quotations about marriage
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
No man of common sense will value a woman the less, for not giving herself up at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, even of her understanding, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark.
DANIEL DEFOE
Moll Flanders
Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.
ELLEN KEY
"The Morality of Woman"
But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from "loving" parents, to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it! Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put him in convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child? If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to "justice," to put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the State. The child receives but a blighted memory of his father's stripes.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Marriage and Love", Anarchism and Other Essays
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
There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
MARTIN LUTHER
Table Talk
There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"The Old Scout", The Writer's Almanac, October 4, 2005
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
Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.
MEXICAN PROVERB
Marriage is not an event. It's a journey. And what I mean by that is you learn from each other every day.
JUDITH HARRIS
Birmingham Times, November 29, 2017
If sex is supposed to be satisfying and anxiety-free once we are safely ensconced in marriage, how come that's when many of us stop wanting it?
DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH
Passionate Marriage
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
Marriage is like life in this -- that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Virginibus Puerisque
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
A successful marriage is the result of falling in love often--with the same person.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
A marriage bound together by commitments to exploit the other for filling one's own needs (and I fear that most marriages are built on such a basis) can legitimately be described as a "tic on a dog" relationship. Just as a hungry tic clamps on to a nourishing host in anticipation of a meal, so each partner unites with the other in the expectation of finding what his or her personal nature demands. The rather frustrating dilemma, of course, is that in such a marriage there are two tics and no dog!
LARRY CRABB
The Marriage Builder
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
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
attributed, And I Quote
Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
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