The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant--and let the air out of the tires.
Dorothy Parker
1. "A mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law in one house are like two cats in a bag."
Jewish proverb
Other categories: Family and Loneliness -:- Woman and Man
2. "Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond."
Thomas Love Peacock
3. "Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner."
John Updike, "Couples"
4. "If married couples did not live together good marriages would be more common."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
5. "A good husband is healthy and absent."
Japanese proverb
6. "Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph."
Iris Murdoch, "The Message to the Planet"
Other categories: Woman and Man
7. "When two people marry they become in the eyes of the law one person, and that one person is the husband!"
Shana Alexander, "State-by-State Guide to Women`s Legal Rights"
Other categories: Law and Crime
8. "If marriages were made by putting all the men's names into one sack and the women's names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England."
George Bernard Shaw, "Misalliance"
Other categories: Happiness
9. "Women hope men will change after marriage but they don?t; men hope women won?t change but they do."
Bettina Arndt, "Private Lives"
Other categories: Woman and Man
10. "In the best of all possible worlds, childbirth enriches a marriage. In the worst, it harms it. No matter how good their marriage is, most couples find that having a baby challenges their relationship."
Jean Marzollo, "Your Maternity Leave"
Other categories: Family and Loneliness
11. "Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up."
Joseph Barth
Other categories: Youth and Age
12. "A literary woman’s best critic is her husband."
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, "Chapters from a Life"
Other categories: Art and Culture
13. "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"
14. "Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses."
Francis Bacon, "Essays"
Other categories: Woman and Man -:- Youth and Age
15. "An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband."
Booth Tarkington, "Looking Forward and Others"
Other categories: Woman and Man
16. "There is no loneliness like that of a failed marriage."
Alexander Theroux, "An Adultery"
Other categories: Family and Loneliness
17. "Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient."
François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), "Philosophical Dictionary"
18. "Marriage enlarges the Scene of our Happiness and Miseries."
Joseph Addison
Other categories: Happiness
19. "Marriage is a fierce battle before which the two partners ask heaven for its blessing, because loving each other is the most audacious of enterprises; the battle is not slow to start, and victory, that is to say freedom, goes to the cleverest."
Honoré De Balzac
20. "Nowadays love is a matter of chance, matrimony a matter of money and divorce a matter of course."
Helen Rowland, "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl"
Other categories: Love
21. "When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one."
Helen Rowland, "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl"
Other categories: Woman and Man
22. "When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart."
Helen Rowland, "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl"
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
23. "Before marriage, a man will go home and lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he’ll go to sleep before you finish saying it."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
24. "After marriage, a woman’s sight becomes so keen that she can see right through her husband without looking at him, and a man’s so dull that he can look right through his wife without seeing her."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
25. "Love, the quest; marriage, the conquest; divorce, the inquest."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Love
26. "A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Woman and Man
27. "France may claim the happiest marriages in the world, but the happiest divorces in the world are "made in America.""
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: History and Nations -:- Manners and Ethics
28. "Marriage is the operation by which a woman’s vanity and a man’s egotism are extracted without an anaesthetic."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Egoism
29. "Wedding: the point at which a man stops toasting a woman and begins roasting her."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Woman and Man
30. "Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man."
Helen Rowland, "A Guide to Men"
Other categories: Love -:- Truth and Falsity
31. "The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor."
Zora Neale Hurston, "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
32. "I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful."
John Constable
Other categories: Beauty and Ugliness
33. "A great marriage is not when the "perfect couple" comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences."
Dave Meurer, "Daze of Our Wives"
34. "As was his language so was his life."
Seneca the Younger
Other categories: Oration and Silence
35. "In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk."
Rita Rudner
36. "Married couples tell each other a thousand things without speech."
Chinese proverb
Other categories: Oration and Silence
37. "A poor man who takes a rich wife has a ruler, not a wife."
Greek proverb
Other categories: Richness and Money -:- Authority, Government
38. "The woman cries before the wedding and the man after."
Polish proverb
Other categories: Joy and Sadness -:- Woman and Man
39. "Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter."
Laurence J. Peter
40. "The most dangerous food is wedding cake."
James Thurber
Other categories: Health and Alcohol
41. "The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives."
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
42. "Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes."
Joseph Priestley
43. "I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year."
Bette Davis
Other categories: Richness and Money
44. "A retired husband is a wife's full time job."
Ella Harris
Other categories: Work and Laziness
45. "No man is a hero to his wife's psychiatrist."
Eric Berne
Other categories: Various
46. "Marriage means expectations and expectations mean conflict."
Herbert Hoover
47. "To "catch" a husband is an art; to "hold" him is a job."
Simone De Beauvoir
48. "I've been married three times - and each time I married the right person."
Margaret Mead
49. "A man who thinks he is smarter than his wife, has a very smart wife!"
(?)
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
50. "A smart husband buys his wife very fine china so she won't trust him to wash it."
(?)
Other categories: Trust
2007, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
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