quotations about marriage
Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different thing because women have become human beings.
HERBERT GEORGE WELLS
Marriage
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
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
When is it right to marry, and when, after that, is it right to have children? Those are personal questions, and they have personal answers. Answers that are different for different people. But there are rules of thumb, generalizations that hold true more often than society thinks. Our grandparents knew that, but modern America has largely forgotten. Forgotten that the best things in life are actually the purpose of life, and that there is no wisdom in delaying what on our deathbed we will consider the jewels of our existence.
BOB LONSBERRY
A Various Language
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
RITA RUDNER
stand-up routine
Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.
G. K. CHESTERTON
What's Wrong with the World
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
It's terribly hard to be married ... harder than anything else. I think you have to be an angel.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
A Dream Play
Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull Play.
WILLIAM CONGREVE
The Old Bachelor
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
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
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
Marriage is commonly a meal wherein the soup is better than the desert.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
OSCAR WILDE
A Woman of No Importance
It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry.... If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.
EZRA POUND
letter to his mother, 1909
Marriage has some thorns, but celibacy has no roses.
VERNON K. MCLELLAN
Wise Words and Quotes
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
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
Marriage is an economic arrangement in many ways, let's face it.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Period of Adjustment
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