Marriage

"While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone. He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air."

"Divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce … That would be sad. If two people were married and they were really and they just had a great thing and then they got divorced, that would be really sad. But that has happened zero times."

"When love ceases, when in erotic love, in friendship, in short, when in the loving relationship between two people something comes between them so that love ceases, then the two, as we human beings speak, break up. Love was a bond, was in a good sense between them; then when something comes between then, love is displaced, it ceases; the connection between them is broken, and the break enters divisively between them. Therefore it comes to a break. Christianity, however, does not know this use of language, does not understand it, refuses to understand it. When one says it comes to a break, this is because one is of the opinion that in love there is only a relationship between two, rather than that it is a relationship among three, as has been shown. … So what does Christianity do? Its earnestness promptly concentrates eternity’s attention upon the single individual, upon each single one of the two. This is, as the two in love relate themselves to each other, they relate themselves, each one of them separately to love. Now if it does not go at all easily with the break. Before it comes to the break, before one of them comes to the point of breaking his or her love in relation to the other, that one must first fall away from love. This is the important point; therefore Christianity does not speak about the couple’s breaking with each other but only about what the single individual is always able to do-to fall away from love."

"Incompatibility. And besides, I think she hated me."

"A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. "Yet," added he, "none of you can tell where it pinches me.""

"[Reading a letter on T.V.] Dear Mrs. Doubtfire; Two months ago, my mom and dad decided to separate. Now they live in different houses. My brother Andrew says that we aren't a real family any more. Is this true? Did I lose my family? Is there anything I could do to get my parents back together? Sincerely, Katie McCormick." Oh, my dear Katie. You know, some parents get along much better when they don't live together. They don't fight all the time and they can become better people. Much better mommies and daddies for you. And sometimes they get back together. And sometimes they don't, dear. And if they don't... don't blame yourself. Just because they don't love each other doesn't mean that they don't love you. There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. Some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. Some live in separate homes and neighborhoods, in different areas of the country. They may not see each other for days, weeks, months or even years at a time. But if there's love, dear, those are the ties that bind. And you'll have a family in your heart forever. All my love to you, poppet. You're going to be all right. Bye-bye."

"The fact that the majority of marriages in the United States end in divorce is widely known. In 1997, over 1.16 million divorces were granted in the United States – a rate of 4.3 per 1000 (National Center for Health Statistics, 1998). From the 1960s to the 1980s, the divorce rate increased by well over 200%. Although this increase leveled off in the 1990s, the failure of marriages in U.S. society continues to be a pervasive social problem (e.g. Hoffman & Duncan, 1988). This phenomenon has sparked what is sure to be a lengthy quest to discover the causes of divorce and the factors that contribute to its prevalence (e.g., Gottman, 1994)."

"Divorce is simply modern society's version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionally wounded people do their best to inflict pain upon the other party, but rather than using claws they use divorce lawyers."

"For his pleasure he got married. On his thinking it over he got divorced."

"Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet."

"Today's 70% support for same-sex marriage marks a new milestone in a trend that has pointed upward for a quarter of a century. A small minority of Americans (27%) supported legal recognition of gay and lesbian marriages in 1996, when Gallup first asked the question. But support rose steadily over time, eventually reaching the majority level for the first time in 2011. By the time of the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, support for gay marriage had reached 60%. Since then, the issue has been less prominent in U.S. politics, and public support for same-sex marriage has continued to increase."

"Republicans, who have consistently been the party group least in favor of same-sex marriage, show majority support in 2021 for the first time (55%). The latest increase in support among all Americans is driven largely by changes in Republicans' views. Democrats have consistently been among the biggest supporters of legal same-sex marriage. The current 83% among Democrats is on par with the level of support Gallup has recorded over the past few years. This could suggest that support for gay marriage has reached a ceiling for this group, at least for now. Meanwhile, support among political independents, now at 73%, is slightly higher than the 68% to 71% range recorded from 2017 to 2020."

"As would be expected at a high-water mark in national support for same-sex marriage, all age groups are the most supportive they have been to date. Still, age differences remain, with 84% of young adults, 72% of middle-aged adults, and 60% of older adults saying they favor same-sex marriage."

"It's very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage. Or as I like to call it: marriage. You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not “gay lunch”. I parked my car; I didn't “gay park” it."

"And so the question arises: How does America address its homophobic past as it moves forward into a more tolerant future? If American views on gays have changed -- and they have, with shocking rapidity -- that means there are a lot of people in this country who used to hold more deeply anti-gay views than they do today, and who may be ashamed of what they once thought and said in what now seems a distant and unenlightened era. Two thirds of the change in views on gay marriage comes from "individuals' modifying their views over time" and only "one-third was due to a cohort succession effect, or later cohorts replacing earlier ones," according to sociologist Dawn Michelle Baunach, who looked into the issue in a 2011 Social Science Quarterly piece. Most such people have had the privilege of a private life, where their participation in an ugly ideology that diminished and damaged gay people is something they speak of only in conversation with friends, or recall within the inmost sanctuary of their own thoughts. But some people have been living public lives a long time, and have left a very public paper trail of their expressions of discomfort and distaste. What is the proper response to the discovery of such information? How do we as a society react when people openly change their views in public on gays, and on same-sex marriage? And are we finally ready to get beyond the politics of the mid-1990s?"

"The Defense of Marriage Act was a very successful piece of legislation. Not only did it create two categories of marital benefits -- one for straights, and one for gays -- but it had a profound silencing effect on political leaders. Between 1996 -- when DOMA was passed -- and 2006, only one member of the U.S. Senate came out in support of same-sex marriage, according to data collected by Wonkblog's Dylan Matthews: Dean Barkley of Minnesota, who replaced Paul Wellstone after his death in 2002 and served a grand total of 61 days in office. But starting in 2012, that began to shift -- thanks in large measure to Joe Biden. The vice president got the ball rolling on the new round of gay-marriage pronouncements on May 6. "I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual -- men and women marrying -- are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties," he told NBC's Meet the Press. That put pressure on Obama to make his own views clearer -- not that there was much doubt about what they were. "There's no doubt in my mind that the president shares these values and that's why it's time for him to speak out in favor of marriage equality as well," Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. Days later, Obama sat down with ABC's Robin Roberts, telling her, 'I've just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.""

"What's happening now is a wholesale repudiation of the 1990s move to eject gay people from the American family, writ large. The reason for DOMA was anti-gay animus by a group of men who showed their respect for marriage by divorcing multiple times and having affairs. The reason to undo DOMA is a rejection of that animus, and the growing recognition there is no way to argue against same-sex marriage that is not ultimately an argument for the moral inferiority of gay people. As of Friday, only four Democrats in the U.S. Senate had not come out in favor of gay marriage. "I have concluded the federal government should no longer discriminate against people who want to make lifelong, loving commitments to each other or interfere in personal, private, and intimate relationships," Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota said. "I view the ability of anyone to marry as a logical extension of this belief." The reason to not support gay marriage is the lingering sense that there's something strange or not right about it. That it's fine for gay people to do what they want in privacy, but that their relationships are not the same as straight ones. Not as powerful, not as loving, not as legitimate. "[T]his is the inevitable extension of my efforts to promote equality and opportunity for everyone," said Sen. Mark Warner in announcing his new views. "[A]s many of my gay and lesbian friends, colleagues and staff embrace long term committed relationships, I find myself unable to look them in the eye without honestly confronting this uncomfortable inequality," observed Senator Claire McCaskill in a Tumblr post."

"The 1990s are over. Newt Gingrich, who stepped down as House Speaker after the Republicans performed poorly at the polls in 1998, in 2012 lost his comeback bid and the Republican presidential primary. Former representative Bob Barr, the sponsor of DOMA in 1996, in 2009 recanted his support for the bill and said gays should be allowed to marry. Bill Clinton -- who signed it the bill with a statement saying "I have long opposed governmental recognition of same-gender marriages" -- has too. But if that moment of moralism in the mid-90s deserves to be remembered, it's for the lesson that the American people, when they stop being upset about an issue, really let it go. Clinton was impeached over his infidelity, but he hung on to office and became one of the most beloved ex-presidents ever. His party even won seats in the House and Senate the same year his scandal dominated the news, as the public defied political predictions and turned against the moralists instead of the man they accused. As the drumbeat of shifting views of gay marriage continues, each voice affirms gay people as part of the American family, and each senator freshly legitimizes gay Americans as he or she repudiates past views or clarifies new ones. Whatever happens with the Supreme Court, this moment of change and affirmation -- this moment of public evolution -- is having a power all its own."

"Nonetheless, a kind of Gresham's law applies. Bad sex drives out the good, and the worst of all- philandering and homosexuality- are exalted. Gay liberation, pornographic glut, and one-night trysts are all indices of sexual frustration; all usually disclose a failure to achieve profound and loving sexuality. When a society deliberately affirms these failures: contemplates legislation of homosexual marriage, celebrates the women who denounce the family, and indulges pornography as a manifestation of sexual health and a release from repression- the culture is promoting a form of erotic suicide. For it is destroying the cultural preconditions of profound love and sexuality; the durable heterosexual relationships necessary to a community of emotional investments and continuities in which children can find a secure place."

"Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right."

"Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in? Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me?"

"New Rule: Gay marriage won't lead to dog marriage. It is not a slippery slope to rampant inter-species coupling. When women got the right to vote, it didn't lead to hamsters voting. No court has extended the equal protection clause to salmon. And for the record, all marriages are “same sex” marriages. You get married, and every night, it's the same sex."

"The people of Virginia have spoken by a margin of 57-43. They’ve already enshrined in the Virginia Constitution that gay marriage is not permitted, so unless there is another effort to change the Constitution, that matter is settled. That is the law of the land and, look, reasonable people can disagree on these things. That’s what the law is now. That’s something that I support. That was the right decision."

"Speculation of whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take a case to overturn same-sex marriage at the federal level is mounting after embattled Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis pushed the effort as far up the legal chain as possible. Davis' attorney, Matthew Staver, previously told Newsweek he is optimistic the court will again rule on Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark case that guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage nationwide. William Powell, the attorney who represented the couple that sued Davis, previously wrote in a statement provided to Newsweek that he is "confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis' arguments do not merit further attention." Obergefell v. Hodges, as part of a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in June 2015, guaranteed that same-sex couples can marry by the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Prior the Court's ruling, equal rights and protections for same-sex marriage was already established in 36 states by statutes, court rulings, or voter initiatives. Davis made national headlines just two months after the Obergefell v. Hodges decision when she defied a U.S. federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. After being elected clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, in 2014, she was defeated by Democratic challenger Elwood Caudill Jr. in 2018."

"Two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that some businesses may discriminate against LGBTQ+ people on First Amendment grounds, a Texas judge is once again arguing for her right to refuse to marry same-gender couples. Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace in Waco, has refused to sign marriage licenses for same-gender applicants for years. After the state Commission on Judicial Conduct sanctioned her in 2019 for refusing to perform her duties impartially, Hensley unsuccessfully sued the panel for damages, arguing she could not be compelled to violate her religious beliefs. Last week, the Texas Tribune reports, Hensley filed a petition with the Texas Supreme Court citing last month’s 303 Creative decision — which held that a private business could not be compelled to provide services related to same-gender weddings — as precedent to award her $10,000 in damages. The court agreed to revive Hensley’s suit against the commission in June, days before the 303 Creative decision was made public."

"Hensley’s “sincere religious objections to homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage,” the petition reads, are constitutionally protected even in her role as a judge. According to the petition, the 303 Creative decision “rejects the idea of a ‘compelling interest’ in forcing wedding vendors to participate” in marriages that are contrary to their religious beliefs. The petition argues that 303 Creative undermines the state’s case, which rested on its “compelling interest” in requiring Hensley to affirm all legal marriages. But there’s a big asterisk next to Hensley’s argument, because of course, a judge is a member of the government sworn to uphold the law to the best of their ability, not a business owner selling goods or services. “The law of the land is marriage equality. It’s as simple as that,” said Equality Texas spokesperson Johnathan Gooch in a statement to the Texas Tribune. “If judges and justices of the peace were empowered to only enforce the laws that they agreed with, we would quickly descend into anarchy.”"

"The decision saw the court side with a Colorado website designer who sued for the right to refuse service to LGBTQ\+ people. Hensley has previously been represented in her suit by the law firm First Liberty Institute, which has argued on its website that since Hensley’s staff signed same-gender marriage licenses at a different office blocks away, no rights had actually been violated — even though that seems like the literal definition of “separate but equal” segregationist policies, which were outlawed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Last week’s petition was filed on Hensley’s behalf by Jonathan F. Mitchell, a former Texas Solicitor General and the architect of the state’s infamous Senate Bill 8 “bounty” law that allows individuals to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. LGBTQ+ activists have decried the 303 Creative decision in the past two weeks, pointing out that details of the case appeared to have been falsified. But conservatives have already jumped on the decision to justify denying service to LGBTQ+ people, adding insult to injury where possible. One Michigan hair salon owner announced last week that transgender people were no longer welcome at her business, recommending they “seek services at a local pet groomer” instead."

"Don't hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you're against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet 'H' on your shirt, and say, 'I am a homophobe!'"

"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."

"The exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and responsibilities of marriage, accordingly, is not a small and tangential inconvenience resulting from a few surviving relics of societal prejudice destined to evaporate like the morning dew. It represents a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples."

"In 2000, the citizens of California passed a statewide referendum, with 61 percent support, which said that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” It was a major victory for the sanctity of traditional marriage. By passing the referendum (Proposition 22), the people of California gave the final word on what is morally right and permissible, correct? Well, based on recent actions by the California legislature, apparently not. In the last legislative session, Democrat Paul Koretz introduced a bill to create civil unions, giving homosexual couples “comprehensive legal status parallel to civil marriage laws.” By introducing Assembly Bill 1338, Democrats (and a few Republicans) sought to override the people and legalize homosexual marriage. Thanks to the efforts of California Republicans (and a few Democrats) Koretz withdrew the bill. However, Koretz will reintroduce it next year. The movement to legitimize the homosexual lifestyle and homosexual marriages is strong and must be vigorously opposed. Homosexuals themselves should not be demonized; however, their lifestyle deserves absolutely no special legal status. The Tory hopes and prays that California legislators and activists who courageously opposed AB 1338 this year will do so for years to come."

"Defenders of marriage Defending the institution against people who wanna get married"

"I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And by the way, in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why, then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity? Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your sex; regard us then as Beings placed by Providence under your protection, and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness."

"But O ye lords of ladies intellectual, Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?"

"And truant husband should return, and say, "My dear, I was the first who came away.""

"Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them."

"Let the husband render to his wife the affection owed her, and likewise also the wife to her husband."

"The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband. And in like manner the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife."

"An obedient wife commands her husband."

"God give me a rich husband, though he be an ass."

"Conjugal government requires its treatises. A young woman setting out in life lacks a printed guide. Her cookery-book, however, may afford some useful hints till one be actually directed to the important subject just mentioned. Many well-known receipts are equally available for a batterie de cuisine or du cœur. Your roasted husband is subdued by the fire of fierce words and fiercer looks — your broiled husband, under the pepper and salt of taunt and innuendo — your stewed husband, under the constant application of petty vexations — your boiled husband dissolves under the watery influences — while your confectionized husband goes through a course of the blanc mange of flattery, or the preserves and sweets of caresses and smiles."

"The lover in the husband may be lost."

"God is thy law, thou mine."

"The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks, Safest and seemliest by her husband stays, Who guards her, or with her the worst endures."

"And to thy husband's will Thine shall submit; he over thee shall rule."

"With thee goes Thy husband, him to follow thou art bound; Where he abides, think there thy native soil."

"Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself."

"The stoic husband was the glorious thing. The man had courage, was a sage, 'tis true, And lov'd his country."

"Well, if our author in the wife offends He has a husband that will make amends; He draws him gentle, tender, and forgiving, And sure such kind good creatures may be living."

"No worse a husband than the best of men."

"I will attend my husband, be his nurse, Diet his sickness, for it is my office."

"That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty."

"If I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands."

"Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance."

"Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband."

"A man who only becomes a husband brings pain to his parents, and a man who only becomes a son brings pain to his wife."

"It takes a mighty good husband to be better than none at all."

"He who does not support a wife, he who does not support a child, has no cause for celebration."

"A plant as sweet as a husband does not grow in the steppe."

"While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone. He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air."

"Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less."

"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."

"Marriage? That's for life! It's like cement!"

"“How excellent is the saying of one of old: ‘He that adventureth upon matrimony is like unto one who thrusteth his hand into a sack containing many thousands of serpents and one eel. Yet, if Fate so decree, he may draw forth the eel.’”"

"He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public…. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marry—"A young man not yet, an elder man not at all"."

"Marriage is a science."

"A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman."

"The fate of the home depends on the first night."

"Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours everything, that is, familiarity."

"The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation."

"No jealousy their dawn of love o'ercast, Nor blasted were their wedded days with strife; Each season looked delightful as it past, To the fond husband and the faithful wife."

"The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence."

"Logically the Neo-Pagan should get rid of the institution of marriage altogether, but the very nature of human society, which is built up of cells each of which is a family, and the very nature of human generation, forbid such an extreme. Children must be brought up and acknowledged and sheltered, and the very nature of human affection, whereby there is the bond of affection between the parent and the child, and the child is not of one parent but of both, will compel the Neo-Pagan to modify what might be his logical conclusion of free love and to support some simulacrum of the institution of marriage."

"A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you can't let go."

"Marriage, n. A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two."

"I'd rather die Maid, and lead apes in Hell Than wed an inmate of Silenus' Cell."

"The godly union of souls in mutual forebearance with each other's infirmities, and mutual stimulating each other's graces--this surely is a fragment of true happiness that has survived the Fall."

"Marriage and hanging go by destiny; matches are made in heaven."

"'Cause grace and virtue are within Prohibited degrees of kin; And therfore no true Saint allows, They shall be suffer'd to espouse."

"There was no great disparity of years, Though much in temper; but they never clash'd, They moved like stars united in their spheres, Or like the Rhône by Leman's waters wash'd, Where mingled and yet separate appears The river from the lake, all bluely dash'd Through the serene and placid glassy deep, Which fain would lull its river-child to sleep."

"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."

"A marriage so free, so spontaneous, that it would allow of wide excursions of the pair from each other, in common or even in separate objects of work and interest, and yet would hold them all the time in the bond of absolute sympathy, would by its very freedom be all the more poignantly attractive, and by its very scope and breadth all the richer and more vital -- would be in a sense indestructible."

"So why do we marry? According to Kabbala, the compulsion to rush into a lifelong commitment is an expression of the human soul's deepest ambitions. The subliminal signals emanating from the soul have caused the logic-defying institution of marriage to be an integral part of the human fabric since the dawn of time. The soul's desire to connect and commit makes the aspiration for marriage one of our most basic instincts."

"The Talmud says that each soul's bashert (predestined soulmate) is determined before its birth. The two may be born continents apart with seemingly nothing in common, but Divine destiny ensures that everyone's path intersects with their bashert's. [In rare instances, due to external spiritual factors which may intervene, it is possible for people to marry spouses who are not their basherts. Even in such instances, however, eventually the two original soulmates will marry -- whether later on in life as a second marriage, or in a future incarnation of the two souls.]"

"You cannot easily make a good drama out of the success or failure of a marriage, just as you could not make a good drama out of the growth of an oak tree or the decay of an empire. As Polonius very reasonably observed, it is too long. A happy love-affair will make a drama simply because it is dramatic; it depends on an ultimate yes or no. But a happy marriage is not dramatic; perhaps it would be less happy if it were."

"In the first place, an unjust law exists in this Commonwealth, by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal. I am perfectly aware of the gross ridicule to which I may subject myself by alluding to this particular; but I have lived too long, and observed too much, to be disturbed by the world's mockery. In the first place, the government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens. A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion. His taste may not suit his neighbors; but so long as his deportment is correct, they have no right to interfere with his concerns."

"Prima societas in ipso conjugio est: proxima in liberis; deinde una domus, communia omnia."

"I am not against hasty marriages, where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income."

"Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner."

"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."

"The best way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once."

"Domestic happiness, thou only bliss Of Paradise that has surviv'd the fall!"

"The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man will change, all men marry believing their wife will never change."

"Any married man should forget his mistakes - no use two people remembering the same thing."

"Marriage is memory, marriage is time."

"Nuptiae sunt coniunctio maris et feminae et consortium omnis vitae, divini et humani iuris communicatio."

"Marriages are the union of male and female, a sharing of life and the communication of divine and human rights."

"Young men not ought to marry yet, and old men never ought to marry at all."

"The character of a woman rapidly develops after marriage, and sometimes seems to change, when in fact it is only complete."

"I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man."

"There's nothing a woman hates more than her fiance's best friend. He knows all the secrets she's going to spend the rest of her life trying to find out."

"La chaîne du mariage est si lourde qu'il faut être deux pour la porter,—quelquefois trois."

"If the policy of the law has withheld from married women certain powers and faculties, the Courts of law must continue to treat them as deprived of those powers and faculties, until the legislature directs those Courts to do otherwise."

"Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ is the head of the Church."

"But the main purpose of marriage will compel us to revise the institution so that we shall not waste any useful woman, expecially if she is a woman of notable ability. It is a significant fact that there are no 'unwanted women' in polygamous countries. These derelicts are to be found only in countries which are monogamous; and they represent, less today, perhaps, than formerly, sheer waste of mother-power. Even as things are, the 'unwanted woman' is still doomed to lead a solitary life, unless she has an illicit lover, and can contemplate old age and retirement only with dismay."

"A man should marry four wives: A Persian to have some one to talk to; a Khurasani woman for his housework; a Hindu for nursing his children; a woman from Mawaraun nahr, or Transoxiana, to have some one to whip as a warning to the other three."

"Marriage is in the same state as the Church: both are becoming functionally defunct, as their preachers go about heralding a revival, eagerly chalking up converts in the day of dread. And just as God has been pronounced dead quite often but has this sneaky way of resurrecting himself, so everyone debunks marriage, yet ends up married."

"The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth, Life's paradise, great princess, the soul's quiet, Sinews of concord, earthly immortality, Eternity of pleasures."

"A bachelor May thrive by observation on a little, A single life's no burthen: but to draw In yokes is chargeable, and will require A double maintenance."

"Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage."

"If you help yourself to the benefits of being married when you are single, you're likely to help yourself to the benefits of being single when you're married."

"My son is my son till he have got him a wife, But my daughter's my daughter all the days of her life."

"They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves, in hope that one will come and cut the halter."

"Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman', for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh."

"You were born together, and together you shall be forever more. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."

"The woman destined to become the true companion of man was taken from Adam's body, for "only when like is joined unto like the union is indissoluble." The creation of woman from man was possible because Adam originally had two faces, which were separated at the birth of Eve. ... Indeed, God had created a wife for Adam before Eve, but he would not have her, because she had been made in his presence. ... The wedding of the first couple was celebrated with pomp never repeated in the whole course of history since. God Himself, before presenting her to Adam, attired and adorned Eve as a bride."

"The evil of marriage, as is it practiced in the European countries, extends further than we have yet described. The method is for a thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex, to come together, to see each other, for a few times, and under circumstances full of delusion and then to vow eternal attachment. What is the consequence of this? In almost every instance they find themselves deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable mistake. They are led to conceive it their wiser policy, to shut their eyes upon realities, happy, if by any perversion of intellect, they can persuade themselves that they were right in their first crude opinion of each other. Thus the institution of marriage is made a system of fraud; and men who carefully mislead their judgement in the daily affair of their life, must be expected to have a crippled judgement in every other concern."

"Whoever attacks marriage undermines […] the basis of all moral society."

"Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?"

"Marriage is the tomb of trust and love."

"That the harshness of Inca and Aztec legislation toward homosexuality involved more than a reaction to indigenous berdaches is suggested by the equally severe penalties imposed on other violations of [[morals legislation. The Incas punished pimps and prostitutes severely, by death if the offense was repeated. Incest and adultery were capital offenses in both empires. Drunkenness was illegal under the Incas and a capital offense under the Aztecs. Abortion was also a capital offense under the Aztecs. Aztec youths lost their rights to land if they did not marry by a certain age. Inca men were also forced to marry."

"Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral."

"The critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time."

"However important it is that love shall precede marriage, it is far more important that it shall continue after marriage."

"I believe in open marriage."

"In the marriage ceremony, that moment when falling in love is replaced by the arduous drama of staying in love, the words "in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, till death do us part" set love in the temporal context in which it achieves its meaning. As time begins to elapse, one begins to love the other because they have shared the same experience... Selves may not intertwine; but lives do, and shared memory becomes as much of a bond as the bond of the flesh."

"In reply he said: “Did YOU not read that he who created them from [the] beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’?"

"I tell you the truth," Jesus said to them, "no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life."

"At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."

"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."

"A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience."

"Sir, it is so far from being natural for a man and a woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives that they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilized society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together."

"Marriages would in general be as happy, if not more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor."

"Marriage is the safe harbor men proffer from a tempest they themselves conjure into creation."

"Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right."

"Is there anyone who thinks that the resolution can come later when it is really needed? So it is not needed then, not on the wedding day, when the eternal pledge is entered into? But then, later? Can he mean that there was no thought of leaving one another, but of enjoying the first gladness of their union-and so united, of finding support in the resolution? Then when toil and trouble come, and need, be it physical or spiritual, stands at the door, then the time is there? Aye, indeed, the time is there-the time for the resolved individual to muster up his resolution; but not just the time to form a resolution. It is true that distress and failure may help a man to seek God in a resolution; but the question is whether the conception is always the right one, whether it is joyful, whether it does not have a certain wretchedness, a secret wish that it were not necessary, whether it may not be out of humor, envious, melancholy, and so no ennobling reflection of the trials of life. There is in the state a loan association to which the indigent may apply. The poor man is helped, but I wonder if that poor man has a pleasant conception of the loan-association. And so there may also be a marriage which first sought God when in difficulty, alas, sought Him as a loan-association; and everyone who first seeks God for the first time when in difficulties, always runs this danger. Is then such a late resolution, which even if it were a worthy one, was not without shame and not without great danger, bought at the last moment, is that more beautiful, and wiser than the resolution at the beginning of marriage?"

"A married man risks every day, and every day the sword of duty hangs over his head, and the journal is kept up as long as the marriage keeps on, and the ledger of responsibility is never closed, and the responsibility is even more inspiring than the most glorious epic poet who must testify for the hero. Well, it is true that he does not take the risk for nothing-no, like for like; he risks everything for everything, and if because of its responsibility marriage is an epic, then because of its happiness it certainly also is an idyll. Marriage is the fullness of time. Love is the unfathomable ground that is hidden in darkness, but the resolution is the triumphant victor who, like Orpheus, fetches the infatuation of falling in love to the light of day, for the resolution is the true form of love, the true explanation and transfiguration; therefore marriage is sacred and blessed by God. It is civic, for by marriage the lovers belong to the state and the fatherland and the common concerns of their fellow citizens. It is poetic, inexpressively so, just as is falling in love, but the resolution is the conscientious translation that translates the enthusiasm into actuality, and this translator is so scrupulous, oh, so scrupulous!"

"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."

"Marriage does not withdraw us from the life we knew; it means that we wade deeper in the stream of it, take the strain of it more boldly than before."

"Marriage […] is, not in lover's language but in cold theological fact, a foretaste of heaven.[…] Heaven is enduring love, love that endures without effort; heaven is a happiness into which the thought of self does not enter; heaven is all giving, and giving without cost. Of all that, we can find no nearer image on earth than the love of man and woman. Only, because it is of earth, that image remains imperfect. Earthly love cannot survive the stress of everyday living without the need of sacrifices on both sides."

"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."

"The husband is the chief of the family and the head of the wife. The woman, because she is flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, must be subject to her husband and obey him; not, indeed, as a servant, but as a companion, so that her obedience shall be wanting in neither honor nor dignity. Since the husband represents Christ, and since the wife represents the Church, let there always be, both in him who commands and in her who obeys, a heaven-born love guiding both in their respective duties."

"He must be rich whom I could love, His fortune clear must be, Whether in land or in the funds, 'Tis all the same to me."

"As unto the bow the cord is, So unto the man is woman; Though she bonds him she obeys him, Though she draws him, yet she follows, Useless each without the other!"

"But because among us there is such a shameful mess and the very dregs of all vice and lewdness, this commandment is directed also against all manner of unchastity, whatever it may be called; …, For flesh and blood remain flesh and blood, and the natural inclination and excitement have their course without let or hindrance, as everybody sees and feels. In order, therefore, that it may be the more easy in some degree to avoid unchastity, God has commanded the estate of matrimony, that every one may have his proper portion and be satisfied therewith …"

"Let me now say in conclusion that this commandment demands also that every one love and esteem the spouse given him by God. For where conjugal chastity is to be maintained, man and wife must by all means live together in love and harmony, that one may cherish the other from the heart and with entire fidelity. For that is one of the principal points which enkindle love and desire of chastity, so that, where this is found, chastity will follow as a matter of course without any command. Therefore also St. Paul so diligently exhorts husband and wife to love and honor one another."

"In the majority of cases which are brought to me as a consulting psychologist for love and marital adjustment, there are self-deceptions to be uncovered as well as attempts to deceive other people. Beneath such love conflicts there is almost always a festering psychological core of dishonesty."

"A man may be a fool and not know it—but not if he is married."

"[Peter J.] Riga concludes that in 15 years of Supreme Court cases ending in 1979, the view of marriage as an indissoluble lifelong commitment had been abandoned. In its wake is the perverted notion of liberty that each individual should be able to live out his sexual life in any way he chooses without interference from the state."

"Hail, wedded love, mysterious law; true source Of human offspring."

"To the nuptial bower I led her, blushing like the morn; all Heaven, And happy constellations on that hour Shed their selectest influence; the earth Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill; Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs Whisper'd it to the woods, and from their wings Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub."

"Therefore God's universal law Gave to the man despotic power Over his female in due awe, Not from that right to part an hour, Smile she or lour."

"There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told, When two, that are link'd in one heavenly tie, With heart never changing, and brow never cold, Love on thro' all ills, and love on till they die."

"That is why a man will leave his father and his mother and he must stick to his wife and they must become one flesh."

"Marriage is wonderful when it lasts forever, and I envy the old couples in When Harry Met Sally who reminisce tearfully about the day they met 50 years before. I no longer believe, however, that a marriage is a failure if it doesn't last forever. It may be a tragedy, but it is not necessarily a failure. And when a marriage does last forever with love alive, it is a miracle."

"The best friend will probably get the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship."

"When marrying, you should ask yourself this question: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation."

"Even cohabitation has been corrupted – by marriage."

"Here's the advice I give everyone about marriage — is she someone you find interesting? … You will spend more time with this person than anyone else for the rest of your life, and there is nothing more important than always wanting to hear what she has to say about things … Does she make you laugh? And I don’t know if you want kids, but if you do, do you think she will be a good mom? Life is long. These are the things that really matter over the long term."

"Let the husband render to his wife the affection owed her, and likewise also the wife to her husband."

"The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband. And in like manner the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife."

"Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion."

"The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife."

"This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act. The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason."

"No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him."

"When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her."

"Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond."

"Il matrimonio bisogna che sia un vero castigo, poichè fa diventar savi anche i matti."

"In all other marriages he prohibited dowries; the bride was to bring with her three changes of raiment, household stuff of small value, and nothing else. For he did not wish that marriage should be a matter of profit or price, but that man and wife should dwell together for the delights of love and the getting of children."

"Do not marry unbelieving women, until they believe: A slave woman who believes is better than an unbelieving woman, even though she allures you. Nor marry to unbelievers until they believe: A man slave who believes is better than an unbeliever, even though he allures you. Unbelievers do (but) beckon you to the Fire. But Allah beckons by His Grace to the Garden and forgiveness, and makes His Signs clear to mankind: That they may celebrate His praise."

"No fornicator will espouse but a fornicating woman or a polytheist woman; No fornicating woman will espouse but a fornicator or a polytheist: and those are forbidden for the believers."

"Unchaste women are destined for unchaste men, and unchaste men are destined for unchaste women and chaste women are destined for chaste men, and chaste men are destined for chaste women; these are not affected by what people say: there is forgiveness, and a honourable providence for them."

"We have already seen how the ideology of national honour derives from authoritarian ideology and the latter from the sex-negation regulation of sexuality. Neither Christianity nor National Socialism attacks the institution of compulsive marriage: for the former, apart from its function of procreation, marriage is a ‘complete, life-long union’; for the National Socialists it is a biologically rooted institution for the preservation of racial purity. Outside of compulsive marriage, there is no sexuality for either of them."

"Our culture has rejected the original premise of marriage, yet we wonder why our institutions do not make sense. Marriage was not historically about the happiness of the married couple but about the stability of the family unit, a legal means of tying the children to their biological mother and father. Of course, there have always been deaths, tragedies, and complex situations that meant children were not always born into the home of their biological parents. Adoption and infidelity are likely as old as the institution of marriage itself. Yet, until just recently, there was coherence in the marriage contract: Two people assumed responsibility for the children of that union."

"We got married: society’s solution to loneliness, lust and laundry."

"The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky."

"Cold disdain is the meat of marriage."

"A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted."

"There is not infrequently, in marriage, a suggestion of purchase, of acquiring a woman on condition of keeping her in a certain standard of material comfort. Often and often, a marriage hardly differs from prostitution except by being harder to escape from."

"[C]hildren are what makes marriage important. But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex, but as soon as children enter in, the husband and wife, if they have any offspring, are compelled to realise that their feelings towards each other are no longer what is of most importance."

"It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness."

"Marrying means doing whatever possible to become repulsed of each other."

"Evidence of the destructiveness of unrealistic expectations can be found in the literature on cognition and marriage. For example, people who feel that their relationship standards (e.g., how alike they believe they should be, the degree to which they should engage in acts of caring and concern for each other) are unmet are more inclined to report more negative cognitive and affective reactions to marital problems (Baucom et al., 1996). Further, research on relationship beliefs indicates that idealistic and unrealistic beliefs, like “mind reading is expected” (partners who truly care about and know one another should be able to sense each other’s needs and preferences without overy communication), “sexual perfectionism” (one must be a “perfect” sexual partner) and “disagreement is destructive” (disagreements in marriage are a sign of impending doom) are positively associated with marital distress (eidelson & Epstein, 1982; Epstein & Eidelson, 1981) and negatively associated with the desire to maintain the relationship (Eidelson & Epstein, 1982)."

"If you shall marry, You give away this hand, and that is mine; You give away heaven's vows, and those are mine; You give away myself, which is known mine."

"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."

"I will fasten on this sleeve of thine: Thou art an elm, my husband, I, a vine."

"Men's vows are women's traitors! All good seeming, By thy revolt, O husband, shall be thought Put on for villany; not born where 't grows, But worn a bait for ladies."

"Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married."

"The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love."

"God, the best maker of all marriages, Combine your hearts in one."

"He is the half part of a blessed man, Left to be finished by such as she; And she a fair divided excellence, Whose fulness of perfection lies in him."

"A world-without-end bargain."

"Hanging and wiving goes by destiny."

"As are those dulcet sounds in break of day That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear And summon him to marriage."

"Happiest of all, is, that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king."

"I will marry her, sir, at your request; but if there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance * * * I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt: I will marry her; that I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely."

"But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, Than that which with'ring on the virgin thorn Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness."

"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."

"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."

"Let husbands know, Their wives have sense like them: they see, and smell, And have their palates both for sweet and sour, As husbands have."

"She is not well married that lives married long: But she's best married that dies married young."

"If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day When I shall ask the banns and when be married."

"Who wooed in haste, and means to wed at leisure."

"She shall watch all night: And if she chance to nod I'll rail and brawl And with the clamour keep her still awake. This is the way to kill a wife with kindness."

"Thy husband * * * commits his body To painful labour, both by sea and land, * * * * * * And craves no other tribute at thy hands, But love, fair looks, and true obedience; Too little payment for so great a debt."

"Let still the woman take An elder than herself: so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn Than women's are."

"Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent: For women are as roses, whose fair flower Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour."

"Now go with me and with this holy man Into the chantry by: there, before him, And underneath that consecrated roof, Plight me the full assurance of your faith."

"Even if you’re planning to get me married, that will also cost money! Just help me start my studies; I won’t be a burden on you."

"Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity."

"The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error."

"Let's say you're a 6-month-old girl, no evidence whatsoever of any abuse. They're simply saying, 'You, in this culture, may grow up to be a child bride when you're 14. Therefore we're going to remove you now when you're 6 months old. Or, 'You're a 6-month-old boy; 25, 30 years, 40 years from now you're going to be a predator, so we're going to take you away now."

"Marge: Homer, is this the way you pictured married life? Homer: Yup, pretty much. Except we drove around in a van solving mysteries."

"Marriage is like a coffin and each kid is another nail."

"Better to live with a lion and a snake than to share a house with a wicked woman. Wickedness disfigures a woman’s appearance, it saddens the face, making her look like a bear. When her husband dines with his neighbor, he sighs bitterly, in spite of himself. All wickedness is nothing compared with a woman’s wickedness. Let her lot be that of a sinner!"

"An harlot shall be accounted as spittle; but a married woman is a tower against death to her husband. A wicked woman is given as a portion to a wicked man: but a godly woman is given to him that feareth the Lord. A dishonest woman contemneth shame: but an honest woman will reverence her husband. A shameless woman shall be counted as a dog; but she that is shamefaced will fear the Lord. A woman that honoureth her husband shall be judged wise of all; but she that dishonoureth him in her pride shall be counted ungodly of all."

"[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."

"I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man nothing but instant flight could save him."

"[A man] expects an angel for a wife; [yet] he knows that she is like himself—erring, thoughtless and untrue; but like himself also, filled with a struggling radiancy of better things, and adorned with ineffective qualities. You may safely go to school with hope; but ere you marry, should have learned the mingled lesson of the world:[…] that hope and love address themselves to a perfection never realized, and yet, firmly held, become the salt and staff of life; that you yourself are compacted of infirmities, perfect, you might say, in imperfection, and yet you have a something in you lovable and worth preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one but, by some generous reading, will become to you a lesson, a model and a noble spouse through life. So thinking, you will constantly support your own unworthiness and easily forgive the failings of your friend. Nay, you will be wisely glad that you retain the sense of blemishes; for the faults of married people continually spur up each of them, hour by hour, to do better and to meet and love upon a higher ground."

"Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes."

"[M]arriage is a natural right into which the question of color does not enter except as an individual preference expressed by the parties to the marriage. It is so recognized by the laws of all nations except our own."

"Marry a wife according to your choice. Have children to your heart's content."

"Marrying is human. Having children is divine."

"When I married a malicious husband, when I bore a malicious son, an unhappy heart was assigned to me."

"For his pleasure he got married. On his thinking it over he got divorced."

"Marriage was not originated by human law. When God created Eve, she was a wife to Adam; they then and there occupied the status of husband to wife and wife to husband. . . . It would be sacrilegious to apply the designation “a civil contract” to such a marriage. It is that and more – a status ordained by God."

"As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down."

"Nothing, Cyrnus, is more delightful than a good wife; to the truth of this I am witness to thee and do thou become witness to me."

"Marriages, even those that are most carefully considered, must inevitably be conditioned by so many chances (those of fortune, circumstance, sentiment and opportunity) that it would be absurd to explore the ground armed with the rules of mathematics. Besides, human choice in the matter is so wrapped in obscurity that anyone who would choose too carefully, who is obsessed by any such notion as finding a "sister soul", runs a very grave risk of not marrying at all, or else of making some perfectly ridiculous choice, the kind of choice (to quote La Fontaine) "one would never have thought possible" — though we see it happening every day! […] Even in the most enlightened unions, there is always an element of the leap in the dark, an element of gamble — the Pascalian pari."

"But happy they, the happiest of their kind! Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate Their Hearts, their Fortunes, and their Beings blend."

"Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to."

"Don't get married, young man ... I urge you. As long as a woman isn't sure of you she's sweet as pie, you can twist her round your little finger. But the minute you put a ring around her finger — it's all over! She begins kicking like a mule — and you can't do a thing about it. It's a law of nature, young man! Reason won't get you anywhere with them. Am I right or not?"

"Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals."

"Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed."

"Marriage, in the sense of a ceremonial commitment of people to merge their lives, is properly a social ritual reflecting religious or personal conviction, and should not have legal status."

"What no one except the cultural right wants to admit is that marriage as a social institution (an economic partnership, a secure context for child-rearing) only works when it's more or less compulsory, as it has been until the last 15 or 20 years. Marriages held together solely by desire are by definition unpredictable; as thrice-married Margaret Mead once blurted out to psychologist and divorce counselor Judith S. Wallerstein, "Judy, there is no society in the world where people have stayed married without enormous community pressure to do so.""

"'Tis my maxim, he's a fool that marries; but he's a greater that does not marry a fool."

"You are of the society of the wits and railleurs … the surest sign is, since you are an enemy to marriage,—for that, I hear, you hate as much as business or bad wine."

"I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being, neither white, black, brown nor red. When you are dealing with humanity as one family, there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being, or one human being living around and with another human being."

"Body and soul, like peevish man and wife, United jar, and yet are loth to part."

"He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief."

"To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part."

"To love, cherish, and to obey."

"With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow."

"He that said it was not good for man to be alone, placed the celibate amongst the inferior states of perfection."

"Cursed be the man, the poorest wretch in life, The crouching vassal, to the tyrant wife, Who has no will but by her high permission; Who has not sixpence but in her possession; Who must to her his dear friend's secret tell; Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell. Were such the wife had fallen to my part, I'd break her spirit or I'd break her heart."

"Una muger no tiene. Valor para el consejo, y la conviene Casarse."

"To sit, happy married lovers; Phillis trifling with a plover's Egg, while Corydon uncovers with a grace the Sally Lunn, Or dissects the lucky pheasant—that, I think, were passing pleasant As I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a dun."

"We've been together now for forty years, An' it don't seem a day too much; There ain't a lady livin' in the land As I'd swop for my dear old Dutch."

"Man and wife, Coupled together for the sake of strife."

"Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring."

"Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure, Marry'd in haste, we may repent at leisure."

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

"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."

"At length cried she, I'll marry: What should I tarry for? I may lead apes in hell forever."

"The wictim o' connubiality."

"Every woman should marry—and no man."

"Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in."

"Magis erit animorum quam corporum conjugium."

"You are of the society of the wits and railers;… the surest sign is, you are an enemy to marriage, the common butt of every railer."

"The husband's sullen, dogged, shy, The wife grows flippant in reply; He loves command and due restriction, And she as well likes contradiction. She never slavishly submits; She'll have her way, or have her fits. He his way tugs, she t'other draws; The man grows jealous and with cause."

"It is not good that the man should be alone."

"Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh."

"Denn ein wackerer Mann verdient ein begütertes Mädchen."

"So, with decorum all things carry'd; Miss frown'd, and blush'd, and then was—married."

"Le divorce est le sacrement de l'adultere."

"An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them."

"I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of."

"Yet while my Hector still survives, I see My father, mother, brethren, all in thee."

"Andromache! my soul's far better part."

"Felices ter et amplius Quos irrupta tenet copula, nec malis Divulsus querimoniis Suprema citius solvet amor die."

"I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem, and to be given away by a Novel."

"Ay, marriage is the life-long miracle, The self-begetting wonder, daily fresh."

"You should indeed have longer tarried By the roadside before you married."

"Sure the shovel and tongs To each other belongs."

"Take heede, Camilla, that seeking al the Woode for a streight sticke, you chuse not at the last a crooked staffe."

"Marriage is destinie, made in heaven."

"And, to all married men, be this a caution, Which they should duly tender as their life, Neither to doat too much, nor doubt a wife."

"The sum of all that makes a just man happy Consists in the well choosing of his wife: And there, well to discharge it, does require Equality of years, of birth, of fortune; For beauty being poor, and not cried up By birth or wealth, can truly mix with neither. And wealth, when there's such difference in years, And fair descent, must make the yoke uneasy."

"What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder."

"Par un prompt désespoir souvent on se marie. Qu'on s'en repent après tout le temps de sa vie."

"Women when they marry buy a cat in the bag."

"Il en advient ce qui se veoid aux cages; les oyseaux qui en sont dehors, desesperent d'y entrer; et d'un pareil soing en sortir, ceulx qui sont au dedans."

"Drink, my jolly lads, drink with discerning, Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning; Never was owl more blind than a lover, Drink and be merry, lads, half seas over."

"Hac quoque de causa, si te proverbia tangunt, Mense malos Maio nubere vulgus ait."

"Si qua voles apte nubere, nube pari."

"Some dish more sharply spiced than this Milk-soup men call domestic bliss."

"The garlands fade, the vows are worn away; So dies her love, and so my hopes decay."

"Grave authors say, and witty poets sing, That honest wedlock is a glorious thing."

"There swims no goose so gray, but soon or late She finds some honest gander for her mate."

"Before I trust my Fate to thee, Or place my hand in thine, Before I let thy Future give Color and form to mine, Before I peril all for thee, Question thy soul to-night for me."

"A prudent wife is from the Lord."

"Advice to persons about to marry—Don't."

"Le mariage est comme une forteresse assiégée; ceux qui sont dehors veulent y entrer et ceux qui sont dedans en sortir."

"Widowed wife and wedded maid."

"Marriage is a desperate thing."

"To disbelieve in marriage is easy: to love a married woman is easy; but to betray a comrade, to be disloyal to a host, to break the covenant of bread and salt, is impossible."

"What God hath joined together no man shall ever put asunder: God will take care of that."

"The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women."

"Lastly no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tobagie" as Michelet calls it, spreads all over the world."

"Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder."

"The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages."

"Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity."

"Marriages are made in Heaven."

"Remember, it is as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman."

"This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes."

"What woman, however old, has not the bridal-favours and raiment stowed away, and packed in lavender, in the inmost cupboards of her heart?"

"Thrice happy is that humble pair, Beneath the level of all care! Over whose heads those arrows fly Of sad distrust and jealousy."

"The happy married man dies in good stile at home, surrounded by his weeping wife and children. The old bachelor don't die at all—he sort of rots away, like a pollywog's tail."

"'Tis just like a summer bird cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair, and are in a consumption, for fear they shall never get out."

"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."

"In the eye of the law no doubt, man and wife are for many purposes one: but that is a strong figurative expression, and cannot be so dealt with as that all the consequences must follow which would result from its being literally true."

"When a woman marries, her husband is the head of the family."

"A woman is to comfort her husband."

"If such cruelty shall be sanctioned, and wives shall not be allowed necessaries, England will lose the happy reputation in all foreign kingdoms, which her inhabitants have achieved by their respect for this sex, the most excelling in beauty, which, as in this climate it far transcends that of the women in all other lands, so has this Kingdom surpassed all other countries in its tenderness and consideration for their welfare."

"Dissentions existing between man and wife are in all events very unfortunate: when they become the subject of consideration to third persons, they are very unpleasant, and if the case requires that the conduct of each party should be commented upon in public, it is a most painful task to those to whose lot it falls to judge on them. The subject therefore is always to be handled with as much delicacy as it will admit of; but the infirmities of human nature have given rise to cruelties and other ill-treatment on the part of husbands, and to cases in which this Court has thought it indispensably necessary to interpose."

"By the laws of England, by the laws of Christianity, and by the constitution of society, when there is a difference of opinion between husband and wife, it is the duty of the wife to submit to the husband."

"The naturalest and first conjunction of two towards the making a farther society of continuance, is of the husband and wife, each having care of the family: the man to get, to travel abroad, to defend; the wife to save, to stay at home, and distribute that which is gotten for the nurture of the children and family; is the first and most natural but primate apparence of one of the best kind of commonwealths, where not one always, but sometime, and in some things, another bears a rule; which to maintain, God hath given the man greater wit, better strength, better courage to compel the woman to obey, by reason or force; and to the woman, beauty, fair countenance, and sweet words to make the man obey her again for love. Thus each obeyeth and commandeth the other, and the two together rule the house, so long as they remain together in one."

"There may by possibility be cases where cruelty may lead up directly to the wife's adultery."

"A woman commits adultery in order to gratify her own unlawful passion: she does not think about the annoyance to her husband when she abandons herself to her lover."

"If I might be permitted to borrow an illustration from poetry, the distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation is nowhere more strikingly shown than by a poet who, more than most other men, has sounded the depths of human feeling, and who supposes the question put to the husband of an adulteress: "Then did you freely, from your heart forgive?" to which he replies: "Sure, as I hope before my Judge to live; Sure, as the Saviour died upon the tree For all who sin—for that dear wretch and me, Whom never more, on earth, will I forsake or see." Grabbe's " Tales of the Hall," b. 12."

"When people understand that they must live together, except for a very few reasons known to the law, they learn to soften by mutual accommodation that yoke which they know they cannot shake off; they become good husbands, and good wives, from the necessity of remaining husbands and wives; for necessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties which it imposes.1 If it were once understood, that upon mutual disgust married persons might be legally separated, many couples, who now pass through the world with mutual comfort, with attention to their common offspring and to the moral order of civil society, might have been at this moment living in a state of mutual unkindness—in a stage of estrangement from their common offspring—and in a state of the most licentious and unreserved immorality."

"The cock swan is an emblem or representation of an affectionate and true husband to his wife above all other fowls; for the cock swan holdeth himself to one female only, and for this cause nature hath conferred on him a gift beyond all others; that is, to die so joyfully, that he sings sweetly when he dies; upon which the poet saith: "Dulcia defecta modulatur carmina lingua, Cantator, cygnus, funeris ipse sui, &c.""

"There is not one of us who cannot recall to memory the experience of some case in which a woman submitted to the worst of treatment, treatment degrading and humiliating, and allowed it to continue rather than permit her name to become the subject of a public scandal."

"The reason why the law will not suffer a wife to be a witness against her husband is to preserve the peace of families."

"The husband is not liable for the criminal conduct of his wife."

"Nothing is more natural than to marry."

"The holy state of matrimony was ordained by Almighty God in Paradise, before the Fall of Man, signifying to us that mystical union which is between Christ and His Church; and so it is the first relation: and when two persons are joined in that holy state, they twain become one flesh1; and so it is the nearest relation."

"Marriage in the contemplation of every Christian community is the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others."

"Matrimony is a sacrament."

"In the Christian Church marriage was elevated in a later age to the dignity of a sacrament."

"Marriage, in its origin, is a contract of natural law; it may exist between two individuals of different sexes, although no third person existed in the world, as happened in the case of the common ancestors of mankind: It is the parent, not the child of civil society. "Principium urbis et quasi seminarium reipublicce.""

"It will appear, no doubt, that at various periods of our history there have been decisions as to the nature and description of the religious solemnities necessary for the completion of a perfect marriage, which cannot be reconciled together; but there will be found no authority to contravene the general position, that at all times, by the common law of England, it was essential to the constitution of a full and complete marriage, that there must be some religious solemnity; that both modes of obligation should exist together, the civil and the religious."

"A contract executed without any part performance."

"Our law considers marriage in the light of a contract, and applies to it with some exceptions, the ordinary principles which apply to other contracts."

"If people are drunk or delirious, The marriage of course would be bad; Or if they're not sober and serious, But acting a play or charade. It's bad if it's only a cover For cloaking a scandal or sin, And talking a landlady over, To let the folks lodge in her inn."

"A marriage contract compels a woman to work for a man. This is voluntary servitude so long as a woman loves a man. But when she does not love him it becomes involuntary servitude, which the consititution does not permit in the United States."

"No one walks together with him or directs their steps towards him. Life passes him by like water. He is dear to no just man, plague prevails over him. Like a worthless penny. [...] He is clothed with a garment as if a heavy punishment were assigned to him. Who is he? His name? A man sleeping with someone's wife."

"If a man's wife be surprised with another man, both shall be tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the king his slaves. ¶ If a man violate the wife [betrothed or child-wife] of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleep with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless. ¶ If a man bring a charge against one's wife, but she is not surprised with another man, she must take an oath and then may return to her house. ¶ If the "finger is pointed" at a man's wife about another man, but she is not caught sleeping with the other man, she shall jump into the river for her husband."

"Thou shalt not commit adultery."

"And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death."

"The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face."

"For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: ¶ But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. ¶ Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. ¶ Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them."

"But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul."

"Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness."

"Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; ¶ Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst."

"They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker, who ceaseth from raising after he hath kneaded the dough, until it be leavened."

"Οὔ τοι σύμφορόν ἐστι γυνὴ νέα ἀνδρὶ γέροντι: οὐ γὰρ πηδαλίῳ πείθεται ὡς ἄκατος, οὐδ᾽ ἄγκυραι ἔχουσιν ἀπορρήξασα δὲ δεσμὰ πολλάκις ἐκ νυκτῶν ἄλλον ἔχει λιμένα."

"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

"It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

"Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. ¶ And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. ¶ And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, ¶ They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. ¶ Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? ¶ This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. ¶ So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. ¶ And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. ¶ And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. ¶ When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? ¶ She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."

"Curam Clymene narrabat inanem Vulcani Martisque dolos et dulcia furta, aque Chao densos divum numerabat amores."

"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Cauta est et ab illis incipit uxor."

"And come not near unto adultery. Lo! it is an abomination and an evil way."

"In flagrante delicto."

"Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice ne la miseria."

"Ȝyf weddyd man, sengle woman takeþ, Forsoþe spousebrechë þere he makyþ. Ȝyf weddyd wyfe take sengle man, Alle spousebreche tel y hyt þan; For þey haue broke with-outë fayle Þe chastë bondë of spousayle."

"I am possess’d with an adulterate blot; My blood is mingled with the crime of lust."

"Adultery? Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: The wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; For Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father Than my daughters got ’tween the lawful sheets."

"And then they called me foul adulteress, Lascivious Goth."

"When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom—is to die."

"What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, Is much more common where the climate’s sultry."

"Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes of it"

"Adultery it is not fit Or safe, for women, to commit."

"I saw a little burnished fly Within my Mistress’ bodice lie, Sipping lovely stolen sweets From her ample rosy teats. ‘Small adulterer,’ said I, ‘Dost thou know where thou dost lie? ‘’Tis my lady’s bosom fine, ‘And thou dost sip what is not thine.’"

"Kiss not thy neighbor's wife, unless Thine own thy neighbor doth caress."

"I'll match my private wife against any man's."

"Adultery is the application of democracy to love."

"Adultery is treason to the family; adulterers should be put to death."

"I want to have it all. I want to have a family, a career, and a side piece."

"WEDDING, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable."

"For talk six times with the same single lady, And you may get the wedding dresses ready."

"Is there anyone who thinks that the resolution can come later when it is really needed? So it is not needed then, not on the wedding day, when the eternal pledge is entered into? But then, later? Can he mean that there was no thought of leaving one another, but of enjoying the first gladness of their union-and so united, of finding support in the resolution? Then when toil and trouble come, and need, be it physical or spiritual, stands at the door, then the time is there? Aye, indeed, the time is there-the time for the resolved individual to muster up his resolution; but not just the time to form a resolution. It is true that distress and failure may help a man to seek God in a resolution; but the question is whether the conception is always the right one, whether it is joyful, whether it does not have a certain wretchedness, a secret wish that it were not necessary, whether it may not be out of humor, envious, melancholy, and so no ennobling reflection of the trials of life. There is in the state a loan association to which the indigent may apply. The poor man is helped, but I wonder if that poor man has a pleasant conception of the loan-association. And so there may also be a marriage which first sought God when in difficulty, alas, sought Him as a loan-association; and everyone who first seeks God for the first time when in difficulties, always runs this danger. Is then such a late resolution, which even if it were a worthy one, was not without shame and not without great danger, bought at the last moment, is that more beautiful, and wiser than the resolution at the beginning of marriage?"

"The Doctor: Ook, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't always happen to me in quite the right order. Gets a bit confusing at times, especially at weddings. I'm rubbish at weddings, especially my own."

"She is your treasure, she must have a husband; I must dance barefoot on her wedding day And for your love to her lead apes in hell."

"Cling closer, closer, life to life, Cling closer, heart to heart; The time will come, my own wed Wife, When you and I must part! Let nothing break our band but Death, For in the world above 'Tis the breaker Death that soldereth Our ring of Wedded Love."

"I revolted against this marriage of convenience, this marriage for money and wanted to marry only for love, out of a great passion."

"The marriage of convenience has this to recommend it: we are better judges of convenience than we are of love."

"[C]hild marriage or marriage of the non-adults remain a dangerous practice in char-chapori areas. For the immigrant Muslims, girls are forced to get married at the age of 12–14, as if this becomes their main agenda of social reforms. Girls are forced to get married at an early stage and they become mother of two-three children at a very tender age. As a result their health never recovers. Majority of them suffer from malnutrition and anaemia. Their life cycle is also very less. Majority of the women are exploited, subjugated and neglected …"

"As already noted, the church in Africa is facing a grim reality even when it comes to sex in marriage. According to UNICEF, teenage brides in some African countries are becoming infected with the AIDS virus at higher rates than sexually active unmarried girls of similar ages. That’s because young brides are acquiring HIV from their husbands, who tend to be many years older and were infected before marriage. Clearly, abstinence and fidelity prevention strategies will not reliably protect these women."

"The existence of these evils among the Muslims is distressing enough. But far more distressing is the fact that there is no organized movement of social reform among the Musalmans of India on a scale sufficient to bring about their eradication. The Hindus have their social evils. But there is relieving feature about them-namely, that some of them are conscious of their existence and a few of them are actively agitating for their removal. Indeed, they oppose any change in their existing practices. It is noteworthy that the Muslims opposed the Child-Marriage Bill brought in the Central Assembly in 1930, whereby the age for marriage of a girl was raised to 14 and of a boy to 18 on the ground that it was opposed to the Muslim cannon law. Not only did they oppose the bill at every stage but that when it became law they started a campaign of Civil Disobedience against that Act."

"As for my two wives, what can I do about it? They married me off at thirteen, to my cousin. I was thirteen and she was twenty-three. I didn’t even know what it meant to have a wife, and when they tried to explain it to me, I went out of my mind with rage. With fury. I didn’t want a wife, I wanted to play cricket. I was very fond of cricket. To calm me down, they had to give me two new cricket bags. When the ceremony was over, I ran off to play cricket. There are so many things I must change in my country! And I was fortunate. They married my playmate off at the age of eleven to a woman of thirty-two. He always said to me, »Lucky you!«"

"“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)”"

"The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age."

"Child marriage was an accepted childrearing practice in sixteenth-century northern England."

"Child marriage has rapidly gained international attention over the last decade with donors increasingly recognising the importance of child marriage and its links to a range of development priorities from economic development and poverty alleviation to health, human rights, and social justice. The body of evidence regarding child marriage prevention and response is now deep and wide, and it clearly shows that effective strategies require not only dedicated efforts to address child marriage, but also crosssectoral cooperation and integration. ... Child marriage disproportionately affects girls more than boys. According to UNICEF, 720 million women alive today were married as children, as compared to 156 million men. Some fifteen million girls are married each year worldwide, and across the developing world, one in three girls is married before the age of 18, and one in nine girls before age 15."

"Hindu child brides in India are flogged, and sometimes burned alive, if the pathetic dowry they bring is judged to be too small."

"The The Clinton Foundation notes that child marriage "limits the full potential of girls" and "undermines health, education, economic opportunity, and security." Early wedlock is most common among the world's poorest children. One study found that teen marriage in the U.S. increased by nearly 50 percent in the 1990s thanks to "the spread of abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education at American schools, a shift toward cultural conservatism among some teens and a growing fear among youngsters of contracting AIDS through promiscuity," as the Chicago Tribune wrote in 2004."

"As the legacy of this scenario, Indian girls are still being sold to West Asian nationals as wives, concubines and slave girls. For example, all the leading Indian newspapers... flashed the news of a sixty year old “toothless” Arab national Yahiya H.M. Al Sagish “marrying” a 10-11 year old Ameena of Hyderabad after paying her father Rs. 6000, and attempting to take her out of the country. Al Sagish has been taken into police custody and the case is in the law-court now. Mr. I.U. Khan has “pointed out that no offence could be made out against his client as he had acted in accordance with the Shariat laws. He said that since this case related to the Muslim personal law which permitted marriage with girls who had attained Puberty (described as over 9 years of age), Al Sagish could not be tried under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Besides Ameena’s parents had not complained.” But this is not an isolated case. I was in Hyderabad for about four years, 1979-1983. There I learnt that such “marriages” are common. There are regular agents and touts who arrange them. Poor parents of girls are handsomely paid by foreign Muslims for such arrangements. Every time that I happened to go to the Hyderabad Airlines office or the Airport (which was about at least once a month), I found bunches of old bridegrooms in Arab attire accompanied by young girls, often little girl brides. “A rough estimate indicated that as many as 8000 such marriages were solemnised during the past one decade in Hyderabad alone.” In short, the sex slave-trade is still flourishing not only in Hyderabad but in many other cities of India after the medieval tradition."

"Afghanistan is becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis... 18.8 million Afghans are unable to feed themselves every day.... starvation is not the only issue faced by children. As UNICEF warns “Afghanistan was already one of the toughest places on earth to be a child. Right now, the situation is desperate.” The situation deteriorates quickly as the country is on a brink of famine. Recent weeks have seen yet another trend: families selling their children, and mostly girls, so that families could buy food. In one of reported cases, a six-year-old girl and 18-month-old toddler were sold for $3,350 and $2,800 respectively. In another reporting, a 9-year-old girl was sold for about $2,200 in the form of sheep, land and cash. There are many more such stories.... Some of these girls will become child brides... Child marriage... a major violation of their human rights and can sometimes amount to a form of modern day slavery. While poverty may drive child marriage, child marriage traps girls in a cycle of poverty. Child marriage further puts girls at risk of physical and sexual abuse...Some of the girls will be turned into child laborers... The people of Afghanistan cannot be left to starve. Afghan girls cannot be sacrificed."

"Islamic apologists in the West argue furiously that child marriage has nothing to do with Islam, and that the idea that Muhammad married a child is the invention of greasy Islamophobes. In reality, few things are more abundantly attested in Islamic law than the permissibility of child marriage."

"One does not marry a three-year-old wife, as a donkey does."

"In 2010, 158 countries reported that 18 years was the minimum legal age for marriage for women without parental consent or approval by a pertinent authority. However, in 146 countries, state or customary law allows girls younger than 18 to marry with the consent of parents or other authorities; in 52 countries, girls under age 15 can marry with parental consent. In contrast, 18 is the legal age for marriage without consent among males in 180 countries. Additionally, in 105 countries, boys can marry with the consent of a parent or a pertinent authority, and in 23 countries, boys under age 15 can marry with parental consent."

"Marriage before the age of majority is prohibited.... the age of majority for boys is fifteen lunar years and for girls nine lunar years... marriage before puberty by the permission of the Guardian and on condition of taking into consideration the ward’s interest is proper."

"The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl; he was twenty-eight at the time. She became pregnant at age eleven, although that pregnancy ended with a miscarriage. Khomeini called marriage to a girl before her first menstrual period “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”"

"In February 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) stated that it was “seriously concerned” that child marriage was becoming more common in Iran, and that an increasing number of “girls at the age of 10 years or younger . . . are subjected to child and forced marriages to much older men.” It called upon Iran to “repeal all legal provisions that authorise, condone or lead to child sexual abuse.”"

"She is concerned for the orphan and concerned for the widow. She does not forget the man who helps others, she is a mother for the orphan; Nance, a carer for the widow, who always finds advice for the ; the lady who gives protection for refugees. She seeks out a place for the weak. She swells his collecting basket for him; she makes his collecting vessel profitable for him. For the righteous maiden who has taken her path, Nance chooses a young man of means. Nance raises a secure house like a roof over the widow who could not remarry."

"WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character."

"He first deceased; she for a little tried To live without him, liked it not, and died."

"Forced and especially early forced marriages in the has long been known to be a serious problem, but now it has been documented in the first-ever large-scale study – and the consequences of this problem are even more serious and widespread than many had suspected."

"Many girls are forced into a marriage before they have the full rights of adulthood. It is a horrific form of human rights abuse."

"Daughters are frequently seen as burdens or commodities because of pervasive gender inequality. In places where the groom’s family pays a bride’s price, parents in difficult economic circumstances may marry off their daughters as a source of income."

"See yonder blushing vine tree grow, And clasp a dry and wither’d plane, And round its youthful tendril throw A shelter from the wind and rain.That sapless trunk in former time Gave covert from the noontide blaze, And taught the infant shoot to climb, That now the pious debt repays.And thus, kind Powers, a partner give To share in my prosperity; Hang on my strength while yet I live, And do me honour when I die."

"It is the custom with you, for the eldest of five brothers to marry and for the wife of such brother to be common to all five; hence there cannot be the slightest or remotest doubt of your being all bastards and whoresons. This is about the seventh time that you have acted treasonably towards the sircar, and plundered our armies. I have now [therefore] vowed to the true God, that if you ever again conduct yourselves traitorously or wickedly, I will not revile or molest a single individual among you, but making Ahmedies [i.e. Muslims] of the whole of you, transplant you all from this country to some other; by which means, from being illegitimate, your progeny or descendants may become legitimate, and the epithet of whoresons (born of sinful mothers) may no longer belong to your tribe."