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Marriage Quotations

Authors that have more than 2 quotes: Ambrose Bierce, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Emma Goldman, Kin Hubbard, Mignon McLaughlin, Henry Louis Mencken, Michel de Montaigne, Helen Rowland, Rita Rudner


Joey Adams (top)
A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.
- Joey Adams


Muhammad Ali (top)
My toughest fight was with my first wife.
- Muhammad Ali


Woody Allen (top)
I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.
- Woody Allen


Jane Austen (top)
I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.
- Jane Austen


Unknown Author (top)
"I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?
- Unknown Author
Bachelor: the only man who has never told his wife a lie.
- Unknown Author
Divorce: The past tense of marriage.
- Unknown Author
English Law prohibits a man from marrying his mother-in-law. This is our idea of useless legislation.
- Unknown Author
If marriage were outlawed, only outlaws would have in-laws.
- Unknown Author
If your husband and a lawyer were drowning and you had to choose, would you go to lunch or to a movie?
- Unknown Author
It's easy to understand love at first sight, but how do we explain love after two people have been looking at each other for years?
- Unknown Author
Love is grand; divorce a hundred grand.
- Unknown Author
Love is one long sweet dream, and marriage is the alarm clock.
- Unknown Author
Love may be blind but marriage is a real eye-opener!
- Unknown Author
Marriage changes passion - suddenly you're in bed with a relative.
- Unknown Author
Marriage is not a word - it is a sentence.
- Unknown Author
Marriage means commitment. Of course, so does insanity.
- Unknown Author
Mistress: something between a mister and a mattress.
- Unknown Author
Mother-in-law: a woman who destroys her son-in-law's peace of mind by giving him a piece of hers.
- Unknown Author
My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God, and I didn't.
- Unknown Author
Newlyweds become oldyweds, and oldyweds are the reasons that families work.
- Unknown Author
No man expects a great deal from marriage. He is quite satisfied if his wife is a good cook, a good valet, an attentive audience, and a patient nurse.
- Unknown Author
Spouse: someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
- Unknown Author
Three rings of marriage are the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering.
- Unknown Author
Wedding rings: the world's smallest handcuffs.
- Unknown Author
Why do married men gain weight while bachelors don't? Bachelors go to the refrigerator, see nothing they want, then go to bed. Married guys go to the bed, see nothing they want, then go to the refrigerator.
- Unknown Author
My wife says I never listen to her. At least I think that's what she said.
- Unknown Author
Home cooking: where many a man thinks his wife is.
- Unknown Author


Francis Bacon (top)
Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men's nurses.
- Francis Bacon


Arthur Baer (top)
Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.
- Arthur Baer


Honoré de Balzac (top)
Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything: routine.
- Honoré de Balzac
The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.
- Honoré de Balzac


Ambrose Bierce (top)
Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect behind her.
- Ambrose Bierce
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
- Ambrose Bierce
Marriage, n. A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two.
- Ambrose Bierce


Josh Billings (top)
Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.
- Josh Billings


Lawana Blackwell (top)
If there was strife and contention in the home, very little else in life could compensate for it.
- Lawana Blackwell


Lady Marguerite Blessington (top)
Love-matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar.
- Lady Marguerite Blessington


Erma Bombeck (top)
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
- Erma Bombeck


Pearl S. Buck (top)
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.
- Pearl S. Buck


Leo J. Burke (top)
The husband who doesn't tell his wife everything probably reasons that what she doesn't know won't hurt him.
- Leo J. Burke


Leo Buscaglia (top)
Don't smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.
- Leo Buscaglia


Lord Byron (top)
I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.
- Lord Byron


Anton Chekhov (top)
If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.
- Anton Chekhov


Charles Caleb Colton (top)
Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
- Charles Caleb Colton


William Congreve (top)
Courtship to marriage is as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
- William Congreve
Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves 'em still two fools.
- William Congreve


Bill Cosby (top)
For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.
- Bill Cosby


Noël Coward (top)
I've sometimes thought of marrying, and then I've thought again.
- Noël Coward


Quentin Crisp (top)
Why get married? For human beings, marriage is such an unnatural state. If you want monogamy, it has been said, you should marry a swan.
- Quentin Crisp


Bette Davis (top)
I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars and would sign over half of it to me before the marriage, and guarantee he'd be dead within the year.
- Bette Davis


Marlene Dietrich (top)
Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.
- Marlene Dietrich


Phyllis Diller (top)
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
- Phyllis Diller


Benjamin Disraeli (top)
It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.
- Benjamin Disraeli
No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.
- Benjamin Disraeli


Alexandre Dumas (top)
So heavy is the chain of wedlock that it needs two to carry it, and sometimes three.
- Alexandre Dumas


Isadora Duncan (top)
Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.
- Isadora Duncan


George Eliot (top)
That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger.
- George Eliot


Ralph Waldo Emerson (top)
A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Euripides (top)
Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife.
- Euripides
Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain.
- Euripides


Nick Faldo (top)
We were happily married for eight months. Unfortunately, we were married for four and a half years.
- Nick Faldo


Edna Ferber (top)
Wasn't marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded. Wasn't it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt.
- Edna Ferber


Harry Emerson Fosdick (top)
It is not marriage that fails; it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick


François (top)
Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.
- François


Benjamin Franklin (top)
A single man has not nearly the value he would have in a state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors.
- Benjamin Franklin


Robert Frost (top)
It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.
- Robert Frost


Zsa Zsa Gabor (top)
A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Husbands are like fires. They go out when unattended.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor


Jackie Gleason (top)
Most wives think of their husbands as bumbling braggarts with whom they happen to be in love.
- Jackie Gleason


Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (top)
The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Emma Goldman (top)
Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State- and church-begotten weed, marriage?
- Emma Goldman
On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.
- Emma Goldman
Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: "Ye who enter here leave all hope behind."
- Emma Goldman


Barry Goldwater (top)
Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.
- Barry Goldwater


Robert Graves (top)
Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.
- Robert Graves


Lewis Grizzard (top)
I came from a big family. As a matter of fact, I never got to sleep alone until I was married.
- Lewis Grizzard


Sacha Guitry (top)
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
- Sacha Guitry


Sydney J. Harris (top)
Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.
- Sydney J. Harris


Nathaniel Hawthorne (top)
What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne


Heinrich Heine (top)
The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.
- Heinrich Heine


Katharine Hepburn (top)
If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.
- Katharine Hepburn
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
- Katharine Hepburn


A.P. Herbert (top)
The concept of two people living together for 25 years without a serious dispute suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.
- A.P. Herbert


Edgar Watson Howe (top)
To avoid mistakes and regrets, always consult your wife before engaging in a flirtation.
- Edgar Watson Howe


Elbert Hubbard (top)
Marriage: A legal or religious ceremony by which two persons of the opposite sex solemnly agree to harass and spy on each other for ninety-nine years, or until death do them join.
- Elbert Hubbard
Never get married in college; it's hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you've already made one mistake.
- Elbert Hubbard


Kin Hubbard (top)
A fellow ought to save a few of the long evenings he spends with his girl till after they're married.
- Kin Hubbard
If you haven't seen your wife smile at a traffic cop, you haven't seen her smile her prettiest.
- Kin Hubbard
Women seem to be all right on bargains till it comes to picking out a husband.
- Kin Hubbard


St. Jerome (top)
Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night.
- St. Jerome


Lyndon B. Johnson (top)
I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let her have it.
- Lyndon B. Johnson


Samuel Johnson (top)
Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.
- Samuel Johnson
There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.
- Samuel Johnson


Joseph Joubert (top)
Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.
- Joseph Joubert


Jean Kerr (top)
Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left.
- Jean Kerr


Ann Landers (top)
All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principle of equal partnership.
- Ann Landers


Doug Larson (top)
More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.
- Doug Larson


Stephen Butler Leacock (top)
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
- Stephen Butler Leacock


Anne Morrow Lindbergh (top)
A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh


George Macdonald (top)
One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them; or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it.
- George Macdonald


Groucho Marx (top)
Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows - marriage does.
- Groucho Marx


William Somerset Maugham (top)
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.
- William Somerset Maugham


André Maurois (top)
A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.
- André Maurois
A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.
- André Maurois


Mignon McLaughlin (top)
"What's for dinner?" is the only question many husbands ask their wives, and the only one to which they care about the answer.
- Mignon McLaughlin
A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it.
- Mignon McLaughlin
A love that lasts for twenty years may be better than love, but it isn't love.
- Mignon McLaughlin
A perfect marriage is one in which "I'm sorry" is said just often enough.
- Mignon McLaughlin
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
- Mignon McLaughlin
A woman ought to look up to her husband, if only a half-inch.
- Mignon McLaughlin
Affairs are just as disillusioning as marriage, and much less restful.
- Mignon McLaughlin
After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6º of marriage!
- Mignon McLaughlin
If you made a list of the reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping.
- Mignon McLaughlin
Love requires a willingness to die; marriage, a willingness to live.
- Mignon McLaughlin
Many marriages are simply working partnerships between businessmen and housekeepers.
- Mignon McLaughlin
Men never know how tired they are till their wives sit them down for a nice long talk.
- Mignon McLaughlin
Pity all newlyweds. She cooks something nice for him, and he brings her flowers, and they kiss and think: How easy marriage is.
- Mignon McLaughlin
Some marriages break up, and some do not, and in our world you can usually explain the former better than the latter.
- Mignon McLaughlin
The marriage of convenience has this to recommend it: we are better judges of convenience than we are of love.
- Mignon McLaughlin
What we love about love is the fever, which marriage puts to bed and cures.
- Mignon McLaughlin


Henry Louis Mencken (top)
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
- Henry Louis Mencken
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
- Henry Louis Mencken
Alimony - The ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
- Henry Louis Mencken
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
- Henry Louis Mencken
If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse - as a man shoots himself.
- Henry Louis Mencken
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
- Henry Louis Mencken
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
- Henry Louis Mencken
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
- Henry Louis Mencken
The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
- Henry Louis Mencken


Harlan Miller (top)
Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid.
- Harlan Miller


Marilyn Monroe (top)
Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.
- Marilyn Monroe


Michel de Montaigne (top)
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
- Michel de Montaigne
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
- Michel de Montaigne
The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting.
- Michel de Montaigne


John Mortimer (top)
Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.
- John Mortimer


Iris Murdoch (top)
There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for granted relationship.
- Iris Murdoch


Ogden Nash (top)
Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgets them.
- Ogden Nash
The reason for much matrimony is patrimony.
- Ogden Nash


Kathleen Norris (top)
Intimacy is what makes a marriage, not a ceremony, not a piece of paper from the state.
- Kathleen Norris


Austin O'Malley (top)
Marriage is a meal where the soup is better than the dessert.
- Austin O'Malley


Ovid (top)
If you would marry suitably, marry your equal.
- Ovid


William Penn (top)
Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love.
- William Penn
Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.
- William Penn


Samuel Pepys (top)
Strange to say what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.
- Samuel Pepys


Alexander Pope (top)
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
- Alexander Pope


African Proverb (top)
A man without a wife is like a vase without flowers.
- African Proverb


American Proverb (top)
The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
- American Proverb


English Proverb (top)
Marriage halves our griefs, doubles our joys, and quadruples our expenses.
- English Proverb


Scottish Proverb (top)
Never marry for money. Ye'll borrow it cheaper.
- Scottish Proverb


Hindu Proverb (top)
Never strike your wife - even with a flower.
- Hindu Proverb


John Ray (top)
Wedlock is a padlock.
- John Ray


Will Rogers (top)
I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.
- Will Rogers


Mickey Rooney (top)
Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted a whole day.
- Mickey Rooney


Jean Rostand (top)
Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.
- Jean Rostand


Helen Rowland (top)
A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.
- Helen Rowland
After a few years of marriage, a man can look right at a woman without seeing her - and a woman can see right through a man without looking at him.
- Helen Rowland
Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won't even lay down his newspaper to talk to you.
- Helen Rowland
In olden times sacrifices were made at the altar, a custom which is still continued.
- Helen Rowland
It isn't tying himself to one woman that a man dreads when he thinks of marrying; it's separating himself from all the others.
- Helen Rowland
One man's folly is another man's wife.
- Helen Rowland
When a girl marries she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one.
- Helen Rowland


Rita Rudner (top)
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
- Rita Rudner
In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk.
- Rita Rudner
Men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage - they've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
- Rita Rudner
When I meet a man I ask myself, 'Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?'
- Rita Rudner


Bertrand Russell (top)
The total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
- Bertrand Russell


Lord John Russell (top)
Two mothers-in-law.
- Lord John Russell


Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (top)
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
- Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus


George Bernard Shaw (top)
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.
- George Bernard Shaw
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
- George Bernard Shaw


Socrates (top)
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
- Socrates
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
- Socrates


Herbert Spencer (top)
Marriage: A word which should be pronounced "mirage."
- Herbert Spencer


Richard Steele (top)
The marriage state, with or without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of Heaven and Hell we are capable of receiving in this life.
- Richard Steele


Gloria Steinem (top)
The surest way to be alone is to get married.
- Gloria Steinem
Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the common-sensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.
- Gloria Steinem


Paul Sweeney (top)
A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year.
- Paul Sweeney


Tertullian (top)
And when will there be an end of marrying? I suppose, when there is an end of living!
- Tertullian


J.R.R. Tolkien (top)
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


Paul-Jean Toulet (top)
A woman who loves her husband is merely paying her bills. A woman who loves her lover gives alms to the poor.
- Paul-Jean Toulet


Lee Trevino (top)
My wife tells me she doesn't care what I do when I'm away, as long as I'm not enjoying it.
- Lee Trevino


Mark Twain (top)
Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
- Mark Twain


Judith Viorst (top)
One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.
- Judith Viorst


Voltaire (top)
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
- Voltaire


Peter De Vries (top)
The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds - they mature slowly.
- Peter De Vries
The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.
- Peter De Vries


Mae West (top)
He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
- Mae West
Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
- Mae West


Oscar Wilde (top)
Bigamy is having one husband or wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
- Oscar Wilde
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
- Oscar Wilde


Thornton Wilder (top)
Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.
- Thornton Wilder


Henny Youngman (top)
Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who'll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you're in the wrong house, that's what it means.
- Henny Youngman
The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
- Henny Youngman