“Marriage is not a simple love affair, it’s an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.”

“Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

“Two men as two women and as a man and a woman can have a loving relationship and make a commitment. And that's what marriage is about.”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

“In any relationship in which two people become one, the end result is two half people.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“And it's no sacrifice,
Just a simple word.
It's two hearts living
In two separate worlds.
But it's no sacrifice.
No sacrifice.
It's no sacrifice at all.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

“Liberty and love
These two I must have.
For my love I’ll sacrifice
My life.
For liberty I’ll sacrifice
My love.”

Sándor Petöfi (1823–1849) Hungarian poet and liberal revolutionary

“A wonderful relationship consists of two people who manage to become children again. Living and loving each other as teenagers in one way: purely.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

“It is within the bonds of marriage that I, for one, found a greater freedom to be and to become and to share myself than I can imagine ever having found in any other kind of relationship.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

“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

“The truth is that the family, like marriage, is one of those institutions whose very importance renders them complex. Abstract ideas are the only simple ones, because they have little to do with life. The family is not the arbitrary creation of a legislator; it is a natural consequence of the division of the species into two sexes, of the human child's protracted helplessness, of maternal love which ministers to this helplessness, of paternal love which is far more artificial and recent in human history, and composed just as much of love for the mother as of that for the child.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer