Quotes about marriage

You, that are going to be married, think things can never be done too fast: but we that are old, and know what we are about, must elope methodically, madam.

— Oliver Goldsmith

Love is blind and marriage is the institution for the blind.

— James Graham

I grew up in a very large family in a very small house. I never slept alone until after I was married.

— Lewis Grizzard

Instead of getting married again. I'm going to find a woman I don't like and give her a house.

— Lewis Grizzard

Two souls and one thought, two hearts and one pulse.

— Halen

Marriage, for a woman at least, hampers the two things that made life to me glorious -- friendship and learning.

— Jane Harrison

The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.

— Carolyn Heilbrun

Matrimony is the high sea for which no compass has yet to be invented.

— Heinrich Heine

Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, What will you have, sir? And I said, A glass of hemlock.

— Ernest Hemingway

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

— Katharine Hepburn

Try to take for a mate a person of your own neighborhood.

— Hesiod

When a husband is embraced without affection, there must be some reason for it.

— Hitopadesa

She is a wife who is the soul of her husband.

— Hitopadesa

I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

There is nothing nobler or 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

Polygamy is an endeavor to get more out of life than there is in it.

— Elbert Hubbard

All marriages are happy it's living together afterwards that causes all the problems.

— Raymond Hull

Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more or their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination not to live without it.

— Morton Hunt

A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there's no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it's an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.

— Henrik Ibsen

Marriage is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.

— Washington Irving

Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.

— Andrew Jackson

Marriage is like wine. It is not properly judged until the second glass.

— Douglas William Jerrold

Marriage is a mistake every man should make.

— George Jessel

Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family --a domestic church.

— John Paul II

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

— Samuel Johnson

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.

— Samuel Johnson

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

— Samuel Johnson

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

— Samuel Johnson

Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same.

— Erica Jong

I never knew what real happiness was until I got married and by then it was too late.

— Max Kauffman

Marrying a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn't always go with everything else in the house.

— Jean Kerr

Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.

— Ellen Key

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.

— Søren Kierkegaard

I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years.

— Sam Kinison

Marriage is a lottery, but you can't tear up your ticket if you lose.

— F. M. Knowles

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

— Karl Kraus

Sensual pleasures have the fleeting brilliance of a comet; a happy marriage has the tranquillity of a lovely sunset.

— Ann Landers

My whole working philosophy is that the only stable happiness for mankind is that it shall live married in blessed union to woman-kind --intimacy, physical and psychical between a man and his wife. I wish to add that my state of bliss is by no means perfect.

— D. H. Lawrence

Progress of a marriage: There was a time when you couldn't make me happy. Now the time has come when you can make me unhappy.

— Irving Layton

Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

— Stephen B. Leacock

Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip.

— John Lennon

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.

— C. S. Lewis

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

— Abraham Lincoln

I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.

— Abraham Lincoln

There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage.

— Martin Luther

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.

— Martin Luther

Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on Earth.

— John Lyly

The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.

— Harriet Martineau

Any one must see at a glance that if men and women marry those whom they do not love, they must love those whom they do not marry.

— Harriet Martineau

One of the best hearing aids a man can have is an attentive wife.

— Groucho Marx

Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe.

— Jackie Mason

A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.

— Andre Maurois

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.

— Andre Maurois

A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.

— Andre Maurois

You can never be happily married to another until you get a divorce from yourself. A successful marriage demands a certain death to self.

— Jerry Mccant

There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage.

— Donald H. Mcgannon

Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage; it was contrived for her protection. Unless she accepts it as such --as a beautiful, bountiful, but quite unequal association --the going will be hard indeed.

— Phyllis Mcginley

Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.

— Phyllis Mcginley

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

— Mignon McLaughlin

I've been married three times -- and each time I married the right person.

— Margaret Mead

The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations.

— Margaret Mead

If I ever marry it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself.

— H. L. Mencken

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.

— H. L. Mencken

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

— H. L. Mencken

After seven years of marriage, I'm sure of two things -- first, never wallpaper together, and second, you'll need two bathrooms.. both for her. The rest is a mystery, but a mystery I love to be involved in.

— Dennis Miller

Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid.

— Harlan Miller

We often marry in despair, so that we repent of it all our life after.

— Moliere

Love is often the fruit of marriage.

— Moliere

We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way.

— Iris Murdoch

Marriage should be a duet-when one sings, the other claps.

— Joe Murray

Successful marriage is always a triangle: a man, a woman, and God.

— Cecil Myers

There is only one thing for a man to do who is married to a woman who enjoys spending money, and that is enjoy earning it.

— Ogden Nash

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who cannot sleep with window shut, and a woman who cannot sleep with the window open.

— Ogden Nash

The secret to a happy marriage is to tell your spouse everything, but the essentials.

— Cynthia Nelms

A good marriage is at least 80 percent good luck in finding the right person at the right time. The rest is trust.

— Nanette Newman

The best friend is likely to acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is based on the talent for friendship.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage: which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Only as far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life and family life in general.

— Novalis

Quarrels are the dowry which married folk bring one another.

— Ovid

If you wish to marry suitably, marry your equal.

— Ovid

My wife isn't married to me forever; she's married to me for good. That keeps me on my toes.

— Mal Pancoast

In marriage do thou be wise; prefer the person before money; virtue before beauty; the mind before the body.

— William Penn

Saw a wedding in the church. It was strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.

— Samuel Pepys

God invented concubinage, Satan marriage.

— Francis Picabia

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

— Alexander Pope

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.

— Ezra Pound

Be to their virtue very kind; be to their faults a little blind.

— Matthew Prior

Choose your wife as you wish your children to be.

— Proverb

Those that marry for money sell their liberty.

— Proverb

Three things drive a man outdoors; smoke, a leaking roof and a scolding wife.

— Proverb

You'll repent if you marry, and repent if you don't.

— Proverb

Marrying is easy, it's housework that's hard.

— Proverb

Marriage is like a besieged castle; those who are on the outside wish to get in; and those who are on the inside wish to get out.

— Arabian Proverb

Marriage is the sunset of love.

— French Proverb

Weeping bride, laughing wife, laughing bride, weeping wife.

— German Proverb

It's a sad house where the hen crows louder than the cock.

— Scottish Proverb