Quotes about marriage (944 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Gay marriage is legal in 6 states, but having sex with a horse is legal in 23 states. Good job, America.”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

Sex , Horse

“You must break away from all the rules of selfishness and make sharing as your new motto in marriage.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Selfishness

“Many marriages would be better if the husband and wife clearly understood that they're on the same side.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

“The appropriate age for marriage is around eighteen for girls and thirty-seven for men.”

Aristotle book Politics

Book VII, 1335a.27
Politics

Men , Age , Girl

“You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Mercy (1996)

Love

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

love , Friendship , Cute , Valentine's Day

“All my lovers asked me why they couldn't replace Mary, but it's simply impossible. The only friend I've got is Mary and I don't want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me, it was a marriage. We believe in each other, that's enough for me.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

On Mary Austin, a long time companion, and the inheritor of most of his estate, as quoted in "For A Song : The Mercury that's rising in rock is Freddie the satiny seductor of Queen" by Fred Hauptfuhrer, in People magazine (5 December 1977) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Group_-_12-05-1977_-_People

Law , Lovers

“Self-interest must be sacrificed if you wish to keep your marriage alive, or to keep your significant one attracted to your attributes.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Wedding , Hope , Imagination , Intelligence

“A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Wedding , Love , Way , Change

“I don't like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Paul and Joanne: A Biography of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward by Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein (1988), p. 157

Home

“I married him against all evidence. I married him believing that marriage doesn't work, that love dies, that passion fades, and in so doing I became the kind of romantic only a cynic is truly capable of being.”

Nora Ephron book Heartburn

Source: Heartburn

Love , Passion

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Love , Life , Death , God

“There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.”

Martin Luther book Table Talk

292
Table Talk (1569)

Relationship , Anniversary , Wedding , Love

“How many women are there…who because of their husbands' harshness spend their weary lives in the bond of marriage in greater suffering than if they were slaves among the Saracens?”

Christine de Pizan book The Book of the City of Ladies

Quantes femmes est il qui usent leur vie au lien de mariage par la durte de leurs maris en plus grant penitence que se elles feussent esclaves entre les sarazins.
Part II, ch. 13, pp. 118-19.
Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (c. 1405)
Source: The Book of the City of Ladies

Women , Suffering

“Marriage is a wonderful institution… but who wants to live in an institution?”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Funny , Wedding

“I haven't touched a piano in so many years. I couldn't play with such crippled fingers, even if I wanted to. For a time after my marriage I tried to keep up my music. But it was hopeless. One-night stands, cheap hotels, dirty trains, leaving children, never having a home — [She stares at her hands with fascinated disgust. ] See, Cathleen, how ugly they are! So maimed and crippled! You would think they'd been through some horrible accident! [She gives a strange little laugh. ] So they have, come to think of it. [She suddenly thrusts her hands behind her back. ] I won't look at them. They're worse than the foghorn for reminding me — [Then with defiant self-assurance. ] But even they can't touch me now. [She brings her hands from behind her back and deliberately stares at them — calmly. ] They're far away. I see them, but the pain has gone.”

Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night

Page 106 (Act 3)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)

Pain , Children , Music , Home

“I think marriage is all about timing. Getting married is insanity; I mean, it's a risk – who knows if you're going to be together forever? But you both say, 'We're going to take this chance, in the same spirit.”

Cate Blanchett (1969) Australian actress

Cate Blanchett: 'Getting Married Is Insanity', People Magazine, 12 January 2007 http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20008317,00.html,

Thinking , Chance , Time

“Michael Moorcock: Several reviewers accused you of saying that all intercourse was rape. I haven't found a hint of that anywhere in the book. Is that what you are saying?
Dworkin: No, I wasn't saying that and I didn't say that, then or ever.… My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse — it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Interview in New Statesman & Society (21 April 1995), discussing her books Intercourse and Right Wing Women.

Books , Law , Reading , Parting

“What maintains the marriage and what is it? Only the knowledge of the hearts, that is its beginning and end.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)

Knowledge , Heart

“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?
Free love? As if love is anything but free!”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

"Marriage and Love" in Anarchism and Other Essays (1911)
Context: 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?
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.

Love , Life , Law , Hope

“Often and often, a marriage hardly differs from prostitution except by being harder to escape from.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Ch VIII: The World As It Could Be Made, p. 129-130
1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918)
Context: One of the most horrible things about commercialism is the way in which it poisons the relations of men and women. The evils of prostitution are generally recognized, but, great as they are, the effect of economic conditions on marriage seems to me even worse. 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. The whole basis of these evils is economic. Economic causes make marriage a matter of bargain and contract, in which affection is quite secondary, and its absence constitutes no recognized reason for liberation. Marriage should be a free, spontaneous meeting of mutual instinct, filled with happiness not unmixed with a feeling akin to awe: it should involve that degree of respect of each for the other that makes even the most trifling interference with liberty an utter impossibility, and a common life enforced by one against the will of the other an unthinkable thing of deep horror.

“I thoroughly believe in the institution of marriage, but there's still a long way to go before I get married. Right now I want to concentrate on my career.”

Nedim Jahić (2001) Bosnian singer

Way

“You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life , Forgetting

“well, i don't know about you but I'm going to try everything! War, women, travel, marriage, children, the works. […]. I want to know about things, what makes them work!”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Women , War , Children , Travel

“In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Personality

“A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Solitude

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Love

“Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Course of Love

People , Hope , Future

“A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Romantic , Wedding , Happiness

“So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Girl

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Friendship , Relationship , Cute , For Friend

“A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.”

Terry Pratchett book The Fifth Elephant

Source: The Fifth Elephant

People

“Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Love , Disease , Food

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Friendship , People

“Good heavens! how marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

“A whole woman will always attract a whole man. And when they touch, they will fuse to create a whole marriage. Ultimately, when the time is right, they will produce whole children.”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Children , Time

“I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.”

Kinky Friedman (1944) Singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician

Wedding , Support

“When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Age , Question , Time , Personality

“Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Idea

“Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

People

“It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Love , People

“The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Love , Making love , Problem , Night

“Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Wedding , Hope

“When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Queen

Source: The Other Queen

For Wife , Love , Death , Fools

“Marriage is two imperfect people committing themselves to a perfect institution, by making perfect vows from imperfect lips before a perfect God.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

God , People , Perfection

“When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Women , Men

“In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison

Forgiveness , Heart

“I worship you, but I loathe marriage. I hate its smugness, its safety, its compromise and the thought of you interfering with my work, hindering me; what would you answer?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Hate

“To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Lady Bracknell, Act III
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

People , Thinking

“My theory is that for those of us who are too weak to remain single, God gives us a spouse. For those of us who are too hung up to handle marriage, God gives us celibacy. So, pick your weakness. Pick your poison, I guess. But anyway, for those of you who do choose to be in love and stuff, go for it.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Anderson, Indiana http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/anderson-indiana-nov1695.html (November 16, 1995)
In Concert

Love , God

“Treating women as second-class citizens is a bad tradition. It holds you back. There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence. There’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation. There’s no place in civilized society for the early or forced marriage of children. These traditions may date back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century. These are issues of right and wrong -- in any culture. But they’re also issues of success and failure. Any nation that fails to educate its girls or employ its women and allowing them to maximize their potential is doomed to fall behind in a global economy.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

Women , Children , Education , Girl

“Marriage is the cure of love, and friendship the cure of marriage.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

Detached Thoughts http://books.google.com/books?id=vVdSAAAAcAAJ&q=%22Marriage+is+the+cure+of+love+and+friendship+the+cure+of+marriage%22&pg=PA384#v=onepage, first published in Letters and Works of Philip Dormer Stanhope, volume 5 (1847)

Love , Friendship

“My most dear lord, King and husband, / The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things. / Katharine the Quene.”

Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536) first wife of Henry VIII of England (1485–1536)

Sharon Turner (1828) The History of England from the Earliest Period to the Death of Elizabeth, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green.

Love , Death , God , Health

“No, there are three people in a marriage, there's the woman, there's the man, and there's what I call the third person, the most important, the person who is composed of the man and woman together.”

José Saramago book All the Names

The woman in the ground floor flat; p. 48
All the Names (1997)

People , Personality

“This morning, the Supreme Court recognized that the Constitution guarantees marriage equality. In doing so, they’ve reaffirmed that all Americans are entitled to the equal protection of the law. That all people should be treated equally, regardless of who they are or who they love. […] This ruling will strengthen all of our communities by offering to all loving same-sex couples the dignity of marriage across this great land.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality (June 2015)

Love , People , Law , Sex

“Furthermore, the best way to restore humanity to the position of the children of God through conversion of lineage is through the inter-cultural “exchange” marriage blessing. It is the greatest of moral acts, creating the Heavenly lineage on a whole new level, transcending the walls of race, culture, nationality and religion. It is an act that severs all links of enmity. It is the sacred rite of the conversion of lineage, through which all can be re-created through the True Parents, the King and Queen of Peace, the substantial manifestations of God who enable Him to exercise His providence in the present world.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

The Mission of the Clan Messiah in the Revolutionary Era after the Coming of Heaven http://www.unification.net/2006/20060601_1.html (2006-06-01)

God , Children , World , Peace

“It seems clear to me that marriage ought to be constituted by children, and relations not involving children ought to be ignored by the law and treated as indifferent by public opinion. It is only through children that relations cease to be a purely private matter.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to Ottoline Morrell, January 30, 1916
1910s

Children , Law , Indifference

“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.”

Len Deighton book London Match

London Match (London: Hutchinson, 1985) p. 18

Women , Men , Thinking , Change

“A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting.”

Helen Rowland (1875–1950) American journalist

Second Marriages
A Guide to Men (1922)

Wedding

“According to Islamic tradition (sunnah), marriage has been deemed to be an essential requirement. Celibacy has been regarded as a malevolent condition fraught with evils.”

Morteza Motahhari (1919–1979) Iranian politician

Sexual Ethics in Islam and in the Western World, al-islam.org http://www.al-islam.org/sexualethics/,
PDF format http://www.iranchamber.com/personalities/mmotahari/works/sexual_ethics_islam_and_western_world.pdf
Source: Sexual Ethics in Islam and in the Western World, Chapter 1, Sexual Ethics in Islam and in the Western World, Baztab News, 2007/08/10, 2007-08-19 http://en.baztab.com/content/?cid=4132,

Evil

“However the marriage is there severe.”
Quanquam severa illic matrimonia

Tacitus book Germania

Start of chapter 18
This is in the sense that the matrimonial bond was strictly observed by the Germanic peoples, this being compared favorably against licentiousness in Rome. Tacitus appears to hold the fairly strict monogamy (with some exceptions among nobles who marry again) between Germanic husbands and wives, and the chastity among the unmarried to be worthy of the highest praise. (Ch. 18).
Germania (98)

“If I had told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history... open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran's nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, take out the mastermind of 9/11... win marriage equality, and secure the right to health insurance for another 20 million of our fellow citizens... you might have said our sights were set a little too high. But that's what we did. That's what you did.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Farewell Address (January 2017)

People , Health , History

“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.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1770, p. 182
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

Hope

“What for is marriage? It is to unite a man and a woman to enjoy a natural life with happiness. It is to find solace after hard work. Most of the people do not realize that marriages are for sharing pleasures of the wedded life.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

citation needed
Marriage

Life , People , Pleasure , Nature

“In every society, a few individuals acquire the status of an elite through talent. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, and bravery, these individuals come to possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are likely to be passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn to with their conflicts and complaints against each other. These leaders of the natural elite act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge out of a sense of duty expected of a person of authority or out of concern for civil justice as a privately produced "public good."”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State http://www.mises.org/etexts/intellectuals.asp (21 July 2006)

Wisdom , Men , Family , Justice

“[Ibn Battuta’s eyewitness account of the Sultan’s arranging the enslaved girls’ marriages with Muslims on a large scale on the occasion of the two Ids, confirms the statement of Abbas:] “First of all, daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come and sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives, sons of Maliks etc. On the second day the durbar is held in a similar fashion after Asr. Female singers are brought out… the Sultan distributes them among the Mameluke Amirs. On the third day relatives of the Sultan are married and they are given rewards. On the sixth day male and female slaves are married. On the seventh day he (the Sultan) gives charities with great liberality.””

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.
Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

Girl , Fashion , Singing , Dance

“Seldom, or perhaps never, does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises; there is no coming to consciousness without pain.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Source: Contributions to Analytical Psychology (1928), p. 193

Pain

“While the sale of daughters was practiced in England for seven hundred years after the introduction of Christianity, we note that by the ancient law of India, a father was forbidden to sell his daughter in marriage, or receive the smallest present therefor. In mediaeval England the daughter was held as a portion of the father property to be sold to the highest bidder.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) American abolitionist, writer

Source: Woman, Church and State (1893), p. 301

Law , Daughters

“Children have the right to grow up in a family with a father and mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child's development and emotional maturity. Today marriage and the family are in crisis. We now live in a culture of the temporary, in which more and more people are simply giving up on marriage as a public commitment. The revolution in mores and morals has often flown the flag of freedom, but in fact it has brought spiritual and material devastation to countless human beings, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

"Pope Francis declares union between man and woman 'at root of marriage' in blow to gay rights", by Adam Withnall, The Independent (18 November 2014) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis-declares-union-between-man-and-woman-at-root-of-marriage-in-blow-to-gay-rights-9867561.html
2010s, 2014

Children , People , Family , Freedom

“Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.”

Menander (-342–-291 BC) Athenian playwright of New Comedy

Unidentified fragment 651.

Truth , Evil

“Divorce is probably of nearly the same age as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Le divorce est probablement de la même date à peu près que le mariage. Je crois pourtant que le mariage est de quelques semaines plus ancien.
"Divorce" (1771)
Citas, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)

Age

“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.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

Chapter VIII http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abeslmca5t.html
1830s, An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833)

World , Law , Color , Personality

““ We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

Girl , Success

“When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to them.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Our Sexual Ethics http://www.utilitarian.org/texts/oursexethics.html (1936)
1930s

Children , Family , Sex , Feeling

“Very much screwed in the head by trying to get Roger's marriage chapter into shape; and also warmed by L. saying last night that he was fonder of me than I of him. A discussion as to which would mind the other's death most. He said he depended more upon our common life than I did. He gave the garden as an instance. He said I live more in a world of my own. I go for long walks alone. So we argued. I was very happy to think I was so much needed. Its strange how seldom one feels this: yet 'life in common' is an immense reality.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Friday 28 April, 1939
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life , Death , World , Feeling

“Doctors! You know yourself, without the help of any doctors that your case has no foundation! I care not a straw for your Doctors! For every Doctor and Lawyer that upholds your case I could find a thousand that would find our marriage good and valid!”

Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536) first wife of Henry VIII of England (1485–1536)

Alison Weir (1991). The Six Wives of Henry VIII. ISBN 0802136834, p. 213.

Help

“The same King [Greek Empire] placed holiness in abstinence from marriage. Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical history tells us, that Musanus wrote a tract against those who fell away to the heresy of the Encratites, which was then newly risen, and had introduced pernicious errors; and that Tatian, the disciple of Justin, was the author thereof; and that Irenæus in his first book against heresies teaches this… But although the followers of Tatian were at first condemned as heretics by the name of Encratites, or Continentes; their principles could not be yet quite exploded: for Montanus refined upon them, and made only second marriages unlawful; he also introduced frequent fastings, and annual, fasting days, the keeping of Lent, and feeding upon dried meats. The Apostolici, about the middle of the third century, condemned marriage, and were a branch of the disciples of Tatian. The Hierocitæ in Egypt, in the latter end of the third century, also condemned marriage. Paul the Eremite [Hermit] fled into the wilderness from the persecution of Decius, and lived there a solitary life till the reign of Constantine the great, but made no disciples. Antony did the like in the persecution of Dioclesian, or a little before, and made disciples; and many others soon followed his example.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Vol. I, Ch. 13: Of the King who did according to his will, and magnified himself above every God, and honored Mahuzzims, and regarded not the desire of women
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)

Life , Books , Error , History

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

Theodor W. Adorno book Minima Moralia

E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 10
Minima Moralia (1951)

World , Communication , Idea , Nature

“[On his childhood problems and his father's second marriage to Helen] It was very difficult in the beginning, when everybody was talking about it. My mother just couldn't take it. It hurt her terribly. She used to worry all the time, go in to depression frequently. When she cried, we children used to cry with her”

Salman Khan (1965) Indian film actor

Quotes By Salman

Children , Problem , Time , Childhood

“Anita had the mechanics of marriage down pat, even to the subtlest conventions. If her approach was disturbingly rational, systematic, she was thorough enough to turn out a credible counterfeit of warmth.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 1 (p. 25)

“Adultery breathes new life into marriages which have been left for dead.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

L'adultère introduit l'esprit dans la lettre que bien souvent le mariage eût laissée morte.
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. V: The Captive (1923)

Life , Dead

“Of all the horrid brutalities of our age, I know of none so horrid as those that are sanctioned and defended by marriage. Night after night, there are thousands of rapes committed, under cover of this accursed license; and millions—yes I say it boldly, knowing whereof I speak—millions of poor, heart broken, suffering wives are compelled to minister to the lechery of insatiable husbands, when every instinct of body and sentiment of soul revolts in lathing and disgust…. The world has got to be startled from this pretense into realizing that there is nothing else now existing among pretendedly enlightened nations, except marriage, that invests men with the right to debauch women, sexually, against their wills, yet marriage is held to be synonymous with morality! I say, eternal damnation, sink such morality! …”

Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) American suffragist

Tried As By Fire, or The True and The False, Socially, speech, 1874, quoted in Gabriel, Mary, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored (Chapel Hill, N.Car.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1st ed. 1998 ISBN 1-56512-132-5, p. 222 & n. [20] (each ellipsis or set of suspension points so in original) (author Mary Gabriel journalist, Reuters News Service), in turn as reprinted in Stern, Madeleine B., ed., The Victoria Woodhull Reader (Weston, Mass.: M&S Press, 1974).

Women , Men , Age , World

“The woman offers the man fruit. Maybe that's how our female ancestors enticed males to join them in caring for offspring. 'I'll offer you food, and in response we're going to make a team. That's the deal.' And that's the human deal. That's why we're more or less monogamous and why we more or less pair-bond, and why something approximating marriage is a human universal. You can find exceptions, but who cares? Look at the vast pattern. The price we pay for having very large brains is that we're very dependent, and it takes a long time for us to get programmed, and because of that we need relatively stable family bonding, and that's basically what we've evolved. You don't get that without making males self conscious. Why not impregnate and run. It's not 'why do men abandon their children?' that's the mystery. It's 'why do any men ever stick with them?”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Just look at the animal kingdom. The simple and easiest thing is always the most likely thing to occur. It's the exception - the long term commitment - that needs explanation."
Concepts

Men , Children , Family , Food

“I am sure that university life would be better, both intellectually and morally, if most university students had temporary childless marriages. This would afford a solution to the sexual urge neither restless nor surreptitious, neither mercenary nor casual, and of such a nature that it need not take up time which ought to be given to work.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Sex in Education", p. 119-120
1930s, Education and the Social Order (1932)

Life , Nature , Universe , Time

“Darcy wants to present himself to Elizabeth as a proud gentleman, and he gets from her the message 'your pride is nothing but contemptible arrogance.' After the break in their relationship each discovers, through a series of accidents, the true nature of the other - she the sensitive and tender nature of Darcy, he her real dignity and wit - and the novel ends as it should, with their marriage. The theoretical interest of this story lies in the fact that the failure of their first encounter, the double misrecognition concerning the real nature of the other, functions as a positive condition of the final outcome: we cannot say 'if, from the very beginning, she had recognized his real nature and he hers, their story could have ended at once with their marriage.' Let us take a comical hypothesis that the first encounter of the future lovers was a success - that Elizabeth had accepted Darcy's first proposal. What would happen? Instead of being bound together in true love they would become a vulgar everyday couple, a liaison of an arrogant, rich man and a pretentious, every-minded young girl… If we want to spare ourselves the painful roundabout route through the misrecognition, we miss the truth itself: only the working-through of the misrecognition allows us to accede to the true nature of the other and at the same time to overcome our own deficiency - for Darcy, to free himself of his false pride; for Elizabeth, to get rid of her prejudices.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

67
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Love , Pain , Truth , Girl

“Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

In reaction to statements by Maurice O'Connor Drury who expressed disapproval of depictions of an ancient Egyptian god with an erect phallus, in "Conversations with Wittgenstein" as quoted in Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism (1997) by Richard Thomas Eldridge, p. 130
Attributed from posthumous publications

World , Religion , Sex , Night

“Americans are already deep in a culture war over morality—marijuana, abortion, same-sex marriage. We are already racially polarized over affirmative action and income inequality. And when we have ceased to be an English-speaking, Christian country and become instead an Asian-Hispanic-African-American-white nation, with large Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic and atheist minorities, and no defined borders, or common faith and culture, what holds us together?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

"The Brazil of North America" https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/the-brazil-of-north-america/ (July 18, 2014), Chronicles
2010s

War , Faith , Sex , Marijuana

“A kind of music far superior, in my opinion, to that of operas, and which in all Italy has not its equal, nor perhaps in the whole world, is that of the 'scuole'. The 'scuole' are houses of charity, established for the education of young girls without fortune, to whom the republic afterwards gives a portion either in marriage or for the cloister. Amongst talents cultivated in these young girls, music is in the first rank. Every Sunday at the church of each of the four 'scuole', during vespers, motettos or anthems with full choruses, accompanied by a great orchestra, and composed and directed by the best masters in Italy, are sung in the galleries by girls only; not one of whom is more than twenty years of age. I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure. Carrio and I never failed being present at these vespers of the 'Mendicanti', and we were not alone. The church was always full of the lovers of the art, and even the actors of the opera came there to form their tastes after these excellent models. What vexed me was the iron grate, which suffered nothing to escape but sounds, and concealed from me the angels of which they were worthy. I talked of nothing else. One day I spoke of it at Le Blond's; "If you are so desirous," said he, "to see those little girls, it will be an easy matter to satisfy your wishes. I am one of the administrators of the house, I will give you a collation [light meal] with them." I did not let him rest until he had fulfilled his promise. In entering the saloon, which contained these beauties I so much sighed to see, I felt a trembling of love which I had never before experienced. M. le Blond presented to me one after the other, these celebrated female singers, of whom the names and voices were all with which I was acquainted. Come, Sophia, — she was horrid. Come, Cattina, — she had but one eye. Come, Bettina, — the small-pox had entirely disfigured her. Scarcely one of them was without some striking defect.
Le Blond laughed at my surprise; however, two or three of them appeared tolerable; these never sung but in the choruses; I was almost in despair. During the collation we endeavored to excite them, and they soon became enlivened; ugliness does not exclude the graces, and I found they possessed them. I said to myself, they cannot sing in this manner without intelligence and sensibility, they must have both; in fine, my manner of seeing them changed to such a degree that I left the house almost in love with each of these ugly faces. I had scarcely courage enough to return to vespers. But after having seen the girls, the danger was lessened. I still found their singing delightful; and their voices so much embellished their persons that, in spite of my eyes, I obstinately continued to think them beautiful.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), On the musicians of the Ospedale della Pieta (book VII)

Love , Age , World , Education

“What a queer work the Bible is.
… Some texts are very funny. Deut. XXIV, 5: "When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken." I should never have guessed "cheer up" was a Biblical expression. Here is another really inspiring text: "Cursed be he that lieth with his mother-in-law. And all the people shall say, Amen." St Paul on marriage: "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." This has remained the doctrine of the Church to this day. It is clear that the Divine purpose in the text "it is better to marry than to burn" is to make us all feel how very dreadful the torments of Hell must be.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to Colette, August 10, 1918
1910s

War , People , Law , Feeling

“I have often thought had there been somebody like me around, something might have been able to be done. I also think I don't see how I could have done what I've done in the world had I been married. And when I decided-because I've been on the verge of marriage many times-I said no, because if I wanted to roam the globe like I did, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the people. At the point, I really feel it was a kind of destiny because I've been able to get to places. There are some people in the world who have other jobs to do.”

Virginia Satir (1916–1988) American psychologist

Brief biography http://www.avanta.net/writings/biography/biography.html at Avanta.net (1999)

People , World , Feeling , Thinking

“Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed in Henry Louis Mencken (1942), A New Dictionary of Quotations
Misattributed

Hell

“Of all serious things, marriage is the most ludicrous.”

Pierre Beaumarchais The Marriage of Figaro

De toutes les choses sérieuses, le mariage étant la plus bouffonne.
Act I, scene ix
The Marriage of Figaro (1778)

“I can say everything to you. It's a wonderful feeling. I never could tell Francoise that I don't really love her, that our marriage isn't based on any hones ideal. It's founded on my weariness and boredom. Although those are solid enough bases. Plenty of lasting marriages are build on them, God knows. At least, they're always present.”

Françoise Sagan book A Certain Smile

Un certain sourire (1955, A Certain Smile, translated 1956)

Love , God , Feeling

“They are preserving the sanctity of marriage, so that two gay men who've been together for twenty-five years can't get married, but a guy can still get drunk in Vegas and marry a hooker at the Elvis chapel! The sanctity of marriage is saved!”

Lea DeLaria (1958) American actress and singer

Box Lunch

Men , Guy

“For a woman as for a man, marriage might enormously help or devastatingly hinder the growth of her power to contribute something impersonally valuable to the community in which she lived, but it was not that power, and could not be regarded as an end in itself. Nor, even, were children ends in themselves; it was useless to go on producing human beings merely in order that they, in their sequence, might produce others, and never turn from this business of continuous procreation to the accomplishment of some definite and lasting piece of work.”

Vera Brittain book Testament of Youth

Source: Testament of Youth (1933), Chapter 11

Children , Communication , Business , Help

“Our girls have to be treated the same. We can’t let old traditions stand in the way. The march of history shows that we have the capacity to broaden our moral imaginations. We come to see that some traditions are good for us, they keep us grounded, but that, in our modern world, other traditions set us back. When African girls are subjected to the mutilation of their bodies, or forced into marriage at the ages of 9 or 10 or 11 -- that sets us back. That's not a good tradition. It needs to end. […]”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

Age , World , Way , Imagination

“Simran and Sukirti are not similar at all. I think the amount of the sacrifices that Simran has made may exist in other girls in real life too but I do not see myself in the same mould. I am a very reserved and a practical girl. However, I can relate to undying love, extreme emotions and the bubbliness of Simran. I have always preferred my work to speak for me than my relationships; I don’t want to comment on it. As far as marriage is concerned, I cannot think of getting married till the time I have achieved my targets. My parents got married when they were both 32 so I don’t think 25 years down the line, their kids are rushing into marriage anytime soon.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

On comparison with her character and personal life http://www.tellychakkar.com/tv/tv-news/i-have-never-been-associated-the-word-struggle-life-sukirti-kandpal-042/

Love , Life , Girl , Thinking

“Here you should be guided by the words of St. Paul, I Corinthians 7 [:4–5], “The husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does; likewise the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does. Do not deprive each other, except by agreement,” etc. Notice that St. Paul forbids either party to deprive the other, for by the marriage vow each submits his body to the other in conjugal duty. When one resists the other and refuses the conjugal duty she is robbing the other of the body she had bestowed upon him. This is really contrary to marriage, and dissolves the marriage. For this reason the civil government must compel the wife, or put her to death. If the government fails to act, the husband must reason that his wife has been stolen away and slain by robbers; he must seek another. We would certainly have to accept it if someone’s life were taken from him. Why then should we not also accept it if a wife steals herself away from her husband, or is stolen away by others?”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

The Estate of Marriage, 1522, translated by Walther I. Brandt, from Luther's Works, Vol. 45, pp. 32-34); as quoted in Martin Luther: Execute Adulterers, Witches, Frigid Wives, & Prostitutes, Pagadian Diocese http://www.pagadiandiocese.org/2017/10/30/martin-luther-execute-adulterers-witches-frigid-wives-prostitutes/, October 26, 2017, Dave Armstrong

Life , Death

“And we’ll work to strengthen families by removing the financial deterrents to marriage for low-income couples, and do more to encourage fatherhood — because what makes you a man isn’t the ability to conceive a child; it’s having the courage to raise one.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Fifth State of the Union Address (February 2013)

Family , Courage

Quotes about marriage

Best quotes about marriage

Quotes about marriage