quotations about marriage
Marriage is the union of two hearts, without which there can be no marriage; but where this is the case, and the legal ceremony takes place, it is registered in Heaven. A father or mother getting their daughter to marry a man she does not care for is simply selling her, and a sin in all concerned, which cannot turn out for her happiness, but must lead to a life of mental misery and mental degradation. Having given their children a good Christian education, parents have no right to prevent, or try to prevent, their children marrying whosoever they choose, provided there is nothing against the character of the person chosen. Selling a young woman to an old man who is wealthy is a loathsome and disgusting sight; and the young woman should resist such a union at all hazards; for with such a marriage, or so-called marriage, ends all hope of earthly happiness and self-respect.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
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"On Marriage", Short Essays
Society is built on marriage ... marriage and its consequences.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
The Forsyte Saga
You shouldn't marry anyone you have to try hard for.
RACHEL RAY
Good Housekeeping, July 2010
Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism are extracted without an anaesthetic.
HELEN ROWLAND
A Guide to Men
I'm never going to get married again. Three strikes you're out. I think if I would try to get married again in California I have to go to prison don't I? I think you only get three.
ROSEANNE BARR
Larry King Live, March 2, 2006
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
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
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
One way to describe the new vision of twenty-first-century marriage is that we have grafted onto the companionship marriage of the previous century the expectations and mores of a lover relationship--the kind of passion, attention, and emotional closeness that we most commonly associate with youth, and with the early stages of a relationship. The common thread running through both of these times is that the couple is principally concerned with itself. I call this nose-to-nose energy. But sooner or later--and certainly with the advent of those things that won't go away--healthy couples turn to side-by-side energy. No longer principally wrapped up in each other, the partners stand in harness together shoulder to shoulder, facing out toward the life they are building.
TERRENCE REAL
The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work
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
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
ALEXANDER POPE
The Wife of Bath
Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.
JAMES THURBER
Is Sex Necessary?
A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting.
HELEN ROWLAND
A Guide to Men
Marriage is a serious undertaking. You must submit to family congratulations on certain events, and have a nursery at the top of the house. One doesn't know what a nursery may lead to.
ROBERT BELL
Marriage: A Comedy in Five Acts
It was crazy: marriage. You gave your whole life, your whole happiness, over to one other human being, even the best of them inept at times, prone to reach for some other fulfillment, some other pleasure.
ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING
Marriage: A Duet
They stand at the altar before the minister and emotionally utter the words, "I do." It is a pivotal moment--the end of the wedding, but the start of the marriage. This is either the inauguration of a covenant or partnership that either expresses divine love that transcends all or (as is increasingly the case) the fractious nature of a communion unplanned, unevenly yoked, and selfishly formed.
SAM OHENE-APRAKU
foreword, A Purposeful Marriage
Never marry but for love; but see that thou lov'st what is lovely.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
To make a happy fire-side clime
To weans and wife,
That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.
ROBERT BURNS
"To Dr. Blacklock"
Marriage is a public declaration of a man and a woman that they have formed a secret alliance, with the intention to belong to, and share with each other, a mystical estate; mystical exactly in the sense that the real experience cannot be communicated to others, nor explained even to oneself on rational grounds.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
"Marriage Is Belonging", Collected Essays and Occasional Writings
Marriage is not something that can be accomplished all at once; it has to be constantly reaccomplished. A couple must never indulge in idle tranquility with the remark: "The game is won; let's relax." The game is never won. The chances of life are such that anything is possible. Remember what the dangers are for both sexes in middle age. A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living