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Marriage

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I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being, neither white, black, brown nor red. When you are dealing with humanity as one family, there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being, or one human being living around and with another human being. ~ Malcolm X
An unjust law exists... by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal... Government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens... A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion. His taste may not suit his neighbors; but so long as his deportment is correct, they have no right to interfere with his concerns. ~ Lydia Maria Child

Marriage (also called matrimony or wedlock) is a socially or religiously recognized union or legal contract between spouses that establishes rights and obligations between them, between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws. The definition of marriage varies according to different cultures, but it is principally an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged. In some cultures, marriage is recommended or considered to be compulsory before pursuing any sexual activity. When defined broadly, marriage is considered a cultural universal.

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Quotes

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A

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  • While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone. He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.
  • Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.
  • Marriage as a community of interests unfailingly means the degradation of the interested parties, and it is the perfidy of the world's arrangements that no one, even if aware of it, can escape such degradation. The idea might therefore be entertained that marriage without ignominy is a possibility reserved for those spared the pursuit of interests, for the rich. But the possibility is purely formal, for the privileged are precisely those in whom the pursuit of interests has become second-nature—they would not otherwise uphold privilege.
  • Marriage? That's for life! It's like cement!
  • “How excellent is the saying of one of old: ‘He that adventureth upon matrimony is like unto one who thrusteth his hand into a sack containing many thousands of serpents and one eel. Yet, if Fate so decree, he may draw forth the eel.’”

B

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  • He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public…. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marry—"A young man not yet, an elder man not at all".
    • Francis Bacon, "Of Marriage and Single Life", in Fred A. Howe, ed., The Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral of Francis Bacon (1908), chapter 8, p. 20, 22. Based on the 1625 edition but with modernized spelling.
  • Marriage is a science.
  • A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.
  • The fate of the home depends on the first night.
  • Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours everything, that is, familiarity.
  • The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.
  • No jealousy their dawn of love o'ercast,
    Nor blasted were their wedded days with strife;
    Each season looked delightful as it past,
    To the fond husband and the faithful wife.
  • The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.
  • Logically the Neo-Pagan should get rid of the institution of marriage altogether, but the very nature of human society, which is built up of cells each of which is a family, and the very nature of human generation, forbid such an extreme. Children must be brought up and acknowledged and sheltered, and the very nature of human affection, whereby there is the bond of affection between the parent and the child, and the child is not of one parent but of both, will compel the Neo-Pagan to modify what might be his logical conclusion of free love and to support some simulacrum of the institution of marriage.
  • A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you can't let go.
  • Marriage, n. A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
  • I'd rather die Maid, and lead apes in Hell
    Than wed an inmate of Silenus' Cell.
    • Richard Brathwait, English Gentelman and Gentelwoman (1640), in a supplemental tract, The Turtle's Triumph. Phrase "lead apes in hell" found in his Drunken Barnaby's Journal. Bessy Bell. Massinger, City Madam, Act II, scene 2. Shirley, School of Compliments (1637).
  • The godly union of souls in mutual forebearance with each other's infirmities, and mutual stimulating each other's graces--this surely is a fragment of true happiness that has survived the Fall.
    • Charles Bridges, An Exposition of Ecclesiastes, comment on Ecclesiastes 4:7-9.
  • Marriage and hanging go by destiny; matches are made in heaven.
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section II. Mem. 5. Subs. 5.
  • 'Cause grace and virtue are within
    Prohibited degrees of kin;
    And therfore no true Saint allows,
    They shall be suffer'd to espouse.
  • There was no great disparity of years,
    Though much in temper; but they never clash'd,
    They moved like stars united in their spheres,
    Or like the Rhône by Leman's waters wash'd,
    Where mingled and yet separate appears
    The river from the lake, all bluely dash'd
    Through the serene and placid glassy deep,
    Which fain would lull its river-child to sleep.

C

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That they may not become too complacent or delighted in married life, he makes them distressed by the shortcomings of their partners, or humbles them through willful offspring, or afflicts them with the want or loss of children. But, if in all these matters he is more merciful to them, he shows them by diseases and dangers how unstable and passing all mortal blessings are, that they may not be puffed up with vain glory. ~ John Calvin
So why do we marry? According to Kabbala, the compulsion to rush into a lifelong commitment is an expression of the human soul's deepest ambitions. The subliminal signals emanating from the soul have caused the logic-defying institution of marriage to be an integral part of the human fabric since the dawn of time. The soul's desire to connect and commit makes the aspiration for marriage one of our most basic instincts. ~ Chabad.org
The Talmud says that each soul's bashert (predestined soulmate) is determined before its birth. The two may be born continents apart with seemingly nothing in common, but Divine destiny ensures that everyone's path intersects with their bashert's. ~ Chabad.org
  • That they may not become too complacent or delighted in married life, he makes them distressed by the shortcomings of their partners, or humbles them through willful offspring, or afflicts them with the want or loss of children. But, if in all these matters he is more merciful to them, he shows them by diseases and dangers how unstable and passing all mortal blessings are, that they may not be puffed up with vain glory.
    • John Calvin Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life pg. 69
  • A marriage so free, so spontaneous, that it would allow of wide excursions of the pair from each other, in common or even in separate objects of work and interest, and yet would hold them all the time in the bond of absolute sympathy, would by its very freedom be all the more poignantly attractive, and by its very scope and breadth all the richer and more vital -- would be in a sense indestructible.
  • So why do we marry? According to Kabbala, the compulsion to rush into a lifelong commitment is an expression of the human soul's deepest ambitions. The subliminal signals emanating from the soul have caused the logic-defying institution of marriage to be an integral part of the human fabric since the dawn of time. The soul's desire to connect and commit makes the aspiration for marriage one of our most basic instincts.
  • The Talmud says that each soul's bashert (predestined soulmate) is determined before its birth. The two may be born continents apart with seemingly nothing in common, but Divine destiny ensures that everyone's path intersects with their bashert's.
    [In rare instances, due to external spiritual factors which may intervene, it is possible for people to marry spouses who are not their basherts. Even in such instances, however, eventually the two original soulmates will marry -- whether later on in life as a second marriage, or in a future incarnation of the two souls.]
  • You cannot easily make a good drama out of the success or failure of a marriage, just as you could not make a good drama out of the growth of an oak tree or the decay of an empire. As Polonius very reasonably observed, it is too long. A happy love-affair will make a drama simply because it is dramatic; it depends on an ultimate yes or no. But a happy marriage is not dramatic; perhaps it would be less happy if it were.
  • In the first place, an unjust law exists in this Commonwealth, by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal. I am perfectly aware of the gross ridicule to which I may subject myself by alluding to this particular; but I have lived too long, and observed too much, to be disturbed by the world's mockery. In the first place, the government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens. A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion. His taste may not suit his neighbors; but so long as his deportment is correct, they have no right to interfere with his concerns.
  • Prima societas in ipso conjugio est: proxima in liberis; deinde una domus, communia omnia.
    • The first bond of society is marriage; the next, our children; then the whole family and all things in common.
    • Cicero, De Officiis (44 B.C.), I. 17.
  • I am not against hasty marriages, where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income.
  • Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
  • Marriage is the union of two different surnames, in friendship and in love, in order to continue the posterity of the former sages, and to furnish those who shall preside at the sacrifices to heaven and earth, at those in the ancestral temple, and at those at the altars to the spirits of the land and grain.
  • The best way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once.
  • Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
    Of Paradise that has surviv'd the fall!

D

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  • The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man will change, all men marry believing their wife will never change.
  • Any married man should forget his mistakes - no use two people remembering the same thing.
  • Nuptiae sunt coniunctio maris et feminae et consortium omnis vitae, divini et humani iuris communicatio.
  • Marriages are the union of male and female, a sharing of life and the communication of divine and human rights.
  • Young men not ought to marry yet, and old men never ought to marry at all.
  • The character of a woman rapidly develops after marriage, and sometimes seems to change, when in fact it is only complete.
  • I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.
  • There's nothing a woman hates more than her fiance's best friend. He knows all the secrets she's going to spend the rest of her life trying to find out.
  • La chaîne du mariage est si lourde qu'il faut être deux pour la porter,—quelquefois trois.
    • Translation: The chain of marriage is so heavy that it takes two to carry it—sometimes three.
    • Alexandre Dumas, fils, in Léon Treich, L'esprit d'Alexandre Dumas (Paris: Gallimard, 1926), p. 115.

E

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  • If the policy of the law has withheld from married women certain powers and faculties, the Courts of law must continue to treat them as deprived of those powers and faculties, until the legislature directs those Courts to do otherwise.
    • Lord Eldon, C.J., Beard v. Webb (1800), 1 Bos. and Pull. 109; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 164.
  • Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ is the head of the Church.
    • Ephesians 5:22 as quoted by Pope Pius XI in Casti Conobubii, (1930)
  • But the main purpose of marriage will compel us to revise the institution so that we shall not waste any useful woman, expecially if she is a woman of notable ability. It is a significant fact that there are no 'unwanted women' in polygamous countries. These derelicts are to be found only in countries which are monogamous; and they represent, less today, perhaps, than formerly, sheer waste of mother-power. Even as things are, the 'unwanted woman' is still doomed to lead a solitary life, unless she has an illicit lover, and can contemplate old age and retirement only with dismay.
    • St. John Ervine, Bernard Shaw, His Life, Work and Friends (1956), p. 424. In this comment on Shaw's play, "Getting Married", Ervine summarizes one of the arguments in Shaw's lengthy Preface to the play.

F

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  • A man should marry four wives: A Persian to have some one to talk to; a Khurasani woman for his housework; a Hindu for nursing his children; a woman from Mawaraun nahr, or Transoxiana, to have some one to whip as a warning to the other three.
    • Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl, trans. by H. Blochmann. I, 327. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7. Also cited in Herklot, Islam in India, 85-86.
  • Marriage is in the same state as the Church: both are becoming functionally defunct, as their preachers go about heralding a revival, eagerly chalking up converts in the day of dread. And just as God has been pronounced dead quite often but has this sneaky way of resurrecting himself, so everyone debunks marriage, yet ends up married.
  • The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth,
    Life's paradise, great princess, the soul's quiet,
    Sinews of concord, earthly immortality,
    Eternity of pleasures.
    • John Ford, The Broken Heart (ca. 1625–33; printed 1633), Act II, scene 2, line 102.
  • A bachelor
    May thrive by observation on a little,
    A single life's no burthen: but to draw
    In yokes is chargeable, and will require
    A double maintenance.
    • John Ford, The Fancies Chaste and Noble (1635-6; printed 1638), Act I, scene 3, line 82.
  • Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
  • My son is my son till he have got him a wife,
    But my daughter's my daughter all the days of her life.

G

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Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman', for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. ~ Genesis 2:24
  • Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman', for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
    • Genesis 2:24 (TNIV)
  • You were born together, and together you shall be forever more. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
  • The woman destined to become the true companion of man was taken from Adam's body, for "only when like is joined unto like the union is indissoluble." The creation of woman from man was possible because Adam originally had two faces, which were separated at the birth of Eve. ... Indeed, God had created a wife for Adam before Eve, but he would not have her, because she had been made in his presence. ... The wedding of the first couple was celebrated with pomp never repeated in the whole course of history since. God Himself, before presenting her to Adam, attired and adorned Eve as a bride.
  • The evil of marriage, as is it practiced in the European countries, extends further than we have yet described. The method is for a thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex, to come together, to see each other, for a few times, and under circumstances full of delusion and then to vow eternal attachment. What is the consequence of this? In almost every instance they find themselves deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable mistake. They are led to conceive it their wiser policy, to shut their eyes upon realities, happy, if by any perversion of intellect, they can persuade themselves that they were right in their first crude opinion of each other. Thus the institution of marriage is made a system of fraud; and men who carefully mislead their judgement in the daily affair of their life, must be expected to have a crippled judgement in every other concern.
  • Whoever attacks marriage undermines […] the basis of all moral society.
  • Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
    • Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, "Marriage and Love"
  • Marriage is the tomb of trust and love.
  • That the harshness of Inca and Aztec legislation toward homosexuality involved more than a reaction to indigenous [[w:Berdaches|berdaches is suggested by the equally severe penalties imposed on other violations of morals legislation. The Incas punished pimps and prostitutes severely, by death if the offense was repeated. Incest and adultery were capital offenses in both empires. Drunkenness was illegal under the Incas and a capital offense under the Aztecs. Abortion was also a capital offense under the Aztecs. Aztec youths lost their rights to land if they did not marry by a certain age. Inca men were also forced to marry.

H

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  • Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
    •  Hebrews 13:4 (NIV)
  • The critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time.
  • However important it is that love shall precede marriage, it is far more important that it shall continue after marriage.

I

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

J

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Have you not read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh"? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. ~ Jesus
Those who are engaged to marry are called to live chastity in continence. They should see in this time of testing a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in fidelity, and the hope of receiving one another from God. They should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love. They will help each other grow in chastity. ~ John Paul II
  • In reply he said: “Did YOU not read that he who created them from [the] beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’?
  • "I tell you the truth," Jesus said to them, "no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life."
    • Jesus, Luke 18:29–30 (NRSV)
  • At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
    • Jesus, Matthew 22:30 (NIV)
  • Those who are engaged to marry are called to live chastity in continence. They should see in this time of testing a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in fidelity, and the hope of receiving one another from God. They should reserve for marriage the expressions of affection that belong to married love. They will help each other grow in chastity.
  • A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.
    • Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. George B. Hill, rev. and enl. ed., ed. L. F. Powell (1934), entry for 1770, vol. 2, p. 128.
  • Sir, it is so far from being natural for a man and a woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives that they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilized society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.
  • Marriages would in general be as happy, if not more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor.
  • Marriage is the safe harbor men proffer from a tempest they themselves conjure into creation.

K

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  • Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.
  • Is there anyone who thinks that the resolution can come later when it is really needed? So it is not needed then, not on the wedding day, when the eternal pledge is entered into? But then, later? Can he mean that there was no thought of leaving one another, but of enjoying the first gladness of their union-and so united, of finding support in the resolution? Then when toil and trouble come, and need, be it physical or spiritual, stands at the door, then the time is there? Aye, indeed, the time is there-the time for the resolved individual to muster up his resolution; but not just the time to form a resolution. It is true that distress and failure may help a man to seek God in a resolution; but the question is whether the conception is always the right one, whether it is joyful, whether it does not have a certain wretchedness, a secret wish that it were not necessary, whether it may not be out of humor, envious, melancholy, and so no ennobling reflection of the trials of life. There is in the state a loan association to which the indigent may apply. The poor man is helped, but I wonder if that poor man has a pleasant conception of the loan-association. And so there may also be a marriage which first sought God when in difficulty, alas, sought Him as a loan-association; and everyone who first seeks God for the first time when in difficulties, always runs this danger. Is then such a late resolution, which even if it were a worthy one, was not without shame and not without great danger, bought at the last moment, is that more beautiful, and wiser than the resolution at the beginning of marriage?
  • A married man risks every day, and every day the sword of duty hangs over his head, and the journal is kept up as long as the marriage keeps on, and the ledger of responsibility is never closed, and the responsibility is even more inspiring than the most glorious epic poet who must testify for the hero. Well, it is true that he does not take the risk for nothing-no, like for like; he risks everything for everything, and if because of its responsibility marriage is an epic, then because of its happiness it certainly also is an idyll. Marriage is the fullness of time. Love is the unfathomable ground that is hidden in darkness, but the resolution is the triumphant victor who, like Orpheus, fetches the infatuation of falling in love to the light of day, for the resolution is the true form of love, the true explanation and transfiguration; therefore marriage is sacred and blessed by God. It is civic, for by marriage the lovers belong to the state and the fatherland and the common concerns of their fellow citizens. It is poetic, inexpressively so, just as is falling in love, but the resolution is the conscientious translation that translates the enthusiasm into actuality, and this translator is so scrupulous, oh, so scrupulous!
  • It is natural for man or woman to look out on a world-picture framed in a human companionship; we see better, don't we, with two eyes than with one? And man and woman happily wedded can attain, between them, a clearness of view, a sureness of touch, that would not have come to either of them if they had travelled alone.
    • Ronald Knox, Bridegroom and Bride (London: Sheed and Ward, 1957), pp. 29–30.
  • Marriage does not withdraw us from the life we knew; it means that we wade deeper in the stream of it, take the strain of it more boldly than before.
    • Ronald Knox, Bridegroom and Bride (London: Sheed and Ward, 1957), p. 65.
  • Marriage […] is, not in lover's language but in cold theological fact, a foretaste of heaven.[…] Heaven is enduring love, love that endures without effort; heaven is a happiness into which the thought of self does not enter; heaven is all giving, and giving without cost. Of all that, we can find no nearer image on earth than the love of man and woman. Only, because it is of earth, that image remains imperfect. Earthly love cannot survive the stress of everyday living without the need of sacrifices on both sides.
    • Ronald Knox, Bridegroom and Bride (London: Sheed and Ward, 1957), pp. 68–69.
  • Genuine love is never love of one's self but love of another "person." The greatest love is the love of God, and the lasting "marital" love between the sexes overbridging the immense psychological abyss between man and woman is not unrelated to the love of God; it is basically the love for one of His children. The very delight in the otherness of the beloved person is a tacit, loving recognition of God's all-embracing greatness. True love between man and woman accepts the mysterious variety of God's creation whose harmony even original sin did not entirely destroy.

L

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The husband is the chief of the family and the head of the wife. The woman, because she is flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, must be subject to her husband and obey him; not, indeed, as a servant, but as a companion, so that her obedience shall be wanting in neither honor nor dignity. Since the husband represents Christ, and since the wife represents the Church, let there always be, both in him who commands and in her who obeys, a heaven-born love guiding both in their respective duties. ~ Pope Leo XIII
  • The husband is the chief of the family and the head of the wife. The woman, because she is flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, must be subject to her husband and obey him; not, indeed, as a servant, but as a companion, so that her obedience shall be wanting in neither honor nor dignity. Since the husband represents Christ, and since the wife represents the Church, let there always be, both in him who commands and in her who obeys, a heaven-born love guiding both in their respective duties.
    • Pope Leo XIII Encyclical 1880 Arcanum. "Archived copy". (Archived from the original on 2009-06-22).
  • He must be rich whom I could love,
    His fortune clear must be,
    Whether in land or in the funds,
    'Tis all the same to me.
    • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The London Literary Gazette (10th November 1821), 'Six Songs of Love, Constancy, Romance, Inconstancy, Truth, and Marriage - Matrimonial Creed'
  • As unto the bow the cord is,
    So unto the man is woman;
    Though she bonds him she obeys him,
    Though she draws him, yet she follows,
    Useless each without the other!
  • But because among us there is such a shameful mess and the very dregs of all vice and lewdness, this commandment is directed also against all manner of unchastity, whatever it may be called; …, For flesh and blood remain flesh and blood, and the natural inclination and excitement have their course without let or hindrance, as everybody sees and feels. In order, therefore, that it may be the more easy in some degree to avoid unchastity, God has commanded the estate of matrimony, that every one may have his proper portion and be satisfied therewith …
  • Let me now say in conclusion that this commandment demands also that every one love and esteem the spouse given him by God. For where conjugal chastity is to be maintained, man and wife must by all means live together in love and harmony, that one may cherish the other from the heart and with entire fidelity. For that is one of the principal points which enkindle love and desire of chastity, so that, where this is found, chastity will follow as a matter of course without any command. Therefore also St. Paul so diligently exhorts husband and wife to love and honor one another.

M

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  • In the majority of cases which are brought to me as a consulting psychologist for love and marital adjustment, there are self-deceptions to be uncovered as well as attempts to deceive other people. Beneath such love conflicts there is almost always a festering psychological core of dishonesty.
  • A man may be a fool and not know it—but not if he is married.
    • H. L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major (New York: John Lane Company, 1926), p. 68.
  • Hail, wedded love, mysterious law; true source
    Of human offspring.
  • To the nuptial bower
    I led her, blushing like the morn; all Heaven,
    And happy constellations on that hour
    Shed their selectest influence; the earth
    Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill;
    Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs
    Whisper'd it to the woods, and from their wings
    Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub.
  • Therefore God's universal law
    Gave to the man despotic power
    Over his female in due awe,
    Not from that right to part an hour,
    Smile she or lour.
  • There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told,
    When two, that are link'd in one heavenly tie,
    With heart never changing, and brow never cold,
    Love on thro' all ills, and love on till they die.
    • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Light of the Harem, Stanza 42.
  • That is why a man will leave his father and his mother and he must stick to his wife and they must become one flesh.
  • Marriage is wonderful when it lasts forever, and I envy the old couples in When Harry Met Sally who reminisce tearfully about the day they met 50 years before. I no longer believe, however, that a marriage is a failure if it doesn't last forever. It may be a tragedy, but it is not necessarily a failure. And when a marriage does last forever with love alive, it is a miracle.

N

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

O

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P

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  • Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
  • This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.
    The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.
    • Pope Paul VI (25 July 1968). "Humanae Vitae: Encyclical of Pope Paul VI on the Regulation of Birth, sec 12". Rome: Vatican. Retrieved 25 November 2008.
  • No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him.
  • When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her.
  • Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.
  • Il matrimonio bisogna che sia un vero castigo, poichè fa diventar savi anche i matti.
    • Translation: Matrimony must be like a sound flogging, for it makes the veriest block-heads learn something.
    • Alessandro Pepoli, La Scomessa, Act III., Sc. IV. — (Desiderio.). Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 316.
  • In all other marriages he prohibited dowries; the bride was to bring with her three changes of raiment, household stuff of small value, and nothing else. For he did not wish that marriage should be a matter of profit or price, but that man and wife should dwell together for the delights of love and the getting of children.
    • Plutarch, Life of Solon, XX, 4 (tr. Bernadotte Perrin, 1914)

Q

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  • Do not marry unbelieving women, until they believe: A slave woman who believes is better than an unbelieving woman, even though she allures you. Nor marry to unbelievers until they believe: A man slave who believes is better than an unbeliever, even though he allures you. Unbelievers do (but) beckon you to the Fire. But Allah beckons by His Grace to the Garden and forgiveness, and makes His Signs clear to mankind: That they may celebrate His praise.
  • No fornicator will espouse but a fornicating woman or a polytheist woman; No fornicating woman will espouse but a fornicator or a polytheist: and those are forbidden for the believers.
  • Unchaste women are destined for unchaste men, and unchaste men are destined for unchaste women and chaste women are destined for chaste men, and chaste men are destined for chaste women; these are not affected by what people say: there is forgiveness, and a honourable providence for them.

R

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  • We have already seen how the ideology of national honour derives from authoritarian ideology and the latter from the sex-negation regulation of sexuality. Neither Christianity nor National Socialism attacks the institution of compulsive marriage: for the former, apart from its function of procreation, marriage is a ‘complete, life-long union’; for the National Socialists it is a biologically rooted institution for the preservation of racial purity. Outside of compulsive marriage, there is no sexuality for either of them.
  • Our culture has rejected the original premise of marriage, yet we wonder why our institutions do not make sense. Marriage was not historically about the happiness of the married couple but about the stability of the family unit, a legal means of tying the children to their biological mother and father. Of course, there have always been deaths, tragedies, and complex situations that meant children were not always born into the home of their biological parents. Adoption and infidelity are likely as old as the institution of marriage itself. Yet, until just recently, there was coherence in the marriage contract: Two people assumed responsibility for the children of that union.
  • We got married: society’s solution to loneliness, lust and laundry.
  • The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.
    • Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), p. 78.
  • Cold disdain is the meat of marriage.
  • A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.
  • There is not infrequently, in marriage, a suggestion of purchase, of acquiring a woman on condition of keeping her in a certain standard of material comfort. Often and often, a marriage hardly differs from prostitution except by being harder to escape from.
  • [C]hildren are what makes marriage important. But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex, but as soon as children enter in, the husband and wife, if they have any offspring, are compelled to realise that their feelings towards each other are no longer what is of most importance.

S

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  • Marrying means doing whatever possible to become repulsed of each other.
  • Evidence of the destructiveness of unrealistic expectations can be found in the literature on cognition and marriage. For example, people who feel that their relationship standards (e.g., how alike they believe they should be, the degree to which they should engage in acts of caring and concern for each other) are unmet are more inclined to report more negative cognitive and affective reactions to marital problems (Baucom et al., 1996). Further, research on relationship beliefs indicates that idealistic and unrealistic beliefs, like “mind reading is expected” (partners who truly care about and know one another should be able to sense each other’s needs and preferences without overy communication), “sexual perfectionism” (one must be a “perfect” sexual partner) and “disagreement is destructive” (disagreements in marriage are a sign of impending doom) are positively associated with marital distress (eidelson & Epstein, 1982; Epstein & Eidelson, 1981) and negatively associated with the desire to maintain the relationship (Eidelson & Epstein, 1982).
  • If you shall marry,
    You give away this hand, and that is mine;
    You give away heaven's vows, and those are mine;
    You give away myself, which is known mine.
  • Men are April when they woo, December when they wed; maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.
  • I will fasten on this sleeve of thine:
    Thou art an elm, my husband, I, a vine.
  • Men's vows are women's traitors! All good seeming,
    By thy revolt, O husband, shall be thought
    Put on for villany; not born where 't grows,
    But worn a bait for ladies.
  • Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
    Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
    She married.
  • The instances that second marriage move
    Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
  • God, the best maker of all marriages,
    Combine your hearts in one.
  • He is the half part of a blessed man,
    Left to be finished by such as she;
    And she a fair divided excellence,
    Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.
  • Happiest of all, is, that her gentle spirit
    Commits itself to yours to be directed,
    As from her lord, her governor, her king.
  • I will marry her, sir, at your request; but if there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance * * * I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt: I will marry her; that I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely.
    • William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597; published 1602), Act I, scene 1, line 253.
  • I would not marry her, though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed: she would have made Hercules have turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too. * * * I would to God some scholar would conjure her; for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary.
  • Let husbands know,
    Their wives have sense like them: they see, and smell,
    And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
    As husbands have.
  • She shall watch all night:
    And if she chance to nod I'll rail and brawl
    And with the clamour keep her still awake.
    This is the way to kill a wife with kindness.
  • Thy husband * * * commits his body
    To painful labour, both by sea and land,
    * * * * * *
    And craves no other tribute at thy hands,
    But love, fair looks, and true obedience;
    Too little payment for so great a debt.
  • Let still the woman take
    An elder than herself: so wears she to him,
    So sways she level in her husband's heart:
    For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
    Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
    More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn
    Than women's are.
  • Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
    Or thy affection cannot hold the bent:
    For women are as roses, whose fair flower
    Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour.
  • Now go with me and with this holy man
    Into the chantry by: there, before him,
    And underneath that consecrated roof,
    Plight me the full assurance of your faith.
  • Even if you’re planning to get me married, that will also cost money! Just help me start my studies; I won’t be a burden on you.
The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error. ~ George Bernard Shaw
  • The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.
    • This has also been paraphrased as: Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.
    • George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman (1903)
  • Let's say you're a 6-month-old girl, no evidence whatsoever of any abuse. They're simply saying, 'You, in this culture, may grow up to be a child bride when you're 14. Therefore we're going to remove you now when you're 6 months old. Or, 'You're a 6-month-old boy; 25, 30 years, 40 years from now you're going to be a predator, so we're going to take you away now.
  • Marge: Homer, is this the way you pictured married life?
    Homer: Yup, pretty much. Except we drove around in a van solving mysteries.
  • Better to live with a lion and a snake than to share a house with a wicked woman. Wickedness disfigures a woman’s appearance, it saddens the face, making her look like a bear. When her husband dines with his neighbor, he sighs bitterly, in spite of himself. All wickedness is nothing compared with a woman’s wickedness. Let her lot be that of a sinner!
    • Ben Sirach, Ecclesiasticus: Wisdom of Sirach
  • [M]arriage […] resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.
    • Sydney Smith, quoted in A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith by his daughter Lady Holland (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855), Vol. I, ch. 11, p. 415.
  • I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man nothing but instant flight could save him.
  • [A man] expects an angel for a wife; [yet] he knows that she is like himself—erring, thoughtless and untrue; but like himself also, filled with a struggling radiancy of better things, and adorned with ineffective qualities. You may safely go to school with hope; but ere you marry, should have learned the mingled lesson of the world:[…] that hope and love address themselves to a perfection never realized, and yet, firmly held, become the salt and staff of life; that you yourself are compacted of infirmities, perfect, you might say, in imperfection, and yet you have a something in you lovable and worth preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one but, by some generous reading, will become to you a lesson, a model and a noble spouse through life. So thinking, you will constantly support your own unworthiness and easily forgive the failings of your friend. Nay, you will be wisely glad that you retain the sense of blemishes; for the faults of married people continually spur up each of them, hour by hour, to do better and to meet and love upon a higher ground.
    • Robert Louis Stevenson, "Virginibus Puerisque", in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1881), pp. 45–46.
  • Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.
    • Robert Louis Stevenson, "Talk and Talkers", Cornhill Magazine (April 1882); included in Memories and Portraits (London: Chatto and Windus, 1887), p. 189.
  • Marriage was not originated by human law. When God created Eve, she was a wife to Adam; they then and there occupied the status of husband to wife and wife to husband. . . . It would be sacrilegious to apply the designation “a civil contract” to such a marriage. It is that and more – a status ordained by God.

T

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  • As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,
    And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
  • Nothing, Cyrnus, is more delightful than a good wife; to the truth of this I am witness to thee and do thou become witness to me.
    • Theognis of Megara, lines 1225-1226. Elegy and Iambus. English Translation by. J. M. Edmonds. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1931.
  • Marriages, even those that are most carefully considered, must inevitably be conditioned by so many chances (those of fortune, circumstance, sentiment and opportunity) that it would be absurd to explore the ground armed with the rules of mathematics. Besides, human choice in the matter is so wrapped in obscurity that anyone who would choose too carefully, who is obsessed by any such notion as finding a "sister soul", runs a very grave risk of not marrying at all, or else of making some perfectly ridiculous choice, the kind of choice (to quote La Fontaine) "one would never have thought possible" — though we see it happening every day! […] Even in the most enlightened unions, there is always an element of the leap in the dark, an element of gamble — the Pascalian pari.
    • Gustave Thibon, Love and Marriage (Ce que Dieu a uni, 1947), trans. A, Gordon Smith. London: Burns & Oates (Universe Books), 1962, pp. 51–52. Translation first published by Hollis & Carter in 1952 under the title What God Has Joined Together.
  • But happy they, the happiest of their kind!
    Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate
    Their Hearts, their Fortunes, and their Beings blend.
  • Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to.
    • J. R. R. Tolkien, letter to Michael Tolkien (March 1941) in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), p. 51.

V

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

W

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Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals. ~ Judge Vaughn Walker
  • Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
    • Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893), act III, in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (1923), vol. 7, p. 263 . Lord Illingworth is speaking.
  • Marriage, in the sense of a ceremonial commitment of people to merge their lives, is properly a social ritual reflecting religious or personal conviction, and should not have legal status.
    • Ellen Willis "Can Marriage Be Saved: A Forum", The Nation (5 July 2004)
  • What no one except the cultural right wants to admit is that marriage as a social institution (an economic partnership, a secure context for child-rearing) only works when it's more or less compulsory, as it has been until the last 15 or 20 years. Marriages held together solely by desire are by definition unpredictable; as thrice-married Margaret Mead once blurted out to psychologist and divorce counselor Judith S. Wallerstein, "Judy, there is no society in the world where people have stayed married without enormous community pressure to do so."
    • Ellen Willis “Marriage on the Rocks” in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (1992)
  • A bride burns her bridges, having fallen in love, and drowns in marriage.
  • You are of the society of the wits and railleurs … the surest sign is, since you are an enemy to marriage,—for that, I hear, you hate as much as business or bad wine.

X

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

Y

[edit]
  • Body and soul, like peevish man and wife,
    United jar, and yet are loth to part.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night II, line 175.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

[edit]
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 495-500.
  • He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
  • To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.
    • Book of Common Prayer, Solemnization of Matrimony.
  • To love, cherish, and to obey.
    • Book of Common Prayer, Solemnization of Matrimony.
  • With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.
    • Book of Common Prayer, Solemnization of Matrimony.
  • He that said it was not good for man to be alone, placed the celibate amongst the inferior states of perfection.
    • Robert Boyle, Works, Volume VI, p. 292. Letter from Mr. Evelyn.
  • Cursed be the man, the poorest wretch in life,
    The crouching vassal, to the tyrant wife,
    Who has no will but by her high permission;
    Who has not sixpence but in her possession;
    Who must to her his dear friend's secret tell;
    Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell.
    Were such the wife had fallen to my part,
    I'd break her spirit or I'd break her heart.
  • Una muger no tiene.
    Valor para el consejo, y la conviene Casarse.
    • A woman needs a stronger head than her own for counsel—she should marry.
    • Calderon, El Purgatorio de Sans Patricio, III. 4.
  • To sit, happy married lovers; Phillis trifling with a plover's
    Egg, while Corydon uncovers with a grace the Sally Lunn,
    Or dissects the lucky pheasant—that, I think, were passing pleasant
    As I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a dun.
  • We've been together now for forty years,
    An' it don't seem a day too much;
    There ain't a lady livin' in the land
    As I'd swop for my dear old Dutch.
  • Man and wife,
    Coupled together for the sake of strife.
  • Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring.
  • Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure,
    Marry'd in haste, we may repent at leisure.
  • Misses! the tale that I relate
    This lesson seems to carry—
    Choose not alone a proper mate,
    But proper time to marry.
  • Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared been
    To public feasts, where meet a public rout,
    Where they that are without would fain go in,
    And they that are within would fain go out.
  • At length cried she, I'll marry:
    What should I tarry for?
    I may lead apes in hell forever.
  • Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in.
  • Magis erit animorum quam corporum conjugium.
    • The wedlock of minds will be greater than that of bodies.
    • Erasmus, Procus et Puella.
  • You are of the society of the wits and railers;… the surest sign is, you are an enemy to marriage, the common butt of every railer.
    • David Garrick, The Country Girl, Act II. 1. Play taken from Wycherly's Country Wife.
  • The husband's sullen, dogged, shy,
    The wife grows flippant in reply;
    He loves command and due restriction,
    And she as well likes contradiction.
    She never slavishly submits;
    She'll have her way, or have her fits.
    He his way tugs, she t'other draws;
    The man grows jealous and with cause.
  • It is not good that the man should be alone.
    • Genesis, II. 18.
  • Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.
    • Genesis, II. 23.
  • Denn ein wackerer Mann verdient ein begütertes Mädchen.
  • So, with decorum all things carry'd;
    Miss frown'd, and blush'd, and then was—married.
  • Le divorce est le sacrement de l'adultere.
  • An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them.
  • I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.
  • Yet while my Hector still survives, I see
    My father, mother, brethren, all in thee.
    • Homer, The Iliad, Book VI, line 544. Pope's translation.
  • Andromache! my soul's far better part.
    • Homer, The Iliad, Book VI, line 624. Pope's translation.
  • Felices ter et amplius
    Quos irrupta tenet copula, nec malis
    Divulsus querimoniis
    Suprema citius solvet amor die.
    • Happy and thrice happy are they who enjoy an uninterrupted union, and whose love, unbroken by any complaints, shall not dissolve until the last day.
    • Horace, Carmina, I, 13, 17.
  • I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem, and to be given away by a Novel.
  • Ay, marriage is the life-long miracle,
    The self-begetting wonder, daily fresh.
  • You should indeed have longer tarried
    By the roadside before you married.
  • Sure the shovel and tongs
    To each other belongs.
  • Take heede, Camilla, that seeking al the Woode for a streight sticke, you chuse not at the last a crooked staffe.
  • Marriage is destinie, made in heaven.
    • John Lyly's Mother Bombie. Same in Clarke, Paræmologia, p. 230. (Ed. 1639).
  • And, to all married men, be this a caution,
    Which they should duly tender as their life,
    Neither to doat too much, nor doubt a wife.
  • The sum of all that makes a just man happy
    Consists in the well choosing of his wife:
    And there, well to discharge it, does require
    Equality of years, of birth, of fortune;
    For beauty being poor, and not cried up
    By birth or wealth, can truly mix with neither.
    And wealth, when there's such difference in years,
    And fair descent, must make the yoke uneasy.
  • What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder.
    • Matthew, XIX. 6.
  • A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
  • Par un prompt désespoir souvent on se marie.
    Qu'on s'en repent après tout le temps de sa vie.
    • Men often marry in hasty recklessness and repent afterward all their lives.
    • Molière, Les Femmes Savantes (1672), V. 5.
  • Il en advient ce qui se veoid aux cages; les oyseaux qui en sont dehors, desesperent d'y entrer; et d'un pareil soing en sortir, ceulx qui sont au dedans.
    • It happens as one sees in cages: the birds which are outside despair of ever getting in, and those within are equally desirous of getting out.
    • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book III, Chapter V.
  • Drink, my jolly lads, drink with discerning,
    Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning;
    Never was owl more blind than a lover,
    Drink and be merry, lads, half seas over.
  • Hac quoque de causa, si te proverbia tangunt,
    Mense malos Maio nubere vulgus ait.
    • For this reason, if you believe proverbs, let me tell you the common one: "It is unlucky to marry in May."
    • Ovid, Fasti, V, 489.
  • Si qua voles apte nubere, nube pari.
    • If thou wouldst marry wisely, marry thine equal.
    • Ovid, Heroides, IX, 32.
  • Some dish more sharply spiced than this
    Milk-soup men call domestic bliss.
  • The garlands fade, the vows are worn away;
    So dies her love, and so my hopes decay.
  • Grave authors say, and witty poets sing,
    That honest wedlock is a glorious thing.
  • There swims no goose so gray, but soon or late
    She finds some honest gander for her mate.
  • Before I trust my Fate to thee,
    Or place my hand in thine,
    Before I let thy Future give
    Color and form to mine,
    Before I peril all for thee,
    Question thy soul to-night for me.
  • A prudent wife is from the Lord.
    • Proverbs, XIX. 14.
  • Advice to persons about to marry—Don't.
    • "Punch's Almanack." (1845). Attributed to Henry Mayhew.
  • Le mariage est comme une forteresse assiégée; ceux qui sont dehors veulent y entrer et ceux qui sont dedans en sortir.
    • Marriage is like a beleaguered fortress; those who are without want to get in, and those within want to get out.
    • Quitard, Études sur les Proverbes Français, p. 102.
  • Widowed wife and wedded maid.
  • Marriage is a desperate thing.
  • To disbelieve in marriage is easy: to love a married woman is easy; but to betray a comrade, to be disloyal to a host, to break the covenant of bread and salt, is impossible.
  • What God hath joined together no man shall ever put asunder: God will take care of that.
  • The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women.
  • Lastly no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tobagie" as Michelet calls it, spreads all over the world.
  • Under this window in stormy weather
    I marry this man and woman together;
    Let none but Him who rules the thunder
    Put this man and woman asunder.
  • The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
  • Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity.
  • This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.
  • What woman, however old, has not the bridal-favours and raiment stowed away, and packed in lavender, in the inmost cupboards of her heart?
  • Thrice happy is that humble pair,
    Beneath the level of all care!
    Over whose heads those arrows fly
    Of sad distrust and jealousy.
  • The happy married man dies in good stile at home, surrounded by his weeping wife and children. The old bachelor don't die at all—he sort of rots away, like a pollywog's tail.
  • 'Tis just like a summer bird cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair, and are in a consumption, for fear they shall never get out.
  • Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge,
    And nature that is kind in woman's breast,
    And reason that in man is wise and good,
    And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,—
    Why do not these prevail for human life,
    To keep two hearts together, that began
    Their spring-time with one love.
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Law of husband and wife

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Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 100-103.
  • In the eye of the law no doubt, man and wife are for many purposes one: but that is a strong figurative expression, and cannot be so dealt with as that all the consequences must follow which would result from its being literally true.
  • When a woman marries, her husband is the head of the family.
    • Parker, C.J., Inhabitants of St. Katherine v. St. George (1714), Fortesc. 218.
  • A woman is to comfort her husband.
    • Holt, C.J., Russell v. Corne (1703), 2 Raym. 1032.
  • If such cruelty shall be sanctioned, and wives shall not be allowed necessaries, England will lose the happy reputation in all foreign kingdoms, which her inhabitants have achieved by their respect for this sex, the most excelling in beauty, which, as in this climate it far transcends that of the women in all other lands, so has this Kingdom surpassed all other countries in its tenderness and consideration for their welfare.
    • Per Cur, Manby v. Scott (1672), 1 Levinz, 4; 2 Sm. L. C. (8th ed.) 458.
  • Dissentions existing between man and wife are in all events very unfortunate: when they become the subject of consideration to third persons, they are very unpleasant, and if the case requires that the conduct of each party should be commented upon in public, it is a most painful task to those to whose lot it falls to judge on them. The subject therefore is always to be handled with as much delicacy as it will admit of; but the infirmities of human nature have given rise to cruelties and other ill-treatment on the part of husbands, and to cases in which this Court has thought it indispensably necessary to interpose.
    • Buller, J., Fletcher v. Fletcher (1788), 2 Cox, Eq. Cas. 102.
  • By the laws of England, by the laws of Christianity, and by the constitution of society, when there is a difference of opinion between husband and wife, it is the duty of the wife to submit to the husband.
    • Molina, V.-C., In re Agar-Ellis; Agar-Ellis v. Lascelles (1878), L. R. 10 C. D. 55.
  • The naturalest and first conjunction of two towards the making a farther society of continuance, is of the husband and wife, each having care of the family: the man to get, to travel abroad, to defend; the wife to save, to stay at home, and distribute that which is gotten for the nurture of the children and family; is the first and most natural but primate apparence of one of the best kind of commonwealths, where not one always, but sometime, and in some things, another bears a rule; which to maintain, God hath given the man greater wit, better strength, better courage to compel the woman to obey, by reason or force; and to the woman, beauty, fair countenance, and sweet words to make the man obey her again for love. Thus each obeyeth and commandeth the other, and the two together rule the house, so long as they remain together in one.
    • Sir Thomas Smith, "Commonwealth of England," Bk. I., c. 11, f. 23; quoted by Hyde, J., Manby v. Scott (1600), 1 Mod. 140, who added "I wish, with all my heart, that the women of this age would learn thus to obey, and thus to command their husbands: so will they want for nothing that is fit, and these kind of flesh-flies shall not suck up or devour their husbands' estates by illegal tricks".
  • There may by possibility be cases where cruelty may lead up directly to the wife's adultery.
    • Dr. Lushington, Dillon v. Dillon (1841), 3 Curt. 94.
  • A woman commits adultery in order to gratify her own unlawful passion: she does not think about the annoyance to her husband when she abandons herself to her lover.
    • Brett, M.R., Fearon v. Earl of Aylesford (1884), L. R. 14 Q. B. D. 797.
  • If I might be permitted to borrow an illustration from poetry, the distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation is nowhere more strikingly shown than by a poet who, more than most other men, has sounded the depths of human feeling, and who supposes the question put to the husband of an adulteress:
    "Then did you freely, from your heart forgive?"
    to which he replies:
    "Sure, as I hope before my Judge to live;
    Sure, as the Saviour died upon the tree
    For all who sin—for that dear wretch and me,
    Whom never more, on earth, will I forsake or see."
    Grabbe's " Tales of the Hall," b. 12.
    • Lord Chelmsford, L.C., Keats v. Keats and another (1859), 7 W. R. 378; 5 Jur. (N. S.) Part 1 (1859), p. 178.
  • When people understand that they must live together, except for a very few reasons known to the law, they learn to soften by mutual accommodation that yoke which they know they cannot shake off; they become good husbands, and good wives, from the necessity of remaining husbands and wives; for necessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties which it imposes.1 If it were once understood, that upon mutual disgust married persons might be legally separated, many couples, who now pass through the world with mutual comfort, with attention to their common offspring and to the moral order of civil society, might have been at this moment living in a state of mutual unkindness—in a stage of estrangement from their common offspring—and in a state of the most licentious and unreserved immorality.
    • Sir William Scott, Evans v. Evans (1790), 1 Hagg. Con. Rep. 36, 37.
  • The cock swan is an emblem or representation of an affectionate and true husband to his wife above all other fowls; for the cock swan holdeth himself to one female only, and for this cause nature hath conferred on him a gift beyond all others; that is, to die so joyfully, that he sings sweetly when he dies; upon which the poet saith:
    "Dulcia defecta modulatur carmina lingua,
    Cantator, cygnus, funeris ipse sui, &c."
  • There is not one of us who cannot recall to memory the experience of some case in which a woman submitted to the worst of treatment, treatment degrading and humiliating, and allowed it to continue rather than permit her name to become the subject of a public scandal.
    • Lord Fitzgerald, G. v. M. (1885), L. R. 10 Ap. Ca. 208.
  • The reason why the law will not suffer a wife to be a witness against her husband is to preserve the peace of families.
    • Lord Hardioicke, Barker v. Dixie (1735), Ca. temp. Lord Hardwicke, 265.
  • The husband is not liable for the criminal conduct of his wife.
    • Wilmot, J., Lockwood v. Coysgarne (1764), 3 Burr. Part IV. 1681.

Law of marriage

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Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 165-166.
  • The holy state of matrimony was ordained by Almighty God in Paradise, before the Fall of Man, signifying to us that mystical union which is between Christ and His Church; and so it is the first relation: and when two persons are joined in that holy state, they twain become one flesh1; and so it is the nearest relation.
    • Hyde, J., Manby v. Scott (1659), 1 Mod. Rep. 125.
  • Marriage in the contemplation of every Christian community is the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.
    • Lush, L.J., Harvey v. Farnie (1880), L. R. 6 Pro. D. 53.
  • Matrimony is a sacrament.
    • Abney, J., Richards v. Dovey (1746), Willes' Rep. 623.
  • In the Christian Church marriage was elevated in a later age to the dignity of a sacrament.
    • Sir William Scott, Dalrymple v. Dalrymple (1811), 2 Hagg. Con. Rep. 64.
  • Marriage, in its origin, is a contract of natural law; it may exist between two individuals of different sexes, although no third person existed in the world, as happened in the case of the common ancestors of mankind: It is the parent, not the child of civil society. "Principium urbis et quasi seminarium reipublicce."
    • Sir William Scott, Dalrymple v. Dalrymple (1811), 2 Hagg. Con. Rep. 63.
  • It will appear, no doubt, that at various periods of our history there have been decisions as to the nature and description of the religious solemnities necessary for the completion of a perfect marriage, which cannot be reconciled together; but there will be found no authority to contravene the general position, that at all times, by the common law of England, it was essential to the constitution of a full and complete marriage, that there must be some religious solemnity; that both modes of obligation should exist together, the civil and the religious.
  • Our law considers marriage in the light of a contract, and applies to it with some exceptions, the ordinary principles which apply to other contracts.
    • Steph. Com., Vol. II. (8th ed.), Book 3, c. 2. p. 238.
  • If people are drunk or delirious,
    The marriage of course would be bad;
    Or if they're not sober and serious,
    But acting a play or charade.
    It's bad if it's only a cover
    For cloaking a scandal or sin,
    And talking a landlady over,
    To let the folks lodge in her inn.
    • Lord Neaves, The Tourist's Matrimonial Guide through Scotland, quoted in an unidentiied case before Mr. Justice Barnes, (July, 1899).
  • A marriage contract compels a woman to work for a man. This is voluntary servitude so long as a woman loves a man. But when she does not love him it becomes involuntary servitude, which the consititution does not permit in the United States.

See also

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