quotations about marriage
If you have the least doubt about it, do not marry.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
attributed, And I Quote
A woman will always cherish the memory of the man who wanted to marry her. A man, of the woman who he didn't.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
I've been married eleven times. It would have been twelve, but one of my ex-wives tracked down all the others.
FERN MICHAELS
The Marriage Game
The key to a successful marriage is picking up your husband's socks.
PIERS MORGAN
Good Morning Britain, November 29, 2017
Spend time, talk it out before you get married. And figure it out. Make sure your really big issues you agree on. How you're going to raise your kids. If you're going to have kids. Your religion. All this kind of stuff. What do you think about money? Your morality? All these things. The big shit. Make sure you talk this stuff out, because this is the stuff that counts, not whether or not he picks up his clothes.
PAT BENATAR
interview, The Believer, May 1, 2003
Possibilities for the success of a marriage are endless. But you have to be willing to search for them.
JASON R. REDMOND
Are You Talking?
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 ... has historically been a battlefield, the site of collisions within and between governments and religions over who should regulate it. But marriage has weathered centuries of skirmishes and change. It has evolved from an institution that was imposed on some people and denied to others, to the loving union of companionship, commitment, and caring between equal partners that we think of today.
EVAN WOLFSON
Why Marriage Matters
Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.
ELLEN KEY
"The Morality of Woman"
If sex is supposed to be satisfying and anxiety-free once we are safely ensconced in marriage, how come that's when many of us stop wanting it?
DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH
Passionate Marriage
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
A successful marriage is the result of falling in love often--with the same person.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
That little ditty about love coming first, then marriage, then the baby carriage--it's history. Over the past few decades more and more single people have been having children, and more and more married couples have not been.
BELLA DEPAULO
Singled Out
Marriage may sometimes be compared to a lottery, in which it is better not to have purchased a ticket than to have drawn a blank.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
MARTIN LUTHER
Table Talk
The next step was the use of huts and skins and fire,
And women became the property of one man.
So the chaste pleasures of a private Venus
Were first invented and couples had their own children.
It was then that the human race began to soften.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
When a match has equal partners, then I fear not.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
Newsweek, March 28, 1960
Today's concept of marrying for love is a relatively new phenomenon. Historically, unions were transactional and women had no say in the matter. In colonial America, for example, there was no dating; fathers arranged their daughters' marriages with the goal of combining wealth and property. What's more, once married, women were prohibited from owning property. They were merely their husband's possession and lost all individual legal rights.
MAUREEN SHAW
"The Sexist and Racist History of Marriage That No One Talks About", Teen Vogue, November 28, 2017