The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding.

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like a horse and carriage

Dad was told by mother

You can't have one without the other.

Until we have a natural, that is, a conscientious world, it cannot be known by experience what natural law will do for the gratification of a supreme affection; but, if you will give me that world, there will be in it very few not called to marriage, provided society allows proper opportunities for acquaintance between marriageable persons.

For what is wedlock forced but a hell,

An age of discord and continued strife?

Whereas the contrary bringeth forth bliss,

And is a pattern of celestial peace.

There is a connection between what you are putting into your marriage and what you are getting out of it.

Marriage accustomed one to the good things, so one came to take them for granted, but magnified the bad things, so they came to feel as painful as a grain in one's eye. An open window, a forgotten quart of milk, a TV set left blaring, socks on the bathroom floor could become occasions for incredible rage. And something happened sexually in marriage--the swearing to forsake all others, despite its slight observance, had a profound effect. Some people felt trapped by it, impelled to assert what they called freedom. Some accepted it like a rein, and in the effort to avoid pain in the form of hopeless desire, cut off occasions of desire, avoided having long talks at parties with attractive members of the opposite sex. In time, all feeling for the opposite sex was cut off, and intercourse limited to the barest politenesses.... But something happened to you when you did that, a kind of death seeped up from the genitals to the rest of the body, till it showed in the eyes, the gestures, in a certain lifelessness.

All of us, at least unconsciously, marry in the hope of healing our wounds. Even if we do not have a traumatic background, we still have hurts and unfilled needs that we carry inside. We all suffer from feelings of self-doubt, unworthiness, and inadequacy. No matter how nurturing our parents were, we never received enough attention and love. So in marriage we look to our spouse to convince us that we are worthwhile and to heal our infirmities.

A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.

A marriage bound together by commitments to exploit the other for filling one's own needs (and I fear that most marriages are built on such a basis) can legitimately be described as a "tic on a dog" relationship. Just as a hungry tic clamps on to a nourishing host in anticipation of a meal, so each partner unites with the other in the expectation of finding what his or her personal nature demands. The rather frustrating dilemma, of course, is that in such a marriage there are two tics and no dog!

One of the best wedding gifts God gave you was a full-length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, "Here's to helping you discover what you're really like!"

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

Oh, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark

Whose worth's unknown, although its height be taken.

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

In the New Testament a totally new concept of marriage is being introduced; it is directly dependent upon the "Good News" of the Resurrection which was brought to Christ. A Christian is called--already in this world--to experience new life, to become a citizen of the Kingdom; and he can do so in marriage. But then marriage ceases to be either a simple satisfaction of temporary natural urges, or a means for securing an illusory survival through posterity. It is a unique union of two beings in love, two beings who can transcend their own humanity and thus be united not only "with each other," but also "in Christ."

When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one.

I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all.

How the world can change,

It can change like that,

Due to one little word:

"Married."

Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism are extracted without an anaesthetic.

The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

Marriage is socialism among two people.

No marriage is "too dead" for the Lord to restore.

Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.

'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.

If society will adopt the rule of nature, and justify no marriage without a supreme affection, the evils of marriage without love will be sufficiently cured. Those who marry without the consent of Nature may securely expect trouble.

Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.

God has given the human reality of marriage the nature it has because he wills to integrate it into his divine plan and to make it a means of holiness, of sanctification.

Marriage is also a social statement, preeminently describing and defining a person's relationship and place in society. Marital status, along with what we do for a living, is often one of the first pieces of information we give to others about ourselves. It's so important, in fact, that most married people wear a symbol of their marriage on their hand.