Marriage Quotes

Véra assumed her married name almost as a stage name; rarely has matrimony so much represented a profession. It was one of the ironies of the life that – born at a time and place where women could and did lay claim to all kinds of ambitions – she should elevate the role of wife to a high art. […] Traditionally, a man changes his name and braces himself for fame; a woman changes hers and passes into oblivion. This was not to be Véra’s case, although she did gather her married name around her like a cloak, which she occasionally opened to startling effect. She would never be forced to make a woman’s historic choice between love and work. Nor would Verochka, as Vladimir called her, squander any of her professional training, though as it happened her husband would be the direct (and sole) beneficiary of that expertise.

~ Stacy Schiff

... There may not be even two men living in the world whom I would have agreed to marry, certainly not on such short notice. But I do not need two; I only need one.

~ Marie Brennan

When Sweetu wasn’t being reduced to merely existing as a bride, as a piece of meat to be handled and prodded, to have decorative contraptions stuck into her skull, her interests were otherwise unexpressed. She rarely complained, hardly asked for anything, and maybe that’s because Indian girls grow up going to weddings and we watch the procedure and we know our roles: be demure, don’t complain, cry but don’t scream, get tea for anyone older than you, and calmly meet expectations.

~ Scaachi Koul

Marriages are like pianos. They go in and out of tune.

~ Sarah Waters

Sometimes a rut can be a comfortable place to be, but ours was full of too many differences and resentments to be wholly comfortable. I had always had my own way in the marriage — about what we’d do, where we’d do it, when, how. Katharine had always argued, and always given in. In the process she’d become more resentful, I guess, except that I was too busy with my own work to notice. But in turn she was less and less appealing to me. She’s a couple of years older than me, I guess you know that, but that wasn’t all. Those stolid American middle-class values, her sensible clothes, her sense of responsibility, her moderation in all things — frankly, they bored me. We made love less and less, and she didn’t even seem to miss it. I did.

~ Shashi Tharoor

Above all, he loathed men who beat women; for, real men didn’t exercise their strength on frail creatures, they joined the army and put Shazaria’s enemies in their graves.

~ A.h. Septimius

So what's the secret to staying together? I asked her. Be nice? she offered. I laughed, but that may be it, the way a secret to losing weight is to eat less. Be nice. Don't leave. That's all.

~ Ada Calhoun

I want to say that at various points in your marriage, may it last forever, you will look at this person and feel only rage.

~ Ada Calhoun

...there is so much beauty in the trying, and in the failing, and in the trying again.

~ Ada Calhoun

The romantic fairy tales we grew up with -- where marriage is the happy ending rather than the opening scene -- are not useful for grown-ups.

~ Ada Calhoun

Forgiveness is difficult,” she said, making me feel small-hearted and brittle. “You don’t have to trust Adam again, not right away, but it does mean you have to accept what’s happened and start to take steps away from the infidelity.” So once again, the burden is on me. Planning the wedding, though it was a genuine joy, was on me. Once we figured out why we couldn’t get pregnant, the burden was on me, too, with those horrible shots that made me so hormonal I had to go into the bathroom at work and cry, and everyone knew and was so nice, which made me cry more. All Adam had to do was switch to wearing boxers and have more sex. The pregnancy—me again. I’m the one with a four-inch scar and a pooch of skin. The house decorating, painting, hiring people to overhaul the plumbing and electric… me. His mother’s birthday—also mine to remember. Holidays, vacations, weekend plans, all mine. And while I would never call my girls a burden, the huge responsibility of raising them is 99 percent mine. And now the future of our marriage is on me. I have to forgive him. I have to accept his apology. I have to get past this. That first night, I lay stiffly next to him. He gave me a meaningful basset-hound look and said, “Thank you, Rachel,” and it was all I could do not to flip him off.

~ Kristan Higgins

Book club meets every other month or so. Besides marriage counseling and the very occasional night out with my sister, I’m home twenty-nine nights out of thirty, and still the girls resent me. Not once have they ever complained about Adam’s late meetings—which may or may not have been booty calls for amazing porno sex. Me, I go out to my stupid book club, and I’m punished for it.

~ Kristan Higgins

(Personally, I have avoided many fights by going to bed angry and waking up to realize that I'd just been tired.)

~ Ada Calhoun

By staying married, we give something to ourselves and to others: hope. Hope that in steadfastly loving someone, we ourselves, for all our faults, will be loved; that the broken world will be made whole. To hitch your rickety wagon to the flickering star of another fallible human being -- what an insane thing to do. What a burden, and what a gift.

~ Ada Calhoun

...even good marriages sometimes involve flinging a remote control at the wall.

~ Ada Calhoun

People who don't marry miss both the pelting hardships of marriage and its warm rewards.

~ Ada Calhoun

Lady Windermere: Windermere and I married for love.Duchess of Berwick: Yes, we begin like that. It was only Berwick's brutal and incessant threats of suicide that made me accept him at all, and before the year was out, he was running after all kinds of petticoats, every colour, every shape, every material.

~ Oscar Wilde

Marriage is situational but love is accidental.

~ Tripurari

As married people, we dwell on a spectrum between happy and unhappy, in love and out of love, and we move back and forth on that line decade by decade, year by year, week by week, even hour by hour.

~ Ada Calhoun

Failure is part of being human, and it is definitely part of being married.

~ Ada Calhoun

...that's part of what marriage means: sometimes hating this other person but staying together because you promised you would.

~ Ada Calhoun

Dating is poetry. Marriage is a novel. There are times, maybe years, that are all exposition.

~ Ada Calhoun

Forsaking all others means going deep with one person -- exhaustingly deep.

~ Ada Calhoun

Wherever you go, there you are. You would just have different problems. Are the problems you have now so bad that any other problems would be better?

~ Ada Calhoun

The boring parts don't last forever. In retrospect, they aren't even boring.

~ Ada Calhoun

Let's go to bed. Those four words differentiate a marriage from every other kind of relationship. We aren't going to find a way to agree, but let's go to bed. Not because we want to, but because we have to. We hate each other right now, but let's go to bed. It's the only one we have. Let's go to our sides, but the sides of the same bed. Let's retreat into ourselves, but together. How many conversations had ended with those four words? How many fights?

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

This is not the story of my marriage. I cannot tell that story: I cannot take hold of, or lay out for anyone, the many swamps and grasses and pockets of fresh air and dank air that have gone over us.

~ Elizabeth Strout

In most marriages, lust and love become tempered by normalcy. If you hear your husband farting in the bathroom seconds before he emerges and asks if you want to fool around, you generally don’t want to fool around. You might, after a few minutes, but you have to forgive your husband for… well, for being human. For eating a bean burrito. After all, you ate the bean burrito, too.

~ Kristan Higgins

Treaties are like marriage: they aren't entered in to with the thought of betrayal, and once they're concluded one shouldn't be suspicious. And if that doesn't suit somebody, they shouldn't get married. Because you can't become a cuckold without being a husband, but you'll admit that fear of wearing the horns is a pitiful and quite ridiculous justification for enforced celibacy.

~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.Poverty: The result of marriage.

~ Idries Shah

Intelligence in a spouse is a timeless quality.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Families share relationships based not only blood, but also the unique affiliation of a terribly long cord when measured in comparison with any other undertaking in a person’s life, from cradle to the grave if you will. These intimate associations create a bond of love, affection, goodwill, and joy that we seek to duplicate when we marry and begin creating our extended families.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

It's worked! Our marriage has outlasted all of the world leaders, except for Castro. And if we keep talking, arguing, making love and dancing to the Ramones- it'll probably keep working.

~ Stephen King

I've always said, stuff the engagement ring! Just build me a really big library.

~ Emma Watson

One should marry when one stops having a good time and settle down.

~ Apurva Sharma

When, some months later, Zoltan emailed me about his decision to run for president, I immediately called him. The first thing I asked was what his wife thought of the plan.“Well, in a way,” he said, “it was Lisa who gave me the idea. Remember how I said she wanted me to do something concrete, get some kind of a proper job?”“I do,” I said. “Although I’m guessing running for president on the immortality platform was not what she had in mind.”“That’s correct,” he confirmed. “It took a little while for her to come around to the idea.”“How did you break it to her?”“I left a note on the refrigerator,” he said, “and went out for a couple hours.

~ Mark O'connell

The amount of women you hear say, If Donald—or Arthur—or whatever his name was—had only lived. And I sometimes think but if he had, he'd have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.

~ Agatha Christie

No finer, greater gift in the world than that: When man and woman possess their home, two minds, two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies, a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.

~ Homer

I welcome you to my home as my son, as the husband of my daughter who is the noor of my eye. Your pain will be our pain, your joy our joy. I hope that you will come to see your Khala and Jamila and me as a second set of parents, and I pray for your and our lovely Soraya jan's happiness. you both have our blessings.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Should I get married? Should I be good?

~ Gregory Corso