Quotes about wedding (244 quotes, page 2)

“Som thingis that prouoke young men to wed in haste,
Show after weddyng, that hast maketh waste.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Some things that provoke young men to wed in haste,
Show after wedding, that haste makes waste.
Part I, chapter 2.
Proverbs (1546)

Men

“It's shameful to spot a lie and not to name it,
shameful to name it and then to shut your eyes,
shameful to call a funeral a wedding
and play the fool at funerals besides.”

Andrey Voznesensky (1933–2010) Soviet poet

Stanley Kunitz (trans.) Story Under Full Sail (New York: Doubleday, 1974) p. 20.

Lie , Fools

“And the music came back with the carnival, the music you've heard as far back as you can remember, ever since you were little, that's always playing somewhere, in some corner of the city, in little country towns, wherever poor people go and sit at the end of the week to figure out what's become of them, sometimes here, sometimes there, from season to season, it tinkles and grinds out the tunes that rich people danced to the year before. It's the mechanical music that floats down from the wooden horses, from the cars that aren't cars anymore, from the railways that aren't at all scenic, from the platform under the wrestler who hasn't any muscles and doesn't come from Marseille, from the beardless lady, the magician who's a butter-fingered jerk, the organ that's not made of gold, the shooting gallery with the empty eggs. It's the carnival made to delude the weekend crowd. We go in and drink the beer with no head on it. But under the cardboard trees the stink of the waiter's breath is real. And the change he gives you has several peculiar coins in it, so peculiar that you go on examining them for weeks and weeks and finally, with considerable difficulty, palm them off on some beggar. What do you expect at the carnival? Gotta have what fun you can between hunger and jail, and take things as they come. No sense complaining, we're sitting down aren't we? Which ain't to be sneezed at. I saw the same old Gallery of the Nations, the one Lola caught sight of years and years ago on that avenue in the park of Saint-Cloud. You always see things again at carnivals, they revive the joy of past carnivals. Over the years the crowds must have come back time and again to stroll on the main avenue of the park of Saint-Cloud…taking it easy. The war had been over long ago. And say I wonder if that shooting gallery still belonged to the same owner? Had he come back alive from the war? I take an interest in everything. Those are the same targets, but in addition, they're shooting at airplanes now. Novelty. Progress. Fashion. The wedding was still there, the soldier too, and the town hall with its flag. Plus a few more things to shoot at than before.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

27
Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

Hunger , War , People , Music

“And never will I wed.
I'll hunt the pearl of death to the bottom of my life,
and ever hold my breath,
till I may be the diver's wife.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Divers
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)

Life , Death

“He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go:
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.”

John Greenleaf Whittier Maud Muller

Maud Muller (1856)

Fashion

“When the wedding march sounds the resolute approach, the clock no longer ticks, it tolls the hour…. The figures in the aisle are no longer individuals, they symbolize the human race.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Dearly Beloved

Dearly Beloved (1962)

“Pete's my best friend, I was the best man at his wedding, I love that man to death. I'd take a bullet for him.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

AbsolutePunk.net, Patrick Stump, Part 2 - 10.13.08

Love , Death

“We—"the free love generation"—are now telling our children to abstain from sex? When I spoke at Carleton College, I told the young people: "Unless they were a virgin on their wedding day, anyone who preaches abstinence to you is a hypocrite." Two weeks later, Ann Coulter showed up at the same school, and one of the students raised his hand and asked her whether she'd been a virgin! It made the papers—and made me laugh. You know what Coulter did? Attacked the kid and changed the subject.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 1 (p. 3)

Love , Children , People , School

“A left-over from this period is the North-Indian custom of celebrating weddings at midnight: this was a safety measure against the Islamic sport of bride catching.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6
1990s, Negationism in India, (1992)

Sport

“David Letterman: Earlier today, the man who owns this network, Leslie Moonves—he and I have had a relationship for years and years and years—and we have had this conversation in the past, and we agreed that we would work together on this circumstance and the timing of this circumstance. And I phoned him just before the program, and I said, "Leslie, it's been great, you've been great, the network has been great, but I'm retiring."
Paul Shaffer: This is—really?
David Letterman: Yep.
Paul Shaffer: This is—this is—you actually did this?
David Letterman: Yes, I did.
[dead silence in the studio followed by nervous laughter from the audience]
Paul Shaffer: Well—do I have a minute to call my accountant, because…I, uh…
[Dave cracks up]
David Letterman: I just want to reiterate my thanks for the support from the network, all of the people who have worked here, all of the people in the theatre, all the people on the staff, everybody at home. Thank you very much. And what this means now, is that Paul and I can be married.
[uproarious laughter and applause as wedding chimes play]
David Letterman: So we don't have the timing of this precisely down, I think it will be at least a year or so. But sometime in the not too distant future—2015 for the love of God, in fact, Paul and I will be wrapping things up and taking a hike.
[studio audience goes wild, gives him a standing ovation]
David Letterman: Thank you, thanks everybody. All right, thanks very much.”

David Letterman (1947) American comedian and actor

On announcing his retirement, quoted in Here’s what happened the moment David Letterman announced his retirement (transcript + video) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/04/03/heres-what-happened-the-moment-david-letterman-announced-his-retirement-transcript-video/ by Emily Yahr, in "The Washington Post" (3 April 2014).

Love , God , People , Home

“Kunti and Draupadi are two women who shape the entire course of dynastic destiny in the Mahabharata. Kunti chooses the scion of Hastinapura, Pandu, to wed, and becomes the mother of the epic’s protagonists: the Pandavas.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

Women

“There were two good fellows I used to know.
--How distant it all appears!
We played together in football weather,
And messed together for years:
Now one of them's wed, and the other's dead
So long that he's hardly missed
Save by us, who messed with him years ago:
But we're all in the old School List.”

James Kenneth Stephen (1859–1892) English poet, tutor to Prince Albert Victor

The Old School List.

School , Distant , Appearance , Football

“She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.”

Margot Asquith (1864–1945) Anglo-Scottish socialite, author and wit

Quoted by her step-daughter Violet in The Listener, June 11, 1953.
Of Lady Desborough.

“If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.”

David Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004)

Love

“His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

As quoted in LIFE magazine (8 April 1946)

Death , People

“I am guilty that I raised your hopes about wedding, marriage, children and family, and many other things.”

Ziad Jarrah (1975–2001) September 11th hijacker

Letter to Aysel Şengün (2001)

Marriage , Children , Family , Hope

“Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel’s childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and the triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things—the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossing and connections casual, dialogues imminently (sic) forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 4 (p. 284)

Life , Family , Memory , Childhood

“[Talking about Richard Hammond's high-speed dragster crash] That should be the anti-speeding advert. It should be footage of Richard Hammond trying to remember his own wedding day. [Mimicking Richard Hammond] "She was wearing black… or was it red? Am I married?"”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Mock the Week

Speed

“Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote.
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat.
We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest.
No wedding day smiles no walk down the aisle,
No flowers no wedding dress.That night we went down to the river.
And into the river we'd dive.
Oh down to the river we did ride.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The River"
Song lyrics, The River (1980)

Smile , Flowers , Birthday , Night

“More drama than a junior prom, a shotgun wedding, and a paternity test all rolled into one!”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC (June 8, 2009)

“Mine is no caste or cult, what care I for one or the other…
No one is of any use to me, nor am I of any use to anyone.
Don’t have a son to need, someone’s daughter to wed.
Tulsi is the slave of Rama, whoever may say whatever he likes.
Begged for food, slept in a mosque, have nothing to take and nothing
to give, call me a swindler or a saint, call me a Rajput or a Julaha.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

A Muslim weaver is called a Julaha which Tusllidas preferred to be called, as he was brought up by a Muslim couple who were weavers who had picked him up and brought him up. Quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 106

Food , Daughters

“No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 178

Life , Evil

“And the other world-picture?, one based not just on science but wedded to a scientistic programme. Well, you know it as well as I do. Here all is ultimately meaningless.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

The Boyle lecture (2005)

World , Science

“[After struggle with heart disease] I've stopped eating meat, cheese, milk, even fish. No dairy at all. I've lost more than 20 pounds so far, aiming for about 30 before Chelsea's wedding. And I have so much more energy now! I feel great. … I just decided that I was the high-risk person, and I didn't want to fool with this anymore. And I wanted to live to be a grandfather. So I decided to pick the diet that I thought would maximize my chances of long-term survival. … The main thing that was hard for me actually … was giving up yogurt and hard cheese. I love that stuff, but it really made a big difference when I did it. … [To truly change the conditions that lead to bad habits and poor health] we have to demand it by changing the way we live. You have to make a conscious decision to change for your own well-being, and that of your family and your country.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

" Bill Clinton Explains Why He Became a Vegan http://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-08-2013/bill-clinton-vegan.html" by Joe Conason, AARP The Magazine, August/September 2013.
2010s

Love , Health , Disease , Family

“I think intelligence has a kind of range of sense and allows us to contemplate the coexistence of the conceptual aspect of thought and the emotional aspect of thought as ideally wedded, troth-plight, and the circumstances in which this troth-plight can be effected are to be found in the medium of language itself.”

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor

Interview, The Paris Review No. 80, Spring 2000 http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/730/the-art-of-poetry-no-80-geoffrey-hill

Intelligence , Thinking , Sense

“Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge became habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glorysmitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton аs his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own Ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakspeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XV

Feeling , Mountain , Birth , Nature

“When I was growing up here in the wild west, if a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married, and the whole darned neighborhood was involved in that wedding. I mean, you just didn't allow that sort of thing to happen, you know? I mean, they wanted that child to be brought up in a home with two parents, you know, that whole story. And so I happen to believe that can happen again.”

William Napoli (1948) American politician

In a 2006 interview regarding his support of the 2006 South Dakota state ban on abortion. PBS NewsHour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june06/abortion_3-03.html (3 March 2006)

Home , Girl , Parent

“The Maiden had been abducted by the Unseen One, and raped. When the crime of the Unseen One finally came to light, instead of punishing his brother, Lord Terminus (who feared him) gave him the Maiden as his wife.
We have never forgiven Lord Terminus his crime, this cynical and smirking act of corruption. What kind of punishment is it to a rapist, to have the victim of his outrages be given to him in bounds of matrimony, his victim to be his, forever after? Lord Terminus decreed that when a husband takes a wife by violence, it is not rape, but holy matrimony; honor is satisfied once the wedding is performed.
Honor was satisfied, but we were not satisfied.”

John C. Wright book Orphans of Chaos

Source: Orphans of Chaos (2005), Chapter 22, “Tales of the Demiurge” Section 3 (p. 293; cf. Deuteronomy 22.28-29 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+22%3A28-29&version=KJV)

Fear , Light

“I paid eighty dollars for this wedding ring, I couldn't take it off if I tried… ~ Hotel Womb”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics

“Let us look facts straight in the eye. World imperialism headed by its aggressive detachment, U. S. imperialism, is directing the course of its economy towards preparations for war. It is arming itself to the teeth. U. S. imperialism is rearming Bonn's Germany, Japan, and all its allies and satellites with all kinds of weapons. It has set up and perfected aggressive military organizations, it has established and continues to establish military bases all around the socialist camp. It is accumulating stocks of nuclear weapons and refuses to disarm, to stop testing nuclear weapons, and is feverishly engaged in inventing new means of mass extermination. Why is it doing all this? To go to a wedding party? No, to go to war against us, to do away with socialism and communism, to put the peoples under bondage.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

War , People , World , Communication

“How can I call security a woman's primary fantasy if I am saying it is also her primary need? Because while her primary need is the security of a home and a family circle, her primary fantasy is that someone else will earn enough to pay for them. Hence the focus of 2 billion women on the latest royal wedding.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 16.

Women , Family , Home

“When the Lord of the Wedding Rings held his no-questions-asked press conference, he said he was sorely "troubled." At last, I thought, an admission. But no, he wasn't talking about his mental condition.”

Kate Clinton (1947) American comedian

Wedded to the Republicans http://progressive.org/?q=node/805
The Progressive, Unplugged

Question

“The most famous Scientology wedding was between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes on November 18, 2006, in Italy. Although it may seem frivolous to focus on such an event when considering an extraordinary group, this wedding for much of the world brought Scientology to the front page. … The significance of Scientology to Cruise was underscored by his selection of David Miscavige, head of the Church of Scientology since the death of L. Ron Hubbard, as his best man.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

[Zellner, William W., Richard T. Schaefer, Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles, Worth Publishers, 2007, Church of Scientology: Social Positions, 304, 0716770342].
About

Death , World

“As for a few others, the vital task was a wedding of abstraction and surrealism. Out of these opposites something new could emerge, and Gorky’s work is a part of the evidence that this is true. What he felt, I suppose, was a sense of polarity, not of dichotomy; that opposites could exist simultaneously within a body, within a painting or within an entire art... These are the opposites poles in his work. Logic and irrationality; violence and gentleness; happiness and sadness, surrealism and abstraction. Out of these elements I think Gorky evolved his style.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Arshile Gorky Adolph Gottlieb in exhibition catalogue Kootz Gallery New York, 1950; as quoted in Abstract Painting in America, W.C, Seitz p. 104.
1950s

Sadness , Art , Thinking , Sense

“Twenty-five years ago the Republican Party was married to liberty, and this is our silver wedding, fellow-citizens.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1870s, An Appeal to Young Men (1879)

“When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager that the man, if not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.”

Henry Fielding book Amelia

Book VI, Ch. 8
Amelia (1751)

Marriage

“Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.”

William Lane Craig book Reasonable Faith

[Subject: Slaughter of the Canaanites, Reasonable Faith, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5767, 2011-10-20], quoted in [Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig, Richard, Dawkins, Guardian, 2011-10-20, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/richard-dawkins-william-lane-craig, 2011-10-20]

Life , Death , God , Children

“Once thou art wed, no longer canst thou be
Lord of thyself.”

Alexis (-372–-270 BC) Athenian poet of Middle Comedy

Fabulae Incertae, Fragment 34, 7.

Art

“Wedding after wedding after wedding and then yours - your wedding? Would that make you what they're now calling happy?”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Barely

Happiness

“It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Fear

“Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love. "She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Smails' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race… They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden;… that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight;… that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ… 'Where does she get all them the'ries?'”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

marveled Uncle Whittier Smail.
Main Street (1920)

Love , Men , Children , Intelligence

“The church is the bride of Christ. The kingdom will be the eternal celebration of the wedding of Christ and the church. We will enjoy rapturous celebration as the bride of Christ in the eternal kingdom.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 71

Christ

“"Those whom God hath joined together let no one put asunder." To Anne Hewlett Fuller on this, our 63rd Wedding Anniversary and my 85 Birthday—July 12, 1980”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

God , Birthday

“I met Donald in 1979 when I was sent to New York to organize Ronald Reagan's campaign for President. He and his father Fred Trump were members of the Reagan for President finance committee. We became good friends. I was invited to two of his weddings. He attended my wedding in Washington DC. He is very smart, very tough and can be very very funny. He is also very tall.”

Roger Stone (1952) American lobbyist

Wikinews interviews three figures from Donald Trump's political past (October 2015)

“Good deeds remain good, no matter whether we know how the world was made or not. Vile deeds are vile, no matter whether we know or do not know what, after death, will be the fate of the doer. We know, at least, what his fate is now, namely, to be wedded to the vileness.
The question for anyone to decide, who hesitates between good and evil, is whether he aspires to be a full-weight man, or merely the fragment, nay, the counterfeit of a man. Only he who ceaselessly aims at moral completeness is, in the true sense, a human being.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Death , Fate , World , Question

“Not at all. It’s so hectic. On your wedding day, you just wear it for like 6 hours and you’re not even concentrating on it because you’re in another zone. But here, you not thinking of the marriage, you’re just shooting and looking at the watch… oh it’s 9 o’clock, I have to leave. It was nice to wear all this initially, but with time it just gets tiring.”

Drashti Dhami (1985) Indian television actress and model

Talking about heavy jewelry on set http://www.bollywoodlife.com/news-gossip/drashti-dhami-i-dont-take-weight-criticism-negatively-because-i-know-i-need-to-cut-down-a-few-kilos/

Marriage , Thinking , Time

“I am lovely, O mortals, like a dream of stone;
And my breast, where everyone is bruised in his turn,
Has been made to awaken in poets a love
That is eternal and as silent as matter.I am throned in blue sky like a sphinx unbeknown;
My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans;
I detest any movement displacing still lines,
And never do I weep and never laugh.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

<p>Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s’est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.</p><p>Je trône dans l’azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J’unis un cœur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.</p>
"La Beauté" [Beauty] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Beaut%C3%A9_%28Les_Fleurs_du_mal%29
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Love , Dreams , Heart

“A wedding. According to Chris, they didn't die on the boat. They got washed up on a shore in a jungle island. The queen gave birth to a baby boy. They build a treehouse. They get eaten by a leopard…”

Jennifer Lee (1971) American motion picture writer and director.

Boy , Birth , Baby

“One of Hunter's first acts upon moving to Colorado was serving as best man at Billy's wedding to Anne Willis. Aside from Hunters putting out his cigarette in the holy water, the wedding transpired without major incident.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 8, American Dream, p. 115

Water

“To church in the morning, and there saw a wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day; and the young people so merry one with another, and strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition, every man and woman gazing and smiling at them.”

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament

December 25, 1665
Diary

People , Smile , Fools

“…But love is like the measles; the later in life it affects you, the more severe the consequences"
"Is there anything you can take for it?”

Len Deighton book Charity

"Only wedding vows"
Charity (1997; Harper Paperback, p. 280)

Love , Life

“Now there was a young gentleman which had married a merchant's wife. And having a little wanton money, which him thought burned out the bottom of his purse, in the first year of his wedding took his wife with him and went over sea, for none other errand but to see Flanders and France and ride out one summer in those countries.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Works (c. 1530)
Sometimes paraphrased "A little wanton money, which burned out the bottom of his purse."

Money , Summer , Sea , Country

“The death of Black Jade coincided with the wedding hour of Pao-yu and Precious Virtue. Shortly after Snow Duck was taken to the wedding chambers, Black Jade had regained consciousness. During this lucid moment, which was not unlike the afterglow of the setting sun, she took Purple Cuckoo's hand and said to her with an effort, "My hour is here. You have served me for many years, and I had hoped that we should be together the rest of our lives… but I am afraid…"
The effort exhausted her and she fell back, panting. She still held Purple Cuckoo's hand and continued after a while, "Mei-mei, I have only one wish. I have no attachment here. After my death, tell them to send my body back to the south––"
She stopped again, and her eyes closed slowly. Purple Cuckoo felt her mistress' hand tighten over hers. Knowing this was a sign of the approaching end, she sent for Li Huan, who had gone back to her own apartment for a brief rest. When the latter returned with Quest Spring, Black Jade's hands were already cold and her eyes dull. They suppressed their sobs and hastened to dress her. Suddenly Black Jade cried, "Pao-yu, Pao-yu, how––" Those were her last words.
Above their own lamentations, Li Huan, Purple Cuckoo, and Quest Spring thought they heard the soft notes of an ethereal music in the sky. They went out to see what it was, but all they could hear was the rustling of the wind through the bamboos and all they could see was the shadow of the moon creeping down the western wall.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 307

Death , Hope , Music , Spring

“I am absolutely for the possibility of a happy relationship between adults, regardless of gender, and I think that they can not be denied the right to life worthy. I am also in favor of equal treatment of married couples and cohabiting couples. I did not marry myself. In Poland, the wedding is considered to be a sanctity, and in fact has primarily legal consequences: it guarantees the right to inheritance, to adoption, to visit the hospital in the most dramatic moments. The alcoholic's husband can go ambulance to the hospital with a battered wife, while the cohabitant with a loved and loving concubine cannot. In the Netherlands, spouses and cohabitants have similar rights.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Tomasz Vetulani o Holandii, niskim kraju http://www.nto.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110605/REPORTAZ01/762330357, nto.pl, 5 June 2011 (in Polish)

Love , Life , Alcohol , Thinking

“The little man on the wedding cake.”

Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884–1980) American writer and prominent socialite

Describing Thomas E. Dewey, Harry S. Truman's Republican opponent, as quoted in The Washington Post (22 May 1951); also attributed to Walter Winchell.

“I set to work. I pointed a mural for the main wall: Introduction to the New National Theatre. The other interior walls, the ceiling and the friezes depicted the forerunners of the contemporary actor – a popular musician, a wedding jester, a good woman dancing, a copyist of the Torah, the first poet dreamer, and finally a modern couple flying over the stage. The friezes were decorated with dishes and food, beigels and fruits spread out on well-laid tables. I looked forward to meeting the actors who passed me: 'Let us agree. Let's join forces and throw out all this old rubbish. Let's work a miracle!”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

c. 1921
Quote from 'Chagall in the Yiddish Theater', Avram Kampf, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 101
1920's

Food , Dance , Flying

“Marriage is a fight to the death, before which the wedded couple ask a blessing from heaven, because it is the rashest of all undertakings to swear eternal love; the fight at once commences and victory, that is to say liberty, remains in the hands of the cleverer of the two.”

Honoré de Balzac book Physiology of Marriage

Le mariage est un combat à outrage avant lequel les deux époux demandent au ciel sa bénédiction, parce que s'aimer toujours est la plus téméraire des entreprises; le combat ne tarde pas à commencer, et la victoire, c'est-à-dire la liberté, demeure au plus adroit.
Part I, Meditation I: The Subject http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Physiology_of_Marriage/Part_1/Med_1.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Love , Death , Marriage , Victory

“To experience and live out a harmony with the world, in a manner quite different from that of everyday life — this, we have said, is the meaning of "festival." But no more intense harmony with the world can be thought of than that of "Praise of God," the worship of the Creator of this world. Now, as I have often experienced, this statement is often received with a mixture of discomfort and various other feelings, but its truth cannot be denied. The most festive festival that can be celebrated is religious worship or "cult," and there is no festival that does not get its life from such worship or does not actually derive its origin from this. There is no worship "without the gods," whether it be mardi gras or a wedding.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 50–51

Life , God , Truth , World

“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. VI: Of the Training of Black Men

Life , Women , Men , Truth

“The most pitiless warriors against drugs have always been militant progressives. In China, the most savage attack on drug use occurred when the country was convulsed by a modern western doctrine of universal emancipation — Maoism. It is no accident that the crusade against drugs is led today by a country wedded to the pursuit of happiness — the United States. For the corollary of that improbable quest is a puritan war on pleasure.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Unsaved: Artificial Paradises (p. 141)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

War , Pleasure , Universe , Country

“With this kiss I wed thee once again.”

Thomas Heywood A Woman Killed with Kindness

A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607), Frank, sc. 16.

Kiss

“This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.”

John Milton On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

Stanza 1, line 1
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629)

Peace , Singing , Happiness

“The Romans are very equivocal about this building. They call it the typewriter or the wedding cake… But whatever you think of it -- it gives you the most amazing views of Rome. It's like a box at the theatre at which Rome is the play.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Belly of An Architect

Thinking , Box

“Gone with the Wind, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, they all should have had the hero cut down by a Dalek, and they would've been vastly improved really.”

Russell T. Davies (1963) Screenwriter, former executive producer of Doctor Who

Doctor Who Confidential Series 4, Episode 12, "Friends and Foe" http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/confidential/S4_12 (Doctor Who documentary series, 2005)

“Your friend, rather perversely I think, refers to the "disastrous results" that followed the monetary tightening of Volcker and other more monetarist-minded central bankers without even hinting at the facts that that the tightening was aimed at bringing down inflation rates, and that it succeeded remarkably well in doing precisely that. In other words, the tightening did precisely what monetarism said it would do, and what monetarists' critics at the time, wedded to the view that monetary policy was ineffective, and that inflation was entirely caused by OPEC (or by unions, or by anything except monetary policy) insisted it could not do. And yet your friend imagines that the experience proved the monetarists wrong!”

George Selgin (1957) economist

In Defense of Monetarism (2008)

Imagination , Thinking , Time

“Like all weddings it had left the strange feeling of futility, the slight sense of depression that comes to English people who have tried, from their strong sense of tradition, to be festive and sentimental and in high spirits too early in the day. The frame of mind supposed to be appropriate to an afternoon wedding can only be genuinely experienced by an Englishman at two o'clock in the morning.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Love's Shadow (1908), Chapter xxiv.

People , Feeling , Sense , Strong

“… my mother will settle on the rug and unclip the bellows, pulling and pushing them with a mild aquatic motion with her left hand, the fingers of the right hand flowering upon the keys, the wedding-bangle suspended around her wrist. Each time the bellows are pushed, the round holes on the back open and close like eyes. Without the body music is not possible; it provides the hollow space for resonance as does the curved wooden box of the violin or the round urn of the sitar. At the moment of singing, breath tips in the swelling diaphragm as water does in a pitcher. The voice-box itself is a microscopic harp, its cords tautening and relaxing with each inflection.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Afternoon Raag (1993)

Music , Flowers , Water , Singing

“I am the older of his wedded wives; the chief religious merit must be mine. Therefore, O Madri, prevent me not from achieving that which must be achieved. I must follow our lord to the region of the dead. Rise up, O Madri, and yield me his body. Rear thou these children.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti in grief wanting to commit sati (selfimmolation) with her dead husband.
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXV

Children , Dead

“This is a common criticism: the idea that the atheist is guilty of a literalist reading of scripture, and that it’s a very naive way of approaching religion, and there’s a far more sophisticated and nuanced view of religion on offer and the atheist is disregarding that. A few problems with this: anyone making that argument is failing to acknowledge just how many people really do approach these texts literally or functionally - whether they’re selective literalists, or literal all the way down the line. There are certain passages in scripture that just cannot be read figuratively. And people really do live by the lights of what is literally laid out in these books. So, the Koran says “hate the infidel” and Muslims hate the infidel because the Koran spells it out ad nauseam. Now, it’s true that you can cherry-pick scripture, and you can look for all the good parts. You can ignore where it says in Leviticus that if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night you’re supposed to stone her to death on her father’s doorstep. Most religious people ignore those passages, which really can only be read literally, and say that “they were only appropriate for the time” and “they don’t apply now”. And likewise, Muslims try to have the same reading of passages that advocate holy war. They say “well, these were appropriate to those battles that Mohammed was fighting, but now we don’t have to fight those battles”. This is all a good thing, but we should recognize what’s happening here: people are feeling pressure from a host of all-too-human concerns that have nothing, in principle, to do with God: secularism, and human rights, and democracy, and scientific progress. These have made certain passages in scripture untenable. This is coming from outside religion, and religion is now making a great show of its sophistication in grappling with these pressures. This is an example of religion losing the argument with modernity.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris in interview by Big Think (04/07/2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zV3vIXZ-1Y&t=6s
2000s

Death , God , Hate , War

“The priest said to the man who married: “Remember that you are caught for life. This door opens but once. Before this den of matrimony the tracks are all one way.” This was in the nature of a punishment for having married. The theologian felt that the contract of marriage, if not contrary to God’s command, was at least contrary to his advice, and that the married ought to suffer in some way, as a matter of justice. The fact that there could be no divorce, that a mistake could not be corrected, was held up as a warning. At every wedding feast this skeleton stretched its fleshless finger towards bride and groom.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Is Divorce Wrong? (1889)

Life , God , Marriage , Justice

“Äärelä (Minne muistot matkaa): I wish that in my mind I'll always be able to find my way back to these special moments of ours. A wedding waltz.”

Pauli Hanhiniemi (1964) Finnish musician and composer

Way

“[.. according to Gauguin ] the impression of nature must be wedded to the aesthetic sentiment which chooses, arranges, simplifies and synthesizes. The painter ought not to rest until he has given birth to the child of his imagination.... begotten in a union of his mind with reality. Gauguin insisted on a logical construction of composition, on a harmonious apportionment of light and dark colors, the simplification of forms and proportions, so as to endow the outline's of forms with a powerful and eloquent expression.... He also insisted upon luminous and pure colors.”

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927) French painter

Paul Sérusier's quote in 1888, about Paul Gauguin; in Pierre Bonnard, John Rewald; MoMA - distribution, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918, p. 13
Sérusier encountered in his summer vacation in Pont-Aven in Brittany [Summer 1888], briefly Paul Gauguin. He also made there a small landscape, painted under Gauguin's direction. Back in Paris, October 1888, Sérusier explained his Nabis friends (Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Vuillard) the artistic lessons Paul Gauguin taught him - as reported by John Rewald in his book Pierre Bonnard, p. 13-14

Color , Imagination , Birth , Nature

“My Brother William was married to Mary Hutchinson…At a little after 8 o'clock I saw them go down the avenue towards the Church. William had parted from me upstairs. [deleted: I gave him the wedding ring – with how deep a blessing! I took it from my forefinger where I had worn it the whole of the night before – he slipped it again onto my finger and blessed me fervently].”

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855) English author, poet and diarist

October 4, 1802
Diaries

Parting , Night

“I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Self-written epitaph on her tombstone in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati Ohio (c. 1850)

Life

“We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

The Unbearable Bassington (1912), Ch. 13

Truth

“For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.”

Walter Scott Marmion

Canto V, st. 12 (Lochinvar, st. 2).
Marmion (1808)

Love , War

“She didn't ask me to the christening, so I'm not going to the wedding.”

Donald McGill (1875–1962) British artist

George Orwell "The Art of Donald McGill"

“Longer than a winter's night for a man who is ill-wed.”

Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) Spanish Baroque lyric poet

Más largo
que una noche de Diciembre
para un hombre mal casado.
"Murmuraban los rocines", line 94, cited from Poesias de D. Luis de Gongora y Argote (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1820) p. 83. Translation from Henry Baerlein The House of the Fighting-cocks (London: Leonard Parsons, 1922) p. 92.

Winter , Night

“In the upstairs bedroom, old Ann dies very slowly, remembering the events of the long-ago wedding night and the next morning… She is attended by a nurse with an Irish accent (Eileen Atkins), who sometimes prompts her: "Remember a happy time!" Dissolve to Ann's memory of a happy time. It is so mundane that if it qualifies as a high point in her life, it compares with Paris Hilton remembering a good stick of gum.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/evening-2007 of Evening (29 June 2007)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Life , Memory , Time , Night

“Muhammad bin Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving captives, and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide… Ibn Battuta’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s arranging marriages of enslaved girls with Muslims on a large scale on the two Ids confirms the statement of Al Umri. “First of all,” writes he, “daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come, sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this the daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives sons of Maliks etc. On the sixth day male and female slaves are married.” It was a general practice for Hindu girls of good families to learn the art of dancing. It was a sort of religious rite. They used to dance during weddings, festivals and Pujas at home and in temples. This art was turned ravenous under their Muslim captors or buyers.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Masalik-ul-Absar, E and D, III, p. 580. Ibn Battuta, p. 63, Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi in Tughlaq Kalin Bharat, Part I, Aligarh, p. 189. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Marriage , Family , Art , Home

“It was devotion to the sea, wedded to a fire of pent-up patriotism struggling incessantly for an outlet in strenuous physical expression; a humanity, born of acute sensitiveness to his own limitations, only adding fuel to the flame.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 91.

Sea

“Wedding: the point at which a man stops toasting a woman and begins roasting her.”

Helen Rowland (1875–1950) American journalist

Syncopations
A Guide to Men (1922)

Wedding

“I can't think of a more appalling contrast between this wedding beanfeast and what is happening in Ireland.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Referring to the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer, in Daily Mail (29 July 1981).

Thinking

“He smiled. Julie’s wedding, exquisite thought. Would his grandchildren be free of godhead? Was divinity a recessive trait?”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 5 (p. 92)

Smile

“In reality, no one had meant anything by talking to the parish pauper, none of them cared at all, no one even thought of carrying him downstairs to let him see the wedding like other folk; he was not allowed to see the wedding that he himself had brought about with his poetic talent—such is the lot of poets.</b”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

Reality

“Patrick… understood that, though Christianity was not inextricably wedded to Roman custom, it could not survive without Roman literacy.”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

“Weddyng is desteny,
And hangyng likewise.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Wedding is destiny,
And hanging likewise.
Part I, chapter 3.
Proverbs (1546)

“Fair weather weddings make fair weather lives.”

Richard Hovey (1864–1900) American writer

Act i. Sc. 3.
The Marriage of Guenevere (1891)

Weather

“I had flings with married men or men with girlfriends, with men who had children, sometimes as old as I was. They went to church on Sunday, drank beer, and eyed the teenage girls in gym shorts. They appreciated a good woman-on-woman porno. They showed me photographs of their fiancées and sent me wedding invitations.”

Rigoberto González (1970) American writer

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)

Men , Children , Girl , Beer

“It seems that you live in someone else's dream
In a hand-me-down wedding dress
With the things that could have been are repressed
But you said your vows and you closed the door
On so many men who would have loved you more”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Cath…
Narrow Stairs (2008)

Love , Men , Dreams

“Sikh extremism, separatism and militancy were a problem in India more than two decades ago. Today, Punjab is at peace and there is growth and prosperity. There are, however, some elements outside India, including in Canada, who try to keep this issue alive for their own purposes. In many cases, such elements have links to or are themselves wedded to terrorism.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

On the Khalistan movement, as quoted in "Manmohan Singh asks Canada to curb Sikh militancy from its soil" http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-manmohan-singh-asks-canada-to-curb-sikh-militancy-from-its-soil-1401712, DNA India (25 June 2010)
2006-2010

Peace , Problem

“All his tunk-a-tunks, his hoo-goo-boos — those mannered, manufactured, individual, uninteresting little sound-inventions — how typical they are of the lecture-style of the English philosopher, who makes grunts or odd noises, uses homely illustrations, and quotes day in and day out from Alice, in order to give what he says some appearance of that raw reality it so plainly and essentially lacks. These “tootings at the wedding of the soul” are fun for the tooter, but get as dreary for the reader as do all the foreign words — a few of these are brilliant, a few more pleasant, and the rest a disaster: “one cannot help deploring his too extensive acquaintance with the foreign languages”, as Henry James said, of Walt Whitman, to Edith Wharton.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Reflections on Wallace Stevens”, p. 129
Poetry and the Age (1953)

Quotes , Home , Soul , Reality