End Of Marriage Quotes & Sayings

The marriage could have been perfect right up to the end, if only one partner or the other one had managed to die peacefully just a little ahead of time. — Kurt Vonnegut

Was his life nothing? Had he nothing to show, no work? He did not count his work, anyone could have done it. What had he known, but the long, marital embrace with his wife. Curious, that this was what his life amounted to! At any rate, it was something, it was eternal. He would say so to anybody, and be proud of it. He lay with his wife in his arms, and she was still his fulfillment, just the same as ever. And that was the be-all and the end-all. Yes, and he was proud of it. — D.H. Lawrence

At the end of the day
after work, after trying to spend some sort of meaningful time with Alice and Noomi
Georgie was usually too tired to make things right with Neal before they fell asleep. So things stayed wrong. — Rainbow Rowell

This was still the era - it would end later in that famous decade - when to be young was a social encumbrance, a mark of irrelevance, a faintly embarrassing condition for which marriage was the beginning of a cure. — Ian McEwan

I spent the rest of my day picturing how I'd kill Amy. It was all I could think of: finding a way to end her. Me smashing in Amy's busy, busy brain. I had to give Amy her due: I may have been dozing the past few years, but I was fucking wide awake now. I was electric again, like I had been in the early days of our marriage...
Andie had screwed me over, Marybeth had turned against me, Go had lost a crucial measure of faith. Boney had trapped me. Amy had destroyed me. I poured a drink. I took a slug, tightened my fingers around the curves of the tumbler, then hurled it at the wall, watched the glass burst into fireworks, heard the tremendous shatter, smelled the cloud of bourbon. Rage in all five senses. Those fucking bitches. — Gillian Flynn

The emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership. — Elizabeth Gilbert

She wondered how she would feel to be a married woman. It would be the end of her life, she decided, if life was a time of choices. — Neil Gaiman

In God's intention, a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage. — John Milton

I once read that love is like a rose: we fixate on the blossom, but it's the thorny stem that keeps it alive and aloft. I think marriage is like that. Like my father said, the things of greatest value are the things we fight for. And in the end, if we do it right, we value the stem far more than the blossom — Richard Paul Evans

There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps. — Ronald Reagan

Love and marriage are of the Father's most powerful means for the making of his foolish little ones into sons and daughters. But so unlike in many cases are the immediate consequences to those desired and expected, that it is hard for not a few to believe that he is anywhere looking after their fate--caring about them at all. And the doubt would be a reasonable one, if the end of things was marriage. But the end is life--that we become the children of God; after which, all things can and will go their grand, natural course; the heart of the Father will be content for his children, and the hearts of the children will be content in their Father. — George MacDonald

Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning. — Esther Perel

If something is buried in the past, leave it buried ... Such dwelling on past lives, including past mistakes, is just not right! It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ ... In cases of marriage and family, ... we can end up destroying so many others. — Jeffrey R. Holland

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

Marriage equality is the law of the land. Officials should be held to their duty to uphold the law-end of story. — Hillary Clinton

Because, though I'd seen and felt just a fraction of all the love in the world, I knew that when people thought of love they thought of moments. Whether or not a marriage worked out, or if they stayed together after graduation, or if they did go to the big dance together, the story's end mattered less, and the highlights in between mattered more. Those are what lingered, and what people can go back to, even when they had nothing left. — Mina V. Esguerra

I always say now that I'm in my blonde years. Because since the end of my marriage, all of my girlfriends have been blonde. — Hugh Hefner

A man is always a little shamefaced on his wedding day, like a fox caught in a baited trap, ensnared because his greed overcame his better judgment. The menfolk laughed at Charlie that spring day, and said he was caught for sure now. As the bride, I was praised and fussed over, as if I had won a prize or done something marvelous that no one ever did before, and I could not help feeling pleased and clever that I had managed to turn myself from an ordinary girl into a shining bride. Now I think it is a dirty lie. The man is the one who is winning the game that day, though they always pretend they are not, and the poor girl bride is led into a trap of hard work and harsh words, the ripping of childbirth and the drubbing of her man's fists. It is the end of being young, but no one tells her so. Instead they make over her, and tell her how lucky she is. I wonder do slaves get dressed up in finery on the day they are sold. — Sharyn McCrumb

The mark of a good marriage is partnership and continuing to feel inspired by your spouse. I had that with Tao. But the end is not necessarily the tragedy. Staying in a relationship that is no longer working is the tragedy. Living unhappily - that's the tragedy. — Olivia Wilde

The lover seeks in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with no prospective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own ends, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the race. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yes, I'm satisfied, but the problem is you're not, and never will be. You're insecure, afraid of losing everything you've achieved; you don't know how to quit once you're ahead. You'll end up destroying yourself. You're killing our marriage and my love. — Paulo Coelho

I've called on Congress to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act to help end discrimination to help end discrimination against same-sex couples in this country. Now, I want to add we have a duty to uphold existing law, but I believe we must do so in a way that does not exacerbate old divides. And fulfilling this duty in upholding the law in no way lessens my commitment to reversing this law. I've made that clear. — Barack Obama

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames. — Thomas Moore

I'm an enormous product of my century, I'm a product of my upbringing. I was not aware of the fact that I was entering marriage with the highest set of expectations that humans have ever brought to the institution. It was really good to find that out. It doesn't have to be the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the moon and the stars - it can just be the moon. It's enough that it just can be what it is. — Elizabeth Gilbert

It is each American's constitutional right to marry the person they love, no matter what state they inhabit. No state should decide who can marry and who cannot. Thanks to the tireless work of so many, someday soon this discrimination will end and every American will be able to enjoy their equal right to marriage. — Brad Pitt

My first wife was a brunette, and Barbi Benton, my major romantic relationship of the early 1970s, was a brunette. But since the end of my marriage, all of my girlfriends have been blonds. — Hugh Hefner

Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God's holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love, you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsability towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal - it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The end of a marriage has got to be one of the saddest events one can experience. I've heard that the pain [of divorce] is second only to an actual death in the family, and that sounds about right. — Danica McKellar

Like the muscles knew from the beginning that it would end with this, this inevitable falling apart ... It's sad, but a relief as well to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence, leaving smooth surfaces instead of bloody shreds. — Julie Powell

Don't imagine it would be the usual kind of marriage." He seemed to withdraw even more. "It needn't even be consummated. Any woman I liked we'll enough to marry doesn't deserve to be saddled to me. If we marry, it will be a quiet wedding by special license in a back room. At the end, we'll go our separate ways
you, to your farm, and me ... " He looked around the small room at the messy piles of paper. "I'm not offering to make a life with you. I'm merely giving you the chance to make your child legitimate. Nothing more."
He watched her, his eyes hooded and wary. And deep inside ... She had no notion as to what to say.
She let out a long breath. "Oh, you are romantic. — Courtney Milan

It takes a CONSTANT flowing of gas from the cylinder to keep the fire burning under your pot. "WOOING your woman" should be a continuous process. It should NEVER end after you get your "yes" from her. If you did a lot to get her, you should do more to keep her. — Olaotan Fawehinmi

What good is talking if neither of you are really committed? If one of you had an affair or got addicted to drugs or was abusive, simply talking about it wouldn;t take the hurt away; or fix the trust that's been lost. In the end, marriage comes down to actions. I think people talk too much about the things that bother them, instead of actually doing the little things that keep a marriage strong. — Nicholas Sparks

Why did you give me a freedom for which I was unfit? Why did you stop teaching me? If you wished it, if you guided me differently, none of all this would happened. I should not now be punished, for no fault at all, by your indifference and even contempt, and you would not have taken from me unjustly all that I valued in life.
Let us be thankful that there is an end of the old emotions and excitements.
That day ended a romance of our marriage. Old feeling became a precious irrecoverable remembrance but a new feeling of love for my kids and their father laid the foundation of a new life and quite different happiness. That life and happiness lasted until to the present time. — Leo Tolstoy

In order for marriage to endure it has to change along with us, and it does that very graciously. And in the end I find there is something kind of moving about it: the fact that people continue to insist on choosing somebody to build a life with. — Elizabeth Gilbert

At the end of a marriage it is difficult to recall the beginning. — Shirley Ann Grau

Even the human race can't claim to be natural anymore. We are fake, dying things. How fitting that I would end up in this sham of a marriage. — Lauren DeStefano

I'll tell you what is convenient," he said after a moment. "To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment's notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka - and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most." Anna — Amor Towles

Can't make marriage the be-all and end-all. Because if you do it won't work. Listen: from the looks of things we've got one of the few solid marriages around. But it took work, pussycat. Work.' Her eyes gleamed with the victory of that work, the necessity for it. — Andre Dubus

Hi lover," he says to me, completely forgetting what happened before.
He knows who I am. He knows that I am the one person who he loves, has always loved. No disease, no person can take that away.
(p.205) — Michael Zadoorian

Couples are really funny, because if they are together, they can fight and do fun things together. In Jane Austen books, marriage is the end of the story, but I actually think a really funny couple could be a fun thing to watch. — Mindy Kaling

At the end of the day, I just want to sit with someone I love and chat about what matters and even what doesn't. — Crystal Woods

That was what bothered him most: the fact that she seemed to encourage his advances, and even granted him certain liberties, up to the point at which she turned on him with violence or laughter. He did not know which was worse, the chuckling or the blows; there was something terribly unmanly about being on the receiving end of either. But he looked forward to a time when he could repay her, could laugh at her or strike her as he saw fit. Thus marriage was already in his mind. Next — Shelby Foote

I once had a dream about getting a marriage, house in the country, and at the end of the day we'd retire, but I'm never going to retire. — Ozzy Osbourne

So that was the end of that marriage. — Virginia Woolf

For a woman as for a man, marriage might enormously help or devastatingly hinder the growth of her power to contribute something impersonally valuable to the community in which she lived, but it was not that power, and could not be regarded as an end in itself. Nor, even, were children ends in themselves; it was useless to go on producing human beings merely in order that they, in their sequence, might produce others, and never turn from this business of continuous procreation to the accomplishment of some definite and lasting piece of work. — Vera Brittain

I was making scrambled eggs smothered in Tabasco, his favorite, when he told me about Stephanie. The way she made him laugh. The way she understood him. The way they connected. I pictured the image of two Lego pieces fusing together, and I shuddered. It's funny; when I think back to that morning, I can actually smell burned eggs and Tabasco. Had I known that this is what the end of my marriage would smell like, I would have made pancakes. — Sarah Jio

Divorce is not the end of the world. It's worse to stay in an unhealthy marriage. That's a worse example for the children. — Jerry Hall

Marriage would change hardly anything between us, except that we would end our arguments in a much more satisfying way. And of course I would have extensive legal rights over your body, your property, and all your individual freedoms, but I don't see what's so alarming about that. — Lisa Kleypas

The most successful relationships are ones with a really low negativity threshold. In those relationships, couples allow each other to complain, and work together to constantly repair the tiny issues between them. In such cases, couples don't bottle up their feelings, and little things don't end up being blown completely out of proportion. — Hannah Fry

In the age of camera phones and screenshots and Twitter ... At the end of the day, I want to share my life with somebody, you know? I want picture albums. I want to look back at our time together. And I also want kids. And if you want kids, then you want marriage. — Joe Manganiello

Marriage is the aim and end of all sensible girls, because it is the meaning of life. — Elinor Glyn

The thing is, when I had my first success it did coincide with the end of my first marriage, and because I went on to have a very, very unhappy two years, I don't think I equate career success with personal happiness. — Rob Brydon

During the periods in my marriage when I chose to stay home with my kids rather than work as an attorney, it caused me no end of anxiety. Despite the fact that I knew I was contributing to our family by caring for our children, I still felt that my worth was less because I wasn't earning. — Ayelet Waldman

When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity. — Joseph Campbell

How you end something as profound and important as a marriage is a reflection of how you live your life
financially, emotionally, and spiritually. — Suze Orman

Love in marriage should be the accomplishment of a beautiful dream, and not, as it too often is, the end. — Alphonse Karr

Men ... be the man of your home.. Love your family and protect your wives ... so at the end of the day ... it wont matter if you live in a cardboard box ... the love between you will always be enough. — Erica Stone

Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end ... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry. — Ann Patchett

That is marriage, he thought, remaking yourself in someone else's image. And who knew where the truth of it began or would end? — Ashley Hay

By journey's end the brides were much better acquainted with their grooms and more or less pleased with the matches. Sybil Bingham wrote in her diary, thanking God for answering her prayer for filling "the void" with a husband like Hiram, a "treasure rich and undeserved." Having read his insufferable memoir, "A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands", all I can say is: I'm happy for her? — Sarah Vowell

*You* may call [Charis] angelic to be for ever trying to please everyone, and being sorry for those she *can't* please, but I don't! Addle-brained is what *I* call it!'
'Oh, no!' uttered Charis imploringly.
'Oh, yes!' he retorted. 'Told you so before! If you don't take care, Charis, you'll end by being sorry for yourself! All for the want of a little resolution! What if Mrs Dauntry and Frederica don't like it [a marriage between you and Endymion]? They'll come round! And you needn't look at me as ugly as bull-beef, Endymion, because I'll say what I choose to my own sister! — Georgette Heyer

On page 607, alluding to the end of my first marriage (and carefully remembering to state that that's none of his business), he very sweetly says that I 'might leave a wife, but not a friend.' Nice try. Neat smear. But he shouldn't be so sure ... — Christopher Hitchens

Even if the two lovers are mature and experienced people who know that broken hearts heal in the end and can clearly foresee that, if they once steeled themselves to go through the present agony of parting, they would almost certainly be happier ten years hence than marriage is at all likely to make them - even then, they would not part. — C.S. Lewis

As they stood there together, Ekwefi's mind went back to the days when they were young. She had married Anene because OKonkwo was too poor then to marry. Two years after her marriage to Anene she could bear it no longer and she ran away to Okonkwo. It had been early in the morning. The moon was shining. She was going to the stream to fetch water. Okonkwo's house was on the way to the stream. She went in and knocked at his door and he came out. Even in those days he was not a man of many words. He just carried her into his bed and in the darkness began to feel around her waist for the loose end of her cloth. — Chinua Achebe

There were three of these women, separated by short intervals of pain, remorse, and despair. When he and the last one had their final quarrel - she threw the breadboard - he was nearly fifty-five, and he gave up on love, save the memory of it. Always his aim had been marriage. He had never entered what he considered to be an affair, something whose end was an understood condition of its beginning. But he had loved and wanted for the rest of his life women who took him in their arms, and even their hearts, but did not plan to keep him. He had known that about them, they had told him no lies about what they wanted, and he had persisted, keeping his faith: if he could not change their hearts, then love itself would. — Andre Dubus

One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love. Taken together, these convictions lead to the conclusion that marriage and romance are essentially incompatible, that it is cruel to commit people to lifelong connection after the inevitable fading of romantic joy. The Biblical understanding of love does not preclude deep emotion. As we will see, a marriage devoid of passion and emotional desire for one another doesn't fulfill the Biblical vision. But neither does the Bible pit romantic love against the essence of love, which is sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. If we think of love primarily as emotional desire and not as active, committed service, we end up pitting duty and desire against each other in a way that is unrealistic and destructive. — Timothy Keller

You know you've reached the end of a relationship: when your lover now demands that your jokes be funny before they laugh. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Slavish obedience to the clerics, who know how to squeeze every last drop of advantage out of religion, is killing our girls. We must speak-blaspheme, if necessary; be accused of being apostates, if that is what is required. Muslims are taught that Islam put an end to the Arabian practice of burying alive newborn baby girls because they were considered worthless and a burden, but as long as we stay quiet in the face of the abomination of child marriage, we are effectively burying our girls alive today. — Mona Eltahawy

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

It is a sad fact that 50 percent of marriages in this country end in divorce. But hey, the other half end in death. You could be one of the lucky ones! — Richard Jeni

Marriages don't end simply because a lack of trust exists. Marriages more specifically end because foundational agreements were broken, disrespectful behavior occurred, healthy and honest communication is lacking, or not "being seen or accepted" has ensued for too long. — Elaina Marie

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

The first rule of marriage: solve the mystery, end the love. — Matt Haig

Beauty won't protect you. Not in the end. What will is the one thing you can't plan for. The one thing you can't save for or search for or even find. It has to find you and decide to stay. Time. More of it. More of it to try and make things right. — Laura Dave

Might be that marriage was not the death of a woman and the end of her true self, but the unfolding of her. It might be that a woman could be a wife without having to cut the pride and the spirit out of herself. A woman might blossom into being a wife, not be trimmed down to fit. — Philippa Gregory

I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person. But I do know that if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all. It is far more important to BE the right kind of person than it is to marry the right person. — Zig Ziglar

She remained silent. There was nothing left to say. He'd said it all the night before. He had to end it. He could never leave his wife. And, in fact, she had known this. Although she loved him - and truly she did - he wasn't hers. He belonged to his wife. She'd earned him. It didn't matter that he was her first love or that she was his passion. It didn't matter that they had loved one another for more than half their lives. It didn't matter that he had married his wife on the rebound. It didn't matter that he didn't love the woman. It didn't even matter that they had turned into some soap-opera cliche. He was married to someone else and that meant that she was leftovers and destined to remain on the periphery in the shadow of another woman's marriage. But no more. She was well and truly sick of it. — Anna McPartlin

People witness the end of their small worlds every day: when somebody's marriage ends, when his only son dies, when a husband/wife dies, when he is diagnosed with a terminal illness, when your party is erased from the political map, when a leader faces a coup, when your town is bombed and your house is hit... — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Marriage is a million piece puzzle, a pristine and exciting pursuit at the beginning that gradually becomes a daunting task, usually more challenging than anticipated. It is only those truly committed to solving that puzzle who witness in the end the miraculous outcome of every tiny piece laid out and pressed together in an inspiring and envious creation - a treasure only time, resoluteness, and perseverance could create. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I'm very close to my parents. I admire them and respect them enormously. But my childhood unfortunately coincided with the end of their marriage. They are two people who should never, ever have got married. — Jackie French

Well I can tell you now that married life is not a plateau, not at all. There are ravines and great jagged peaks and hidden crevasses that send the both of you scrabbling into darkness. Then there are dull, parched stretches that you feel will never end, and much of the journey is in fraught silence, and sometimes you can't see the other person at all, sometimes they drift off very far away from you, quite out of sight, and the journey is hard. It is just very, very, very hard. — David Nicholls

nothing but a testament of his ownership of me. A daily reminder of the golden cage I'd be trapped in for the rest of my life. Until death do us part wasn't an empty promise as with so many other couples that entered the holy bond of marriage. There was no way out of this union for me. I was Luca's until the bitter end. The last few words of the oath that men swore when they were inducted into the mafia could just as well have been the closing of my wedding vow: "I enter alive and I will have to get out dead." I should have run when I still had the chance. — Cora Reilly

Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain? — Bernhard Schlink

And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End. And if Sam thought himself lucky, Frodo knew that he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. When the labours or repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a good deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Courtship, properly understood, is the process whereby both the male and the female are brought into that state of sexual tumescence which is a more or less necessary condition for sexual intercourse. The play of courtship cannot, therefore, be considered to be definitely brought to an end by the ceremony of marriage; it may more properly be regarded as the natural preliminary to every act of coitus. — Havelock Ellis

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

All of women's stories in the 19th century had either one of two endings: you either had the good Jane Austen marriage at the end and you were happy; or you had the terrible Henry James savage downfall because of your own hubris as a woman, or you've made some great error leading you down a path to ruin. One is the story of love that's successful and the other is the story usually of reckless love that goes terribly wrong that destroys the woman. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Marriage is under attack from so many different areas. There should be benefits associated with married people. Life is unfair. Maybe you won't find the right person and you won't end up getting married. Oh, well, life is unfair. But married people, because of their capacity to have children, even if they're not going to end up having children, even if they're unable to bear children, marriage is an institution that is absolutely central to civilization. — Ann Coulter

I opine-I think you're a woman of your world,' he said from the far end of the couch. 'I would have a hard time seeing you pressed and powdered, dreading a life of servitude under the name of marriage. You'd die in that mold. I like you as you are, fiery and ill tempered. — Kim Harrison

True marriage begins well before the wedding day, And the efforts of marriage continue well beyond the ceremony's end. A brief moment in time and the stroke of the pen are all that is needed to create the legal bond of marriage, but it takes a lifetime of love, commitment, forgiveness, and compromise to make marriage durable and everlasting. — Jamie McGuire

Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner. — Amy Bloom

A cynic should never marry an idealist. For the cynic, marriage represents the welcome end of romantic life, with all its agony and ecstasy. But for the idealist, it is only the beginning. — Julie Burchill

Of course, Storm-Lord! But why would a god marry a poor farm girl?" asked one of the bound novices, his voice thin and chirping as an insect.
"All things must eventually mate," I shrugged, "having been cast into a man's flesh I must do as flesh does. And it hardly matters whether one mates with a woman or a rock or a river - the end result is the same. Once all the world wed stones and trees - but this is a degenerate age, and no one keeps to tradition. — Catherynne M Valente

Oh, why did nobody warn me?" cried Grimes in agony. "I should have been told. They should have told me in so many words. They should have warned me about Flossie, not about the fires of hell. I've risked them, and I don't mind risking them again, but they should have told me about marriage. They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children. — Evelyn Waugh

Marriage is an arrangement by which two people start by getting the best out of each other and often end by getting the worst. — Gerald Brenan

According to a 2014 Huffington Post article, Southern states are consistently behind the rest of the country in wages, economic mobility, education, and health care. However, they lead the country in incest, teen pregnancy, gun deaths, incarceration, poverty, obesity, intoxication, and general unhappiness. They're also still hooked on creationism, and freaked out over gay marriage. It's like evolution took a detour, crashed through a dead end sign and plunged into a swamp. But instead of calling for help, it mated with the swamp creatures and built a civilization. — Ian Gurvitz

I believe in marriage. I believe that two good people can be happy together for a lifetime. It's the only thing even close to a religion that I have, and I cling to it with almost messianic zeal. But it is a belief system that makes unreasonable demands on its adherents, all of us sacrificing to the bone for a reward that may or may not come at the end of our days; and all of us steadfastly refusing to see the mounting evidence that long-term happy marriages, if they exist at all, are pretty hard to come by. We all want to think that miracles are possible. Otherwise, marriage is just a lot of hard work. — Kate Hilton

She never confronted the death of anything, be it a habit, a phase, or a marriage, even when the end stood right in front of her, plain and inevitable. — Elif Shafak

When a couple gets to the last stage, one or both partners may have an affair. But an affair is usually a symptom of a dying marriage, not the cause. The end of that marriage could have been predicted long before either spouse strayed. — John M. Gottman

There can be no summary and dramatic end to a marriage - only a slow and painful unravelling of a tangled skein of threads too stubborn to be broken. — Wallis Simpson