Matrimonial Quotes & Sayings

Luck which so often defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs, giving attraction to what is moderate rather than to what is superior. — Jane Austen

CHAPTER LX CHIEFLY MATRIMONIAL — Charles Dickens

A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims
these are lucky eventualites 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.
We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.
And we certainly wouldn't write about it. — Jeffrey Eugenides

No one has ever explained why it is that parents and guardians consider dull people such safe matrimonial investments for their young charges. Even granting the unsound assumption that dull people are more apt to be content with their own matrimonial fetters, they are certainly more apt to be the cause of discontent in others. — Alice Duer Miller

The long matrimonial haul was accomplished in cycles. One cycle of bad breath, one cycle of renewed desire, a third cycle of breakdown and small avoidances, still another of plays and dinners that spurred a conversation between them late at night that reminded her of their like minds and the pleasure they took in each other's talk. And then back to hating him for not taking out the garbage on Wednesday. That was the struggle. Sickness and death, caretaking, the martyrdom of matrimony
that was fluff stuff. When the vows kick in, you don't even blink. You just do. She had to be up for it. — Joshua Ferris

You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day that these words constitute the principle of your entire life and that with the help of divine grace you will observe these solemn vows that today, before God, you formulate. — Pope John Paul II

The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you begin. — Jeffrey Eugenides

He seemed to be an eternal on-sale item in the matrimonial market that everybody bypassed for the fancier merchandise. — Diana Palmer

I have to admit my Elomi bridal lingerie was exquisite. I'd been so certain it would wow Chris, spur him into some post-matrimonial lustfulness. What a joke. A strap-on might have been a better idea. — Kylie Scott

It is indeed a misfortune for a woman to be without beauty, as with men the eye is the chief arbiter of qualities in the sex. Her beauty is her capital
her worth in the market matrimonial depends upon it. With her the Virtues are less reverenced when unaccompanied by the Graces. The sex understand this very well; and hence they seek mainly to make captive the eye, knowing the mind and heart will follow as a matter of course. — Christian Nestell Bovee

While I do not agree with the whole of the idea, there is some truth to it. Otherwise, why do some experience matrimonial bliss independent of the amount of time spent in courtship? I have found that, oftentimes, the married couples who married after a brief courtship are just as happy as those who have known each other their entire lives." "That — Jennifer Joy

My husband would do anything for me ... ' It's degrading. No human being ought to have such power over another."
"It's a very real power, Harriet."
"Then ... we won't use it. If we disagree, we'll fight it out like gentlemen. We won't stand for matrimonial blackmail. — Dorothy L. Sayers

If it is right to be legally married, it is right to be legally divorced ... To be deprived of a Divorce is like being shut up in prison because someone attempted to kill you. It is just as honorable to get out of matrimonial trouble legally, as to be freed from any other wrong. — Mary Edwards Walker

It is easier to avoid great matrimonial catastrophes than trivial everyday miseries. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A short cut to matrimonial unhappiness is not to have the same taste in jokes! — Margaret Deland

Excluded from all fellowship at meals, excluded from all sacrifices, excluded from instruction and from matrimonial alliances, abject and excluded from all religious duties, let them wander over ,this earth. — Guru Nanak

The matrimonial shoe pinches me. — Amelia Barr

Every effort is made in forming matrimonial alliances to reconcile matters relating to fortune, but very little is paid to the congeniality of dispositions, or to the accordance of hearts. — Jean Baptiste Massillon

The mortality rate of literary friendships is high. Writers tend to be bad risks as friends ~ probably for much the same reasons that they are bad matrimonial risks. They expend the best parts of themselves in their work. Moreover, literary ambition has a way of turning into literary competition; if fame is the spur, envy may be a concomitant. — Matthew J. Bruccoli

Nursing is not only a natural vocation for a woman, but an occupation which increases her matrimonial chances about eighty per cent. — Gertrude Atherton

In all matrimonial associations there is, I believe, one constant factor - a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career. For it is intolerable to live constantly with one human being who perceives one's small meannesses. It is really death to do so - that is why so many marriages turn out unhappily. — Ford Madox Ford

I don't care about the London season! It is too matrimonial. People are either hunting for husbands, or hiding from them. — Oscar Wilde

Elaine complained about this at night, in her matrimonial bed, and then complained that in Colombia all the citizens were political but no politician wanted to do anything for the citizens. — Juan Gabriel Vasquez

This revolution - will it be a living?'
'We must hope so. Look, I have to go, I'm visiting a client. He's going to be hanged tomorrow.'
'Is that usual?'
'Oh, they always hang my clients. Even in property and matrimonial cases. — Hilary Mantel

That nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is contemporary with the courtship, and precedes the final banns and the rite; but which, like the bouquet of the costliest German wines, too often evaporates upon pouring love out to drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and nights. — Herman Melville

Feeling unable to maintain this detachment of attitude towards human- and, in especial, matrimonial- affairs, I asked whether it was not true that she had married Bob Duport. She nodded; not exactly conveying, it seemed to me, that by some happy chance their union had introduced her to an unexpected terrestrial paradise. — Anthony Powell

But it was the aforementioned stubborn streak that had him executing his plan by striding down the halls of Lord Welsing's London townhouse, peering into rooms and stopping to question any passing staff, while guests danced and laughed in the ballroom. The young lady crucial to his matrimonial campaign had gone missing. Again. Miss — Alissa Johnson

In matrimonial geography the distance between the first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof is as great as the distance between the first naive faith and the first doubting. — Sinclair Lewis

the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man ... — Thomas Hardy

As his hero and heroine pass the matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as if the drama were over then: the doubts and struggles of life ended: as if, once landed in the marriage country, all were green and pleasant there: and wife and husband had nothing to do but to link each other's arms together, and wander gently downwards towards old age in happy and perfect fruition. But our little Amelia was just on the bank of her new country, and was already looking anxiously back towards the sad friendly figures waving farewell to her across the stream, from the other distant shore. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Don't expect to drop into matrimonial harmony with the end of the honeymoon; you have not thoroughly learned to know each other's foibles by that time. — Blanche Ebbutt

She is distinguished from a courtisane only in that she does not offer her body for money by the hour like a commodity, but sells it into slavery for once and all. Fourier's words hold good with respect to all conventional marriages: "As in grammar two negatives make one affirmative, so in matrimonial ethics, two prostitutions are considered as one virtue." Sexual love in man's relation to woman becomes and can become the rule among the oppressed classes alone, among the proletarians of our day - no matter whether this relation is officially sanctioned or not. Here — Friedrich Engels

Sexual excitability is increased and leads to hasty engagements, marriages by the newspaper, improper love-adventures, conspicuous behavior, fondness for dress, on the other hand to jealousy and matrimonial discord. — Emil Kraepelin

And the first historical form of sexlove as a passion, as an attribute of every human being (at least of the ruling classes), the specific character of the highest form of the sexual impulse, this first form, the love of the knights in the middle ages, was by no means matrimonial love, but quite the contrary. — Friedrich Engels

Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship? — George Eliot

There is yet another kind of matrimonial dialect (which naturally succeeds this of talking at each other), which may very properlybe styled The Language Contradictory ... In the former, however plain the object of satire may be exhibited to the whole company, yet there always remains some little covering ... But in this last method, the defiance becomes more open and the impetuosity with which these contradictions are uttered (although the subjects of them are often of the most indifferent nature) evidently prove that they arise from passion. — Sarah Fielding

No man is in love when he marries. He may have loved before; I have even heard he has sometimes loved after: but at the time never. There is something in the formalities of the matrimonial preparations that drive away all the little cupidons. — Fanny Burney

These men, as she often muttered to friend Eleanor Topping, the two of them pressed together like sisters, their friendship filling in for the matrimonial gaps. These men, romantically isolated, secretly tortured, became like lighthouses flashing their treacherous shallows. Stay away! Stay away! — David Gilbert

Their lives were ruined, he thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary connection with affinities that alone render a lifelong comradeship tolerable. — Thomas Hardy

Motherhood is the keystone of the arch of matrimonial happiness. — Thomas Jefferson

The feminist challenge was sweeping: it embraced education and
occupation, together with legal, political, and social status. It even
dared broach the subject of equality in personal, and especially
matrimonial, relationships. Such assertiveness was more unsettling
than the racial threat because it was more intimate and immediate:
few white men lived with blacks, but most lived with women. — Cynthia Russett

She is the swelling sail, trim rigging and bust sunlit deck of our matrimonial yacht. I am the low hull, with the invisible ballast and keel. — Alasdair Gray

Occasionally a matrimonial epidemic appears, especially toward spring, devastating society, thinning the ranks of bachelordom, and leaving mothers lamenting for their fairest daughters. — Louisa May Alcott

We Greeks get married in circles, to impress upon ourselves the essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back where you began. — Jeffrey Eugenides

And Jessica saw in Richard an enormous amount of potential, which, properly harnessed by the right woman, would have made him the perfect matrimonial accessory. — Neil Gaiman

It is matrimonial suicide to be jealous when you have a really good reason. — Clare Boothe Luce

Even if so inclined, an artist has no business to marry. For a man, it may be well enough, but for a woman, on whom matrimonial duties and cares weigh more heavily, it is a moral wrong, for she must either neglect her family, or her profession. — Harriet Hosmer

Dombey and Son had often dealt in hides, but never in hearts. They left that fancy ware to boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr. Dombey would have reasoned: That a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner in such a house, could not fail to awaken a glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her sex. — Charles Dickens

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

They still had sexual relations with another, slept in the same bed, shared kisses and intimacy and matrimonial fluid, however both were not married to each other in that sense, although there was a piece of paper that said otherwise. — Keira D. Skye

(Nicholas)"Am I dead?"
An odd question, but then she rememberd her mourning attire. "No sir, you are not."
He relaxed a moment, then turned his head slightly as if searching for other passengers. His brows dived in a scowl.
Am I married?"
She wasn't sure how to answer. His kid gloves hid any evidence of his matrimonial state, but his expression of instantaneous alarm and regret suggested he was referring specifically to her.
No sir, we are not. — Donna MacMeans

All the Directors were happy that they had been able to enjoy a bit of extra-marital sex without breaking their matrimonial vows & seeing how pleased they were, the lovely slave offered to perform for them a dance of love & ecstasy.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

I never did, nor do I believe I ever shall, give advice to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage; first, because I never could advise one to marry without her own consent; and, secondly, I know it is to no purpose to advise her to refrain when she has obtained it. A woman very rarely asks an opinion or requires advice on such an occasion, till her resolution is formed; and then it is with the hope and expectation of obtaining a sanction, not that she means to be governed by your disapprobation, that she applies. — George Washington

The Matrimonial Act:

Bless your wife with all of your strength;
she deserves your protection.
Bless your wife with all of your mind;
she deserves your attention.
Bless your wife with all of your heart;
she deserves your affection.
Bless your wife with all of your soul;
she deserves your devotion.
Bless your wife with all of you;
she deserves your adoration.

Accept her suggestions.
Accept her instructions.
Accept her recommendations.
Accept her supplications.
Accept her imperfections.
Accept her ambitions.
Accept her contributions. — Matshona Dhliwayo

I suppose it must be admitted that I was raised in a "dysfunctional" family, but in truth, I do not think I had any sense of that as I was growing up. Probably part of the reason was that all of my extended kin had families at least as dysfunctional as mine. Just to give a little of the flavor of it, my "Aunt Fern," who lived just across the street and was one of the most present and puissant female relatives in my life, was, to be genealogically precise, my mother's brother's, first wife's, second husband's, father's, 3rd, 4th, and 5th wife. (She married "Uncle Lew" three times in the course of her seven matrimonial ventures.) — Carlfred Broderick

In the matrimonial life of the Jewish male every day is Yom Kippur. — Howard Jacobson

Nicholas: I know you, brother. You've been threatened with matrimonial pursuits before. Why are you really here?
William: I received an invitation.
Nicholas: Not from me you didn't.
William: Of course not from you, brother. Parliament would go up in flames before I receive a social invitation from you. — Donna MacMeans