My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Journalist, Author
Wedlock’s like wine, not properly judged of till the second glass.
—Douglas William Jerrold (1803–57) English Writer, Dramatist, Wit
Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.
—Unknown
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
When a match has equal partners then I fear not.
—Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) Greek Playwright
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
When we see the avaricious and crafty taking companions to their tables, and their beds, without any inquiry but after farms and money; or the giddy and thoughtless uniting themselves for life to those whom they have only seen by the light of tapers; when parents make articles for children without inquiring after their consent; when some marry for heirs to disappoint their brothers; and others throw themselves into the arms of those whom they do not love, because they have found themselves rejected where they were more solicitous to please; when some marry because their servants cheat them; some because they squander their own money; some because their houses are pestered with companv; some because they will live like other people; and some because they are sick of themselves, we are not so much inclined to wonder that marriage is sometimes unhappy, as that it appears so little loaded with calamity, and cannot but conclude that society has something in itself eminently agreeable to human nature, when we find its pleasures so great, that even the ill choice of a companion can hardly over balance them.—Those, therefore, that rail against matrimony, should be informed, that they are neither to wonder, or repine, that a contract begun on such principles has ended in disappointment.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
For any man to match above his rank, is but to sell his liberty.
—Philip Massinger (1583–1640) English Playwright
There is only one thing for a man to do who is married to a woman who enjoys spending money, and that is enjoy earning it.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
Marriage with a good woman is a harbor in the tempest of life; with a bad woman, it is a tempest in the harbor.
—Jean Antoine Petit-Senn (1792–1870) Swiss Poet
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
When two people marry they become in the eyes of the law one person, and that one person is the husband.
—Shana Alexander (1925–2005) American Journalist, Editor, Author
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
—Agatha Christie (1890–1976) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled, but the fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband’s bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American Novelist, Human Rights Activist
A man would prefer to come home to an unmade bed and a happy woman than to a neatly made bed and an angry woman.
—Marlene Dietrich (1901–92) German-born American Actor, Singer
Maids want nothing but husbands, and when they have them, they want everything.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband’s dinners.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall out of love with him, or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you maybe fall in love again.
—Judith Viorst (b.1931) American Psychoanalyst, Journalist, Writer
Progress is the law of life; man is not a man as yet.
—Robert Browning (1812–89) English Poet
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Every time a woman makes herself laugh at her husband’s often-told jokes she betrays him. The man who looks at his woman and says “What would I do without you?” is already destroyed.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
I’ve never yet met a man who could look after me. I don’t need a husband. What I need is a wife.
—Joan Collins (b.1933) English Actress
If you would have a good wife, marry one who has been a good daughter.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
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 (1869–1940) Lithuanian-American Anarchist, Feminist
One should never know too precisely whom one has married.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
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 (1824–1905) Scottish Novelist, Lecturer, Poet
Marriage: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
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
Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
True love stories never have endings.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
Marriages are not as they are made, but as they turn out.
—Italian Proverb
I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
A TV host asked my wife, “Have you ever considered divorce?” She replied: “Divorce, never. Murder, often.”
—Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American Actor, Political Activist
Marriage is one long conversation, checkered by disputes.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age—as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.
—Phyllis Diller (b.1917) American Actor, Comedian
You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.
—Charlotte Bronte (1816–1855) English Novelist, Poet
Marriage isn’t a process of prolonging the life of love, but of mummifying the corpse.
—P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) British Novelist, Short-story Writer, Playwright
Flesh of Flesh, Bone of my Bone thou art. and from thy State mine shall never be parted, bliss or woe.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater
In choosing a wife, a nurse, or a school-teacher, look to the breed.—There is as much blood in men as in horses.
—Charles Simmons (1924–2017) American Editor, Novelist
Being married gives one one’s position like nothing else can.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
They that marry old people merely in expectation of burying them, hang themselves in the hope that some one will come and cut the halter.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
Marrying is easy, it’s housework that’s hard.
—Common Proverb
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
The bloom or blight of all men’s happiness.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
I dreamed of a wedding of elaborate elegance; a church filled with flowers and friends. I asked him what kind of wedding he wished for; he said one that would make me his wife.
—Unknown