Quotes about marriage

A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

— Joseph Addison

When a match has equal partners then I fear not.

— Aeschylus

Marriage is more than four bare legs in a bed.

— Hoshang N. Akhtar

When two people marry they become in the eyes of the law one person, and that one person is the husband!

— Shana Alexander

If a man works like a horse for his money, there are a lot of girls anxious to take him down the bridal path.

— Marty Allen

The lion and the calf will lay down together, but the calf won't get much sleep..

— Woody Allen

Marriage is the death of hope.

— Woody Allen

To marry unequally is to suffer equally.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day.

— Barbara De Angelis

The real act of marriage takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It's a choice you make -- not just on your wedding day, but over and over again -- and that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband or wife.

— Barbara De Angelis

Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal.

— Louis K. Anspacher

To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has never had a chance, poor devil, you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.

— Margot Asquith

I married beneath me. All women do.

— Lady Nancy Astor

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

— W. H. Auden

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

— Jane Austen

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

— Jane Austen

In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.

— Enid Bagnold

A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.

— Honore De Balzac

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

— Honore De Balzac

I am thinking of taking a fifth wife. Why not? Solomon had a thousand wives and he is a synonym for wisdom.

— John Barrymore

Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.

— Joseph Barth

Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.

— Baskins

Marriage always demands the greatest understanding of the art of insincerity possible between two human beings.

— Vicki Baum

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength --each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.

— Simone De Beauvoir

How many young hearts have revealed the fact that what they had been trained to imagine the highest earthly felicity was but the beginning of care, disappointment, and sorrow, and often led to the extremity of mental and physical suffering.

— Catharine Esther Beecher

Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.

— Henry Ward Beecher

Never marry a man who hates his mother, because he'll end up hating you.

— Jill Bennett

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. [Ephesians 5:25]

— Bible

Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. [Genesis 2:24]

— Bible

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. [Matthew 22:30]

— Bible

Who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor with the Lord.

— Bible

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. [1 Peter 3:7]

— Bible

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.

— Ambrose Bierce

The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.

— Ambrose Bierce

As a general thing, when the woman wears the pants in the family, she has a good right to them.

— Josh Billings

The mere idea of marriage, as a strong possibility, if not always nowadays a reasonable likelihood, existing to weaken the will by distracting its straight aim in the life of practically every young girl, is the simple secret of their confessed inferiority in men's pursuits and professions to-day.

— William Bolitho

When you get married you forget about kissing other women.

— Pat Boone

Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out the trash.

— Dr. Joyce Brothers

Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.

— Jean De La Bruyere

I hate work. That's why I got married.

— Peg Bundy

The only thing that holds a marriage together is the husband being big enough to keep his mouth shut, to step back and see where his wife is wrong.

— Archie Bunker

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much.

— Anthony Burgess

One was never married, and that's his hell; another is, and that's his plague.

— Robert Burton

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children they just about throw up.

— Barbara Bush

Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil.

— Lord Byron

All tragedies are finished by a death, all comedies by a marriage.

— Lord Byron

I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.

— Lord Byron

Love and marriage, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. Dad was told by mother. You can't have one without the other.

— Sammy Cahn

The deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-lounge.

— Mrs Patrick Campbell

A man will teach his wife what is needed to arouse his desires. And there is no reason for a woman to know any more than what her husband is prepared to teach her. If she gets married knowing far too much about what she wants and doesn't want then she will be ready to find fault with her husband.

— Barbara Cartland

There is a time for all things -- except marriage my dear.

— Thomas Chatterton

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

There's nothing like a Catholic wedding to make you wish life had a fast forward button.

— Daniel Chopin

Before marriage a man yearns for a woman. Afterward the y is silent.

— W. A. Clarke

The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is to be sold and the other to be buried.

— Charles Caleb Colton

Grief walks upon the heels of pleasure; married in haste, we repent at leisure.

— William Congreve

Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing stands in the way of our happy union.

— Cyril Connolly

The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.

— Cyril Connolly

I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night.

— Marie Corelli

Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest.

— Irwin Cory

That married couples can live together day after day is a miracle the Vatican has overlooked.

— Bill Cosby

I've sometimes thought of marrying, and then I've thought again.

— Noel Coward

Marriage is a matter of give and take, but so far I haven't been able to find anybody who'll take what I have to give.

— Cass Daley

My wife and I were happy for twenty. Then we met!

— Rodney Dangerfield

My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it.

— Rodney Dangerfield

I'd marry again if I found a man who had 15 million and would sign over half of it to me before the marriage and guarantee he'd be dead within a year.

— Bette Davis

I think like any marriage, especially when you've had divorced parents like myself, you'd want to try even harder to make it work.

— Princess of Wales Diana

When you're a married man, Samivel, you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now; but whether it's worth while, going through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said when he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o taste.

— Charles Dickens

Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age -- as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.

— Phyllis Diller

It destroys one's nerve to be amiable every day to the same human being.

— Benjamin Disraeli

I'm certain that most couples expect to find intimacy in marriage, but it somehow eludes them.

— Dr. James C. Dobson

So that ends my first experience of matrimony, which I always thought a highly over-rated performance.

— Isadora Duncan

Men marry to make an end; women to make a beginning.

— Alexis Dupuy

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

Marriage is socialism among two people.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

— George Eliot

I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.

— Elizabeth I

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

When the blind lead the blind, no wonder they both fall into -- matrimony.

— George Farquhar

When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager that the man, if not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.

— Henry Fielding

One fool at least in every married couple.

— Henry Fielding

There is a French saying: Love is the dawn of marriage, and marriage is the sunset of love.

— J. Finod De

Married life requires shared mystery even when all the facts are known.

— Richard Ford

I'm going to marry a Jewish woman because I like the idea of getting up Sunday morning and going to the deli.

— Michael J. Fox

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.

— Benjamin Franklin

One good husband is worth two good wives, for the scarcer things are, the more they are valued.

— Benjamin Franklin

Where there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.

— Benjamin Franklin

An undutiful daughter will prove an unmanageable wife.

— Benjamin Franklin

Marriage accustomed one to the good things, so one came to take them for granted, but magnified the bad things, so they came to feel as painful as a grain in one's eye. An open window, a forgotten quart of milk, a TV set left blaring, socks on the bathroom floor could become occasions for incredible rage. And something happened sexually in marriage --the swearing to forsake all others, despite its slight observance, had a profound effect. Some people felt trapped by it, impelled to assert what they called freedom. Some accepted it like a rein, and in the effort to avoid pain in the form of hopeless desire, cut off occasions of desire, avoided having long talks at parties with attractive members of the opposite sex. In time, all feeling for the opposite sex was cut off, and intercourse limited to the barest politesses. But something happened to you when you did that, a kind of death seeped up from the genitals to the rest of the body, till it showed in the eyes, the gestures, in a certain lifelessness.

— Marilyn French

If you would have a good wife, marry one who has been a good daughter.

— Thomas Fuller

Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married estate. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs, as if their mirth were turned into care for their young ones.

— Thomas Fuller

I never hate a man enough to give him his diamonds back.

— Zsa Zsa Gabor

I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.

— Mahatma Gandhi

To be sure a stepmother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!

— Elizabeth Gaskell

I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success.

— J. Paul Getty

When a wife has a good husband it is easily seen in her face.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman's premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, until death doth part.

— Emma Goldman

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

— Emma Goldman