quotations about marriage
The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open.
GROUCHO MARX
attributed, Wise Words and Quotes
There is a connection between what you are putting into your marriage and what you are getting out of it.
MARK GUNGOR
Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage
A single life is doubtless preferable to a married one, where prudence and affection do not accompany the choice; but where they do, there is no terrestrial happiness equal to the married state.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Marriage is often like Procrustes' famous code of hospitality. Procrustes built a bed for his guests the same way we build a marriage: according to his own expectations. Shorter visitors were stretched to fit; taller folks were surgically shortened. Likewise, your spouse will try to change you into what he or she thinks you should be, just as you have fine-tuning in mind for your partner.... Marriage is the procrustean bed in which we can develop and enhance our psychological and ethical integrity. It can be the cradle of adult development.
DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH
Passionate Marriage
Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.
MEXICAN PROVERB
Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age -- as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.
PHYLLIS DILLER
attributed, Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women
When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one.
HELEN ROWLAND
Reflections of a Bachelor Girl
According to a new survey, people who get divorced die early. People who stay married live longer. The difference is they just wish they were dead.
DAVID LETTERMAN
Late Show with David Letterman, January 11, 2012
Ah, traditions. They carry with them a sense of nostalgia and solidarity. And, in the case of some wedding rituals--a bride literally being handed over to her groom by her father (or other male figure), vowing to "love, honor, and obey," male-dominated speeches--sexism. Considered individually, these customs may seem innocuous. But taken collectively, they reflect the sexist roots of the institution of marriage, when women were voiceless and goods to be traded and acquired.
MAUREEN SHAW
"The Sexist and Racist History of Marriage That No One Talks About", Teen Vogue, November 28, 2017
Many brief follies--that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with a single long stupidity.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.
ANDREA DWORKIN
Pornography
"Happy marriage" is a contradiction in terms.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
All of us, at least unconsciously, marry in the hope of healing our wounds. Even if we do not have a traumatic background, we still have hurts and unfilled needs that we carry inside. We all suffer from feelings of self-doubt, unworthiness, and inadequacy. No matter how nurturing our parents were, we never received enough attention and love. So in marriage we look to our spouse to convince us that we are worthwhile and to heal our infirmities.
LESLIE L. PARROTT
Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
I don't know why some people get worked up about gay people marrying. It's not gay people who are "ruining the sanctity of marriage," it's celebrities.
CRAIG FERGUSON
The Late Show with Craig Ferguson, November 1, 2011
I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth--that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence--for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. These are the only purposes for which persons of rank ever think of marriage.
SUSAN FERRIER
Marriage
Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
No man of common sense will value a woman the less, for not giving herself up at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, even of her understanding, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark.
DANIEL DEFOE
Moll Flanders
One of the best wedding gifts God gave you was a full-length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, "Here's to helping you discover what you're really like!"
GARY & BETSY RICUCCI
attributed, Sacred Marriage
People who have found everything disappointing are surprised and pained when marriage proves no exception. Most of the complaints about ... matrimony arise not because it is worse than the rest of life, but because it is not incomparably better.
JOHN LEVY
attributed, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
She is always married too soon, who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late, who gets a good one.
DANIEL DEFOE
Moll Flanders