Quotes & Sayings About Bad Marriage

Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands. — Doris Lessing

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

You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil. — Azar Nafisi

Couples in distress too often turn to solutions that can be summed up by "You do your thing and I'll do my thing" or "You take care of yourself and I'll take care of myself." We hear pop psychology pronouncements such as "I'm not ready to be in a relationship" and "You have to love yourself before anyone can love you."

Is any of this true? Is it really possible to love yourself before someone ever loves you?

Think about it. How could this be true? If it were true, babies would come into this world already self-loving or self-hating. And we know they don't. In fact, human beings don't start by thinking anything about themselves, good or bad. We learn to love ourselves precisely because we have experienced being loved by someone. We learn to take care of ourselves because somebody has taken care of us. — Stan Tatkin

A bad marriage is a season in hell — Bangambiki Habyarimana

So, I poisoned his coffee this morning and watched him drink it. — A.F. Stewart

Protecting people from their bad habits - in fact, defining which habits should be considered "bad" in the first place - is a prerogative lawmakers have eagerly seized. Prostitution, gambling, liquor sales on the Sabbath, pornography, usurious loans, sexual relations outside of marriage (or, if your tastes are unusual, within marriage), are all habits that various legislatures have regulated, outlawed, or tried to discourage with strict (and often ineffective) laws. When — Charles Duhigg

They weren't bad guys, just products of a society run by men and infused with rules to leave everyone sexually frustrated. Even in marriage sex in India is often just a brief, clumsy fumble in the dark, trying not to wake up grandma who's sleeping in the same bed. — Tom Thumb

Lucy could see that love unconfined, love outside convention, might well make a woman an unfit mother; you were one kind of woman or another: you were good or you were bad, as the world saw it, and no stations in between. They allowed you to choose; you could be the maternal or the erotic, but not a bit of both. The latter made you forget the former. Men married the maternal and then longed for the erotic. Or they married the erotic by mistake, and set about making it into the maternal, and then were just as disappointed. — Fay Weldon

There was a time in the marriage when I could no longer look at myself in a mirror, couldn't feel I was a nice person. A bad relationship can do that, can make you doubt everything good you ever felt about yourself. — Dionne Warwick

With my divorce, and even during the end of my marriage before it even got publicly bad, how I decided to cope with things was to go on the treadmill for an hour. — Khloe Kardashian

This is not my first road trip and it's not my first marriage either. I know that my hissy fit in Fougeres and our bad luck on the road to Bordeaux does not spell doom for either our love affair or our journey. Love affairs are like road trips, and road trips are like love affairs -- from beginning to end the emotions are equally intense, the phases just as predictable. Love and travel. They both have their ups and downs. — Vivian Swift

Somebody who has been in a very bad wreck is going to be very conscientious about not speeding through a yellow light ... You just learn so many good lessons when you go through a failed marriage. — Amy Grant

Marriage accustomed one to the good things, so one came to take them for granted, but it magnified the bad things, so they came to feel as painful as a grain in one's eye. An open window, a forgotten quart of milk, a TV set left blaring, socks on the bathroom floor could become occasions for incredible rage. — Marilyn French

I'm too busy being the bad guy." It was one of those things that get said in a marriage, something that starts out as a genuine compliment but turns into a criticism without either party noticing or caring all that much. — Sarah Dunn

One of the joys of marriage is that one can be bad again. — Madeline Hunter

A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc. — Charlie Munger

They make Spy Kids, they make Scream, they make A Scary Movie. This doesn't do that, so it could be a very bad marriage. I'm trying to keep this potential nightmare quiet because we're just finishing editing. — Terry Gilliam

I have learnt that a good marriage is healing for the soul, something to relish. But a bad marriage is long-suffering, a thing to be endured. The only good thing about marriage is that it's perishable like human life. — Meghna Pant

Relax, Cole, I wasn't proposing. She put her hand on his shoulder for a second, and when she
removed it, the impression of her warmth lingered. Burned.
And for a moment he wondered if marriage wouldn't be such a bad idea. — Maisey Yates

I vowed never to condemn anyone to this life, especially without a choice, as happened to me. No matter how politely we behave, we are still fallen demons, as the legends say. I could never do that to her." Rafe's gaze softened. "Just because you were Changed without a choice does not mean it would be so bad for your duchess. Perhaps she wants to spend eternity at your side." Ian laughed as he pictured an eternity with the vexing, mischievous woman, then he sobered. "I do not think so. She fought with all her tiny being against marriage to me. She nearly ran away to avoid being shackled to my side." "I would not be so certain of this," Rafe said softly. "Feelings change, after all." As — Brooklyn Ann

I'm still going on bad dates when by now I should be in a bad marriage. — Laura Kightlinger

Marriage is an intimate relationship between two people. It is a bad idea to involve a third party. — Amy Dickinson

I don't want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting, or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Breaking Bad and if either watches it without the other, they're dead meat. I want to see you guys high-five each other like teammates on a recreational softball team you both do for fun. — Mindy Kaling

Product Warning
If this book were a medication with a label, it would read something like this:
Side Effects Include but Are Not Limited to
renewed sense of self-esteem
increased motivation in all areas of life
You may also lose weight, fall in love, leave a bad marriage, create a better one, have closer relationships with your family, or find the job of your dreams.
Some Users Have experienced
a kick in their step
a swing in their hips
a twinkle in their eye
Hair-tossing (commercial-style) is common, but seek medical attention if you pinch a nerve or can't stop doing it. — Stacy London

Philip wasn't the sort of man to make a friend of a woman. He wanted devotion. I gave him that. I did, you know. But I couldn't stand being made a fool of. I couldn;t stand being put on probation, like an office-boy, to see if I was good enough to be condescended to. I quite thought he was honest when he said he didn't believe in marriage
and then it turned out that it was a test, to see whether my devotion was abject enough. Well, it wasn't. I didn't like having matrimony offered as a bad-conduct prize. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Nothing will undermine your effectiveness as a leader faster than a bad marriage. — Michael Hyatt

A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you can't let go. — Ambrose Bierce

Trust is something you have to practice. Someday you're going to fall in love with someone, and you need to understand what trust is all about. What you doing now is developing bad practices of betraying people's trust. — Ron Suskind

You don't believe in marriage ... "
" I changed my mind. I figured out the flaw in my reasoning. I told you it was more romantic not to get married, because then you just stay with each other for the good times. But I was wrong. It only means something when you stay during the bad times. For better or worse. — Lisa Kleypas

I think it's almost immoral to keep on with a marriage that's really bad. It just gets more and more rotten and vindictive and everybody gets more and more hurt. There's not enough honesty about marriage, I think. I wish more people would face the truth about their marital situations. — Johnny Carson

Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well. — Charles Bukowski

The deep happiness that marriage can bring, then, lies on the far side of sacrificial service in the power of the Spirit. That is, you only discover your own happiness after each of you has put the happiness of your spouse ahead of your own, in a sustained way, in response to what Jesus has done for you. Some will ask, "If I put the happiness of my spouse ahead of my own needs - then what do I get out of it?" The answer is - happiness. That is what you get, but a happiness through serving others instead of using them, a happiness that won't be bad for you. It is the joy that comes from giving joy, from loving another person in a costly way. — Timothy Keller

When you're so close to material, it would be as if you had come out of a bad marriage. You would be so close to it that you would be paying attention to detail that may not mean a whole lot for the reader. — Tim O'Brien

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage. — William Shakespeare

I came seriously close to getting married four times, and each time I backed off in fear or for one reason or another. Each occasion was different, but in hindsight when I look at the people involved, it wasn't a bad thing what I did. I think it may have been more complex had the marriage taken place. — Ratan Tata

The Bible's solution to a bad marriage is a reorientation to the radical, spousal love of Christ communicated in the gospel. "You shall not commit adultery" (Exod 20:14) makes sense in the context of his spousal love, especially on the cross, where he was completely faithful to us. Only when we know this sacrificial, spousal love of Christ will we have real fortitude to combat lust. His love is fulfilling, so it keeps us from looking to sexual fulfillment to give us what only Jesus can. — Timothy Keller

Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife. — Raymond Carver

Even when it isn't going well, knitting can be deeply spiritual. Knitting sets goals that you can meet. Sometimes when I work on something complicated or difficult - ripping out my work and starting over, porong over tomes of knitting expertise, screeching "I don't get it!" white practically weeping with frusteation - my husband looks at me and says, "I don't know why you think you like knitting." I just stare at him. I don't like knitting. I LOVE knitting. I don't know what could have possible led him to think that I'm not enjoying myself. The cursing? The crying? The forteen sheets of shredded graph paper? Knittong is like a marriage (I tell him) and you don't just trash the whole thing because there are bad moments. — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

The woman of my dreams. The woman of my nightmares. Everything good and bad about my life. The "I do" that "I didn't. — Chris Fabry

People talk about love, about marriage, too, like they're magic. There's no magic. Just two people who like each other and decide they're willing to get stuck in together. If you can make your way through the bad patches, it works, and you know each other better afterwards, make a better team. If you can't, it doesn't. No secret. No magic. — Rosalind James

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

Or perhaps we should just junk the whole idea of getting
married in the first place. I'm generally against anything where
you're supposed to change your name. When else do you get
named something else? On joining a nunnery, or becoming a porn
star. As an ostensibly joyful celebration of love, that's bad company
to be in. — Caitlin Moran

Over the course of a fifty-year marriage, one bad year isn't very significant. Your marriage might still be there to be saved. But you'll never know if you keep indulging your hate and anger like the world owes you reparations. — Jonathan Tropper

It's not a bad thing, if you're responsible about it. Just don't start having boyfriends. Wait until you've found your husband."
"And how am I supposed to find a husband if I can't have a boyfriend until then?" I asked ironically. — Zack Love

An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons - marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning. One — C.S. Lewis

Don't be frightened of your own reflection. We all have bad moments in front of the mirror," says Noor. "You should probably get married. I have heard that a good husband is the only cure for bad dreams. You know why? Because then you are sleeping with you nightmare. — Mohammed Hanif

There is no such thing as a perfect match. There are only somewhat good and somewhat bad matches. A couple are like two pebbles that are next to each other on a beach. They will have rough edges and rub each other the wrong way initially. But as they spend time together and the waves pound them, the edges rub off and they will seem made for each other. — Farahad Zama

The realization that a bad marriage might be bad enough to cause a painful split provided ammunition to those women who preferred to abstain from marriage than to enter a flawed one. What — Rebecca Traister

I was, in the 1960s, in a marriage. To use the word 'bad' would be perhaps the understatement of the year. It was dreadful. — Sherwin B. Nuland

People in one of two states in a relationship. The first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It's a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and they'll say,'Oh, he's just in a crummy mood.'Or they can be in negative sentiment override, said that even a relatively new tool thing that a partner says get perceived as negative. In negative sentiment override state, people draw lasting conclusions about each other. If their spouse does something positive, it's a selfish person doing a positive thing. It's really hard to change their states, and those states determine whether when one party tries to repair things, the other party sees that as repair or hostile manipulation. — John Gottberg

Love always doesn't come across as bad, but it always has two sides. — Auliq Ice

Of course married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one's worse habits. — Oscar Wilde

When she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle. Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say." "But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it began. — Gustave Flaubert

In Ollie's opinion, garnered from extensive reading, nothing was guaranteed to drive people apart faster than finally having sex. It was pretty much fatal to any good flirtatious relationship. Almost as bad as marriage. And everyone knew there were no romantic books written about married couples. It was all in the chase. — John Wiltshire

All good marriages need outside support, so we need to seek out the right and appropriate sources. These should be people who are not only safe, but whose influence on us strengthens the marriage bond. Find people who are "for" your marriage and want to help you grow together. Avoid those who play the game of "poor you, being married to that bad person. — Henry Cloud

There are times in people's lives when a significant event occurs and they're not aware of it - the last time you pick up a son before he's too heavy, the final kiss of a marriage gone bad, the view of a beloved landscape you'll never see again. Weeks later, I realized those were Dad's last words to me. — Chris Offutt

Don't overreact. For example, if someone inadvertently embarrasses you in public, don't let anger get the best of you. It really isn't necessary to frame the person for a murder he/she didn't commit. Wouldn't it be enough to simply break up his or her marriage instead? — Anthony Rubino Jr.

I've always deplored bad heterosexual values that dictate the minute a marriage is over the former partners no longer speak to each other; only straights could be so cruel and inhuman as to reject totally the person with whom they've shared their life for 20 or 30 years. — Edmund White

Things didn't go bad between Georgie and Neal. Things were always bad
and always good. Their marriage was like a set of scales constantly balancing itself. And then, at some point, when neither of them was paying attention, they'd tipped so far over into bad, they'd settled there. Now only an enormous amount of good would shift them back. An impossible amount of good. — Rainbow Rowell

But just now, he'd gotten on his knees and proposed marriage, like in a television commercial for a diamond ring. Except of course they had the roll of duct tape instead, which, when you came to think about it, was a far more practical item. Such a bad mistake it would be, to embark on marriage and adult life without a nice supply of duct tape. — Nancy Werlin

More than any other personality trait, my mother seemed to be ruled by anger and sadness. She seemed to hate being a mother. Watching her unhappiness as I grew up made me conclude that the answer was to try and be as unemotional as I could, which many therapists have taught me is a bad idea. It also made me want to avoid marriage and having children. — Merrill Markoe

Nothing brings more joy than a good marriage, and nothing brings more misery than a bad marriage. — Billy Graham

Monsieur, if a wife's nature loathes that of the man she is wedded to, marriage must be slavery. Against slavery all right thinkers revolt, and though torture be the price of resistance, torture must be dared: though the only road to freedom lie through the gates of death, those gates must be passed; for freedom is indispensable. Then, monsieur, I would resist as far as my strength permitted; when that strength failed I should be sure of a refuge. Death would certainly screen me both from bad laws and their consequences. — Charlotte Bronte

Sophie, you must be careful," he said. "Quentin is in the rush of exhilaration that sometimes overtakes people new to God, and you mustn't rush into a commitment until you know he is a man to whom you can be loyal in good times and bad, for better and for worse. You will be joining your life with his for all time. You will walk alongside him into whatever valleys or sorrows come his way, agreeing to help shoulder the burdens. His money and power cannot release you from these obligations. That is the nature of the marriage covenant. — Elizabeth Camden

Expandable is exactly what a marriage is. If you refuse the possibility that bad things might happen, a marriage cannot survive. — Courtney Maum

Maybe that's what love's all about. You share the good and the bad, and hope to God that in the end the person will still be waiting for you on the other side. Marriage is a complete and total leap of faith
I've always thought of myself as a risk taker. The greatest risk of all is pursuing someone with your entire heart, knowing that it's completely possible they won't want you back. — Rachel Van Dyken

Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig
and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave. — William Shakespeare

Life is, you know, but an idea. You can fill it up with anything really and deceive yourself into believing that is what you need. You can be happy, sad, benevolent, crafty, unpleasant. That man filled it up with nastiness and it destroyed him in the end. I wonder what could have made him that way. Cruelty on the part of others or cruelty in his heart?" - Lady Cavendish — Noorilhuda

I know I'm guilty of and I think a lot of people are guilty of sort of getting starry-eyed with love and sort of looking over the bad things and keep going and you don't really prepare for how much work marriage really is. — John Krasinski

The thing is, whenever I see Hillary Clinton, I feel like I have to vote for her. She makes me feel guilty because I feel like I should vote for her so that she'll feel better about herself because she'd been in such a bad marriage. — Lewis Black

I also understand that you have to lie to yourself to survive in a bad marriage, you have to delude yourself if you want to carry on in this life. — Rabih Alameddine

Maybe marriage, like life, isn't only about the big moments, whether they be good or bad. Maybe it's all the small things - like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day - that stretches out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond. — Sarah Dessen

No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. I was in my mid-thirties, with a marriage more or less behind me. I was no longer vulnerable to curiosity's enormous momentum. I had nothing new to murmur to another on the subject of myself and not the smallest eagerness about being briefed on Danielle's supposedly unique trajectory - a curve described under the action, one could safely guess, of the usual material and maternal and soulful longings, a few thwarting tics of character, and luck good and bad. A life seemed like an old story. — Joseph O'Neill

You got your cheese, I hope? You won't mind a word of advice? Eat it. Don't put it in a plastic bag in the fridge and save it for visitors; before you know where you are it'll have swollen to three times its size and smell like a chemical factory. You'll open the bag and be putting your face into a bad marriage. — Julian Barnes

A bad marriage is worse than no marriage at all. — Neil Clark Warren

There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce. — P. J. O'Rourke

We see a promise as a personal law, and we see the people who break them as private-life criminals. We think it automatically, one of those truths that just is to us: breaking a promise is a bad, bad thing. A promise can be as buoyant as whispered words or solemn as a marriage vow, but we view it as something pure and untouchable when it should never be either of those things. If a promise is a personal law, a contract, then it ought to be layered with fine print, rules and conditions, promises within those promises, and whether we like it or not, it ought to be something we can snatch back, that we should snatch back, if those rules are violated. — Deb Caletti

She is always married too soon, who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late, who gets a good one. — Daniel Defoe

I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I'm the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage. — Gillian Flynn

It's perhaps not the future I would choose. I still think it's possible to make a success of both marriage and career even though I didn't. But it's not a bad future. And I'm not afraid of it. — Barbara Stanwyck

Bad enough to make mistakes, without going ahead and marrying them. — Craig L. Rice

When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full posession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims
these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name. — Jeffrey Eugenides

The bad news: your love problems are bigger than you think because love problems are God problems. The good news: the solution is bigger than you think because God cares and is involved. Having more love in your marriage means having more of God in your marriage. Having trouble loving is evidence either that you don't know God or that something is interfering in your relationship with God.1 — Winston T. Smith

To protect ourselves against the storms of passion, marriage with a woman is a harbor in the tempest; but with a bad woman it is a tempest in the harbor. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

One thing I know is that it is a bad idea to marry someone who had bad parents. If they hated their mother, if they were hated by their mother or father, your marriage will pay for it in ways both obvious and subtle. When the chips are down, when someone is sick or loses their job or gets scared, the old patterns will kick in and he will treat you the way he treated his mother or the way she treated him. — Ellen Gilchrist

My husbands weren't any of them bad men, I was the problem. Marriage seemed like such a small space whenever I was in it. I liked the getting married. Courtship has a plotline. But there's no plot to being married. Just the same things over and over again. Same fights, same friends, same things you do on a Saturday. The repetition would start to get to me.

And then I couldn't fit my whole self into a marriage, no matter who my husband was. There were parts of me that John liked, and different parts for the others, but no one could deal with all of me, So I'd lop some part off, but then I'd start missing it, wanting it back. I didn't really fall in love until I had that first child. — Karen Joy Fowler

Thank you. There were three of us kids, all right together. I'm the oldest, she was the knee-baby, and my brother Henry came last. Funny, I miss her all the time, but I miss her most when I'm reading Austen. We'd been fans since we were in the seventh and eighth grade, two Creole girls gigglin' about marriage proposals gone bad. Our daddy teased us about reading each other passages during a Fourth of July crawfish boil, so he named the biggest one Mr. Darcy and threw him in the pot." She looked up, a smile fighting the tears in her eyes. "We refused to eat him. — Mary Jane Hathaway

When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it. — Ava Gardner

Maude regards the ones who don't make it as her own personal failures. "I guess I didn't put enough emphasis on 'until death do you part,'" she says sourly, whenever she hears about the latest divorce. "Sad to say, but some are in it just for the good times. Married folks, they gotta be like that cat's claw acacia I've got growin' in my yard. Gotta grab hard and hold on tight when the going gets rough. Only way to get through the bad times. Grab hard, hold on, and ride. No matter what. — Susan Wittig Albert

This mindset, known as loss aversion, the sunk-cost fallacy, and throwing good money after bad, is patently irrational, but it is surprisingly pervasive in human decision-making.65 People stay in an abusive marriage because of the years they have already put into it, or sit through a bad movie because they have already paid for the ticket, or try to reverse a gambling loss by doubling their next bet, or pour money into a boondoggle because they've already poured so much money into it. Though psychologists don't fully understand why people are suckers for sunk costs, a common explanation is that it signals a public commitment. The person is announcing: "When I make a decision, I'm not so weak, stupid, or indecisive that I can be easily talked out of it." In a contest of resolve like an attrition game, loss aversion could serve as a costly and hence credible signal that the contestant is not about to concede, preempting his opponent's strategy of outlasting him just one more round. — Steven Pinker

The groom should not see you in the dress just before the wedding, that's bad luck. You know what's worst luck? Is getting married, itself. I've read studies. It's like 2 out of 3 of those end in divorce, sometimes more. 3 out of 2, some. — Hank Moody

I want to marry you, Jenna. And marriage means a partnership. A partnership means we take the good and the bad. — Jaci Burton

I would like to request the honor of your daughter's hand in marriage".
Olivia gasped, then squealed, then jumped up and down, which turned out to be a bad idea. "Ow!" she yelped smacking her head on the window. She poked her head back out and beamed down at Harry with tears in her eyes.
"Oh Harry", she signed. — Julia Quinn

New Rule: If you're one of the one-in-three married women who say your pet is a better listener than your husband, you talk too much. And I have some bad news for you: Your dog's not listening, either; he's waiting for food to fall out of your mouth. — Bill Maher

Nothing is as bad as a marriage that's a hopeless failure. — D.H. Lawrence

Unfenced by law, the unmarried lover can quit a bad relationship at any time. But you - the legally married person who wants to escape doomed love - may soon discover that a significant portion of your marriage contract belongs to the State, and that it sometimes takes a very long while for the State to grant you your leave. — Elizabeth Gilbert

No one would wish a bad marriage on anyone. But where do we think good marriages come from? They don't spring full blown from the head of Zeus any more than does a good education ... Why should a marriage require fewer tears and less toil and shabbier commitment than your job or your clothes or your car? — Jeffrey R. Holland

I was married once
in San Francisco. I haven't seen her for many years. The great earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed the marriage certificate. There's no legal proof. Which proves that earthquakes aren't all bad. — W.C. Fields