quotations about marriage
Without sounding pessimistic, I learned that I don't believe in marriage. I believe in a commitment that you make in your heart. There's no paper that will make you stay.
DIANE KRUGER
Glamour Magazine, February 2011
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 may be polygamic, monogamic, polyandric, complex according to the Oneida pattern, or other, and is true marriage (I do not say perfect marriage) so long as it promotes the happiness of the persons married, and the procreation, support, and education of children, and so long as it is founded on the joint free contract of the persons married, and remains under the sanction of the organic society of which those persons are members.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments
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
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
ALEXANDER POPE
The Wife of Bath
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
Probably the institution of marriage had its origin in love of property. Both men and women were united in this--that whatever they loved best, they wished to possess. The usual theory holds that the communal system would not permit the gratification of this desire at the expense of communal rights, and that therefore men were driven to gratify their passion by purchasing or by capturing women from neighboring and hostile tribes.
HENRY ADAMS
Historical Essays
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 the union of two hearts, without which there can be no marriage; but where this is the case, and the legal ceremony takes place, it is registered in Heaven. A father or mother getting their daughter to marry a man she does not care for is simply selling her, and a sin in all concerned, which cannot turn out for her happiness, but must lead to a life of mental misery and mental degradation. Having given their children a good Christian education, parents have no right to prevent, or try to prevent, their children marrying whosoever they choose, provided there is nothing against the character of the person chosen. Selling a young woman to an old man who is wealthy is a loathsome and disgusting sight; and the young woman should resist such a union at all hazards; for with such a marriage, or so-called marriage, ends all hope of earthly happiness and self-respect.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Marriage", Short Essays
Marriage is socialism among two people.
BARBARA EHRENREICH
The Worst Years of Our Lives
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Leigh Hunt
Ah. That ceremony. I see. That's it, then. A formula, a shibboleth meaningless as a child's game, performed by someone created by the situation whose need it answered: a crone mumbling in a dungeon lighted by a handful of burning hair, something in a tongue which not even the girls themselves understand anymore, maybe not even the crone herself, rooted in nothing of economics for her or for any possible progeny since the very fact that we acquiesced, suffered the farce, was her proof and assurance of that which the ceremony itself could never enforce; vesting no new rights in anyone, denying to none the old--a ritual as meaningless as that of college boys in secret rooms at night, even to the same archaic and forgotten symbols?--you call that a marriage, when the night of a honeymoon and the casual business with a hired prostitute consists of the same suzerainty over a (temporarily) private room, the same order of removing the same clothes, the same conjunction in a single bed? Why not call that a marriage too?
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
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
The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character. If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it forever from the realm of love.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Marriage and Love", Anarchism and Other Essays
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
A fulfilling sex life is one of the most powerful marital glues a couple can have.
KEVIN LEMAN
Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
Marriage is also a social statement, preeminently describing and defining a person's relationship and place in society. Marital status, along with what we do for a living, is often one of the first pieces of information we give to others about ourselves. It's so important, in fact, that most married people wear a symbol of their marriage on their hand.
EVAN WOLFSON
Why Marriage Matters
They stand at the altar before the minister and emotionally utter the words, "I do." It is a pivotal moment--the end of the wedding, but the start of the marriage. This is either the inauguration of a covenant or partnership that either expresses divine love that transcends all or (as is increasingly the case) the fractious nature of a communion unplanned, unevenly yoked, and selfishly formed.
SAM OHENE-APRAKU
foreword, A Purposeful Marriage
Few marry their first loves; fewer ought to. The love of the very young is like the love of children for sweetmeats: they usually outgrow it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought