quotations about marriage
The key to a successful marriage is picking up your husband's socks.
PIERS MORGAN
Good Morning Britain, November 29, 2017
If you have the least doubt about it, do not marry.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Marriage may sometimes be compared to a lottery, in which it is better not to have purchased a ticket than to have drawn a blank.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
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
It will perhaps appear extraordinary that in speaking of marriage we have touched upon so many subjects; but marriage is not only the whole of human life, it is the whole of two human lives. Now just as the addition of a figure to the drawing of a lottery multiplies the chances a hundredfold, so one single life united to another life multiplies by a startling progression the risks of human life, which are in any case so manifold.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
I fall in love easily. I love the marriage ceremony. I love the honeymoon phase. I just don't want to be married. I'm not marriage material, but I am a very good honeymooner.
FERN MICHAELS
The Marriage Game
A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
Newsweek, March 28, 1960
I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all.
QUEEN VICTORIA
letter to her daughter, May 3, 1858
A successful marriage is the result of falling in love often--with the same person.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open.
GROUCHO MARX
attributed, Wise Words and Quotes
The next step was the use of huts and skins and fire,
And women became the property of one man.
So the chaste pleasures of a private Venus
Were first invented and couples had their own children.
It was then that the human race began to soften.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
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?
Marriage ... has historically been a battlefield, the site of collisions within and between governments and religions over who should regulate it. But marriage has weathered centuries of skirmishes and change. It has evolved from an institution that was imposed on some people and denied to others, to the loving union of companionship, commitment, and caring between equal partners that we think of today.
EVAN WOLFSON
Why Marriage Matters
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
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
Today's concept of marrying for love is a relatively new phenomenon. Historically, unions were transactional and women had no say in the matter. In colonial America, for example, there was no dating; fathers arranged their daughters' marriages with the goal of combining wealth and property. What's more, once married, women were prohibited from owning property. They were merely their husband's possession and lost all individual legal rights.
MAUREEN SHAW
"The Sexist and Racist History of Marriage That No One Talks About", Teen Vogue, November 28, 2017
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
Our natural tendency in the middle of winter is to avoid the elements as much as possible. When the weather turns frigid, we retreat inside for survival and wait for it to warm up or for the season to change. In a winter marriage, there may be a similar tendency to "avoid the elements." Spouses may withdraw within themselves, hunkering down and trying to ride out the cold season, hoping for spring but not taking any positive steps to move their marriage toward spring. However, unlike the natural seasons, the seasons of a marriage do not typically change without some positive action--unless it's a change from bad to worse.
GARY D. CHAPMAN
The Four Seasons of 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