quotations about marriage
There is something pathetic in the spectacle of those among us who are still only able to recognise the animal end of marriage, and who point to the example of the lower animals--among whom the biological conditions are entirely different--as worthy of our imitation. It has taken God--or Nature, if we will--unknown millions of years of painful struggle to evolve Man, and to raise the human species above that helpless bondage to reproduction which marks the lower animals. But on these people it has all been wasted. They are at the animal stage still. They have yet to learn the A.B.C. of love. A representative of these people in the person of an Anglican bishop, the Bishop of Southwark, appeared as a witness before the National Birth-Rate Commission which, a few years ago, met in London to investigate the decline of the birth-rate. He declared that procreation is the sole legitimate object of marriage and that intercourse for any other end was a degrading act of mere "self-gratification." This declaration had the interesting result of evoking the comments of many members of the Commission, formed of representative men and women with various stand-points--Protestant, Catholic, and other--and it is notable that while not one identified himself with the Bishop's opinion, several decisively opposed that opinion, as contrary to the best beliefs of both ancient and modern times, as representing a low and not a high moral standpoint, and as involving the notion that the whole sexual activity of an individual should be reduced to perhaps two or three effective acts of intercourse in a lifetime. Such a notion obviously cannot be carried into general practice, putting aside the question as to whether it would be desirable, and it may be added that it would have the further result of shutting out from the life of love altogether all those persons who, for whatever reason, feel that it is their duty to refrain from having children at all. It is the attitude of a handful of Pharisees seeking to thrust the bulk of mankind into Hell. All this confusion and evil comes of the blindness which cannot know that, beyond the primary animal end of propagation in marriage, there is a secondary but more exalted spiritual end.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
"The Objects of Marriage", Little Essays of Love and Virtue
A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
Newsweek, March 28, 1960
There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
MARTIN LUTHER
Table Talk
She is always married too soon, who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late, who gets a good one.
DANIEL DEFOE
Moll Flanders
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The Scarlet Letter
Those marriages generally abound most with love and constancy that are preceded by a long courtship.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, December 29, 1711
Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
According to a new survey, people who get divorced die early. People who stay married live longer. The difference is they just wish they were dead.
DAVID LETTERMAN
Late Show with David Letterman, January 11, 2012
If you can hang in there through minor and major differences of opinion, through each other's big and little screwups, year after year, you come to understand that the person you married is really, terribly flawed. There isn't a human being you can hang out with, day in and day out, for over a decade and not come to the same inescapable realization.
KYRAN PITTMAN
Good Housekeeping, June 2011
A single life is doubtless preferable to a married one, where prudence and affection do not accompany the choice; but where they do, there is no terrestrial happiness equal to the married state.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Let your love advise before you choose, and your choice be fixed before you marry: Remember the happiness or misery of your life depends upon this one act, and ... nothing but death can dissolve the knot.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
In a way, marriage is a cosmic joke; we [men and women] are so different from each other.
MARK GUNGOR
Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage
People who have found everything disappointing are surprised and pained when marriage proves no exception. Most of the complaints about ... matrimony arise not because it is worse than the rest of life, but because it is not incomparably better.
JOHN LEVY
attributed, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth--that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence--for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. These are the only purposes for which persons of rank ever think of marriage.
SUSAN FERRIER
Marriage
All of us, at least unconsciously, marry in the hope of healing our wounds. Even if we do not have a traumatic background, we still have hurts and unfilled needs that we carry inside. We all suffer from feelings of self-doubt, unworthiness, and inadequacy. No matter how nurturing our parents were, we never received enough attention and love. So in marriage we look to our spouse to convince us that we are worthwhile and to heal our infirmities.
LESLIE L. PARROTT
Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
Selfish husbands have this advantage in maintaining with easy-minded wives a rigid and inflexible behaviour, viz., that if they do by any chance grant a little favour, the ladies receive it with such transports of gratitude as they would never think of showing to a lord and master who was accustomed to give them everything they asked for.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Men's Wives
I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one's life, the foundation of happiness or misery.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Burwell Bassett, May 23, 1785
Marriage is like life in this -- that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Virginibus Puerisque
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.
ROBERT FROST
The Master Speed
Our expectations for what we want the marriage to provide us have gotten higher in a lot of ways, more sophisticated in a number of other ways, more emotional, more psychological, and because of this additional complexity, more of our marriages are falling short, leaving us disappointed.
ELI FINKEL
"A relationship psychologist explains why marriage seems harder now than ever before", Business Insider, November 14, 2017