly a meal wherein the soup is better than the desert.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
What kind of place would set the age of consent at 17--but allow pregnant girls as young as 11 to marry? Florida: its law is less progressive than Afghanistan's. It is one of 25 US states that allow girls of any age to marry in certain circumstances, such as with judicial approval. Others have minimums set as low as 13. Though boys too are affected, those affected are overwhelmingly female: almost nine in 10 children who marry are girls, and only rarely do they wed a peer. Almost a third wed men of 21 or older. Marriage is often seen as protecting girls, especially if they are pregnant, but it locks children into abusive relationships. In some states, child brides cannot initiate legal action such as a divorce--or even access refuges--because they are minors.
EDITORS
"The Guardian view on child marriage: wedlock is a padlock for girls", The Guardian, November 29, 2017
Many people marry first, and have to learn afterwards the duty of a married state, and the comforts and inconveniences that attend it; and it is not uncommon to meet with persons whose depraved judgments encourage them to think it immaterial, whether or not love proceeds tying the matrimonial knot, looking upon it as a matter of future expectation.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
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
The mere idea of marriage, as a strong possibility, if not always nowadays a reasonable likelihood, existing to weaken the will by distracting its straight aim in the life of practically every young girl, is the simple secret of their confessed inferiority in men's pursuits and professions today.
WILLIAM BOLITHO
Twelve Against the Gods
It's terribly hard to be married ... harder than anything else. I think you have to be an angel.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
A Dream Play
Matrimony is an engagement which must last the life of one of the parties, and there is no retracting ... therefore, to avoid all the horror of a repentance that comes too late, men should thoroughly know the real causes that induce them to take so important a step, before they venture upon it; do they stand in need of a wife, an heiress, or a nurse; is it their passions, their wants, or their infirmities, that solicit them to wed?
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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 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
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
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
There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends
HOMER
The Odyssey
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
JANE AUSTEN
Pride and Prejudice
Marriages are made in heaven though consummated on Earth.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues and his England
Most women use more brains picking a horse in the third at Belmont than they do picking a husband.
LAUREN BACALL
How to Marry a Millionaire
Romance is a great "salt" to sprinkle on the hard work of sharing a life with another human being, but the main ingredient of a happy marriage can never be romance.
MARK GUNGOR
Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
OSCAR WILDE
A Woman of No Importance