In the choice of a wife, we ought to make use of our ears, and not our eyes.

Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age -- as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.

Bad husbands will make bad wives.

A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration.

If you can hang in there through minor and major differences of opinion, through each other's big and little screwups, year after year, you come to understand that the person you married is really, terribly flawed. There isn't a human being you can hang out with, day in and day out, for over a decade and not come to the same inescapable realization.

A single life is doubtless preferable to a married one, where prudence and affection do not accompany the choice; but where they do, there is no terrestrial happiness equal to the married state.

Without sounding pessimistic, I learned that I don't believe in marriage. I believe in a commitment that you make in your heart. There's no paper that will make you stay.

I never was attached to that great sect,

Whose doctrine is, that each one should select

Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,

And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend

To cold oblivion, though it is in the code

Of modern morals, and the beaten road

Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,

Who travel to their home among the dead

By the broad highway of the world, and so

With one chained friend — perhaps a jealous foe,

The dreariest and the longest journey go.

Much of the quarrels and hatred which arise between married people come, in my mind, from the husband's rage and revolt at discovering that his slave and bedfellow, who is to minister to all his wishes, and is church-sworn to honour and obey him--is his superior; and that he, and not she, ought to be the subordinate of the twain.

A bachelor is a guy who never made the same mistake once.

Let your love advise before you choose, and your choice be fixed before you marry: Remember the happiness or misery of your life depends upon this one act, and ... nothing but death can dissolve the knot.

The key to a successful marriage is accepting that you're not going to change the other person. And the words "Yes, dear. Whatever you want."

I don't know why some people get worked up about gay people marrying. It's not gay people who are "ruining the sanctity of marriage," it's celebrities.

Marriage that daily doom.

I think one of the real tests of a stable marriage is being married to a man who worships at the shrine of burnt food -- the back-yard chef.

Many people marry first, and have to learn afterwards the duty of a married state, and the comforts and inconveniences that attend it; and it is not uncommon to meet with persons whose depraved judgments encourage them to think it immaterial, whether or not love proceeds tying the matrimonial knot, looking upon it as a matter of future expectation.

People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it's no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman.

Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.

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