quotations about marriage
Probably the institution of marriage had its origin in love of property. Both men and women were united in this--that whatever they loved best, they wished to possess. The usual theory holds that the communal system would not permit the gratification of this desire at the expense of communal rights, and that therefore men were driven to gratify their passion by purchasing or by capturing women from neighboring and hostile tribes.
HENRY ADAMS
Historical Essays
Before marriage a woman may procure some éclat by pretending to believe in the fiction of her ascendancy; but after marriage, the worshipped beauty becomes a very plain every-day sort of person, and the poetry of the sex's power is at an end for ever!
ROBERT BELL
Marriage: A Comedy in Five Acts
It was crazy: marriage. You gave your whole life, your whole happiness, over to one other human being, even the best of them inept at times, prone to reach for some other fulfillment, some other pleasure.
ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING
Marriage: A Duet
Until we have a natural, that is, a conscientious world, it cannot be known by experience what natural law will do for the gratification of a supreme affection; but, if you will give me that world, there will be in it very few not called to marriage, provided society allows proper opportunities for acquaintance between marriageable persons.
JOSEPH COOK
Marriage: With Preludes on Current Events
If society will adopt the rule of nature, and justify no marriage without a supreme affection, the evils of marriage without love will be sufficiently cured. Those who marry without the consent of Nature may securely expect trouble.
JOSEPH COOK
Marriage: With Preludes on Current Events
There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.
DORIS LESSING
The Grass Is Singing
There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends
HOMER
The Odyssey
Marriage is socialism among two people.
BARBARA EHRENREICH
The Worst Years of Our Lives
The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character. If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it forever from the realm of love.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Marriage and Love", Anarchism and Other Essays
How the world can change,
It can change like that,
Due to one little word:
"Married."
FRED EBB
Cabaret
Upon marrying, we need most to pray for one of two things in our partners--the love that blinds, or the good-nature that excuses.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.
JAMES THURBER
Is Sex Necessary?
A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
notes, Queen Mab
A fulfilling sex life is one of the most powerful marital glues a couple can have.
KEVIN LEMAN
Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
Happy marriage is the greatest wealth a man can possess, and one that a peasant can have as easily as a king.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
How you end something as profound and important as a marriage is a reflection of how you live your life--financially, emotionally, and spiritually.
SUZE ORMAN
The Road to Wealth
Marriage is a land mine. A really intimate land mine. Adultery to kitchen fires. Never a dull [moment].
NORA ROBERTS
Blue Smoke
Marriage is a public declaration of a man and a woman that they have formed a secret alliance, with the intention to belong to, and share with each other, a mystical estate; mystical exactly in the sense that the real experience cannot be communicated to others, nor explained even to oneself on rational grounds.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
"Marriage Is Belonging", Collected Essays and Occasional Writings
Few marry their first loves; fewer ought to. The love of the very young is like the love of children for sweetmeats: they usually outgrow it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Marriage is a fight to the death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven, because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love; the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty, remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage