quotations about marriage
Marriage is often like Procrustes' famous code of hospitality. Procrustes built a bed for his guests the same way we build a marriage: according to his own expectations. Shorter visitors were stretched to fit; taller folks were surgically shortened. Likewise, your spouse will try to change you into what he or she thinks you should be, just as you have fine-tuning in mind for your partner.... Marriage is the procrustean bed in which we can develop and enhance our psychological and ethical integrity. It can be the cradle of adult development.
DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH
Passionate Marriage
Bad husbands will make bad wives.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Newcomes
There is a connection between what you are putting into your marriage and what you are getting out of it.
MARK GUNGOR
Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage
Many brief follies--that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with a single long stupidity.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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
Ah, traditions. They carry with them a sense of nostalgia and solidarity. And, in the case of some wedding rituals--a bride literally being handed over to her groom by her father (or other male figure), vowing to "love, honor, and obey," male-dominated speeches--sexism. Considered individually, these customs may seem innocuous. But taken collectively, they reflect the sexist roots of the institution of marriage, when women were voiceless and goods to be traded and acquired.
MAUREEN SHAW
"The Sexist and Racist History of Marriage That No One Talks About", Teen Vogue, November 28, 2017
When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one.
HELEN ROWLAND
Reflections of a Bachelor Girl
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
Pornography
Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age -- as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.
PHYLLIS DILLER
attributed, Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women
Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.
MEXICAN PROVERB
We could probably date the conception of "modern" marriage at around 1850, with its gestation through the Gilded Age, and its birth about 1920. Not coincidentally, serenading that pregnancy and birth has been a steadily rising chorus of outcries about the death of marriage and the family. By the 1920s every third magazine article seemed to be titled "Will Modern Marriage Survive?" Of course, reports of marriage's death have been greatly exaggerated: even laying aside the peculiar 1950s (which none of "the family" doomsayers foresaw), marriage remains outrageously popular, divorce statistics and all.
E. J. GRAFF
What is Marriage for?
"Happy marriage" is a contradiction in terms.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
God has given the human reality of marriage the nature it has because he wills to integrate it into his divine plan and to make it a means of holiness, of sanctification.
WILLIAM E. MAY
Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built
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
There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship--only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.
ERICA JONG
How To Save Your Own Life
If you have the least doubt about it, do not marry.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
I don't know why some people get worked up about gay people marrying. It's not gay people who are "ruining the sanctity of marriage," it's celebrities.
CRAIG FERGUSON
The Late Show with Craig Ferguson, November 1, 2011
Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
A successful marriage is the result of falling in love often--with the same person.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
Love and fairytales are nice, but marriage is technically a contract, and it's worth reading the fine-print before signing your name.
MAUREEN SHAW
"The Sexist and Racist History of Marriage That No One Talks About", Teen Vogue, November 28, 2017