100 Marriage Quotes to Celebrate Your Bond
Marriage has been a part of the human experience since before recorded history. The earliest evidence we have of marriage comes from the Far East, in Mesopotamia.
In these ceremonies, one man and one woman were united, marking a change from the early periods when hunter-gatherers lived in communities where men and women were shared. As marriage evolved, it became accepted by the major civilizations of the time.
While in the past men and women were married for practical reasons, such as political, economic, or social, today, love is a large part of the equation.
Let’s take a look at 100 quotes about marriage, celebrating this ancient tradition that still holds strong.
“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
“Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.”
Barnett R. Brickner
“Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.”
Tom Mulle
“Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.”
Susan B. Anthony
“Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.”
Franz Schubert
“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
“If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.”
Anton Chekhov
“Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.”
Abraham Lincoln
“A man doesn’t know what happiness is until he’s married. By then, it’s too late.”
Frank Sinatra
“I want the kind of marriage that makes my kids want to get married.”
Emily Wierenga
“Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.”
Hugh Mackay
“Marriage: love, honor and negotiate.”
Joe Moore
“Real love is when you are completely committed to someone even when they are being completely unlovable.”
Dave Willis
“The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“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
“Marriages are like fingerprints; each one is different and each one is beautiful.”
Maggie Reyes
“To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.”
Robert Brault
“The real act of marriage takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It’s a choice you make, not just on your wedding day, but over and over again, and that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband or wife.”
Barbara de Angelis
“Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage.”
Zig Ziglar
“A good marriage requires time. It requires effort. You have to work at it. You have to cultivate it. You have to forgive and forget. You have to be absolutely loyal to one another.”
Gordon B. Hinckley
“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Love is not something you feel. It is something you do.”
David Wilkerson
“The highest happiness on earth is marriage.”
William Lyon Phelps
“You can’t have a happy family if you don’t have a happy marriage.”
Jeremy Sisto
“Marriage, like a submarine, is only safe if you get all the way inside.”
Frank Pittman
“An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”
Agatha Christie
“Marriage is the most natural state of man, and… the state in which you will find solid happiness.”
Benjamin Franklin
“A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.”
Ruth Bell Graham
“A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.”
Andre Maurois
“More marriages might survive if the partners realize that sometimes, the better comes after the worse.”
Doug Larson
“Marriage is not just spiritual communion; it is also remembering to take out the trash.”
Joyce Brothers
“In a happy marriage, it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.”
Gerald Brenan
“A happy marriage is a long conversation, which always seems too short.”
Andre Maurois
“Marriage doesn’t make you happy. You make your marriage happy.”
Dr. Les and Leslie Parrott
“It takes two to make a marriage a success and only one to make it a failure.”
Herbert Samuel
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.”
Leo Tolstoy
“The secret to having a good marriage is to understand that marriage must be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.”
Frank Pittman
“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
Tom Robbins
“The wedding is the planting but the marriage is the season.”
John Bytheway
“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threaded, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.”
Simone Signoret
“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 a mosaic you build with your spouse. Millions of tiny moments that create your love story.”
Jennifer Smith
“One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.”
Honore de Balzac
“Marriage, ultimately, is the practice of becoming passionate friends.”
Harville Hendrix
“Many marriages would be better if the husband and wife clearly understood that they are on the same side.”
Zig Ziglar
“A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like “struggle”. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
Fred Rogers
“Gratitude is the fastest way to happiness in a marriage.”
Dr. Les & Leslie Parrott
“I think long-lasting, healthy relationships are more important than the idea of marriage. At the root of every successful marriage is a strong partnership.”
Carson Daly
“A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.”
Pearl S. Buck
“The best way to remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it once.”
Ogden Nash
“Marriage is nature’s way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.”
Alan King
“After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6 degrees of marriage.”
Mignon McLaughlin
“A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.”
Brendan Behan
“Marriage is not 50-50. Divorce is 50-50. It isn’t dividing everything in half, but giving everything you’ve got.”
Dave Willis
“Love is a partnership of two unique people who bring out the very best in each other, and who know that even though they are wonderful as individuals, they are even better together.”
Barbara Cage
“You don’t marry one person; you marry three: the person you think they are, the person they are, and the person they are going to become as a result of being married to you.”
Richard Needham
“The relationship between husband and wife should be one of closest friends.”
B.R. Ambedkar
“The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together.”
Robert C. Dodds
“There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.”
Winston Churchill
“The great secret of successful marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters.”
Sir Harold George Nicolson
“Keep the fire lit in your marriage and your life will be filled with warmth.”
Fawn Weaver
“Marriage signifies oneness.”
Mark McGrann
“Remember that creating a successful marriage is like farming: you have to start over again every morning.”
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
“The great marriages are partnerships. It can’t be a great marriage without being a partnership.”
Helen Mirren
“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
John Wooden
“The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.”
H. L. Mencken
“Don’t marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can’t live without.”
James C. Dobson
“Marriage, in its truest sense, is a partnership of equals, with neither exercising dominion over the other, but, rather, with each encouraging and assisting the other in whatever responsibilities and aspirations he or she might have.”
Gordon B. Hinckley
“Sensual pleasures have the fleeting brilliance of a comet; a happy marriage has the tranquility of a lovely sunset.”
Ann Landers
“I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
“The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds – they mature slowly.”
Peter De Vries
“The difference between an ordinary marriage and an extraordinary marriage is in giving just a little ‘extra’ every day, as often as possible, for as long as we both shall live.”
Fawn Weaver
“A good husband makes a good wife.”
John Florio
“Being loved just as you are is the greatest currency on earth. It is immeasurable in value and can never truly be repaid.”
Fawn Weaver
“When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”
Franklin P. Jones
“The greatest marriages are built on teamwork. A mutual respect, a healthy dose of admiration, and a never-ending portion of love and grace.”
Fawn Weaver
“The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.”
Henny Youngman
“Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.”
Erma Bombeck
“Always strive to give your spouse the very best of yourself, not what’s left over after you gave your best to everyone else.”
Dave Willis
“Marriage is a commitment- a decision to do, all through life, that which will express your love for one’s spouse.”
Herman H. Kieval
“Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.”
Tom Mullen
“A successful marriage isn’t the union of two perfect people. It’s that of two imperfect people who have learned the value of forgiveness and grace.”
Darlene Schacht
“A good marriage is different to a happy marriage.”
Debra Winger
“Marriage is meant to keep people together, not just when things are good, but particularly when they are not. That’s why we take marriage vows, not wishes.”
Ngina Otiende
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.”
Sam Keen
“A happy marriage is about three things: memories of togetherness, forgiveness of mistakes and a promise to never give up on each other.”
Surabhi Surendra
“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
“Marriages, like a garden, take time to grow. But the harvest is rich unto those who patiently and tenderly care for the ground.”
Darlene Schacht
“Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.”
Helen Keller
“The secret of a happy marriage is finding a right person. You know they are right if you love to be with them all the time.”
Julia Child
“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 successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
Mignon McLaughlin
“I support gay marriage. I believe gay people have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.”
Kinky Friedman
“A marriage doesn’t have to be perfect but you can be perfect for each other.”
Jessica Simpson
“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
Wrapping Up
We hope these marriage quotes brought a smile to your face and gave you food for thought. If you’re looking for more quote collections to inspire you, check out our quotes on hope.
