Quotes & Sayings About Marriages

Decades of behavioral blunders and ill-conceived marriages and businesses run amok had left next to nothing by the time Leonard was in high school. He'd wangled himself an engineering scholarship to Cornell and then a job with Dow Chemical during a time he referred to, reverently, as the Dawn of the Absorbency Revolution. — Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

It's hard to imagine yourself in the future. It's why people do so many dumb things, because they're mired in the moment. Smoking, drinking, making disastrous marriages, putting off medical tests. The reason we've made a mess of the planet is that being its stewards required us to imagine not our own futures but those four or five generations removed. — Anna Quindlen

There are comparatively few articles about whether men are happy or why their marriages also fail or how nice or not their bodies are, even the movie-star bodies. — Rebecca Solnit

They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning. — Clint Eastwood

Repeated studies have found that there is a very close correlation between good marriages and high subjective well-being, and between bad marriages and misery. — Yuval Noah Harari

between one-third and one-half of all marriages fail, — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Interracial marriages were basically legalized, but nevertheless, there was a social stigma attached to them for a long time to come. I imagine that's going to be true for same-sex marriages - that people's emotional comfort level with it will not fully materialize for decades. — Mark Takano

Contrary to popular belief, a good number of transvestites-both male and female-are also heterosexual. Just because they want to get dressed up like the opposite sex does not necessarily mean they want to go to bed with the same sex. Some have successful heterosexual marriages & enjoy the most delightful shopping experiences. — Peter McWilliams

Our Arab mothers and sisters are suffering from injustices like domestic violence, sexual harassment, child marriages and honour killings, some are still fighting for their right to drive or travel without male custody therefore our powerful Arab media was not only expected to broadcast this particular one of a kind Women's march it should have held panels to dissect the issues being brought forth in order for the Arab world to better understand that gender equality is not an idea that one believes in, it is a planned movement that requires an enormous effort on the part of both men and women to reach. — Aysha Taryam

How can you respect a religion that forces women into polygamous marriages, mutilates their genitals, forbids them to drive cars and subjects them to the humiliation of 'instant' divorce? In fact, none of these practices are Islamic at all. Anyone wishing to understand Islam must first separate the religion from the cultural norms and style of a society. — Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood

Arthur and Julie and Mark and Rachel. The Siegels and the Feldmans. It's not just that we were best friends - we dated each other. We went steady. That's one of the things that happens when you become a couple: you date other couples. We saw each other every Saturday night and every Sunday night, and we had a standing engagement for New Year's Eve. Our marriages were tied together. We — Nora Ephron

You heard that man. He destroys marriages. He screws women for fun. Why are you not shocked? — Jodi Ellen Malpas

To an outsider it seems a vital ingredient of many marriages that each partner should support the illusions of the other. — Julian Fellowes

We'll be friends through jobs and kids and marriages. — Kristin Hannah

It is not the lack of commitment that destroys marriages, it is the lack of purpose. — Debasish Mridha

I want to lead the Progressive Conservative Party, a party that will promote true conservative values and principles. I can tell you right now, I am not the merger candidate. I am not interested in institutional marriages with other parties. — Peter MacKay

They tried to say that being gay is a sin, and I said that adultery is a sin. Adultery is responsible for breaking up more marriages, but do we put that in the Constitution? It's absurd. — Al Sharpton

Most Kikuyu marriages were arranged on the basis of what is described by anthropologists as the bride price. — Louis Leakey

Marriages go through hard times. Sometimes you have to get in there and fight for your love. That's the only way for it to get better. — Kristin Hannah

[About sex]: If we're not intentional about pursuing God's best for our marriages, and grasping the tremendous role intimacy plays in that relationship, what was intended to be deeply enjoyed - a passionate, life-giving love affair... alight with laughter, fiercely protected, and drenched in freedom - becomes a stuffy, awkward thing to be endured. — Joy McMillan

Most of these alternative arrangements, so-called, arise out of the ruins of marriages, not as an improvement of old fashioned marriage. — Christopher Lasch

GDP doesn't register, as Robert Kennedy put it, "the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate." GDP measures everything, Kennedy concluded, "except that which makes life worthwhile." Nor does GDP take into account unpaid work, the so-called compassionate economy. — Eric Weiner

Super-confident people with no problems and great marriages and great parenting are not good entertainment. — Matthew Weiner

In Hebrews 12:2, 'the race set before us' is not a sprint but a marathon. We are promised popularity, ease, and fun if we will pursue the lifestyles presented to us by the world. We are promised easy credit, 250 channels, unlimited minutes, all you can eat, no-fault divorce, free wireless, confidential abortions, and safe sex.
Those are the 'joys set before us' by the world, and most people trust these promises to deliver joy apart from God. But notice what is happening. The pursuit of the excellence of Jesus Christ is replaced by the pursuit of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is replaced with the ratings of what or who is most popular, and self-control is traded for self-indulgence. Consequently, there is no foundation for endurance. Even God's people quit jobs and marriages at the same rate as the world. More tragically, many of God's people quit trusting God. They have been stripped of Christian character. — Jim Berg

Weddings are great, but they mostly end up in marriages and that is the problem. — Radovan Kavicky

Romances and marriages are usually over long before they are over. — Mimi Sheraton

Marriages that made out of love (so-called "love-matches") have error as their father and misery (necessity) as their mother. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I love the idea of creative collaboration. I love the idea of exploring marriages, particularly ones that are in process for a long time. — Sacha Gervasi

Judith Stacey - a prominent New York University professor who is in no way regarded as a fringe figure, in testifying before Congress against the Defense of Marriage Act - expressed hope that the revisionist view's triumph would give marriage "varied, creative, and adaptive contours . . . [leading some to] question the dyadic limitations of Western marriage and seek . . . small group marriages."44 In their statement "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage," more than three hundred "LGBT and allied" scholars and advocates - including prominent Ivy League professors - call for legally recognizing sexual relationships involving more than two partners.45 University of Calgary Professor Elizabeth Brake thinks that justice requires us to use legal recognition to "denormalize[] heterosexual monogamy as a way of life" and correct for "past discrimination against homosexuals, bisexuals, polygamists, and care networks."46 — Sherif Girgis

Love does not need true copies signed by a registrar of marriages. — Nilesh Rathod

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

Why shouldn't gay people be allowed to be able to marry? Those against gay marriages say marriage should only be between a man and a woman. God, I of all people know that doesn't always work! — Elizabeth Taylor

When I met couples whose marriages were thriving after thirty and forty years, none of them were riding an emotional roller coaster of passion and then resentment. Instead, they loved each other as an act of their conscious will. They were more in control of their love than their "love" was in control of them. — Donald Miller

When I look back on my marriages, or the breakups, sure I know the pain I went through, but that's part of life and it has its own value. — Rita Hayworth

Rich people making their houses bigger in order to make their lives happier wind up hurting their own marriages. There's a deep irony here. Do the couples perceive that irony? — Tucker Carlson

It was a strange feeling going into a church I did not know for a service that I did not really believe in, but once inside I couldn't help a feeling of warmth and security. Outside there were wars and road accidents and murders, striptease clubs and battered babies and frayed tempers and unhappy marriages and people contemplating suicide and bad jokes, but once in St. Martin's there was peace. Surely people go to church not to involve themselves in the world's problems but to escape from them. — Michael Palin

The only really sound marriages are those based on mutual respect. — Billy Graham

So many television marriages -
that playing out of lives against a
background of the tube.
Instead of two lives filing the room,
There are their two lives and the eleven o'clock news with
Constant commercial interruption.
Instead of what you say and what I say.
You don't laugh with me;
I don't laugh with you.
All the wit comes pouring out of the tube.
And we laugh at it together.
The more we avoid talking
the more passive the relationship becomes.
Television permits us to walk through life
with minor speaking parts.
And the more we fail to speak,
the more difficult speaking becomes — Lois Wyse

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

Each of us is under a divinely spoken obligation to reach out with pardon and mercy and to forgive one another. There is a great need for this Christlike attribute in our families, in our marriages, in our wards and stakes, in our communities, and in our nations.
We will receive the joy of forgiveness in our own lives when we are willing to extend that joy freely to others. Lip service is not enough. We need to purge our hearts and minds of feelings and thoughts of bitterness and let the light and the love of Christ enter in. As a result, the Spirit of the Lord will fill our souls with the joy accompanying divine peace of conscience. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Blessed is a mother that would give up part of her soul for her children's happiness. — Shannon L. Alder

Guard your tongue, and use it for good instead of evil. How many marriages or friendships have been destroyed because of criticism that spiraled out of control? How many relationships have broken down because of a word spoken thoughtlessly or in anger? A harsh word can't be taken back; no apology can fully repair its damage. — Billy Graham

Indeed, while experiences and information can be good teachers, there are many times in life where we simply cannot afford to learn on the job. You don't want to have to go through multiple marriages to learn how to be a good spouse. Or wait until your last child has grown to master parenthood. This is why theory can be so valuable: it can explain — Clayton M Christensen

Years after the war, after marriages, children, divorces, books, he came to Paris with his wife. He phoned her. It's me. She recognized him at once from the voice. He said, I just wanted to hear your voice. She said, it's me, hello. He was nervous, afraid, as before. His voice suddenly trembled. And with the trembling, suddenly, she heard again the voice of China. He knew she'd begun writing books, he'd heard about it through her mother whom he'd met again in Saigon. And about her younger brother, and he'd been grieved for her. Then he didn't know what to say. And then he told her. Told her that it was as before, that he still loved her, he could never stop loving her, that he'd love her until death. — Marguerite Duras

This fear was unbearable. It unwrapped who she was, as neatly as he'd unwound her bandage, leaving too much pain and ugliness exposed.
Nerve endings; he'd said they were the problem [causing phantom pain in the amputated limb]. Things that cut off, that ended abruptly or died
like parents and marriages
kept hurting forever. — Kristin Hannah

All that Swinging Sixties. It didn't do anyone any good, did it? Easy sex and the Pill. Marriages were ruined. I never did approve. I never really enjoyed the sex. — Christine Keeler

I go to church too, y'all. And I've heard it, too. And I want to say to all of our faith leaders out there that I understand that probably in my Baptist church in Maryland, it is not likely that there will be performed - in my church - gay marriages. — Donna Edwards

I might be responsible for as many gay marriages as I am for heterosexual divorces. — Madonna Ciccone

A strange marriage that had been, though most marriages appear strange to spectators. — Ellen Glasgow

Why all of these broken homes? What happens to marriages that begin with sincere love and a desire to be loyal and faithful and true one to another? There is no simple answer. I acknowledge that. But it appears to me that there are some obvious reasons that account for a very high percentage of these problems. I say this out of experience in dealing with such tragedies. I find selfishness to be the root cause of most of it. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Marriages are made in heaven which is why they cause so much trouble on earth. — Mark Helprin

There is much made in the psychological literature of the effects of divorce on children, particularly as it comes to their own marriages, lo those many years later. We have always wondered why there is not more research done on the children of happy marriages. Our parents' love is not some grand passion, there are no swoons of lust, no ball gowns and tuxedos, but here is the truth: they have not spent a night apart since the day they married.
How can we ever hope to find a love to live up to that? — Eleanor Brown

I had never really thought of marriages as things that involved liking. I had just assumed this man-woman arrangement was yet another adult quirk, like flossing. — David Levithan

Love is a feeling that must be felt from the heart and seen through inner beauty. Only if this was known to the youth, many a marriages would have blossomed with age and cherished through decades. Just like a plant that needs the sun, water and more time to grow into a beautiful tree with lovely leaves and flowers, love needs time to be nurtured over time, built on a strong foundation of friendship, trust and honesty. When this foundation is built and combined with the feeling that tickles you from within, that is when love actually happens, the rest is all infatuation, attraction or even lust. — Jagdish Joghee

For women in my lifetime things have changed quite a bit, but not enough. They have only changed for women that have education and access to health care in the Western world. But look at the rest of the world. Still in many places, women are sold into premature marriages, prostitution, forced labor; they are forced to have children that they cannot support or that they don't want. They are abused, tortured, exploited and even killed with impunity. — Isabel Allende

For thousands of years, most marriages were in Stage I
survival-focused. After World War II, marriages increasingly flirted with Stage II
a self-fulfillment focus ... Love's definition is in a transition. — Warren Farrell

The truth is that the more intimately you know someone, the more clearly you'll see their flaws. That's just the way it is. This is why marriages fail, why children are abandoned, why friendships don't last. You might think you love someone until you see the way they act when they're out of money or under pressure or hungry, for goodness' sake. Love is something different. Love is choosing to serve someone and be with someone in spite of their filthy heart. Love is patient and kind, love is deliberate. Love is hard. Love is pain and sacrifice, it's seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship. — The Great Kamryn

The story of Janie's progress through three marriages confronts the reader with the significant idea that the choice one makes between partners, between one man and another (or one woman and another) stretches beyond romance. It is, in the end, the choice between values, possibilities, futures, hopes, arguments (shared concepts that fit the world as you experience it), languages (shared words that fit the world as you believe it to be) and lives. — Zadie Smith

Friendship is all about trust and sharing. Passionate and romantic love is all about sex and emotions. You have to try to combine those, I think. The great marriages, the great couples I know, have both. — Isabel Allende

I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that. — Joyce Carol Oates

I was really interested in how marriages work, how you can, you know, be in love with somebody and spend many years with your lives intertwined, but in the end another soul can be fundamentally unknowable. And I think that the stress of war, when one party goes away and the other has to deal at home, is a really testing time in a lot of marriages. — Geraldine Brooks

A perfectly happy marriage? There is no such thing. There are strong marriages that can survive problems, but happiness is such a brief condition, interrupted by difficulties and plain, boring routine. — Ursula Hegi

She cannot escape marriage; it is her sacred Hindu duty, just as giving her away in marriage was her father's sacred Hindu duty. Like Indian Independence, marriage is her ultimate 'Tryst with Destiny,' and it is not in her hand to escape her preordained and compulsory fate. A marriageable daughter is the lowest common denominator in the giant scheme of things. — Chandana Roy

I couldn't wait to get out of the car. The first thing I did was smell the air. I closed my eyes and took a breath, the biggest breath of my life, knowing I was taking the biggest breath of my life. I was taking a breath to smell Shepelevo. Breathing in Shepelevo was like hitting the right note on the piano. There was only one right note. When I was young, Shepelevo was the smell of nettles, of salted smoked fish, of fresh water from the Gulf of Finland, and of burning firewood, all wrapped up in one Shepelevo. As it had been, so it was. Across two continents, a dozen countries, twenty cities, three colleges, two marriages, three children, three books, and twenty-five years of another life, I breathed it and smelled the air. Nowhere else in the world had it. "Papa," I said, my voice breaking. "Do you think we could photograph the smell?" He gave me a look and then laughed. — Paullina Simons

The most we can hope for is strong marriages. Married women vote Republican; single women vote Democratic. — Ann Coulter

By making no demands (for example, "You must give up your career"), by seeming not to interfere in crucial decisions (should she abort the child she had conceived by him before they were married?) he effectively placed the burden of all decisions on her. She was the one who had to choose - over and over again. Michael could just be himself. This is the free ride men so often enjoy in their marriages. — Carl Rollyson

I think I've become the brand ambassador of arranged marriages, especially for working Indian women. — Sakshi Tanwar

Gays being gay is wrong. Two women can't produce a baby, two men can't produce a baby, so it's not how it's supposed to be ... I don't believe in gay marriages. I don't believe in being gay. — Carl Everett

I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages. — Tony Campolo

Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. — Donna Tartt

Many marriages are simply working partnerships between businessmen and housekeepers. — Mignon McLaughlin

But if Hugh dies first, would I ever be able to stop saying, "we" and say "I"? I doubt it. I do not think that death can take away the fact that Hugh and I are "we" and "us," a new creature born of the time of our marriage vows, which has grown along with us as our marriage has grown. Even during the times, inevitable in all marriages, when I have felt angry, or alienated, the instinctive "we" remains. And most growth has come during times of trial. — Madeleine L'Engle

As I see it, out of a hundred marriages ninety-nine marriages are just licensed prostitution. They are not marriages. A marriage is only a real marriage when it grows out of love. Legal, illegal, does not matter. The real thing that matters is love. — Rajneesh

If there is one word that describes the meaning of character, it is the word honor. Without honor, civilization would not long exist. Without honor, there could be no dependable contracts, no lasting marriages, no trust or happiness. What does the word honor mean to you? To me, honor is summarized in this expression by the poet Tennyson, "Man's word [of honor] is God in man." — Ezra Taft Benson

I've had diseases that lasted longer than my marriages. — Nell Carter

People are more concerned about the economy then these ridiculous concerns as to gender inequity in society, as manifested in marriages, in the mental health system, and then in literature. — Kate Zambreno

In most marriages, there is a contented partner and a restless one. — Jennifer Wilson

Marriages are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find ourselves in winter
discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of summer
comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the seasons repeat themselves in nature. — Gary Chapman

Because from what I've seen of marriages and relationships, there aren't any rules. You deal with what comes, like anything else in life. There's no template. No freaking outline. And that's what makes relationships interesting, right? The element of surprise. — Kristin Walker

If more husbands and fathers would put as much energy into their marriages and families as they do their jobs, the world would change. — Mark Hart

In life there is no formula for 'Marriage" every experience differ as well as every couples differ,so all we have to do is to invite God into our marriages because he is the 'KEY" TO OUR HAPPINESS. — Nthabiseng Motjamela

When you put four Alaskans into a room, you have five marriages, six divorces, and seven political parties. — Dana Stabenow

Real life is all beginnings. Days, weeks, children, journeys, marriages, inventions. Even a murder is the beginning of a criminal. Perhaps even a spree. Everything is prologue. Every story has a stutter. It just keeps starting and starting until you decide to shut the camera off. Half the time you don't even realise that what you're choosing for breakfast is the beginning of a story that won't pan out till you're sixty and staring at the pastry that made you a widower. No, love, in real life you can get all the way to death and never have finished one single story. Or never even get one so much as half-begun. — Catherynne M Valente

Look at all the marriages that have been wonderfully successful where fellows finished their army service and came home to go to college on G.I. bills and their wives worked. — Marta Kristen

When we mother well, we teach our children to embrace the moral obligations that build solid relationships, healthy marriages, and secure families. — Jani Ortlund

Broken marriages, conflicts of loyalty, the problems of everyday life fall away as one faces up to [Jeff] Thomson. — Mike Brearley

A couple of days after the last time I saw him, I got a typically well-written postcard. He said that after he kissed me goodbye at LAX he was driving away and turned on the radio. Elvis was singing "It's Now or Never." In my personal religion, a faith cobbled together out of pop songs and books and movies, there is nothing closer to a sign from God than Elvis Presley telling you "tomorrow will be too late" at precisely the moment you drop off a girl you're not sure you want to drop off. Sitting on the stairs to my apartment, I read that card and wept. It said he heard the song and thought about running after me. But he didn't. And just as well
those mixed-faith marriages hardly ever work. An Elvis song coming out of the radio wasn't a sign from God to him, it was just another one of those corny pop tunes he could live without. — Sarah Vowell

Iris Krasnow has managed to demystify the workings of long-term marriages by confirming the mysterious uniqueness of each one. The secret, she finds, lies in the way two people negotiate their own personal amalgam of companionship and sex, compromise and disappointment, lust and tenderness, trust and lies. The challenge for the rest of us is to do the same. — Suzanne Braun Levine

The happiest marriages are full of alternative lives, lived in the head, unknown to the partner. — John Bayley

No one - not a conservative or liberal or whatever - can stand back and 'define' what marriage means. Other people's marriages have nothing to do with mine; whether my neighbors are divorced or gay or widowed will not lead me to change anything about how my wife and I deal with each other or how we raise our children. — Kurt Eichenwald

I don't consider my marriages as failures! It's idiotic to assume that because a marriage ends, it's failed. — Margaret Mead

The punishment of vertical rending was given to those who had destroyed marriages to satisfy their own lust. — Cindy Pon

The bells will ring and the marriages will begin. And it's a great day in our state for equal protection under the law for all people. — Kamala Harris

I see the policy of opposing same-sex marriages or unions, whatever you call it, as bigotry or discrimination. — Patrick J. Kennedy

I love you," "I was wrong," and "I apologize" are powerful words. They can save marriages, deepen friendships, and change lives. Don't be afraid to use them. — John Hawkins

Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes. — Jean Cocteau

Stressful jobs, loveless marriages, bad food-most people kill themselves slowly every day. — Arthur Nersesian

Wary of being caught unawares, we planned our parenthood, committed to trial marriages with pre-nuptials, and pre-arranged our parents' funerals - convinced we could pre-feel the feelings that we have heard attend new life, true love, and death. — Thomas Lynch

Statesmen are not only liable to give an account of what they say or do in public, but there is a busy inquiry made into their very meals, beds, marriages, and every other sportive or serious action. — Plutarch

This case is not about whether marriages between same-sex couples are consistent or inconsistent with the teachings of a particular religion, whether such marriages are moral or immoral or whether they are something that should be encouraged or discouraged ... Quite simply, this case is about liberty and equality, the two cornerstones of the rights protected by the United States Constitution. — Barbara Brandriff Crabb