Selected marriage quotes

1. Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

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

3. You can't build marriage on a foundation of selfish hedonism, because that would be to promise people only roses, and marriage is also thorns.

4. It would seem that the full meaning of the word marriage can never be known by those who, at their first outspring into life, are surrounded by all that money can give. It requires the single sitting-room, the single fire, the necessary little efforts of self-devotion, the inward declaration that some struggle shall be made for that other one.

5. There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.

6. The appropriate age for marriage is around eighteen for girls and thirty-seven for men.

7. If I get married, I want to be very married.

8. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.

9. I would say that the surest measure of a man's or a woman's maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse.

10. Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

11. An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know.

12. Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.

13. I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year.

14. Zsa Zsa Gabor got married as a one-off, and it was so successful she turned it into a series.

15. Gays being gay is wrong. Two women can't produce a baby, two men can't produce a baby, so it's not how it's supposed to be. ... I don't believe in gay marriages. I don't believe in being gay.

16. I think marriage is all about timing. Getting married is insanity; I mean, it's a risk - who knows if you're going to be together forever? But you both say, 'We're going to take this chance, in the same spirit.

17. There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.

18. I revere the memory of Mr. F. as an estimable man and most indulgent husband, only necessary to mention Asparagus and it appeared or to hint at any little delicate thing to drink and it came like magic in a pint bottle; it was not ecstasy but it was comfort.

19. Whenever I go out with other married couples, I like to bring along a single crackhead. Just to spice things up.

20. There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.

21. They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.

22. Her name was called Lady Helena Herring and her age was 25 and she mated well with the earl.

23. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.

24. The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.

25. Commuter - one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again.

26. In mid-life the man wants to see how irresistible he still is to younger women. How they turn their hearts to stone and more or less commit a murder of their marriage I just don't know, but they do.

27. Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.

28. Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.

29. People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.

30. I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down... The other accident is Diego.

31. There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.

32. I refuse to stand up in front of a rabbi and my friends and the woman I love - who I will tell you I can love with all my heart - and promise she will be the only one I will ever have until the day I die. That's a lie.

33. Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?

34. What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

35. Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

36. When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

37. There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.

38. [Matrimony] is the grave of love.

39. I tell him [husband Emilio] you are lucky I am not a jealous woman, because look at the women he's worked with: Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Thalia, Madonna. These very sexy women. I trust him.

40. The secret of a long marriage is shaving your legs every day . . . because it shows you still care.

41. I think honestly if you can wait until you're married I think you should definitely do that, because it's so much more sacred. That you don't go around sleeping with people. But I mean, I really thought I was going to be with him for the rest of my life, I did.

42. Ne pouvant supprimer l'amour, l'Eglise a voulu au moins le desinfecter, et elle a fait le mariage.

43. Ven you're a married man, Samivel, you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now; but vether it's worth goin' through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter of taste.

44. Debbie Thomas married a white man. Walked down the aisle! I was mad at first. I was like, 'Damn, Debbie. What do I got to do : to get with you?' Then I thought it over and said, 'You know what? I bet she didn't meet a lot of brothers on the ice!'

45. We can't have gay marriage 'cause marriage is sacred, it happens in the church. Marriage is sacred, it's sacred. No, it's not, not in America, not in a country that watches Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? and The Bachelor and The Bachelorette and Who Wants to Marry a Midget. Get the fuck outta here. Shit, Michael Jackson got married, how fucking sacred is that shit?

46. Cal's wife : Nigga get a real job!

47. 'I'm there thinking, 'First off, I'm married, and second of all, even if you were hot, it wouldn't happen. You've obviously got no mirrors in your house if you think you can just walk up to somebody and say, 'Sign my breasts.'

48. I have no patience with those who say that sexual excitement is shameful and that venereal stimuli have their origin not in nature, but in sin. Nothing is so far from the truth. As if marriage, whose function cannot be fulfilled without these incitements, did not rise above blame. In other living creatures, where do these incitements come from? From nature or from sin? From nature, of course. It must borne in mind that in the apetites of the body there is very little difference between man and other living creatures. Finally, we defile by our imagination what of its own nature is fair and holy. If we were willing to evaluate things not according to the opinion of the crowd, but according to nature itself, how is it less repulsive to eat, chew, digest, evacuate, and sleep after the fashion of dumb animals, than to enjoy lawful and permitted carnal relations?

49. It was reported that the fireworks were beginning and Diana, ever enthusiastic, led the procession to the roof. I was bringing up the rear, had reached the top floor and was about to climb the ladder that led up from it, when I heard the sound of shattered glass followed, after what seemed to me a long interval, by the sound of a falling body. I opened a door from behind which the noise seemed to come and looked into a narrow box-room, on the floor of which Diana was lying. She had fallen through a skylight about twenty-five feet from the floor. The opening was so narrow that the large hat she was wearing remained on the roof. She had broken her thigh... This was not an auspicious beginning to our married life. ~ Duff Cooper in Old Men Forget (1955)

50. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.

51. There is a persistent myth that a wife has control over her husband's money because she gets to spend it. Actually, she does not have much more financial authority than the employee of a corporation who is delegated to buy office furniture or supplies. The husband, especially if he is rich, may allow his wife wide latitude in spending - he may reason that since she has to work in the home she is entitled to furnish it to her taste, or he may simply not want to bother with domestic details - but he retains the ultimate veto power. If he doesn't like the way his wife handles his money, she will hear about it.

52. I believe in the separation of sex and state. I also believe that social benefits like health insurance should not be privileges bestowed by marital status but should be available to all as individuals. Marriage, in the sense of a ceremonial commitment of people to merge their lives, is properly a social ritual reflecting religious or personal conviction, and should not have legal status. 'Sanctity' is a religious category that is, or ought to be, irrelevant to secular law. The purpose of civil unions should be to establish parental rights and responsibilities, grant next-of-kin status for such purposes as medical decisions and insure equity in matters of property distribution and taxes. Such unions should be available to any two - or more - adults, regardless of gender.

53. That man and woman have an equality of duties and rights is accepted by woman even less than by man. Behind his destiny woman must annihilate herself, must be only his complement. A woman dedicates herself to the vocation of her husband; she fills up and performs the subordinate parts in it. But if she has any destiny, any vocation of her own, she must renounce it, in nine cases out of ten.

54. It is thought pretty to say that 'Women have no passion.' If passion is excitement in the daily social intercourse with men, women think about marriage much more than men do; it is the only event of their lives. It ought to be a sacred event, but surely not the only event of a woman's life, as it is now. Many women spend their lives in asking men to marry them, in a refined way. Yet it is true that women are seldom in love. How can they be?

55. Men sholde wedden after hir estat, For youthe and elde is often at debat.

56. One of the main conveniences of marriage is that if you can't stand a visitor, you can pass him along to your wife.

57. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad-boy husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a bloodsucker, a hypocrite and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder philosophy!

58. The actors are, it seems, the usual three: Husband and wife and lover.

59. Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife.

60. [My husband Emilio] found the last remaining virgin in the '70s -- and that was me.

61. But even as they were brought closer together by the details of daily life, she was separated from him by a growing sense of inward detachment. Charles' conversation was flat as a sidewalk, a place of passage for the ideas of everyman; they wore drab everyday clothes, and they inspired neither laughter nor dreams.

62. What exasperated her was Charles's total unawareness of her ordeal. His conviction that he was making her happy she took as a stupid insult: such self-righteousness could only mean that he didn't appreciate her.

63. Often, when they spoke of Paris, she would murmur: 'Ah! How happy we'd be, living there!' 'Aren't we happy here?' the young would softly ask, passing his hand over her hair.

64. We are indeed a strange lot! There are times we doubt that we have any emotions we can honestly call our own. I have approached every dynamic scene change in my life the same way. When I married Charlie MacArthur, I sat down and wondered how I could play the best wife that ever was.... My love for him was the truest thing in my life; but it was still important that I love him with proper effect, that I act loving him with great style, that I achieve the ultimate in wifedom.

65. Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition.

66. But our home's been nothing but a playpen. I've been your doll-wife here, just as at home I was Papa's doll-child. And in turn the children have been my dolls. I thought it fun when you played with me, just as they thought it fun when I played with them. That's been our marriage, Torvald.

67. Marriage means expectations and expectations mean conflict.

68. The best among you are those who are best to their wives.

69. O People, it is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women, but they also have right over you. If they abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers.

70. Le mariage est un combat a outrage avant lequel les deux epoux demandent au ciel sa benediction, parce que s'aimer toujours est la plus temeraire des entreprises; le combat ne tarde pas a commencer, et la victoire, c'est-a-dire la liberte, demeure au plus adroit.

71. Un homme ne peut se marier sans avoir etudie l'anatomie et disseque une femme au moins.

72. Il est plus facile d'etre amant que mari, par la raison qu'il est plus difficile d'avoir de l'esprit tous les jours que de dire de jolies choses de temps en temps.

73. Ainsi ne vous laissez jamais seduire par la fausse bonhomie des lits jumeaux. C'est l'invention la plus sotte, la plus perfide et la plus dangereuse qui soit au monde. Honte et anatheme a qui l'imagina!

74. Entre le joueur du matin et le joueur du soir il existe la difference qui distingue le mari nonchalant de l'amant pame sous les fenetres de sa belle.

75. Les meres de famille devraient rechercher de pareils hommes pour leurs filles: l'Esprit est protecteur comme la Divinite, le Desenchantement est perspicace comme un chirurgien, l'Experience est prevoyante comme une mere. Ces trois sentiments sont les vertus theologales du mariage.

76. Comme beaucoup de veuves, elle eut l'idee malsaine de se remarier.

77. L'homme qui nous parle est l'amant, l'homme qui ne nous parle plus est le mari.

78. First the world will call me Bouvier, then I'll change to Jackie K. After my date with tragedy, I will let Aristotle take care of me, I want to be Jackie Onassis oh yeah....

79. I'm going to be with Gloria now.

80. Fay: You've been a widower for three days. Have you considered a second marriage yet? McLeavy: No. Fay: Why not? McLeavy: I've been so busy with the funeral.

81. Mrs Prentice: My uterine contractions have been bogus for some time! Prentice: What a discovery! Married to the mistress of the fraudulent climax.

82. Mrs Prentice: Have you taken up transvestism? I'd no idea our marriage teetered on the edge of fashion.

83. Prentice: It's ridiculous. I'm a married man. Match: Marriage excuses no one the freaks' roll-call.

84. A servant, indeed, one will be able perhaps to bind down by fear; nay, not even for him, for he will soon leave you. But the partner of one's life, the mother of one's children, the foundation of one's every joy, one ought never to chain down by fear and threats, but with love and good temper. For what sort of union is that, where the wife trembles at her husband? And what sort of pleasure will the husband have if he dwells with his wife as with a slave? Yea, even though you suffer everything on her account, do not scold her; for neither did Christ do this to the Church.

85. You marry to be worthy of a gift, and want to say so out loud, but without shouting. One doesn't shout a prayer. Marriage is one of the few ceremonies left to us about which it is impossible - or at least self-demeaning - to be cynical.

86. If you can't sleep with your own wife wearing a false beard, what can you do?

87. I have an outstanding wife.

88. Sheila has just shuffled into the kitchen, she's walking with a stick and wearing a hat to cover a rather unsightly scar but she's never looked more beautiful than she does now. (On his wife, after her surgery for a brain tumour)

89. Under an oak, in stormy weather, I joined this rogue and whore together; And none but he who rules the thunder Can put this rogue and whore asunder.

90. Women my wife's age with broken marriages take up robustly with fellows much younger than themselves, sometimes boys, and their husbands don't like that part of it at all. (It's a means they have of really sticking it to us. The husbands can do without the money and kids. But they can't abide their wives' humping a younger dick and letting everyone know.)

91. Neither of us has ever been married.

92. While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.

93. We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power...

94. While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the law's in regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it.

95. In order to avoid her death, her particular death, with wrung neck and swollen tongue, she must marry the hangman.

96. Be to her virtues very kind; Be to her faults a little blind; Let all her ways be unconfined; And clap your padlock - on her mind!

97. It is no big deal to me. I have always been attracted to women, and I went on dates with women if they asked me.... It did not seem that different to me. But then I met my [husband], and now he is the apple of my eye.

98. Two days ago, I dreamt I married a 5-year-old boy. He treated me like a queen and was perfectly lovely. We took a driving trip for our honeymoon. Then it dawned on me: 'Oh my God! He doesn't have a driver's license! We could get arrested!''

99. Women, different from man but not inferior to him, intelligent, hardworking and free as he is, should be declared his equal in all political and social rights... religious and civil marriage should be replaced by free marriage, and that the upkeep, education and training of all children should be a matter for everyone, a charge upon society .... children belonging neither to society nor to their parents but rather to their future liberty.

100. Our relationship is very special. We were very much in love and still are. Thank God we found each other. When I say my life began with Ronnie, well, it's true. It did. Forty-six years? Can't imagine life without him.