quotations about marriage
Marriage is socialism among two people.
BARBARA EHRENREICH
The Worst Years of Our Lives
The key to a successful marriage is accepting that you're not going to change the other person. And the words "Yes, dear. Whatever you want."
PATRICK DEMPSEY
Good Housekeeping, July 2011
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
Five times? Wedding bells must sound like an alarm clock to you.
MAE WEST
I'm No Angel
Marriage does not unite two people; it entangles them.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
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
Marriage is one thing, and love is another... You need to have a solid canvas; nobody stops you to weave the arabesques.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
Climats
Upon marrying, we need most to pray for one of two things in our partners--the love that blinds, or the good-nature that excuses.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Marriage is for woman the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Marriage and Morals
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Leigh Hunt
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
A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
notes, Queen Mab
There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.
DORIS LESSING
The Grass Is Singing
A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's too late.
FRANK SINATRA
The Joker Is Wild
Marriage is a land mine. A really intimate land mine. Adultery to kitchen fires. Never a dull [moment].
NORA ROBERTS
Blue Smoke
Some women marry for love, some for money, and some for a home. It is not known why men marry.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
ALEXANDER POPE
The Wife of Bath
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 accustomed one to the good things, so one came to take them for granted, but magnified the bad things, so they came to feel as painful as a grain in one's eye. An open window, a forgotten quart of milk, a TV set left blaring, socks on the bathroom floor could become occasions for incredible rage. And something happened sexually in marriage--the swearing to forsake all others, despite its slight observance, had a profound effect. Some people felt trapped by it, impelled to assert what they called freedom. Some accepted it like a rein, and in the effort to avoid pain in the form of hopeless desire, cut off occasions of desire, avoided having long talks at parties with attractive members of the opposite sex. In time, all feeling for the opposite sex was cut off, and intercourse limited to the barest politenesses.... But something happened to you when you did that, a kind of death seeped up from the genitals to the rest of the body, till it showed in the eyes, the gestures, in a certain lifelessness.
MARILYN FRENCH
The Women's Room