quotations about marriage
If you have the least doubt about it, do not marry.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Scarlet Letter
Maybe marriages were made in heaven, but we believe in giving the old-fashioned porch-swing some credit.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
A successful marriage is the result of falling in love often--with the same person.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
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
We could probably date the conception of "modern" marriage at around 1850, with its gestation through the Gilded Age, and its birth about 1920. Not coincidentally, serenading that pregnancy and birth has been a steadily rising chorus of outcries about the death of marriage and the family. By the 1920s every third magazine article seemed to be titled "Will Modern Marriage Survive?" Of course, reports of marriage's death have been greatly exaggerated: even laying aside the peculiar 1950s (which none of "the family" doomsayers foresaw), marriage remains outrageously popular, divorce statistics and all.
E. J. GRAFF
What is Marriage for?
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
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
It will perhaps appear extraordinary that in speaking of marriage we have touched upon so many subjects; but marriage is not only the whole of human life, it is the whole of two human lives. Now just as the addition of a figure to the drawing of a lottery multiplies the chances a hundredfold, so one single life united to another life multiplies by a startling progression the risks of human life, which are in any case so manifold.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
The Rivals
You're married, and suddenly you have your own family. There's a nice comfort in that. That part of your life is certain ... You've got your home in that other person.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Good Housekeeping, October 2010
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 follows on love as smoke on flame.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Marriage is punishment for shoplifting in some countries.
GARTH ALGAR (DANA CARVEY)
Wayne's World
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
Marriage is like life in this -- that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Virginibus Puerisque
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, rightly concluded, is an incarnation of love--poetry expressed in action--a sweet embellishment of an otherwise prosaic existence.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
Our expectations for what we want the marriage to provide us have gotten higher in a lot of ways, more sophisticated in a number of other ways, more emotional, more psychological, and because of this additional complexity, more of our marriages are falling short, leaving us disappointed.
ELI FINKEL
"A relationship psychologist explains why marriage seems harder now than ever before", Business Insider, November 14, 2017