MARRIAGE

Related Subjects: Bride, Courtship, Divorce, Family, Home, Husband, Love, Wedding, Widow, Wife

1. Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual and the obligation reciprocal.—L. K. ANSPACHER
   

2. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.—Bible, Matthew 19:6
   

3. Marriage: a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.—AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
   

4. Marriage and hanging go by destiny; matches are made in heaven.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy
   

5. Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure;
   Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.—CONGREVE, The Old Bachelor
   

6. Misses! the tale that I relate
   This lesson seems to carry,—
   Choose not alone a proper mate
   But proper time to marry.—COWPER, Pairing Time Anticipated
   

7. Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared been
   To public feasts, where meet a public rout,—
   Where they that are without would fain go in,
   And they that are within would fain go out.—SIR .JOHN DAVIES, Contention Betwixt a Wife
   

8. The wictim o' connubiality.—DICKENS, Pickwick Papers
   

9. Being asked whether it was better to marry or not, he [ Socrates] replied, "Whichever you do you will repent it."—DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Socrates
   

10. Every woman should marry—and no man.—DISRAELI, Lothair
    

11. I may commit many follies in life but I never intend to marry for love.—DISRAELI
    

12. The chain of wedlock is so heavy that it takes two to carry it—sometimes three.—DUMAS
    

13. "Ye know a lot about marriage, but ye niver marrid," said Mr. Hennessy. "No," said Mr. Dooley, "No, say I, givin' three cheers, I know about marriage th' way an astronomer knows about th' stars."—F. P. DUNNE, Marriage
    

14. A single Man has not nearly the value he would have in the State of Union. He is an incomplete Animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors.—FRANKLIN
    

15. The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.—SIR J. G. FRAZER, The Golden Bough
    

16. Deceive not thy self by over-expecting happiness in the married estate. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.—THOMAS FULLER,
    Holy & Profane State
    

17. They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter.—THOMAS FULLER, Holy & Profane State
    

18. In marriage, the greater cuckold of the two is the lover.—PAUL GAUGUIN, Intimate Journals
    

19. As a rule, marriage is the result of a mild preference, encouraged by circumstances, and deliberately heightened into strong sexual feeling. When it rises to the point of frenzy people may strictly be said to be in love.—GEORGE GISSING, New Grub Street
    

20. The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.—GOETHE, Elective Affinities
    

21. One pairing is as good as another
    Where all is venture!—THOMAS  HARDY, The Contretemps
    

22. Here's to matrimony, the high sea for which no compass has yet
    been invented.—HEINE
    

23. Marriage for external reasons, even when these are religious or moral, brings a Nemesis upon the off­spring.—IBSEN, Ghosts: Notes
    

24. Marriage is a thing you've got to give your whole mind to.—IBSEN, The League of Youth
    

25. Were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Boswell: Life
    

26. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has few pleasures.—SAMUEL JOHNSON
    

27. Pleasant the snaffle of Courtship, improving the manners and carriage;
    But the colt who is wise will abstain from the terrible thorn-bit of Marriage.—KIPLING, Certain Maxims of Hafiz
    

28. The married man must sink or swim
    An'—'e can't afford to sink!—KIPLING, The Married Man
    

29. After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes a big, sometimes a little, one; but it comes sooner or later, and must be tided over by both parties if they desire the rest of their lives to go with the current.—KIPLING, Plain Tales
    

30. Nothing is to me more dis­tasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-married couple.—CHARLES LAMB, The Behaviour of Married People
    

31. Hail, wedded love, mysterious law, true source
    Of human offspring.—MILTON, Paradise Lost
    

32. He that marrieth for wealth sells his liberty.—Proverb
    

33. Better be half hang'd, than ill wed.—Proverb
    

34. More belongs to marriage than four bare legs in a bed.—Proverb
    

35. Like blood, like good, and like age, make the happiest marriages.—Proverb
    

36. Marriage, with peace, is the world's paradise; with strife, this life's purgatory.—Proverb
    

37. Wedlock's a padlock.—Proverb
    

38. The married man must turn his staff into a stake.—Proverb
    

39. It is a sad house where the hen crows louder than the cock.—Proverb
    

40. Be sure before you marry, of a house wherein to tarry.—Proverb
    

41. An ill marriage is a spring of ill fortune.—Proverb
    

42. When we are handfasted, as we term it, we are man and wife for a year and day; that space gone by, each may choose another mate, or, at their pleasure, may call the priest to marry them for life; and this we call handfasting.—SCOTT, The Monastery
    

43. Marriage is a desperate thing.—JOHN SELDEN, Table Talk
    

44. A young man married is a man that's marr'd.—SHAKESPEARE, All's Well that Ends Well
    

45. Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.—SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It
    

46. For what is wedlock forced, but a hell,
    An age of discord and continual strife?
    Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss,
    And is a pattern of celestial peace.—SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI
    

47. Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.—SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI
    

48. If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another; I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt.—SHAKESPEARE,
    The Merry Wives of Windsor
    

49. But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd
    Than that which withering on the virgin thorn,
    Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.—SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer-Night's Dream
    

50. Benedick the married man.—SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado About Nothing
    

51. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No; the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.—SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado About Nothing
    

52. O curse of marriage!
    That we can call these delicate creatures ours,
    And not their appetites.—SHAKESPEARE, Othello
    

53. Let me not to the marriage of true minds
    Admit 'impediments. Love is not love
    Which alters when it alteration finds.—SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet CXVI
    

54. When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.—BERNARD SHAW, Getting Married
    

55. You had no taste when you married me.—SHERIDAN, The School for Scandal
    

56. Marriage 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, Lady Holland's Memoir
    

57. Some pray to marry the man they love,
    My prayer will somewhat vary:
    I humbly pray to Heaven above
    That I love the man I marry.—ROSE P. STOKES, My Prayer
    

58. Marriages are made in Heaven.—TENNYSON, Aylmer's Field
    

59. A mastiff dog
    May love a puppy cur for no more reason
    Than that the twain have been tied up together.—TENNYSON, Queen Mary
    

60. This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes.—THACKERAY, Vanity Fair
    

61. Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.—THACKERAY, Pendennis
    

62. How I do hate those words, "an excellent marriage." In them is contained more of wicked worldliness than any other words one ever hears spoken.—ANTHONY TROLLOPE, The Small House at Allington
    

63. He is dreadfully married. "He's the most married man I ever saw in my life."—ARTEMUS WARD, Moses, the Sassy
    

64. When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.—OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray