The Don Juans among men and the light-o’-loves among women are afraid of marriage.
—Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Austrian Psychiatrist
Choose your wife as you wish your children to be.
—Common Proverb
Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
—Homer (751–651 BCE) Ancient Greek Poet
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Trip over love, you can get up. Fall in love and you fall forever.
—Unknown
A husband is a guy who tells you when you’ve got on too much lipstick and helps you with your girdle when your hips stick.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
It is better to be unfaithful than faithful without wanting to be.
—Brigitte Bardot (b.1934) French Film Star
If I ever marry it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.
—Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Polymath, Painter, Sculptor, Inventor, Architect
I know the sum of all that makes a man—a just man—happy, consists in the well choosing of his wife; and then well to discharge it, does require equality of years, of birth, of fortune.
—Philip Massinger (1583–1640) English Playwright
Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing stands in the way of our happy union.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
Inertia accounts for two-thirds of marriages. But love accounts for the other third.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one’s face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.
—Carolyn Gold Heilbrun (1926–2003) American Author, Literary Critic
My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it.
—Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American Comedian, TV Personality, Actor
Marriages are not as they are made, but as they turn out.
—Italian Proverb
The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy, the single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead.
—Ask Ann Landers (1918–2002) American Advice Columnist
Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.
—William O. Douglas (1898–1980) American Judge
No man was ever shot by his wife while doing the dishes.
—Indian Proverb
True love stories never have endings.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
I… chose my wife as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
Marriage is a medicine which acts differently on good men and good women.—She does not love him quite enough—cure,—marriage.—He loves her a little too much—cure,—marriage.
—Charles Reade (1814–84) English Novelist, Playwright
Girls usually have a paper mache face on their wedding day.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
All marriages are happy. It’s living together afterwards that is difficult.
—Anonymous
A married man falling into misfortune is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one, chiefly because his spirits are soothed and retrieved by domestic endearments, and his self-respect kept alive by finding that although all abroad be darkness and humiliation, yet there is a little world of love at home over which he is a monarch.
—Jeremy Taylor
My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
—Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American Comedian, TV Personality, Actor
An ideal wife is one who remains faithful to you but tries to be just as charming as if she weren’t.
—Sacha Guitry (1885–1957) Russian-born French Actor, Dramatist
Whether a fellow winds up with a nest egg or a goose egg depends a heap on the kind of chick he married.
—Unknown
Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same.
—Erica Jong (b.1942) American Novelist, Feminist
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labor, 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 (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Marriage! Nothing else demands so much from a man!
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian Playwright
Marriage is the greatest earthly happiness when founded on complete sympathy.
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) British Head of State
The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatsoever, for my heart always alights upon the nearest perch.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
One of the best hearing aids a man can have is an attentive wife.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
Once you are married, there is nothing for you, not even suicide, but to be good.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.
—William Wycherley (c.1640–1716) English Dramatist
Quarrels are the dowry which married folk bring one another.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
Marriages sealed with rings end with drawn knives.
—French Proverb
Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
Marriage is socialism among two people.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael (1766–1817) French Woman of Letters
Never marry for money. Ye’ll borrow it cheaper.
—Scottish Proverb
Constancy… that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.
—Henry L. Stimson (1867–1950) American Political leader, Military Leader, Lawyer