quotations about marriage
It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil.
LORD BYRON
Hours of Idleness
Marriage is to family what legs are to a table.
BETTY JANE WYLIE
Family: An Exploration
Little disputes before marriage are great ones after it; as northerly winds, which are warm in summer, blow keen and cold in winter.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid.
HARLAN MILLER
attributed, Wise Words and Quotes
Any young man who is unmarried at the age of twenty one is a menace to the community.
BRIGHAM YOUNG
attributed, The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
Marriage is hard work; the illusion that you get married and live happily ever after is absolute rubbish.
JULIE ANDREWS
The New York Times, March 14, 1982
Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.
ISADORA DUNCAN
My Life
Married life requires shared mystery even when all the facts are known.
RICHARD FORD
The Sportswriter
The horrors of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.
MARQUIS DE SADE
L'Histoire de Juliette, ou les Prospérités
A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.
EDITH WHARTON
letter, February 12, 1909
In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Parerga and Paralipomena
A wife? A mistress rather ... he would not wed: that was to stoop in chains, renounce his wings, break body and heart and soul for daily bread, get down and crawl among all crawling things!
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth"
Nobody's ready for marriage. Marriage makes you ready for marriage.
DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH
Passionate Marriage
Researchers in Canada say they have discovered the part of the brain that is used to make decisions, and this is weird: If you're married, it's actually located in your wife's brain.
JIMMY FALLON
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, November 26, 2013
Well, the old theory was "marry an older man because they're more mature". But the new theory is "men don't mature -- marry a young one".
RITA RUDNER
Best of the Improv, Vol. 3, 2003
While it is perfectly true that sexual energy may be in large degree arrested, and transformed into intellectual and moral forms, yet it is also true that pleasure itself, and above all, sexual pleasure, wisely used and not abused, may prove the stimulus and liberator of our finest and most exalted activities. It is largely this remarkable function of sexual pleasure which is decisive in settling the argument of those who claim that continence is the only alternative to the animal end of marriage. That argument ignores the liberating and harmonising influences, giving wholesome balance and sanity to the whole organism, imparted by a sexual union which is the outcome of the psychic as well as physical needs. There is, further, in the attainment of the spiritual end of marriage, much more than the benefit of each individual separately. There is, that is to say, the effect on the union itself. For through harmonious sex relationships a deeper spiritual unity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence in or out of marriage, and the marriage association becomes an apter instrument in the service of the world.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
"The Objects of Marriage", Little Essays of Love and Virtue
Marriage is a three-ring circus--engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering.
DAVID MINKOFF
Oy!
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
THORNTON WILDER
The Matchmaker