Quotes about Marriage

I saw an elderly Amish man on TV the other night, and someone asked what was the key to a successful marriage, and he said : The words "I'm sorry" and "forgive me" .

...so very true!

I have urged on Woman independence of Man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in Woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage, and prevented either sex from being what it should be to itself or the other.
I wish Woman to live, first for God's sake.  Then she will not make an imperfect man her god, and thus sink to idolatry.  Then she will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and poverty.  Then, if she finds what she needs in Man embodied, she will know how to love, and be worthy of being loved.

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 moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Nora leaves her husband, not--as the stupid critic would have it--because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children.  Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a life-long proximity between two strangers?  No need for the woman to know anything of the man, save his income.  As to the knowledge of the woman--what is there to know except that she has a pleasing appearance? 

The voice within is what I'm married to. All marriage is a metaphor for that marriage. My lover is the place inside me where an honest yes and no come from. That's my true partner. It's always there.
And to tell you yes when my integrity says no is to divorce that partner.

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 consition continuously until death do them part.

I me wed.

"Boise Cascade," said the other Republican husband.
"Sierra Club," said his Democrat wife.
'Wait, wait," I said. "So one of you fights for trees and the other fights against trees?"
"No, no," he said. "We make the paper she writes on to file lawsuits against the paper we make."

Sometimes idiosyncrasies which used to be irritating become endearing, part of the complexity of a partner who has become woven deep into our own selves.

Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invaribly they are both disappointed.

He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fullness of perfection lies in him.

My Soul’s Marriage

A commitment to your own and
the world’s transformation.

For the Benefit of myself and All Beings.

I,            (my ego & personality)

Do solemnly swear
to love, honor and obey my soul,
my path to realization  and
relationship with a higher,
deeper creative power,
for better or worse,
for richer or poorer,
in sickness and in health,
from now and forever more.

 "Marriage hath in it less of beauty but more of safety, than the single life; it hath more care, but less danger, it is more merry, and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but it is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful."

The trouble is, I can't find a part of myself where you're not important.  I write in order to be worth your while and to finance the way I want to live with you.  Not the way you want to live.  The way I want to live with you.  Without you I wouldn't care.  I'd eat tinned spaghetti and put on yesterday's clothes.  But as it is I change my socks, and make money, and tart up Brodie's unspeakable drivel into speakable drivel so he can be an author too, like me.

I knew the moment I met her that she was trouble...
or that I was in trouble...
or that we would get into trouble together -
and then we danced.
                                                             ~ Scott Nilsson

I believe we're going to find that respect and affection are essential to all relationships working and contempt destroys them.

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.

We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying "Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness."

Was the Buddha married? His wife would say, "Are you just going to sit around like that all day?"

Managing both ways (up and down) is more like a marriage than a job.

You do not find love; you decide to love.  Love does not happen to you; it happens in you. The risk of love is declaring that you have decided to love.  Your heart is open and you are exposed, hoping only for mercy from your beloved.

The duty of love proceeds from logic.  A fundamental truth of love is that it is always for creation. It is also a fundamental truth of lovers that they can never know what is best for their beloved.  Therefore the harsh duty of love is to let go.

The voice within is what I'm married to.  All marriage is a metaphor for that marriage.  My lover is the place inside me where an honest yes and no come from.  That's my true partner.  It's always there.  And to tell you yes when my integrity says no is to divorce that partner.

"I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career."

"A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after."

The point is that getting married for lust or money or social status or even love is usually trouble.  The point is that marriage is a maze into which we wander - a maze that is best got through with a great companion.

The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.

Nothing can cost you someone you love. The only thing that can cost you your husband is if you believe a thought. That's how you move away from him. That's how the marriage ends. You are one with your husband until you believe the thought that he should look a certain way, he should give you something, he should be something other than what he is. That's how you divorce him. Right then and there you have lost your marriage.

He felt married to her, that was all.

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.