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"
Quotations
Marriage
When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.
-Warren Farrell
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.
-George Bernard Shaw
He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows.
-Thomas Fuller
There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.
-Henry James
"The Portrait of a Lady"
A woman is not property and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Marriage was not the combination of two entities into one; it was instead the creation of a third entity whose sole purpose was to soothe and inspire the two individuals.
-Christian Cantrell
Women leave their marriages when they can't take any more. Men leave when they find someone new.
-J. Courtney Sullivan
"Commencement"
It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession.
-Thomas Hardy
"Far from the Madding Crowd"
No marriage stays in the same pattern forever. It is both the best feature of marriage and the worst that it inevitably changes.
-Lisa Kleypas
"Love in the Afternoon"
