Wedding quotes

I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one's life, the foundation of happiness or misery.                                          __GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Burwell Bassett, May 23, 1785 Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists Marriage is for woman the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution. BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals Getting married is like permanently grafting your hand to the cookie jar. No matter how sweet those cookies may taste, you can't help but wonder what would have happened if you'd chosen some other dessert--brownies, for instance ... or frozen yogurt ... or maybe chocolate strudel. JEROME P. CRABB, Marriage Quotes and Quibbles 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 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, Anarchism and Other Essays Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses. FRANCIS BACON, Essays To make a happy fire-side clime To weans and wife, That's the true pathos and sublime Of human life. ROBERT BURNS, To Dr. Blacklock Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter When a match has equal partners, then I fear not. AESCHYLUS, Prometheus Bound Those marriages generally abound most with love and constancy that are preceded by a long courtship. JOSEPH ADDISON, The Spectator, Dec. 29, 1711 A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. JANE AUSTEN, Pride and Prejudice A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's too late. FRANK SINATRA, The Joker Is Wild Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life. JANE AUSTEN, Pride and Prejudice Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two. AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is? GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman I always compare marriage to communism. They're both institutions that don't conform to human nature, so you're going to end up with lying and hypocrisy. BILL MAHER, Rolling Stone, Aug. 24, 2006 I never did, nor do I believe I ever shall, give advice to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage; first, because I never could advise one to marry without her own consent; and, secondly, I know it is to no purpose to advise her to refrain when she has obtained it. A woman very rarely asks an opinion or requires advice on such an occasion, till her resolution is formed; and then it is with the hope and expectation of obtaining a sanction, not that she means to be governed by your disapprobation, that she applies. GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Lund Washington, Sep. 20, 1783 I'm never going to get married again. Three strikes you're out. I think if I would try to get married again in California I have to go to prison don't I? I think you only get three. ROSEANNE BARR, Larry King Live, Mar. 2, 2006 The present relationship existing between husband and wife, where one claims a command over the actions of the other, is nothing more than a remnant of the old leaven of slavery. It is necessarily destructive of refined love; for how can a man continue to regard as his type of the ideal a being whom he has, be denying an equality of privilege with himself, degraded to something below himself? HERBERT SPENCER, An Autobiography When a man marries a woman, they become one--the trouble starts when they try to decide which one. CROFT M. PENTZ, The Complete Book of Zingers If men were wise they would see that the affection that God has implanted in us is amply sufficient, when not weakened by artificial aid, to ensure permanence of union; and if they would have more faith in this all would go well. To tie together by human law what God has tied together by passion, is about as wise as it would be to chain the moon to the earth lest the natural attraction existing between them should not be sufficient to prevent them flying asunder. HERBERT SPENCER, An Autobiography Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull Play. WILLIAM CONGREVE, The Old Bachelor Marriage is like life in this - that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, Virginibus Puerisque Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety, In Paradise of all things common else. JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil. LORD BYRON, Hours of Idleness Marriage has some thorns, but celibacy has no roses. VERNON K. MCLELLAN, Wise Words and Quotes It's terribly hard to be married ... harder than anything else. I think you have to be an angel. AUGUST STRINDBERG, A Dream Play Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed. OSCAR WILDE, A Woman of No Importance Marry'd in haste, we oft repent at leisure. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Poor Richard's Almanac Marriage is a land mine. A really intimate land mine. Adultery to kitchen fires. Never a dull [moment]. NORA ROBERTS, Blue Smoke Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. GENESIS: 2:24 In courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight--that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin. GEORGE ELIOT, Middlemarch The marriage state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of Heaven and Hell we are capable of receiving in this life. RICHARD STEELE, The Spectator, Sep. 1712 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 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, Show Boat Two such as you with such a master speed Cannot be parted nor be swept away From one another once you are agreed That life is only life forevermore Together wing to wing and oar to oar. ROBERT FROST, The Master Speed Marriage is commonly a meal wherein the soup is better than the desert. AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought Marriage is the agreement to let a family happen. BETTY JANE WYLIE, Family: An Exploration There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes. GARRISON KEILLOR, "The Old Scout," The Writer's Almanac, Oct. 4, 2005 Never marry but for love; but see that thou lov'st what is lovely. WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude Marriage does not unite two people; it entangles them. ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims

A woman ... all beautiful and accomplished will, while her hand and heart are undisposed of, turn the heads and set the circle in which she moves on fire. Let her marry, and what is the consequence? The madness ceases and all is quiet again. Why? Not because there is any diminution in the charms of the lady, but because there is an end of hope.

GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Eleanor Parke Custis, Jan. 16, 1795

Men and women are natural enemies, like cat and dog--only more so. They are forced to live together for a time, or this wonderful race couldn't go on.

NEITH BOYCE, Enemies

One of the most common problems in marriage occurs when she wants empathy and he's trying to fix things. Tell your partner what kind of listening you want ... Treat your mate as if he wants to make you happy but doesn't know how. You love him, after all. You picked him. Help him out.

TERRENCE REAL, O Magazine, Jan. 2007

Unfortunately, a marriage license doesn't come with a job description or a set of instructions. There is definitely "some assembly required." In fact, putting together a modern-day marriage can be likened to assembling an airplane in flight.

PATRICIA LOVE, The Truth About Love

Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.

MEXICAN PROVERB, And I Quote

Marriage is meant to be a very sacred union between two people who have no intention of ever becoming emotionally or physically tied to another person for the rest of eternity. Most people mean their marriage vows when they take them, but oftentimes--these days more often than not, according to statistics--the initial commitment begins to wane and ultimately dissipates altogether. We live in a time when most people who get married before they turn thirty are merely doing a practice run.

ZANE, Dear G. Spot

Marriage is not a word, it's a sentence--a life sentence.

DAVID MINKOFF, Oy!

It's a funny thing, but when a guy asks for your hand in marriage, he wants to hear the actual word yes escape from your lips. For him, that's the moment when he can celebrate. The longer you sit there speechless, the quicker he'll go into a panic. So say yes, aloud, and then you can start to hyperventilate with joy.

JANIS SPINDEL, How to Date Men

I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.

G. K. CHESTERTON, What's Wrong with the World

Marriage is a pretty amazing thing when you think about it. For two people to live together for so long under the same roof is a big accomplishment. Fifty-year anniversaries are becoming extinct, yet again proving that long marriages deserve awards and praise. Sometimes I see old people in restaurants sitting together eating their meals and I watch them. Sometimes it makes me sad. They don't even talk. Is it because they have nothing else to say, or can they simply read each other's mind by now?

JENNY MCCARTHY, Life Laughs

Some people put up and shut up and give their life into a miserable future in a marriage. This is not healthy for all who are connected with the marriage be it the couple, children and the external family. The ultimate problem lays in the couple who stick it out for all those years for the sake of the kids, money, time invested in each other, social, religious or family commitments, status or whatever their reason may be to hold that marriage together ignoring their own feelings for the external feelings and commitments. Then comes a time that we get all the freedom and the money we want to live comfortable but your heart is not comfortable because the dreams, goals and senses are lost and there is no vision for tomorrow.

JEANETTE DE JONK, Unconventional & Spiritual Marriage

Marriages don't last. When I meet a guy, the first question I ask myself is: "Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?"

RITA RUDNER, stand-up routine

Happy marriage is the greatest wealth a man can possess, and one that a peasant can have as easily as a king.

DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS, The Lost Diary of Don Juan

I've been married eleven times. It would have been twelve, but one of my ex-wives tracked down all the others.

FERN MICHAELS, The Marriage Game

Marriage is a three-ring circus--engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering.

DAVID MINKOFF, Oy!

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC, attributed, And I Quote

That little ditty about love coming first, then marriage, then the baby carriage--it's history. Over the past few decades more and more single people have been having children, and more and more married couples have not been.

BELLA DEPAULO, Singled Out

It is a mistake to think that marriage is unique to the human species. While, of course, some of the specific accoutrements of human marriage--such as the wedding ceremony--is unique to humans, the institution of marriage itself--the predictable and regulated patterns of mating between a male and a female--is shared by many other species, particularly birds.

ALAN S. MILLER, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters

Romance is a great "salt" to sprinkle on the hard work of sharing a life with another human being, but the main ingredient of a happy marriage can never be romance.

MARK GUNGOR, Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage

Marriage can give one the deepest, happiest moments of life. And that's one of the reasons God created it. It was part of God's "Happiness Plan."

DAVID MICHAEL THOMAS, Christian Marriage

I fall in love easily. I love the marriage ceremony. I love the honeymoon phase. I just don't want to be married. I'm not marriage material, but I am a very good honeymooner.

FERN MICHAELS, The Marriage Game

"Happy marriage" is a contradiction in terms.

DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS, The Lost Diary of Don Juan

They stand at the altar before the minister and emotionally utter the words, "I do." It is a pivotal moment--the end of the wedding, but the start of the marriage. This is either the inauguration of a covenant or partnership that either expresses divine love that transcends all or (as is increasingly the case) the fractious nature of a communion unplanned, unevenly yoked, and selfishly formed.

SAM OHENE-APRAKU, foreward, A Purposeful Marriage

Ask any woman in an arranged marriage. Love is the least stressful way out.

FAY WELDON, The Spa

Possibilities for the success of a marriage are endless. But you have to be willing to search for them.

JASON R. REDMOND, Are You Talking?

Keep the eyes wide open before marriage and half shut afterwards.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Wise Words and Quotes

How you end something as profound and important as a marriage is a reflection of how you live your life--financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

SUZE ORMAN, The Road to Wealth

In a way, marriage is a cosmic joke; we [men and women] are so different from each other.

MARK GUNGOR, Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage

When most people enter marriage, they have only had an "up close and personal" view of a small number of marriages, perhaps only one (i.e., their parents' marriage). Although you likely have known many married people throughout your lifetime, your vision of most marriages is limited to the images that the couples project to the world. You can never really know what another person's marriage is like behind closed doors. Therefore, most people enter into marriage with gaps in their understanding of what marriage entails.

CHRISTINE E. MURRAY, Just Engaged

Marriage is like the army--many complain, but you'd be surprised how many reenlist.

VERNON K. MCLELLAN, Wise Words and Quotes

Love is one long sweet dream, and marriage is the alarm clock.

DAVID MINKOFF, Oy!

Not everyone believes that marriage transforms miserable and immature single people into paragons of maturity and bliss.

BELLA DEPAULO, Singled Out

Marriages are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find ourselves in winter--discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of summer--comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the seasons repeat themselves in nature.

GARY D. CHAPMAN, note to readers, Summer Breeze

A good marriage is good for you. That isn't just a platitude. Mounting research shows that it is the literal truth. When your marriage is healthy, your body and mind are healthier.

CLIFF ISAACSON, The Good-for-You Marriage

The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open.

GROUCHO MARX, Wise Words and Quotes

Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid.

HARLAN MILLER, Wise Words and Quotes

Marriage emerged some forty-five hundred years ago and evolved into a widespread and accepted institution that bonded families, maintained order, and created wealth. Unlike today, where many of us are searching for our romantic "soul mate," marriage was originally more about economics than deep emotion.

ROBI LUDWIG, Till Death Do Us Part

Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.

G. K. CHESTERTON, What's Wrong with the World

To keep your marriage brimming,

With love in the loving cup,

Whenever you're wrong, admit it,

Whenever you're right, shut up.

OGDEN NASH, Marriage Lines: Notes of a Student Husband

Sometimes I think marriage licenses should be like driver's licenses. They expire after a number of years, and in order to keep going you have to renew. Wouldn't that be kind of genius? It would force you both to look at the relationship, and if it's not working, the marriage would expire so you could go on your merry way, or on the positive side of it, you could look at each other and say we really want to renew. What a way to keep it fresh!!

JENNY MCCARTHY, Life Laughs

A summer breeze can be very refreshing; but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely to ourselves, the breeze will die. Our beloved is the same. He is like a breeze, a cloud, a flower. If you imprison him in a tin can, he will die. Yet many people do just that. They rob their loved one of his liberty, until he can no longer be himself. They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying.

THICH NHAT HANH, Teachings on Love

My new found meaning of Marriage is a place where you can be yourself and has breathing space to grow personally and spiritually as and when I want without having to consult my partner about my changes. It is a beautiful place without suffocation, a place where you can learn and teach each other, a place where you do not feel prohibited and a place where you do not have to log in and log out.

JEANETTE DE JONK, Unconventional & Spiritual Marriage

No greater evil can a man endure

Than a bad wife, nor find a greater good

Than one both good and wise; and each man speaks

As judging by the experience of his life.

SOPHOCLES, Fragment

The secret to a good marriage, as far as I am concerned, is a joke I make: Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty.

MICHAEL J. FOX, Good Housekeeping, Apr. 2009

Maybe marriages were made in heaven, but we believe in giving the old-fashioned porch-swing some credit.

ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs

Each coming together of man and wife, even if they have been mated for many years, should be a fresh adventure; each winning should necessitate a fresh wooing.

MARIE CARMICHAEL STOPES, Married Love

Our natural tendency in the middle of winter is to avoid the elements as much as possible. When the weather turns frigid, we retreat inside for survival and wait for it to warm up or for the season to change. In a winter marriage, there may be a similar tendency to "avoid the elements." Spouses may withdraw within themselves, hunkering down and trying to ride out the cold season, hoping for spring but not taking any positive steps to move their marriage toward spring. However, unlike the natural seasons, the seasons of a marriage do not typically change without some positive action--unless it's a change from bad to worse.

GARY D. CHAPMAN, The Four Seasons of Marriage

Married life requires shared mystery even when all the facts are known.

RICHARD FORD, The Sportswriter

Ah. That ceremony. I see. That's it, then. A formula, a shibboleth meaningless as a child's game, performed by someone created by the situation whose need it answered: a crone mumbling in a dungeon lighted by a handful of burning hair, something in a tongue which not even the girls themselves understand anymore, maybe not even the crone herself, rooted in nothing of economics for her or for any possible progeny since the very fact that we acquiesced, suffered the farce, was her proof and assurance of that which the ceremony itself could never enforce; vesting no new rights in anyone, denying to none the old--a ritual as meaningless as that of college boys in secret rooms at night, even to the same archaic and forgotten symbols?--you call that a marriage, when the night of a honeymoon and the casual business with a hired prostitute consists of the same suzerainty over a (temporarily) private room, the same order of removing the same clothes, the same conjunction in a single bed? Why not call that a marriage too?

WILLIAM FAULKNER, Absalom, Absalom!

Marriage problems are relationship problems, they are the result of how two peopleinteract with each other. You may abandon a troubled marriage, but you will still bring theway you interact with others along with you.

MARK GUNGOR, Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage

Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different thing because women have become human beings.

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS, Marriage

The concerts you enjoy together

Neighbors you annoy together

Children you destroy together

That make a marriage a joy.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM, Company

We could probably date the conception of "modern" marriage at around 1850, with its gestation through the Gilded Age, and its birth about 1920. Not coincidentally, serenading that pregnancy and birth has been a steadily rising chorus of outcries about the death of marriage and the family. By the 1920s every third magazine article seemed to be titled "Will Modern Marriage Survive?" Of course, reports of marriage's death have been greatly exaggerated: even laying aside the peculiar 1950s (which none of "the family" doomsayers foresaw), marriage remains outrageously popular, divorce statistics and all.

E. J. GRAFF, What is Marriage for?

Marriage ... has historically been a battlefield, the site of collisions within and between governments and religions over who should regulate it. But marriage has weathered centuries of skirmishes and change. It has evolved from an institution that was imposed on some people and denied to others, to the loving union of companionship, commitment, and caring between equal partners that we think of today.

EVAN WOLFSON, Why Marriage Matters

Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.

OSCAR WILDE, A Woman of No Importance

A true Christian marriage proposal is an offer, not a request. Rather than saying in effect, "Will you do this for me?" when we invite another to enter the marriage relationship, the real question should be, "Will you accept what I want to give?"

GARY THOMAS, Sacred Marriage

For marriage is a matter of more worth

Than to be dealt with in attorneyship.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI

Marriage is divine in its institution, sacred in its union, holy in the mystery, sacramental in its signification, honourable in its appellative, religious in its employments: it is advantage to the societies of men, and it is "holiness to the Lord."

JEREMY TAYLOR, The Marriage Ring

People who have found everything disappointing are surprised and pained when marriage proves no exception. Most of the complaints about ... matrimony arise not because it is worse than the rest of life, but because it is not incomparably better.

JOHN LEVY, quoted in Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.

ANDREA DWORKIN, Pornography

Before marriage a woman may procure some éclat by pretending to believe in the fiction of her ascendancy; but after marriage, the worshipped beauty becomes a very plain every-day sort of person, and the poetry of the sex's power is at an end for ever!

ROBERT BELL, Marriage: A Comedy in Five Acts

The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.

CAROLYN HEILBRUN, Ms. Magazine, Aug. 1974

It was crazy: marriage. You gave your whole life, your whole happiness, over to one other human being, even the best of them inept at times, prone to reach for some other fulfillment, some other pleasure.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING, Marriage: A Duet

So are the early unions of an unfixed Marriage: watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. For infirmities do not manifest themselves in the first Scenes, but in the succession of a long Society.

JEREMY TAYLOR, The Marriage Ring

A happy marriage perhaps represents the ideal of human relationship--a setting in which each partner, while acknowledging the need of the other, feels free to be what he or she by nature is; a relationship in which instinct as well as intellect can find expression; in which giving and taking are equal; in which each accepts the other, and I confronts Thou.

ANTHONY STORK, The Integrity of Personality

The marriage relationship is one of God's creations for building up people. It gives husbands and wives the chance to minister to an immortal human being in a uniquely intimate fashion. To enjoy the meaningfulness of marriage, then, requires a once-made but ongoing commitment of mutual ministry to our mates and the more we seize them, the more meaning our marriage will have.

LARRY CRABB, The Marriage Builder

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. That is what makes a marriage last--more than passion or even sex.

SIMONE SIGNORET, London Daily Mail, Jul. 4, 1978

Marriage is a language of love, equality, and inclusion.

EVAN WOLFSON, Why Marriage Matters

Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.

THORNTON WILDER, The Matchmaker

Marriage, far from being an end in itself, is a key part of God's plan to fill the earth with a demonstration of who he is. Marriage belongs to God and exists for his glory.

GARY & BETSY RICUCCI, Love That Lasts

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, Talk and Talkers

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, Parerga and Paralipomena

I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.

EDITH WHARTON, letter, Feb. 12, 1909

I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth--that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence--for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. These are the only purposes for which persons of rank ever think of marriage.

SUSAN FERRIER, Marriage

Marriage is, in actual fact, just a way of living. Before marriage, we don't expect life to be all sunshine and roses, but we seem to expect marriage to be that way.

LESLIE L. PARROTT, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, quoted in James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

ALEXANDER POPE, The Wife of Bath

Marriage is a serious undertaking. You must submit to family congratulations on certain events, and have a nursery at the top of the house. One doesn't know what a nursery may lead to.

ROBERT BELL, Marriage: A Comedy in Five Acts

So many promising girls allowed themselves to be submerged altogether in marriage for a time, and when they emerged everyone had forgotten the promise of their début.

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS, Marriage

What is marriage for?... Toaster ovens and silverware.

E. J. GRAFF, What is Marriage for?

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

HELEN ROWLAND, A Guide to Men

If sex is supposed to be satisfying and anxiety-free once we are safely ensconced in marriage, how come that's when many of us stop wanting it?

DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH, Passionate Marriage

Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.

WILLIAM WYCHERLEY, The Country Wife

The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding.

GARY SMALLEY, quoted in Worth Repeating

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like a horse and carriage

Dad was told by mother

You can't have one without the other.

SAMMY CAHN, "Love and Marriage"

Until we have a natural, that is, a conscientious world, it cannot be known by experience what natural law will do for the gratification of a supreme affection; but, if you will give me that world, there will be in it very few not called to marriage, provided society allows proper opportunities for acquaintance between marriageable persons.

JOSEPH COOK, Marriage: With Preludes on Current Events

For what is wedlock forced but a hell,

An age of discord and continued strife?

Whereas the contrary bringeth forth bliss,

And is a pattern of celestial peace.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI

There is a connection between what you are putting into your marriage and what you are getting out of it.

MARK GUNGOR, Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage

Marriage accustomed one to the good things, so one came to take them for granted, but magnified the bad things, so they came to feel as painful as a grain in one's eye. An open window, a forgotten quart of milk, a TV set left blaring, socks on the bathroom floor could become occasions for incredible rage. And something happened sexually in marriage--the swearing to forsake all others, despite its slight observance, had a profound effect. Some people felt trapped by it, impelled to assert what they called freedom. Some accepted it like a rein, and in the effort to avoid pain in the form of hopeless desire, cut off occasions of desire, avoided having long talks at parties with attractive members of the opposite sex. In time, all feeling for the opposite sex was cut off, and intercourse limited to the barest politenesses.... But something happened to you when you did that, a kind of death seeped up from the genitals to the rest of the body, till it showed in the eyes, the gestures, in a certain lifelessness.

MARILYN FRENCH, The Women's Room

All of us, at least unconsciously, marry in the hope of healing our wounds. Even if we do not have a traumatic background, we still have hurts and unfilled needs that we carry inside. We all suffer from feelings of self-doubt, unworthiness, and inadequacy. No matter how nurturing our parents were, we never received enough attention and love. So in marriage we look to our spouse to convince us that we are worthwhile and to heal our infirmities.

LESLIE L. PARROTT, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.

ZSA ZSA GABOR, Newsweek, Mar. 28, 1960

A marriage bound together by commitments to exploit the other for filling one's own needs (and I fear that most marriages are built on such a basis) can legitimately be described as a "tic on a dog" relationship. Just as a hungry tic clamps on to a nourishing host in anticipation of a meal, so each partner unites with the other in the expectation of finding what his or her personal nature demands. The rather frustrating dilemma, of course, is that in such a marriage there are two tics and no dog!

LARRY CRABB, The Marriage Builder

One of the best wedding gifts God gave you was a full-length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, "Here's to helping you discover what you're really like!"

GARY & BETSY RICUCCI, quoted in Sacred Marriage

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

Oh, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark

Whose worth's unknown, although its height be taken.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, sonnet cxvi

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

JOHN UPDIKE, Couples

In the New Testament a totally new concept of marriage is being introduced; it is directly dependent upon the "Good News" of the Resurrection which was brought to Christ. A Christian is called--already in this world--to experience new life, to become a citizen of the Kingdom; and he can do so in marriage. But then marriage ceases to be either a simple satisfaction of temporary natural urges, or a means for securing an illusory survival through posterity. It is a unique union of two beings in love, two beings who can transcend their own humanity and thus be united not only "with each other," but also "in Christ."

JOHN MEYENDORFF, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective

When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one.

HELEN ROWLAND, Reflections of a Bachelor Girl

I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all.

QUEEN VICTORIA, letter to her daughter, May 3, 1858

How the world can change,

It can change like that,

Due to one little word:

"Married."

FRED EBB, Cabaret

Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism are extracted without an anaesthetic.

HELEN ROWLAND, A Guide to Men

The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado About Nothing

Marriage is socialism among two people.

BARBARA EHRENREICH, The Worst Years of Our Lives

No marriage is "too dead" for the Lord to restore.

CHARLES R. SWINDOLL, Marriage: From Surviving to Thriving

Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.

ISADORA DUNCAN, My Life

'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, The Rivals

If society will adopt the rule of nature, and justify no marriage without a supreme affection, the evils of marriage without love will be sufficiently cured. Those who marry without the consent of Nature may securely expect trouble.

JOSEPH COOK, Marriage: With Preludes on Current Events

Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.

ELLEN KEY, "The Morality of Woman"

God has given the human reality of marriage the nature it has because he wills to integrate it into his divine plan and to make it a means of holiness, of sanctification.

WILLIAM E. MAY, Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built

Marriage is also a social statement, preeminently describing and defining a person's relationship and place in society. Marital status, along with what we do for a living, is often one of the first pieces of information we give to others about ourselves. It's so important, in fact, that most married people wear a symbol of their marriage on their hand.

EVAN WOLFSON, Why Marriage Matters

Marriage is often like Procrustes' famous code of hospitality. Procrustes built a bed for his guests the same way we build a marriage: according to his own expectations. Shorter visitors were stretched to fit; taller folks were surgically shortened. Likewise, your spouse will try to change you into what he or she thinks you should be, just as you have fine-tuning in mind for your partner.... Marriage is the procrustean bed in which we can develop and enhance our psychological and ethical integrity. It can be the cradle of adult development. DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH, Passionate Marriage It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry.... If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week. EZRA POUND, letter to his mother, 1909 [Marriage] is the merciless revealer, the great white searchlight turned on the darkest places of human nature. KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, The Days Before Nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman.... It is only man's egoism that wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities. LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH, Venus in Furs Marriage, the relationship of husband and wife, a faithful union, marks the first human compact. The earliest recognized distinction between that which is lawful and that which is unlawful found its expression in marriage. In some places the old names for "law" and "marriage" are interchangeable. Whatever ceremonies may have accompanied it, however some (at all times) have evaded its obligation, the primæval conscience, the original human instinct, before the formation of any Church or code, recognized the need of a "covenant" first in marriage. Around it laws have grown. It is no invention of legislators. It arose from the divinely implanted necessities of "human" life, and a sense of its excellence above that of other animals "which have no understanding." Thus marriage grew to be called an "honourable estate;" to be surrounded with ceremony and fenced with safeguards. HARRY JONES, Courtship and Marriage That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds. JOHN UPDIKE, foreward, Too Far To Go The horrors of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation. MARQUIS DE SADE, L'Histoire de Juliette, ou les Prospérités One hundred percent of divorces start with a marriage. MARK GUNGOR, Laugh Your Way To a Better Marriage The mere idea of marriage, as a strong possibility, if not always nowadays a reasonable likelihood, existing to weaken the will by distracting its straight aim in the life of practically every young girl, is the simple secret of their confessed inferiority in men's pursuits and professions today. WILLIAM BOLITHO, Twelve Against the Gods Nobody's ready for marriage. Marriage makes you ready for marriage. DAVID MORRIS SCHNARCH, Passionate Marriage There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship--only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier. ERICA JONG, How To Save Your Own Life The expectations you bring to your partnership can make or break your marriage. Don't miss out on the sterling moments of marriage because your ideals are out of sync with your partner's. Don't believe the myth that you and your partner automatically come with the same expectations for marriage. Instead, remember that the more openly you discuss your differing expectations, the more likely you are to create a vision of marriage that you agree on--and that is unique to the two of you. LESLIE L. PARROTT, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts A little weeping, a little wheedling, a little self-degradation, a little careful use of our advantages, and then some man will say--"Come, be my wife!" With good looks and youth marriage is easy to attain. There are men enough; but a woman who has sold herself, even for a ring and a new name, need hold her skirt aside for no creature in the street. They both earn their bread in one way. Marriage for love is the beautifullest external symbol of the union of souls; marriage without it is the uncleanliest traffic that defiles the world. OLIVE SCHREINER, The Story of an African Farm Focus on your marriage. Because that's the nucleus of the home, whatever you do to restore its health and strength will naturally restore what's broken among the other relationships. If you have no children yet, this will make a comfortable nest for them to begin life well. If you have children, the changes you make in your marriage will affect the rest of the household more quickly and dramatically than you think. CHARLES R. SWINDOLL, Marriage: From Surviving to Thriving After marriage, a woman's sight becomes so keen that she can see right through her husband without looking at him, and a man's so dull that he can look right through his wife without seeing her. HELEN ROWLAND, A Guide to Men Marrying a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn't always go with everything else in the house. JEAN KERR, The Snake Has All the Lines When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, letter to Maria Gisborne Though women are angels, yet wedlock's the devil. LORD BYRON, "To Eliza" Marriage is generally used as a term for a social institution. As such it may be defined as a relation of one or more men to one or more women which is recognized by custom or law and involves certain rights and duties both in the case of the parties entering the union and in the case of children born of it. These rights and duties vary among different peoples, and cannot therefore all be included in a general definition: but there must, of course, be something which they have in common. Marriage always implies the right of sexual intercourse: society holds such intercourse allowable in the case of husband and wife, and, generally speaking, even regards it as their duty to gratify in some measure the other partner's desire. But the right to sexual intercourse is not necessarily exclusive. It can hardly be said to be so, from the legal point of view, unless adultery is regarded as an offense which entitles the other partner to dissolve the marriage union, and this, as we know, is by no means always the case. EDWARD WESTERMARCK, The History of Human Marriage Marriage is to family what legs are to a table. BETTY JANE WYLIE, Family: An Exploration Husband and wife did not need to speak words to one another, not just from the old habit of living together but because in that one long-ago instant at least out of the long and shabby stretch of their human lives, even though they knew at the time it wouldn't and couldn't last, they had touched and become as God when they voluntarily and in advance forgave one another for all that each knew the other could never be. WILLIAM FAULKNER, Go Down, Moses

But in marriage do thou be wise; prefer the Person before Money, Virtue before Beauty, the Mind before the Body: Then thou hast a Wife, a Friend, a Companion, a Second Self; one that bears an equal Share with thee in all thy toils and troubles.

WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude

Marriage is the comfort of the considerate and prudent; but the torment of the inconsiderate and self-willed.

WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs

Marriages are like diets--they can be ruined by having a little dish on the side.

CROFT M. PENTZ, The Complete Book of Zingers

Were the husband as blind to the faults of the wife, as the lover to the faults of the maiden, few unhappy marriages would follow happy courtships.

IVAN PANIN, Thoughts

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

GEORGE ELIOT, Adam Bede

When the hour of adversity arrives, when false friends are scattered, when we are moving through the keen atmosphere of selfishness, then it is that the virtuous wife, like an angel of light, shines with peculiar lustre.

WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

GEORGE ELIOT, Romola

Let us now set forth one of the fundamental truths about marriage: the wife is in charge.

BILL COSBY, Woman's Day Magazine, Sep. 1, 2009

Well-married, a man is winged--ill-matched, he is shackled.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Men who marry for gratification, propagation, or the matter of buttons and socks, must expect to cope with and deal in a certain amount of quibble, subterfuge, concealment and double, deep-dyed prevarication.

ELBERT HUBBARD, The American Bible

When is it right to marry, and when, after that, is it right to have children? Those are personal questions, and they have personal answers. Answers that are different for different people. But there are rules of thumb, generalizations that hold true more often than society thinks. Our grandparents knew that, but modern America has largely forgotten. Forgotten that the best things in life are actually the purpose of life, and that there is no wisdom in delaying what on our deathbed we will consider the jewels of our existence.

BOB LONSBERRY, A Various Language

We only attain the true idea of marriage when we consider it as a spiritual union--a union of immortal affections, of undying faculties, of an imperishable destiny.

E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words

Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage. Love cannot exist in marriage, because love is an ideal; that is to say, something not quite understood--transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, the au dela? There is none. I say in marriage an au dela is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble and the water, the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The monosyllable which epitomizes the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard not, thought not there--only the nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes. Freedom limitless; the Mahometan stands on the verge of the abyss, and the spaces of perfume and colour extend and invite him with the whisper of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal ... Thus love is possible, there is a delusion, anau dela.

GEORGE MOORE, Confessions of a Young Man

A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.

HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

The present marriage laws are very propitious towards making Cuckoldom the normal state of men.

ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims

And so the words are spoken, and the indissoluble knot is tied. Amen. For better, for worse, for good days or evil, love each other, cling to each other, dear friends. Fulfil your course, and accomplish your life's toil. In sorrow, sooth eath other; in illness, watch and tend. Cheer, fond wife, the husband's struggle; lighten his gloomy hours with your tender smiles, and gladden his home with your love. Husband, father, whatsoever your lot, be your heart pure, your life honest. For the sake of those who bear your name, let no bad action sully it. AS you look at those innocent faces, which ever tenderly greet you, be yours, too, innocent, and your conscience without reproach. As the young people kneel before the altar-railing, some such thoughts as these pass through a friend's mind who witnesses the ceremony of their marriage. Is not all we hear in that place meant to apply to ourselves, and to be carried away for everyday congitation.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, Philip

Marriage is only another word for irremediable slavery.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY, The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos

Propose not to a woman when she hath gotten a new frock, nor when she is puffed up with victories; when she reigneth and rejoiceth in her hour of triumph, come not nigh unto her; but when she be ill or weary, when she is cast down in spirit and needeth a comforter, then be thou ready, and make thy suit.

GELETT BURGESS, The Maxims of Methuselah

Marriage may sometimes be compared to a lottery, in which it is better not to have purchased a ticket than to have drawn a blank.

NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections

If love be not thy chiefest motive, thou wilt soon grow weary of a married state, and stray from thy promise, to search out thy pleasures in forbidden places.

WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude

Matrimony is an engagement which must last the life of one of the parties, and there is no retracting ... therefore, to avoid all the horror of a repentance that comes too late, men should thoroughly know the real causes that induce them to take so important a step, before they venture upon it; do they stand in need of a wife, an heiress, or a nurse; is it their passions, their wants, or their infirmities, that solicit them to wed?

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

A woman will always cherish the memory of the man who wanted to marry her. A man, of the woman who he didn't.

GRENVILLE KLEISER, Dictionary of Proverbs

You shouldn't marry anyone you have to try hard for.

RACHAEL RAY, Good Housekeeping, Jul. 2010

You're married, and suddenly you have your own family. There's a nice comfort in that. That part of your life is certain ... You've got your home in that other person.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON, Good Housekeeping, Oct. 2010

Selfish husbands have this advantage in maintaining with easy-minded wives a rigid and inflexible behaviour, viz., that if they do by any chance grant a little favour, the ladies receive it with such transports of gratitude as they would never think of showing to a lord and master who was accustomed to give them everything they asked for.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, Men's Wives

A successful marriage is the result of falling in love often--with the same person.

CROFT M. PENTZ, The Complete Book of Zingers

In the choice of a wife, we ought to make use of our ears, and not our eyes. WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine Bad husbands will make bad wives. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, Newcomes A single life is doubtless preferable to a married one, where prudence and affection do not accompany the choice; but where they do, there is no terrestrial happiness equal to the married state. WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine Much of the quarrels and hatred which arise between married people come, in my mind, from the husband's rage and revolt at discovering that his slave and bedfellow, who is to minister to all his wishes, and is church-sworn to honour and obey him--is his superior; and that he, and not she, ought to be the subordinate of the twain. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, Esmond Let your love advise before you choose, and your choice be fixed before you marry: Remember the happiness or misery of your life depends upon this one act, and ... nothing but death can dissolve the knot. WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine Many people marry first, and have to learn afterwards the duty of a married state, and the comforts and inconveniences that attend it; and it is not uncommon to meet with persons whose depraved judgments encourage them to think it immaterial, whether or not love proceeds tying the matrimonial knot, looking upon it as a matter of future expectation. WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine

A bell is no bell 'til you ring it,

A song is no song 'til you sing it,

And love in your heart

Wasn’t put there to stay -

Love isn’t love

'Til you give it away.

-Oscar Hammerstein, Sound of Music, "You Are Sixteen (Reprise)"

After all there is something about a wedding-gown prettier than in any other gown in the world.  -Douglas William Jerrold

         

A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short.  -Andre Maurois

A hundred hearts would be too few

To carry all my love for you.

-Author Unknown

Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs.  -Ovid

All things do go a-courting,

In earth, or sea, or air,

God hath made nothing single

But thee in His world so fair.

-Emily Dickinson

A man in love is incomplete until he is married.  Then he's finished.  -Zsa Zsa Gabor

Are we not like two volumes of one book?  -Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.  -Mignon McLaughlin

Come, let's be a comfortable couple and take care of each other!  How glad we shall be, that we have somebody we are fond of always, to talk to and sit with.  -Charles Dickens

For you see, each day I love you more

Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.

-Rosemonde Gerard

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.  -Albert Einstein

Grow old with me!  The best is yet to be.  -Robert Browning

If two stand shoulder to shoulder against the gods,

Happy together, the gods themselves are helpless

Against them while they stand so.

-Maxwell Anderson

I dreamed of a wedding of elaborate elegance,

A church filled with family and friends.

I asked him what kind of a wedding he wished for,

He said one that would make me his wife.

-Author Unknown

If our two loves be one, or thou and I

Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

-John Donne

I love thee - I love thee,

'Tis all that I can say

It is my vision in the night,

My dreaming in the day.

-Thomas Hood

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

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.  -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Love is a symbol of eternity.  It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.  -Author Unknown

Love one another and you will be happy.  It's as simple and as difficult as that.  -Michael Leunig

Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart.  -Author Unknown

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.  -Zora Neale Hurston

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.  -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Let all thy joys be as the month of May,

And all thy days be as a marriage day.

-Francis Quarles

Love - a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to pucker.  -Author Unknown

Love me and the world is mine.  -David Reed

Marriage: that I call the will of two to create the one who is more than those who created it.  -Friedrich Nietzsche

My heart to you is given:

Oh, do give yours to me;

We'll lock them up together,

And throw away the key.

-Frederick Saunders

Marriage, n:  The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.  -Ambrose Bierce

My whole heart for my whole life.  -French saying used on poesy rings

Many are the starrs I see, but in my eye no starr like thee.  -English saying used on poesy rings

Spouse:  someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.  -Author Unknown

True love stories never have endings.  -Richard Bach

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.  -Martin Luther

Trip over love, you can get up.  Fall in love and you fall forever.  -Author Unknown

The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.  -Peter Devries

The Oriole weds his mottled mate,

The Lily weds the bee;

Heaven's marriage ring is round the earth,

Let me bind thee?

-Author Unknown

The highest happiness on earth is marriage.  -William Lyon Phelps

Tell me how many beads there are

In a silver chain

Of evening rain,

Unravelled from the tumbling main,

And threading the eye of a yellow star: -

So many times do I love again.

-Thomas Lovell Beddoes

We have the greatest pre-nuptial agreement in the world.  It's called love.  -Gene Perret

Who, being loved, is poor?  -Oscar Wilde

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, both are infinite.

-William Shakespeare

Never go to bed mad.  Stay up and fight.  -Phyllis Diller, Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints, 1966

One of the best things about marriage is that it gets young people to bed at a decent hour.  -M.M. Musselman

There is no such cozy combination as man and wife.  -Menander

Think not because you are now wed

That all your courtship's at an end.

-Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza

Two souls, one heart.  -French saying used on poesy rings

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.  -Emily Brontë

Wedlock is the deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise lounge.  -Mrs Patrick Campbell

When love is not madness, it is not love.  -Pedro Calderon de la Barca

When the one man loves the one woman and the one woman loves the one man, the very angels desert heaven and come and sit in that house and sing for joy.  -The Brahma Sutras

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.  -Author Unknown

[W]hen you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.  -Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally