Quotes & Sayings About Matrimony

He quietly groaned. Again and again, he'd witnessed this phenomenon with his friends. They got married. They were happy in that sated, grateful way of infrequently pleasured men with a now-steady source of coitus. Then they went about crowing as if they'd invented the institution of matrimony and stood to earn a profit for every bachelor they could convert. — Tessa Dare

I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle ... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody) — Elizabeth Peters

Some jobs are worse than actual wives. Ad agency vs. Matrimony, for instance: Even the most capricious and demanding spouse is not going to divorce you for refusing to spend forty hours a week making up lies about toilet paper. — P. J. O'Rourke

The First Bond of Society is Marriage. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want. — Jane Austen

O marriage! marriage! what a curse is thine, Where hands alone consent and hearts abhor. — Aaron Hill

It goes far towards reconciling me to being a woman, when I reflect that I am thus in no danger of ever marrying one. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Marriage is destinie, made in heaven. — John Lyly

Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony. — Jane Austen

Matrimony, he began to think, was a cure for an illness he hadn't known he had. — Ann Packer

Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. — Jane Austen

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

It had been, in Robin's view, the most perfect proposal, ever, in the history of matrimony. He had even had a ring in his pocket, which she was now wearing; a sapphire with two diamonds, it fitted perfectly, and all the way into town she kept staring at it on her hand as it rested on her lap. She and Matthew had a story to tell now, a funny family story, the kind you told your children, in which his planning (she loved that he had planned it) went awry, and turned into something spontaneous. She loved the tramps, and the moon, and Matthew, panicky and flustered, on one knee; she loved Eros, and dirty old Piccadilly, and the black cab they had taken home to Clapham. She — Robert Galbraith

Matrimony is the only game of chance the clergy favor. — Emily Murphy

[Marriage] promote[s] the moral order of the world - Edith Wharton "The Eyes — S.T. Joshi

Russian ladies, for the most part, cherish only Platonic love, without mingling any thought of matrimony with it; and Platonic love is exceedingly embarrassing. — Mikhail Lermontov

After fourteen years of matrimony, I have discovered that hoping your other half telepathically reads your mind only leads to someone wanting to punch the other one in the face. — Twinkle Khanna

Take one Naive Girl. Bring to room temperature in the Big City. Add three cups Academia. If in one cup Encouragement. Fold in two drop Love. Sprinkle with one teaspoon Adoration. Mix thoroughly. Spoon carefully into greased Pan of Matrimony. Bake in Desert Heat for 25. Test doneness with Careless Toothpick. Let cool on Wire Rack of Inertia. Serve with generous dollops of Benign Neglect. — Elizabeth J. Church

Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection. — Jane Austen

Expect nothing at all and accept as a joyful surprise whatever good you find in matrimony. — Frank Leslie

Multiple wives are required for a godly man to get into heaven, and the prophet regularly performs spiritual marriages, deciding who should be wed to whom, placing girls to be exalted in a plural marriage based on a revelation from God. Most families wait to marry their daughters until the girl begins menstruation, as childbearing is expected within the first year of matrimony. Raising up a righteous seed unto the Lord is a woman's highest calling and it is only though a husband's guidance that a woman can attain entry into the celestial kingdom. — Michele Dominguez Greene

The happy State of Matrimony is, undoubtedly, the surest and most lasting Foundation of Comfort and Love ... the Cause of all good Order in the World, and what alone preserves it from the utmost Confusion. — Benjamin Franklin

I think marriage is dangerous. The idea of two people trying to possess each other is wrong. I don't think the flare of love lasts. Your mind rather than your emotions must answer for the success of matrimony. It must be friendship - a calm companionship which can last through the years. — Carole Lombard

She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she expressed uncertainty, - how could he affect her as a lover? The — George Eliot

LEONATO
Well, then, go you into hell?
BEATRICE
No, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. — William Shakespeare

They say all marriages are made in heaven, but so are thunder and lightning. — Clint Eastwood

When I hear that a friend has fallen into matrimony, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

LEONATO
Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.
BEATRICE
Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred. — William Shakespeare

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom. — Karl Kraus

She that weds well will wisely match her love, Nor be below her husband nor above. — Ovid

she feels still that grasp upon her ankle as if it were a circlet of iron: the embodiment of matrimony. She would be pinned, like the museum butterflies. He would remain free to flutter. — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Matrimony was probably the first union to defy management. — Red Ruffing

oh, why am I a girl? Why am I not a stupid - ? Look at you; you're stupider than I am, not much, but some, and you can lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else, and you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified - and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but now what's in store for me - I have to marry, that goes without saying. Who? I'm too bright for most men, and yet I have to descend to their level and let them patronize my intellect in order to get their attention. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Matrimony sites have made this world even more small and Fake — Subhasis Das

May your union be filled with love
Annealed by passion
Built on a strong foundation
And tempered by time — Richard L. Ratliff

whenever you are transplanted, like me, Miss Woodhouse, you will understand how very delightful it is to meet with anything at all like what one has left behind. I always say this is quite one of the evils of matrimony. — Jane Austen

Men marry women who see through their bullshit, and women marry men they can't seduce, at least according to Lou. It's the only way you can live with each other over long periods of time and get things done, raising kids and buying houses and all the other nonsense of matrimony and human striving.

To Judith, this was a depressing thought. She wanted to marry a man who was so crazy for her he couldn't see straight. — Karin Goodwin

While the moral force of Judeo-Christian tradition and the law have sought to purify the penis, and to restrict its seed to the sanctified institution of matrimony, the penis is not by nature a monogamous organ. It knows no moral code. It was designed by nature for waste, it craves variety, and nothing less than castration will eliminate the allure of prostitution, fornication adultery, or pornography. — Gay Talese

There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil
improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?"
"Are you a young lady?"
"I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated. — Charlotte Bronte

People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort. — Thomas Hardy

We do not create marriage from scratch. Instead, in the elegant language of the marriage ceremony, we 'enter into the holy estate of matrimony.' — Nancy Pearcey

Meanwhile Canon Leigh in his study did not know what on earth he ought to do; and when he remembered that he had four daughters who each of them might have five love affairs, making twenty all told, before he got them safely steered into the harbor of matrimony
though even then there might be upsets in the harbor
he came out in a cold sweat. He spent a bad night and in the cold light of dawn sat down and penned a note to Mistress Flowerdew, asking that he might wait upon her and receive her inestimable advice upon a matter of overwhelming importance. — Elizabeth Goudge

But no, music lasted longer than anything it inspired. After LPs, cassettes, and CDs, when matrimony was about to decay into its component elements - alimony and acrimony - the songs startled him and regained all their previous, pre-Rachel meanings, as if they had not only conjured her but then dismissed her, as if she had been entirely their illusion. He listened to the old songs again, years later on that same dark promenade, when every CD he had ever owned sat nestled in that greatest of all human inventions, the iPod, dialed up and yielding to his fingertip's tap. The songs now offered him, in exchange for all he had lost, the sensation that there was something still to long for, still, something still approaching, and all that had gone before was merely prologue to an unimaginably profound love yet to seize him. If there was any difference now, it was only that his hunger for music had become more urgent, less a daily pleasure than a daily craving. — Arthur Phillips

So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are correct, but in only one respect - only if they happen to be talking about Judaism. Christianity simply does not share that deep and consistent historical reverence toward matrimony. Lately it has, yes- but not originally. For the first thousand or so years of Christian history, the church regarded monogamous marriage as marginally less wicked that flat-out whoring but only very marginally. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Still lost?"
This time Grant tugged her against him and gave her a hard kiss. "Apparently you've survived a month of matrimony, but you're still skinny."
"And compliments still roll trippingly off your tongue," she retorted, drawing back. After a moment she laughed and hugged him fiercely. "Damn,I hate to say it out loud,but it's good to see you. — Nora Roberts

My weakness for beautiful women is my most expensive vice, I still believe in matrimony, but I can't afford another try. — George Strait

[I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband. — Wallace Stegner

Nowadays love is a matter of chance, matrimony a matter of money and divorce a matter of course. — Helen Rowland

It is obvious that she is more interested in happiness than in the institution of marriage, in love and understanding than matrimony. — Azar Nafisi

Matrimony is a serious thing. — Anne Bronte

Should all despair That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind Would hang themselves. — William Shakespeare

To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, "so that he would see whether I knew myself or not." The next day, she wrote and handed to Gyllenborg an essay titled 'Portrait of a Fifteen-Year-Old Philosopher.' He was impressed and returned it with a dozen pages of comments, mostly favorable. "I read his remarks again and again, many times [Catherine later recalled in her memoirs]. I impressed them on my consciousness and resolved to follow his advice. In addition, there was something else surprising: one day, while conversing with me, he allowed the following sentence to slip out: 'What a pity that you will marry! I wanted to find out what he meant, but he would not tell me. — Robert K. Massie

Oh! To rationalize oneself into matrimony ... Oh! To decide something so grave in life 'after mature consideration'! Choose the color of a dress after a thousand hesitations, but for God's sake, get married without reflecting on it! That's the grace I wish I wish for you. May you even be so distracted that day that you walk past the registry office without remembering to stop there. — Colette

I harbor ill feelings toward a society, and a clergy, that allows marriage partners to split over the smallest incompatibility, where divorce comes in a multitude of flavors, like Baskin Robbins ice cream, where men and women can blame one another and everything except themselves for matrimony's mess. They look for externals over which they have no control and, fingering them, take no responsibility. — Robert Dykstra

A pall fell over the room. A black shroud of disease and deathbeds and all the worst things from all the worst places. This mutant world, a tragic portmanteau, the unnatural marriage of two roots as different as could be. 'And do you, Ability take Vitriol to be your lawfully wedded suffix?' I wanted to scream objections to the unholy matrimony, but nothing came out. My mouth was clammy and dry, full of sand. Dr. Wilson smiled on, rambling about the benefits of Abilitol while my father nodded like a toy bobblehead immune to the deepening shadow in the room.

As they spoke, I caught my mother's eye. I could tell by her face that she felt the deepening shadow too.

Neither of us smiled.
Neither of us spoke.
We felt the shadow together. — David Arnold

Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse. — P.G. Wodehouse

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job. — Simone De Beauvoir

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved. — Samuel Butler

No man of common sense will value a woman the less, for not giving herself up at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, even of her understanding, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark. — Daniel Defoe

A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Only the most passionate, forthright kind of love would ever induce her to enter the confining state of matrimony. — Melanie Dickerson

The reason for much matrimony is patrimony. — Ogden Nash

I am not only not going to be married, at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all. — Jane Austen

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination. — Ambrose Bierce

Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke. In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson's celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures. — Jane Austen

If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married. — Elizabeth I

The most important things that any member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ever does in this world are: 1. To marry the right person, in the right place, by the right authority; and 2. To keep the covenant made in connection with the holy and perfect order of matrimony-thus assuring the obedient persons of an inheritance of exaltation in the celestial kingdom. — Bruce R. McConkie

I shall expect my husband to have no pleasures but what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the enjoyment of my company - why - it will be the worse for him - that's all.'
'If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed, be careful whom you marry - or rather, you must avoid it altogether. — Anne Bronte

You cannot really get married by mistake. You can only marry the wrong person. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To-day well, my Utopia, if ever I framed one, would be a land where the laws demanded that people should be vicious. Then one would be able to count at any rate on a little virtue. If no man might live with a woman in any but an irregular union, there would be at once quite a run on honest matrimony and the Law Courts would be full of desperately wicked monogamists; while if every one was expected to steal and swindle, there would soon be an extensive criminal class who respected property. — Edward Verrall Lucas

It is hard to wive and thrive both in a year. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

I am humbly following in your footsteps and having a row with the Government over the iniquity of the Marriage Tax in the form of supertax ... our incomes being added together we are liable for supertax which we are refusing to pay on the grounds of morality as I consider in a Christian country it is an immoral and outrageous act to tax me because I am living in Holy matrimony instead of as my husband's mistress. — Marie Stopes

ALEXIS
I have made some converts to the principle that men and women should be coupled in matrimony without distinction of rank. I have lectured on the subject at Mechanics' Institutes, and the mechanics were unanimous in favour of my views. I have preached in workhouses, beershops and Lunatic Asylums, and I have been received with enthusiasm. I have addressed navvies on the advantages that would accrue to them if they married wealthy ladies of rank, and not a navvy dissented!
ALINE
Noble fellows! And yet there are those who hold that the uneducated classes are not open to argument! And what do the countesses say?
ALEXIS
Why, at present, it can't be denied, the aristocracy hold aloof.
ALINE
Ah, the working man is the true Intelligence after all!
ALEXIS
He is a noble creature when he is quite sober. — W.S. Gilbert

[I]n the end this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin. — Elizabeth I

Women are like bottles of liquor. They should be sampled,
savored, then discarded. Matrimony is for men who can't
handle their liquor. — Gena Showalter

Some women marry houses. — Anne Sexton

There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose. — Charles Dickens

Well married, a man is winged - ill-matched, he is shackled. — Henry Ward Beecher

I don't understand art-speak. My pictures are big doodles. I'm amazed what people come up with when they look at them. There's one of a figure with two heads that somebody thought must be a comment on the state of matrimony. None of it is a comment on anything. — Billy Connolly

Matrimony is a very dangerous disorder; I had rather drink. — Marie De Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise De Sevigne

Husbands and wives talk of the cares of matrimony, and bachelors and spinsters bear them. — Wilkie Collins

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. — Jane Austen

Women when they marry buy a cat in the bag. — Michel De Montaigne

Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

It seemed to me pretty plain, that they had more of love than matrimony in them. — Oliver Goldsmith

If we take matrimony at it's lowest, we regard it as a sort of friendship recognised by the police. — Robert Louis Stevenson

In the consciousness of belonging together, in the sense of constancy, resides the sanctity, the beauty of matrimony, which helps us to endure pain more easily, to enjoy happiness doubly, and to give rise to the fullest and finest development of our nature. — Fanny Lewald

Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me — Elizabeth Gilbert

'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Only the most passionate love could ever induce me to marry. — Melanie Dickerson

The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch must have been an off-shoot of the Blue Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times. His warning name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best society and possessed immense wealth. Captain Murderer's mission was matrimony, and the gratification of a cannibal appetite with tender brides. — Charles Dickens

I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand
they only. Know this at last. — Charlotte Bronte

Pardon me; I must seem to you so stupid! Why is the property of the woman who commits Murder, and the property of the woman who commits Matrimony, dealt with alike by your law? — Frances Power Cobbe

My first [wife] was an angel; My second a silly woman; My third a Roman Senator; My fourth a pretty little thing; My fifth - all woman! — Nat C. Goodwin

Women are always anxious to urge bachelors to matrimony; is it from charity, or revenge ?. — Louis Gustave Vapereau

INCOMPATIBILITY, n. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination. Incompatibility may, however, consist of a meek-eyed matron living just around the corner. It has even been known to wear a moustache. — Ambrose Bierce

The state of matrimony is the chief in the world after religion; but people shun it because of its inconveniences, like one who, running out of the rain, falls into the river. — Martin Luther

No compass has ever been invented for the high seas of matrimony. — Heinrich Heine