Marriage has been an established institution for an eternity, so one could think it’s a pretty certain bet.
This endless number of famous people, however, had a whole range of thoughts to articulate on marriage. Feel free to share these quotes when it’s your anniversary or that of a friend or simply when the time to get married is drawing nearer and you’d like to publicly state what you think. It’s a pretty hot topic, indeed.
Famous Quotes about Marriage
- 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
- Happiness is only real when shared. Jon Krakauer
- Love is an act of endless forgiveness; a tender look which becomes a habit. Peter Ustinov
- If I get married, I want to be very married. Audrey Hepburn
- To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous. Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
- Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
- The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely. Charlotte Brontë
- It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. Friedrich Nietzsche
- You know it’s never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It’s always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride. Jodi Picoult, Mercy
- After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. Mark Twain, Diaries of Adam & Eve
- A great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences. Dave Meurer
- The only way love can last a lifetime is if it’s unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love. Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare
- 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, Adam Bede
- Marriages, even the best ones—perhaps especially the best ones—are an ongoing process of spoken and unspoken forgiveness.
- Never forget the nine most important words of any family-
I love you.
You are beautiful.
Please forgive me.
H. Jackson Brown Jr. - There is nothing 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, The Odyssey
- To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you’re wrong, admit it; whenever you’re right, shut up. Ogden Nash
- Find a woman who makes you feel more alive. She won’t make life perfect but she’ll make it infinitely more interesting. And then love her with all that’s in you. Gayle Roper, Shadows on the Sand
- What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security,’ and, ‘What a man is is an arrow into the future and a what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- If you have to convince someone to stay with you then they have already left. Shannon L. Alder
- Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel: sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
- Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine. Honoré de Balzac
- I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage. Mahatma Gandhi
- A sacrament–like marriage–means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you’re modeling God. And God never gives up. Jodi Picoult
Funny Quotes about Marriage
- Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed. H.M. Harwood
- 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
- Marriage is a fine institution, but I’m not ready for an institution. Mae West
- Longed for him. Got him. Shit. Margaret Atwood
- There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won’t, and that’s a wife who can’t cook and will. Robert Frost
- Someone told me the delightful story of the crusader who put a chastity belt on his wife and gave the key to his best friend for safekeeping, in case of his death. He had ridden only a few miles away when his friend, riding hard, caught up with him, saying ‘You gave me the wrong key! Anaïs Nin
- Yes, we praise women over 40 for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it’s not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman over 40, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year old waitress. Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”, here’s an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage! Andy Rooney
- Why does a woman work ten years to change a man, then complain he’s not the man she married? Barbra Streisand
- By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. Socrates
- Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There’s no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere. Groucho Marx
- I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. Groucho Marx
- 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
- An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her. Agatha Christie
- My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met. Rodney Dangerfield
- My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked. Winston S. Churchill
- Every culture has some ritual for joining two people together and making them stay that way, and ours is giving tax breaks. Bauvard
- Not only is love blind, it’s a little hard of hearing. Brian P. Cleary
- The man may be the head of the household. But the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head whichever way she pleases. Nia Vardalos
- Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Long Quotes about Marriage
- When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth……
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, Into the season-less world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. Kahlil Gibran, Le Prophète - People always fall in love with the most perfect aspects of each other’s personalities. Who wouldn’t? Anybody can love the most wonderful parts of another person. But that’s not the clever trick. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner’s faults honestly and say, ‘I can work around that. I can make something out of it.’? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it’s always going to pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you. Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
- I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don’t want to look around any more: I don’t need to look around for anything. Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
- When you find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will stand in front of you when other’s cast stones, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who will hold your hand when your sick, who thinks your pretty without makeup, the one who turns to his friends and say, ‘that’s her’, the one that would bear your rejection because losing you means losing his will to live, who kisses you when you screw up, watches the stars and names one for you and will hold and rock that baby for hours so you can sleep…..you marry him all over again.”
― Shannon L. Alder - Eve was not taken out of Adam’s head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him. Matthew Henry
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