Marriage

"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."