But if marriage be such a blessed state, how comes it, may you say, that there are so few happy marriages? Now in answer to this, is it not to be wondered that so few succeed, we should rather be surprized to find so manydo, considering how imprudently menengage, the motive they act by, and the very strange conduct they observe throughout.

-Astell, Mary
  Some Reflections upon MarriageOccasion'd by the Duke and Duchess of Mazarine's Case which is also consider'd, preface (1706 edn).

Marriage is not a house or even a tent it is before that, and colder.

-Atwood, Margaret Eleanor
  Procedures from Underground,'Habitation'.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

-Austen,Jane
  Pride and Prejudice, ch.6.

Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.

-Austen,Jane
  Pride and Prejudice, ch.22.

   Le mariage doit incessamment combattre un monstre qui de¤ v ore tout: l'habitude. Marriage should always combat the monster that devours everything: habit.

-Balzac, Honore¤   de
  Physiologie du mariage.

She endured a five-year marriage to Ernest Hemingway that roughly coincided with and bore more than a passing resemblance to World War II.

-Barrer, Bruce
  Of Martha Gelhorn. In the Wall Street  Journal, 9 Mar.

   De toutes les choses se¤  rieuses, le mariage e¤  tant la plus bouffonne. Of all serious things, marriage is the most farcical.

-Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron de
  Le Mariage de Figaro, act1, sc.9.

   He wasnotfitfor marriage, only for work. A major writer, he conceded, required major torment.

-Bergreen, Laurence
  Of  James  Agee.  James  Agee.

All weddings are similar but every marriage is different. Death comes to everyone but one mourns alone.

-Berger,John Peter
  The White Bird,'The Storyteller'.

For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 24:38.

Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community Billings consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

-Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

'We stay together, but we distrust each other.' 'Ah, yes,†but isn't that a definition of marriage?'

-Bradbury, Malcolm Stanley
  The History Man, ch.3.

Butthislove ofoursisimmoderate, inordinate, and notto be comprehended inany bounds.It will notcontainitself within the union of marriage or apply to one object, but is a wandering, extravagant, a domineering, a boundless, an irrefragable, a destructive passion.

-Burton, Robert pseudonym DemocritusJunior
Anatomy of Melancholy, pt.3, section 2, member1, subsection 2.

For in what stupid age or nation Was marriage ever out of fashion?

-Butler, Samuel
  Hudibras, pt.3, canto1, l.817^18.

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage.

-Butler, Samuel
  The Way of  All Flesh, ch.75.

There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Foul as their soil, and frigid as their snows. The lamps that shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merryas a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza 21.

What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?

-Carter, Angela Olive
  Nights at the Circus,'London 2'.

Marriage is the grave or tomb of wit.

-Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle
  Plays,'Nature's Three Daughters', pt.2, act 5, sc.20.

Medieval marriages were entirely a matter of property, and, as everyone knows, marriage without love means love without marriage.

-Clark, Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron
  Civilisation, ch.3.

But for his funeral trainwhichthe bridegroomsees in the distance, Would he so joyfully, think you, fall in with the marriage- procession?

-Clough, Arthur Hugh
  Amours de Voyage, canto 3, pt.6.