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Marriage Quotes

The page is a long argument between people for marriage and people who found it funny, with Shakespeare supplying the most entries on both sides. George Bernard Shaw, in Man and Superman (1903), said the confusion of marriage with morality had done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error. Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables, said the best way to worship God is to love your wife. Disraeli, in Lothair (1870), thought every woman should marry, and no man.

Two famous items are flagged as misattributed. “By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher” is credited to Socrates, but its origin is unknown. The exchange in which Lady Astor offers to poison Churchill’s coffee is credited to Churchill. Both are better as stories than as evidence.

Random quote on Marriage

Most quoted on marriage:

It is natural for man or woman to look out on a world-picture framed in a human companionship; we see better, don't we, with two eyes than with one? And man and woman happily wedded can attain, between them, a clearness of view, a sureness of touch, that would not have come to either of them if they had travelled alone.

Ronald Knox

Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge,
And nature that is kind in woman's breast,
And reason that in man is wise and good,
And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,—
Why do not these prevail for human life,
To keep two hearts together, that began
Their spring-time with one love.

William Wordsworth

And while the wicket falls behind
Her steps, I thought if I could find
A wife I need not blush to show
I've little further now to go.

William Barnes Not Far to Go. Reported in Hoyt's (1922)

"George", says Mr. Baguet. "You Know me. It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained. Wait till the greens is off her mind. Thens we'll consult. Whatever the old girl says, do - do it!

Charles Dickens

That they may not become too complacent or delighted in married life, he makes them distressed by the shortcomings of their partners, or humbles them through willful offspring, or afflicts them with the want or loss of children. But, if in all these matters he is more merciful to them, he shows them by diseases and dangers how unstable and passing all mortal blessings are, that they may not be puffed up with vain glory.

John Calvin

Genuine love is never love of one's self but love of another "person." The greatest love is the love of God, and the lasting "marital" love between the sexes overbridging the immense psychological abyss between man and woman is not unrelated to the love of God; it is basically the love for one of His children. The very delight in the otherness of the beloved person is a tacit, loving recognition of God's all-embracing greatness. True love between man and woman accepts the mysterious variety of God's creation whose harmony even original sin did not entirely destroy.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Those who are engaged to marry are called to live chastity in continence. They should see in this time of testing a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in fidelity, and the hope of receiving one another from God. They should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love. They will help each other grow in chastity.

Pope John Paul II

I would not marry her, though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed: she would have made Hercules have turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too. * * * I would to God some scholar would conjure her; for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary.

William Shakespeare

Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.

Samuel Johnson

Light household duties evermore inwrought
With placid fancies of one trusting heart
That lives but in her smile, and turns
From Life's cold seeming, and the busy mart,
With tenderness, that ever homeward yearns
To be refreshed where one pure altar burns.
Shut out from hence, the mockery of life—
Thus liveth she content, the meek, fond, trusting wife.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith

Marriage as a community of interests unfailingly means the degradation of the interested parties, and it is the perfidy of the world's arrangements that no one, even if aware of it, can escape such degradation. The idea might therefore be entertained that marriage without ignominy is a possibility reserved for those spared the pursuit of interests, for the rich. But the possibility is purely formal, for the privileged are precisely those in whom the pursuit of interests has become second-nature—they would not otherwise uphold privilege.

Theodor Adorno Minima Moralia (1951)

Marriage is the union of two different surnames, in friendship and in love, in order to continue the posterity of the former sages, and to furnish those who shall preside at the sacrifices to heaven and earth, at those in the ancestral temple, and at those at the altars to the spirits of the land and grain.

Confucius Sing Ging Su (1922)

[M]arriage […] resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

Sydney Smith

Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline.

G. K. Chesterton Manalive (1912)

There's no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding.

Henry James The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

Marriage is not a sometime thing; it’s whole hawg or you’re not married.

Robert A. Heinlein To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)

The thing nobody ever tells you about marriage is that sometimes it makes you lonelier than being alone ever could.

Michael Ian Black

The truth is, the notion that gay marriage is harmful to marriage, is sort of mind-boggling, because these are people trying to get married. But it seems to me, if you want to defend marriage against something, defend it against divorce.

Cokie Roberts

For every marriage then is best in tune,
When that the wife is May, the husband June.

Rowland Watkyns

There are pretenses which are very sincere, and marriage is their school.

Miguel de Unamuno Tres novelas ejemplares y un prólogo [Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue (1920)

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