Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.

-Congreve,William
  Bellmore to Belinda. The Old Bachelor, act 5, sc.10.

If the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,öif you did not come inonthewife'sside,öif youdid not sneak intothehouse in her train, but were an old friend in first habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on,ölook about you† Every long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world.

-Lamb, Charles
  Essays of Elia,'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'.

My Darling, prickly hedgehog of the heart, chocolates, cherries, hairshirts, pinks and glassö when we joined in the sublime blindness of courtship loving lost all its vice with half its virtue.

-Lowell, RobertTraill Spence,Jr
  'NewYear's Eve'.

For the first twenty years you are still growing, Bodily that is; as a poet, of course, You are not born yet. It's the next ten You cut your teeth on to emerge smirking For your brash courtship of the muse.

-Thomas, R(onald) S(tuart)
  'ToAYoung Poet'.