Marriage Quotes
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76. Adultery; Marriage
He talked of the heinousness of the crime of adultery, by which the peace of families was destroyed. He said, "Confusion of progeny constitutes the essence of the crime; and therefore a woman who breaks her marriage vows is much more criminal than a man who does it. A man, to be sure, is criminal in the sight of God; but he does not do his wife a very material injury, if he does not insult her; if for instance, from mere wantonness of appetite, he steals privately to her chambermaid. Sir, a wife ought not to greatly resent this. I would not receive home a daughter who had run away from her husband on that account. A wife should study to reclaim her husband by more attention to please him. Sir, a man will not, once in a hundred instances, leave his wife and go to a harlot, if his wife has not been negligent of pleasing."
Boswell: Life
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78. Marriage
When I censured a gentleman of my acquaintance for marrying a second time, as it shewed a disregard of his first wife, he said, "Not at all, Sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by shewing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time."
Boswell: Life
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89. Marriage
On second marriages: "The triumph of hope over experience."
Boswell: Life
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139. Marriage
"Marriage is the best state for a man in general; and every man is a worse man, in proportion as he is unfit for the married state."
Boswell: Life
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186. Marriage
"I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter."
Boswell: Life
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187. Marriage
Boswell: "Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy, as with any one woman in particular?" Johnson: "Ay, Sir, fifty thousand."
Boswell: Life
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192. Marriage
"Marriage, Sir, is much more necessary to a man than to a woman; for he is much less able to supply himself with domestick comforts."
Boswell: Life
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197. Marriage
"It is commonly a weak man who marries for love."
Boswell: Life
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205. Marriage
I repeated to him an argument of a lady of my acquaintance, who maintained, that her husband's having been guilty of numberless infidelities, released her from conjugal obligations, because they were reciprocal. Johnson: "This is miserable stuff, Sir. To the contract of marriage, besides the man and wife, there is a third party -- Society; and, if it be considered as a vow -- GOD: and, therefore, it cannot be dissolved by their consent alone. Laws are not made for particular cases, but for men in general. A woman may be unhappy with her husband; but she cannot be freed from him without the approbation of the civil and ecclesiastical power. A man may be unhappy, because he is not so rich as another; but he is not to seize upon another's property with his own hand." Boswell: "But, Sir, this lady does not want that the contract should be dissolved; she only argues that she may indulge herself in gallantries with equal freedom as her husband does, provided she takes care not to introduce a spurious issue into his family. You know, Sir, what Macrobius has told us of Julia." Johnson: "This lady of yours, Sir, I think, is very fit for a brothel."
Boswell: Life
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460. Marriage; Solitude

"Many other evils infest private life. Some are the slaves of servants whom they have trusted with their affairs. Some are kept in continual anxiety by the caprice of rich relations, whom they cannot please and dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious, and some wives perverse: and as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one may often make many miserable." [Princess Nekayah]

"If such be the general effect of marriage," said the prince, "I shall, for the future, think it dangerous to connect my interest with another, lest I should be unhappy by my partner's fault."

"I have met," said the princess, "with many who live single for that reason; but I have never found that their prudence ought to raise envy. They dream away their time without friendship, without fondness, and are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by childish amusements or vicious delights. They act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with rancor; and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home, and malevolent abroad; and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them from its priveleges."
Johnson: Rasselas
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas.
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462. Celibacy; Charity; Involvement; Marriage; Stoicism; Solitude
"To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures."
Johnson: Rasselas [Princess Nekayah]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas.
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467. Marriage
"Marriage is evidently the dictate of nature; men and women are made to be companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be persuaded but that marriage is one of the means of happiness."
Johnson: Rasselas [Rasselas]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas.
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468. Marriage
"I know not ... whether marriage be more than one of the innumerable modes of human misery. When I see and reckon the various forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversities of temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses, the obstinate contests of disagreeable virtues where both are supported by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes disposed to think, with the severer casuists of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted than approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compacts."
Johnson: Rasselas [Princess Nekayah]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas.
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470. Marriage
"Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange 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 had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty."
Johnson: Rasselas [Rasselas]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas.
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556. Marriage
"There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it."
Johnson: Rambler #18 (May 19, 1750)
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558. Marriage; Virtue
"...Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, and there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and that he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness, that regard which only virtue and piety can claim."
Johnson: Rambler #18 (May 19, 1750)
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618. Marriage; Youth
"It is ... common to hear both sexes repine at their change [Marriage], relate the happiness of their earlier years, blame the folly and rashness of their own choice, and warn those whom they see coming into the world against the same precipitance and infatuation. But it is to be remembered, that the days which they so much wish to call back, are the days not only of celibacy but of youth, the days of novelty and improvement, of ardour and of hope, of health and vigour of body, of gaiety and lightness of heart. It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful; and I am afraid that, whether married or unmarried, we shall find the vesture of terrestrial existence more heavy and cumbrous the longer it is worn."
Johnson: Rambler #45 (August 21, 1750)
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620. Marriage
"Every man recounts the inconveniences of his own station, and thinks those of any other less, because he has not felt them. Thus the married praise the ease and freedom of a single state, and the single fly to marriage from the weariness of solitude."
Johnson: Rambler #45 (August 21, 1750)
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622. Anger; Marriage
"Wives and husbands are ... incessantly complaining of each other; and there would be reason for imagining that almost every house was infested with perverseness or oppression beyond human sufferance, did we not know upon how small occasions some minds burst into lamentations and reproaches, and how naturally every animal revenges his pain upon those who happen to be near, without any nice examination of its cause. We are always willing to fancy ourselves within a little of happiness, and when, with repeated efforts, we cannot reach it, persuade ourselves that it is intercepted by an ill-paired mate, since, if we could find any other obstacle, it would be our own fault that it was not removed."
Johnson: Rambler #45 (August 21, 1750)
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623. Marriage
"When I see the avaricious and crafty taking companions to their tables and their beds, without any inquiry but after farms and money; or the giddy and thoughtless uniting themselves for life to those whom they have only seen by the light of tapers at a ball; when parents make articles for their children without inquiring after their consent; when some marry for heirs to disappoint their brothers, and others throw themselves into the arms of those whom they do not love, because they found themselves rejected where they were more solicitous to please; when some marry because their servants cheat them, some because they squander their own money, some because their houses are pestered with company, some because they will live like other people, and some only because they are sick of themselves; I am not so much inclined to wonder that marriage is sometimes unhappy, as that it appears so little loaded with calamity; and cannot but conclude that society has something in itself eminently agreeable to human nature, when I find its pleasures so great that even the ill choice of a companion can hardly overbalance them."
Johnson: Rambler #45 (August 21, 1750)
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