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...

Ode to the Chamber…linger here amidst the chamberin which we embrace our lovetalk to me of sonnetsand call me turtledove…

(Response to King Erik XIV of Sweden’s proposal of marriage:)”[W]hile we perceive … the zeal and love of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are grieved that we cannot gratify...

[I]f the name of wife appears more sacred and more valid, sweeter to me is ever the word friend, or, if thou be not ashamed, concubine … And thou thyself wert not wholly unmindful of...

No: I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne.””I ask why? I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy of you.”She stood on the hearth; she was pale as the white...

Bride, n. – A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

A man who lives with his wife is safer and more venerable than a man who lives with a tramp.

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

Adrian Mole’s father was so angry that so many pepole got divorced nowadays. HE had been unhappilly married for 30 years, why should everybody else get away?

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

Marriage is not ‘I’, its ‘We’.

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

[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.

In matters of religion and matrimony I never give advice, because I will not have anybody’s torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.

What tale do you like best to hear?’ ‘Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme – courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe – marriage.

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...

For marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

[F]rom my years of understanding … I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I...

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.

[I]t is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better; one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue. Nor should she deem herself other than venal who weds a...

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation...

I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.

The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed … or find a still greater man to marry her. … The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he...

-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…

Marriage is a responsibility, not a swimming pool you can jump into and then just go out of afterwards

Some women marry houses.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

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

LEONATOWell, then, go you into hell?BEATRICENo, 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...

Marriage is one sweet way in which one can taste heaven on earth. Similarly, I can also become hell on earth.

It was all Mrs. Bumble. She would do it,” urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round, to ascertain that his partner had left the room.That is no excuse,” returned Mr. Brownlow. “You were present on the...

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.

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...

LEONATOWell, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.BEATRICENot till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce...

There are some who want to get married and others who don’t. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.

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

There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance … some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two...

Philip wasn’t the sort of man to make a friend of a woman. He wanted devotion. I gave him that. I did, you know. But I couldn’t stand being made a fool of. I couldn;t...

Yes, faith; it is my cousin’s duty to make curtsy and say ‘Father, as it please you.’ But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and...

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

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

What do you mean, ‘Angle of Repose?’ she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother’s life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down....

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...

If [God] send me no husband, for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening …

And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. Taken in that light, certainly their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could place them in such a view. You will allow that in...

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...

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

[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.

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...

How many women are there … who because of their husbands’ harshness spend their weary lives in the bond of marriage in greater suffering than if they were slaves among the Saracens?