Marriage

“ By telling them how married partners should treat one another, what an important institution marriage is as the fountain from which all other relationships in life proceed, how marriage can be made happy, how necessary it is for married partners to treat each other with respect and consideration. ”

“ The object of marriage is the ultimation of that love which brings the two together and binds them together in the procreation and rearing of children for heaven. This is the only true aim and sole object about which every earthly desire, interest and plan of the married pair should cluster. ”

“ Are you speaking, Mademoiselle, of the solemn union between man and woman? In this sense, marriage is a sacrament. But sometimes, alas! it is almost a sacrilege. As for civil marriage, it is a formality. The importance given to it in our society is an idiotic thing which would have made the women of other times laugh. ”

“ Ay, marriage is the life-long miracle,
The self-begetting wonder, daily fresh; ”

“ By marriage two were to become one flesh, therefore those that before were in a sense one flesh by nature could not, without the greatest absurdity, become one flesh by institution; for the institution was designed to unite those who before were not united. (2.) Marriage puts an equality between husband and wife. ”

“ He describes marriage as "a species of friendship," one, moreover, which "is most in accordance with Nature, as husband and wife mutually supply what is lacking in the other." Here is the ideal marriage, the relationship between one woman and the one man that to-day we are striving to attain. ”

“ You must pardon the deception, dear sir, and you must perform the marriage ceremony without inconvenient scruples, or hesitation, or questions. Be thankful, for the sake of morality, we see the propriety of getting married at all. ”

“ I am a woman and have begun to think. This marriage, though brought about in so ridiculous a way, has had a wonderful effect upon me. I have heard that marriage merges a woman's identity with that of her husband, but this marriage has made an individual of me. ”

“ The precise form of the ceremony of marriage is not the important thing, but the fact of some form which will make marriage more or less binding, binding enough to compel the fulfillment of the obligations which follow from it, which are inherent in it and inseparable from it. ”

“ A study of the marriage laws of the world has also brought the happy conviction that the wholesome view of marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life, to the exclusion of all others, is the one triumphant fact of human history which can never lose its prestige. ”

“ Your weal or woe and the weal or woe of those who shall come after you, and the influence you shall exert upon the world, depend, in a great measure, upon the wisdom and virtue with which you conduct your preparation for marriage. All true minds see the manifest impropriety of jesting about the most delicate, serious, and sacred relation and feeling of human experience. The whole tendency of such lightness is to cause the marriage relation to be lightly esteemed and the true aim of courtship to be lost sight of. ”

“ The first great marriage celebrated in this world of ours—that of our first parents—is a sample of marriage that should be introduced and practiced by and among all generations and nations, so far as the eternity of its duration is concerned. ”

“ “Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden, meeting by chance or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness before had concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge Nature with cruelty. ”

“ In a word, the Man and the Woman remains, but the Husband and Wife are loft; the Conjunction holds, but the Union is lost; the Marriage is fixed and fast, but the Matrimony is gone, in a word, there's the Whoredom without the Matrimony, the vitious Part without the virtuous, the humid without the sublime; there's the married Couple without their Souls; their Affections are no more united than the Poles, and like the living and the dead Body I mentioned just now, they are only Bound to one another, that at last they may Rot together. ”

“ Judging the standing of married life by infrequent divorces and rather early marriage, he is painfully disconcerted to discover that the marriage ideal is nevertheless mean and lacking in social inspiration. ”

“ We will therefore divide this important Meditation into six paragraphs:
1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE. 2. OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW. 3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS. 4. OF THE LOVER'S ALLIES. 5. OF THE MAID. 6. OF THE DOCTOR. 1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE. La Bruyere has very wittily said, "It is too much for a husband to have ranged against him both devotion and gallantry; a woman ought to choose but one of them for her ally." ”

“ Amongst other discourses one day I told him, I was much affected with the relation I had from some of the company of their custom in holding the feast of the family, for that, methought, I had never heard of a solemnity wherein Nature did so much preside. And because propagation of families proceedeth from the nuptial copulation, I desired to know of him what laws and customs they had concerning marriage, and whether they kept marriage well, and whether they were tied to one wife? ”

“ Marriage, and especially this marriage, meant to her a great many pleasant things, a splendid, lovable man with whom to share life, a big home to manage and delight in, a conspicuous place in society, and one that she knew that she could fill gracefully and well. ”

“ When the marriage is consummated, I shall have a more noble lord than I deserve." They all say: "If you are prudent, this very day shall not go by without the marriage being solemnised. For it is folly to postpone for a single hour an advantageous act." ”

“ Thus the husband and wife exercise the duties of their marriage contract of love, protection, obedience, and the like, all the year long, and yet solemnize it by a more deliberate and reflecting act of the same love on the anniversary of their marriage. ”

“ More and more the people are growing into a responsiveness to the sacredness of the marriage relation. The husband has increased in knowledge regarding his duty to his wife; the wife sees better her relation to her husband; the parents more clearly perceive what is possible and proper with reference to their children; and, therefore, we can claim thousands of homes which are sources of refinement, of love, and of purest pleasure. ”

“ And, indeed, marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree. Our author, however, is clearly of the same opinion as the Scotch lassie who, on her father warning her what a solemn thing it was to get married, answered, ‘I ken that, father, but it’s a great deal solemner to be single.’ He may be regarded as the champion of the married life. ”

“ Thrice happy are you, O noble Couple, that you are yet in possession of the Pleasures of the first Marriage, and are not troubled with the contention of a cross-graind Father-in-law, or Mother-in-law over your Children, nor with their fore-children, or Children of the second bed. ”

“ This, however, is a state which can only be effected by degrees, during the progress of the conjugial life; and to form the youth into a husband and the virgin into a wife, is one of the uses which are to be wrought out in marriage. ”

“ All of one’s friends help a little. Marriage is like a country surprise party each guest of which has been asked to ‘Please furnish Advice.’ Aunt Levina said: ‘My dear, marriage is like medicine—it isn’t so much what you take as what you believe it is going to do.’ Papa said: ‘Madge, girl, ask your mother how she hypnotized me. ”

“ A marriage, so free, so spontaneous, that it would allow of wide excursions of the pair from each other, in common or even in separate objects of work and interest, and yet would hold them all the time in the bond of absolute sympathy, would by its very freedom be all the more poignantly attractive, and by its very scope and breadth all the richer and more vital—would be in a sense indestructible; ”

“ A nice notion you have of a wife, to suppose she's nothing to think of but her husband's buttons. A pretty notion, indeed, you have of marriage. Ha! if poor women only knew what they had to go through. ”

“ Go to the good heart that is my husband
Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love:—
Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him
Wrought out my destiny—that through the flesh
I won spirit, and through spirit, peace.
There is no marriage in heaven
But there is love. ”

“ Suppose both our wives should conceive the first night of our marriage, and should happen to be brought to bed on one day, yours of a son, and mine of a daughter, we will give them to each other in marriage. ”

“ Being the first wife, while in the heyday of life and youth having her husband to herself, in obedience to the law of God she sacrificed her own feelings at the shrine of duty, and in compliance with the laws of celestial marriage was willing that others should also share the affections of her husband. ”

“ First we find the present "normal condition of individual marriage with the occasional existence of marital relations between the individual wife and other men of the same group as that to which her husband belongs, and the occasional existence also of still wider marital relations;" ”

“ After the comforts you've known of marriage—what are you sighing at, dear?—after the comforts, you must marry again—now don't forswear yourself in that violent way, taking an oath that you know you must break—you couldn't help it, I'm sure of it ”

“ It is more the especial purpose of what follows, however, to treat of the matter of marriage in particular, to say something definite to young husbands and wives that shall be of real benefit to them, not only by way of starting them out right in the new and untried way upon which they have entered, but to help them to make that way a realm of perpetual and ever increasing joy to both parties concerned, throughout its entire course, their whole lives long. ”

“ The ancient marriage, and indeed the medieval one, and the marriage of our own grandmother's time began with submission and usually ended with subjection. But the modern marriage at its best is a spiritual and material partnership. It is the modern marriage at its best and otherwise with which we have to do. ”

“ Marriage is the miracle that transforms a kiss from a pleasure into a duty, and a lie from a luxury into a necessity. ”

“ But perhaps most persons, especially when young and looking forward to a long future of connubial happiness, consider the act of marriage more as a religious rite than a civil contract, and hence the forms and ceremonies of the Church accord more agreeably with the sentiment of love and affection than the business-like and informal words of the magistrate, who, in response to their acknowledgment of intention to marry, simply pronounces them man and wife. ”

“ Healthy in body and pure in spirit, brought up in an atmosphere of sincerity and morality under the care of an incomparable mother, but deprived, owing to my rank, of more or less enlightened friends who would have reposed certain womanly confidences in me, I gave my whole soul to my approaching marriage without troubling myself what marriage might mean. ”

“ As to marriage "narrowing a man's mind," that which never had any breadth cannot be narrowed. And history abundantly shows how wise in counsel, how judicious in influence, how helpful in sympathy and co-operation have been many such wives. ”

“ One poor hen-pecked husband groans in these terms: “Cursed be the first man who invented marriage, and then the second, and the third, and the fourth, and all those who imitated them.” One old husband laments: “I have married a witch with a dowry. ”

“ The marriage ideal is a well-mated pair, physically and intellectually qualified, who through affection are attracted to marriage and through mutual [36] consideration are ready unselfishly to seek each other's welfare, and who recognize in marriage a divinely ordered provision for human happiness and for the perpetuation of the race. ”

“ Marriage, being the commencement of a domestic life, beside the many agreeable circumstances attending it, has its peculiar cares and troubles which require the solace of a companion actuated by better principles, and possessed of more amiable endowments than outward splendor and magnificence can afford. ”

“ So strictly are the laws of marriage carried out, that, should any sign of courtship or affection be observed between those 'of one flesh,' the brothers or male relatives of the woman beat her severely. ”

“ The practices I have enumerated have all been interpreted as expiations for marriage. Marriage, it is said,—the appropriation of one or more women to one man—is an evolution from the primeval condition of promiscuity. ”

“ Therefore we must by all means marry, both for our country’s sake, for the succession of children, and as far as we are concerned, the perfection of the world; since [80] the poets also pity a marriage half-perfect and childless, but pronounce the fruitful one happy. But it is the diseases of the body that principally show marriage to be necessary. ”

“ But the importance which has been attached to this form of marriage in the literature of sociology is due to the fact that these eminent writers have constructed theories on the assumption that marriage by capture was widespread and important, more than to anything else. ”

“ Marriage is a union between two persons—one man and one woman. A woman who has given herself up to one, can not give herself up to a second, for her whole dignity requires that she should belong only to this one. ”