Some might think the marriage institution is quite outdated, but when you truly think about it, it is pretty amazing. To devote yourself to just that one special person, to build a future life together, and even maybe to have kids sounds like something from a fairy tale! All the better if you can choose to have two surnames after this alliance—then you instantly become a princess or some fancy baroness. However, marriage is, of course, not the play-pretend act of becoming imaginary royalty, but rather hard work of keeping the love alive and the spark alight. Sometimes it’s the greatest fun, yet sometimes, you wish you’d never have said that final Yes for a moment here and there. And to encompass the roller coaster of this institution in the best way possible, we’ve gathered here some of the best marriage quotes that we’ve found.
Some of these smart quotes are also funny, giving you a lighter take on the matter. Other marriage quotes are pretty deep, talking about the aspirations of eternal love and dedication. Still, some manage to round up all of the things above in just a sentence, and those are by far the best quotes. So, truly, no matter at which stage you are in your marriage, these inspiring quotes will sound relatable, supportive, and motivating.
So, scroll just a tiny notch down below and check out our collection of beautiful marriage quotes! Don’t forget to vote for the wise words that resonate the most with you and, of course, share this article with your very special someone!
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“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“My husband and I have never considered divorce... murder sometimes, but never divorce.” ― Joyce Brothers
“Marriage is a mosaic you build with your spouse. Millions of tiny moments that create your love story.” — Jennifer Smith
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” — Lao Tzu
“Love doesn’t make the world go round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.” — Louis de Bernières
“My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.” — Winston Churchill
“Marriage doesn’t make you happy, you make your marriage happy.” — Drs. Les & Leslie Parrott
“Being in a long marriage is a little bit like that nice cup of coffee every morning – I might have it every day, but I still enjoy it.” — Stephen Gaines
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.” - Leo Tolstoy
“Marriage is a risk; I think it’s a great and glorious risk, as long as you embark on the adventure in the same spirit.” — Cate Blanchett
“The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.” — Henny Youngman
“Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music, and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays." — Henny Youngman
“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” — Billy Crystal, 'When Harry Met Sally'
“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” ― Socrates
“The greatest marriages are built on teamwork. Mutual respect, a healthy dose of admiration, and a never-ending portion of love and grace.” — Fawn Weaver
“Sensual pleasures have the fleeting brilliance of a comet; a happy marriage has the tranquility of a lovely sunset.” — Ann Landers
“An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.” ― Agatha Christie
“A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.”— Andre Maurois
“If I had a flower for every time thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.” — Alfred, 'Lord Tennyson'
“Look, you want to know what marriage is really like? Fine. You wake up, she's there. You come back from work, she's there. You fall asleep, she's there. You eat dinner, she's there. Do you know? I mean, I know that sounds like a bad thing, but it's not." — Ray Romano, 'Everybody Loves Raymond'
“Getting married is like trading in the adoration of many for the sarcasm of one.” ― Mae West
“A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.” ― Anne Lamott, 'Joe Jones'
“When I'm weak, you can be strong; when I'm strong, you can be weak. That's what I believe marriage is.” - Gisele Bundchen
“The great marriages are partnerships. It can’t be a great marriage without being a partnership.” – Helen Mirren
“It’s amazing how one day someone walks into your life, and you cannot remember how you ever lived without them.”
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”— Mignon McLaughlin
“Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.” — Franz Schubert
“If he can't handle you at your worst then he does not deserve you at your best. Real love means seeing beyond the words spoken out of pain, and instead of seeing a person's soul.” ― Shannon Alder, '300 Questions LDS Couples Should Ask Before Marriage'
“Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.” ― Honore de Balzac
His contemporary Emile Zola wrote...»The chains of matrimony are so heavy it takes two people to carry them.......and sometimes three»
“A great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.” — Dave Meurer
“A good marriage is one where each partner secretly suspects they got the better deal.”
“When in a relationship, a real man doesn't make his woman jealous of others, he makes others jealous of his woman.” ― Steve Maraboli, 'Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience'
“Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. It’s the way you love your partner every day.” — Barbara De Angelis
“You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.”― Jodi Picoult, 'Mercy'
“To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up.” ― Ogden Nash
“One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.” ― W. Somerset Maugham, 'The Painted Veil'
Gay,later adopted one of his lovers,many years his junior.....a brilliant writer
“It was finally becoming clear to her that love wasn’t about finding someone perfect to marry. Love was about seeing through to the truth of a person and accepting all their shades of light and dark. Love was an ability.” ― Lisa Kleypas, ‘Tempt Me at Twilight’
“Finding a life partner is like choosing a bed. You need one as a friend either in times of health or sickness. Freshness or weariness. Happiness or sadness. And we can be certain that we've picked the right one without having to sleep with it first.” ― Isman H. Suryaman
“Who we marry is one of the most important decisions in life. One that will influence the level of happiness, growth, and success, like no other choice.” - Nathan Workman
“A happy marriage doesn’t mean you have a perfect spouse or a perfect marriage. It simply means you’ve chosen to look beyond the imperfections in both.” — Fawn Weaver
“I got gaps; you got gaps; we fill each other’s gaps… Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades. You can depend so much on certain people; you can set your watch by them. And that’s love, even if it doesn’t seem very exciting.” — Sylvester Stallone
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss
“This is what marriage really means: helping one another to reach the full status of being persons, responsible beings who do not run away from life.” — Paul Tournier
“When you end up happily married, even the failed relationships have worked beautifully to get you there.” — Julia Roberts
“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.” ― Oscar Wilde, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'
.Oscar Wilde was a brilliant wit and very much a part of the glitterati of his time...he did marry for a short time and wrote a beautiful book for his son...but ended tragically as an exile in France.His downfall was a torrant love affair with a young English lord,brought to court by the young mans father and as homosexuality was a big no no in Victorias reign he was sent to jail for a time...later exiled.
“I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.” ― Mary Ann Shaffer, 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society'
“Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.” ― Mae West, 'The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said'
“There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.” ― Homer, 'The Odyssey'
“Love is an act of endless forgiveness; a tender look which becomes a habit.” ― Peter Ustinov
“My husband has made me laugh. Wiped my tears. Hugged me tight. Watched me succeed. Seen me fail. Kept me strong. My husband is a promise that I will have a friend forever.”
“Every heart sings a song, incomplete until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” — Plato
“Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.” — Alexander Smith
“To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.” — Robert Brault
“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.” ― Katharine Hepburn
“You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage’
“So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.” ― Sylvia Plath, 'The Bell Jar'
“The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.” ― Gabriel García Márquez
“Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.” ― P.G. Wodehouse, 'The Small Bachelor'
“They say all marriages are made in heaven, but so are thunder and lightning.”
― Clint Eastwood
“That’s my prescription for a happy marriage – marry someone who doesn’t do anything similar to what you do.” - Maxine Kumin
“Marriage is a huge investment: of time, of energy, and of emotion. Protect and keep contributing to your investment.” - Karen Gordon
“A lasting relationship isn’t about marriage. It’s about compatibility and communication. And you both need to want it to work.” — Goldie Hawn
“The secret to a happy marriage is if you can be at peace with someone within four walls, if you are content because the one you love is near to you, either upstairs or downstairs, or in the same room, and you feel that warmth that you don’t find very often, then that is what love is all about.” — Bruce Forsyth
“I have a best friend as a husband, and he is my number one supporter. He’s a family man, and he’s always giving back to God. That is what makes him a beautiful man. We’re not perfect by any means, but that makes us beautiful as well. We’re not afraid to say we’re not perfect. We have our disagreements, but that comes along with marriage.” — Tamera Mowry
“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow—this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
“Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.” — Tom Mullen
“Marriage is like watching the color of leaves in the fall; ever-changing and more stunningly beautiful with each passing day.” — Fawn Weaver
“Marriage is like a graph—it has its ups and downs and as long as things bounce back up again, you’ve got a good marriage. If it heads straight down, then you’ve got some problems!” — Julie Andrews
“There's no bad consequence to loving fully, with all your heart. You always gain by giving love. It's like that beautiful Shakespeare quote from Romeo and Juliet: 'My bounty is as boundless as the sea. My love is deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have. For both are infinite.'” — Reese Witherspoon
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you directly without problems or pride: I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love, except in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams.” — Pablo Neruda
“Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity, yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.” — Sydney J. Harris
“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, every day. You and me... every day.” ― Nicholas Sparks, ‘The Notebook’
“Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.” ― Groucho Marx
...one can quote Groucho Marx till the cows come home...this,substitute wife with husband and you are spot on,LOL
“When you loved someone and had to let them go, there will always be that small part of yourself that whispers, "What was it that you wanted and why didn't you fight for it?” ― Shannon L. Alder
“Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who'll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you're in the wrong house, that's what it means.” ― Henny Youngman
“The only way love can last a lifetime is if it’s unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love.” ― Stephen Kendrick, ‘The Love Dare’
“I'm not married,” he said softly, “because I can't stomach the idea of marrying a woman inferior to me in mind and spirit. It would mean the death of my soul.” ― Sarah J. Maas, 'Throne of Glass'
“There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will.” ― Robert Frost
“If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.” ― Michel de Montaigne
“Women leave their marriages when they can't take any more. Men leave when they find someone new.” ― J. Courtney Sullivan, 'Commencement'
“We had a happy marriage because we were together all the time. We were friends as well as husband and wife. We just had a good time.” - Julia Child
“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threaded, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through years.” - Simone Signoret
“In terms of my marriage, you know, falling in love with my husband was by far the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” - Caroline Kennedy
“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” — Rita Rudner
“We have a couple of rules in our relationship. The first rule is that I make her feel like she’s getting everything. The second rule is that I actually do let her have her way in everything. And, so far, it’s working.” — Justin Timberlake
“There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.” — Martin Luther
“Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.” — Sam Levenson
“After a while, you just want to be with the one that makes you laugh.” — Chris Noth as Mr. Big, ‘Sex and the City’
“Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.” — Samuel Richardson
“And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.” ― P.G. Wodehouse, 'Mostly Sally'
“The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing - and then marry him.” ― Cher
“To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.” ― Criss Jami, 'Venus in Arms'
“Why does a woman work ten years to change a man, then complain he's not the man she married?” ― Barbra Streisand
“After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.” ― Mark Twain, 'Diaries of Adam & Eve'
“When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.” ― George Bernard Shaw, 'Getting Married'
“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, ‘Jude the Obscure’
“I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.” ― L.M. Montgomery, 'Anne of the Island'
“There are guys who grow up thinking they'll settle down some distant time in the future, and there are guys who are ready for marriage as soon as they meet the right person. The former bore me, mainly because they're pathetic; and the latter, frankly are hard to find.” ― Nicholas Sparks, 'The Last Song'
“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.” ― Greta Garbo, 'Greta and Cecil'
“The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It’s followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.” ― Nora Ephron
“Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could and until you've stopped loving the woman you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing... Otherwise, all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.” ― Leo Tolstoy, 'War and Peace'
“I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.” ― Abraham Lincoln
“Dignity will only happen when you realize that having someone in your life doesn’t validate your worth.” ― Shannon L. Alder
“I’m done. I don’t need anything more out of life. I have you, and that’s enough.” ― Alessandra Torre
“To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.” ― G.K. Chesterton
“Marriage has made me a lot happier and I’m deeply in love with my wife, and I thank God for her every day.” - Harry Connick, Jr.
“Your marriage is a glorious bond but doesn't take it as an easy task. It is meant to be worked upon - similar to all of your other relationships.” - Raymond Eido
“Marriage is the most natural state of man and the state in which you will find solid happiness.” — Benjamin Franklin
“The person you choose to marry will have a great influence in your life and in the decisions you make from the point of marriage onwards.” - Peter Cain
“No matter what the two of you have to face, it is possible to get through it together as long as you both have confidence in the marriage and in one another.” - Tyler Green
“There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.” - Martin Luther
“The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they’re right if you love to be with them all the time.” — Julia Child
“Love recognizes no barriers, it jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination, full of hope.” — Maya Angelou
“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” — Rumi
“There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?” — Marry Oliver
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” ― Jane Austen, 'Pride and Prejudice'
“I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.” ― Martha Gellhorn, 'Selected Letters'
“Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.” ― Shannon L. Alder
“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.” ― Shannon L. Alder
“I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.” ― Nikola Tesla
“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you
control it.” ― John Steinbeck, 'Travels with Charley: In Search of America'
“I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart.” ― Emily Giffin, 'Heart of the Matter'
“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, ‘Middlesex’
“Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do. ” ― Zsa Zsa Gabor
“Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play guitar under your window every night and sing at the top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have to marry me to save your reputation.” ― Margaret Mitchell, 'Gone with the Wind'
“Become the kind of person the kind of person you would like to marry would like to marry.” ― Douglas Wilson
“Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.” - Franz Schubert
