quotations about marriage
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 and women are natural enemies, like cat and dog--only more so. They are forced to live together for a time, or this wonderful race couldn't go on.
NEITH BOYCE
Enemies
When custom has made familiar the charms that are most attractive, when youthful freshness has died away, and with the brightness of domestic life more and more shadows have mingled, then ... and not till then, can the wife say of the husband, "He is worthy of love;" then, first, the husband say of the wife, "She blooms in imperishable beauty."
T. S. ARTHUR
"The Evening Before Marriage", Orange Blossoms
And so the words are spoken, and the indissoluble knot is tied. Amen. For better, for worse, for good days or evil, love each other, cling to each other, dear friends. Fulfil your course, and accomplish your life's toil. In sorrow, sooth eath other; in illness, watch and tend. Cheer, fond wife, the husband's struggle; lighten his gloomy hours with your tender smiles, and gladden his home with your love. Husband, father, whatsoever your lot, be your heart pure, your life honest. For the sake of those who bear your name, let no bad action sully it. AS you look at those innocent faces, which ever tenderly greet you, be yours, too, innocent, and your conscience without reproach. As the young people kneel before the altar-railing, some such thoughts as these pass through a friend's mind who witnesses the ceremony of their marriage. Is not all we hear in that place meant to apply to ourselves, and to be carried away for everyday congitation.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Philip
Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different thing because women have become human beings.
HERBERT GEORGE WELLS
Marriage
If society will adopt the rule of nature, and justify no marriage without a supreme affection, the evils of marriage without love will be sufficiently cured. Those who marry without the consent of Nature may securely expect trouble.
JOSEPH COOK
Marriage: With Preludes on Current Events
By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
attributed, Life of Samuel Johnson
Marriage has some thorns, but celibacy has no roses.
VERNON K. MCLELLAN
Wise Words and Quotes
Marriage is like the army--many complain, but you'd be surprised how many reenlist.
VERNON K. MCLELLAN
attributed, Wise Words and Quotes
Marriage, the relationship of husband and wife, a faithful union, marks the first human compact. The earliest recognized distinction between that which is lawful and that which is unlawful found its expression in marriage. In some places the old names for "law" and "marriage" are interchangeable. Whatever ceremonies may have accompanied it, however some (at all times) have evaded its obligation, the primæval conscience, the original human instinct, before the formation of any Church or code, recognized the need of a "covenant" first in marriage. Around it laws have grown. It is no invention of legislators. It arose from the divinely implanted necessities of "human" life, and a sense of its excellence above that of other animals "which have no understanding." Thus marriage grew to be called an "honourable estate;" to be surrounded with ceremony and fenced with safeguards.
HARRY JONES
Courtship and Marriage
A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
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
Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull Play.
WILLIAM CONGREVE
The Old Bachelor
Marriage is meant to be a very sacred union between two people who have no intention of ever becoming emotionally or physically tied to another person for the rest of eternity. Most people mean their marriage vows when they take them, but oftentimes--these days more often than not, according to statistics--the initial commitment begins to wane and ultimately dissipates altogether. We live in a time when most people who get married before they turn thirty are merely doing a practice run.
ZANE
Dear G. Spot
Marriage is commonly a meal wherein the soup is better than the desert.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
The only way you can make a marriage work is as free, independent people. It needs to be based on the good feelings that you have for each other, not on need.
ALEXANDER LOWEN
"Alexander Lowen: An Energetic Man", Journal of Counseling & Development, September/October 1992
Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.
G. K. CHESTERTON
What's Wrong with the World
Marriages are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find ourselves in winter--discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of summer--comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the seasons repeat themselves in nature.
GARY D. CHAPMAN
note to readers, Summer Breeze