55 quotes about marriage that range from romantic to brutally honest

About her marriage, one of the most scrutinized marriages on the planet, Hillary Clinton once said: “We’ve been married for 22 years...and I have learned a long time ago that the only people who count in any marriage are the two who are in it.”

It’s true. You and your spouse are the only people who count in a union. However, many notable people have said some pretty wise things about marriage over the years, things that ring true for millions of couples around the world. And if you’ve landed on this article, chances are you’re looking for some romantic or relatable sayings that embody the essence of holy matrimony.

There are sweet quotes about marriage, like this one by André Maurois: “A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.” There are honest quotes about marriage, like when Mary Oliver said: “There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?” And there are reliably funny quotes about marriage. “The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret,” said Henny Youngman.

These 55 thoughtful marriage quotes can add a bit of pizzazz to an anniversary card, wedding vows, or even a toast for newlyweds. They can also make you think more deeply on the meaning of love and profundity of pledging your life to someone. So, with no further ado, here come the marriage quotes.

55 best quotes about marriage

• “Love and marriage, love and marriage / Go together like a horse and carriage.” — Sammy Cahn

• “We’ve been married for 22 years...and I have learned a long time ago that the only people who count in any marriage are the two who are in it.”  — Hillary Clinton

• “The concerts you enjoy together, / Neighbors you annoy together, / Children you destroy together, / That keep marriage intact.” — Stephen Sondheim

• “The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• “In every house of marriage there’s room for an interpreter.” — Stanley Kunitz

• “Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.” — George Bernard Shaw

• “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments. Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove: / O no! it is an ever-fixed mark.” — William Shakespeare

• “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.” — Benjamin Franklin

• “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” — Princess Diana

• “Marriage is like life in this — that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

• “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do! / I’m half crazy all for the love of you! / It won’t be a stylish marriage, / I can’t afford a carriage, / But you’ll look sweet upon the seat / Of a bicycle built for two!” — Harry Dacre

• “Deceive not thyself by overexpecting happiness in the married estate…Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.” — Thomas Fuller

• “To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

• “Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life.” — Susan B. Anthony

• “Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o’Sunday.” — William Shakespeare

• “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” — Mignon McLaughlin

• “A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.” ― André Maurois

• “If I get married, I want to be very married.” ― Audrey Hepburn

• “But we loved with a love that was more than love.” ― Edgar Allen Poe

• “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.” ― Oscar Wilde

• “There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage.” ― Martin Luther

• “Marriage is like vitamins: we supplement each other’s minimum daily requirements.” — Kathy Mohnke

• “A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.” — Ruth Bell Graham

• “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.” ― Winston S. Churchill

• “Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.” — Robert Browning

• “A good marriage is a contest of generosity.” — Diane Sawyer

• “The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.” ― Henny Youngman

• “Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.” ― Erma Bombeck

• “True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.” ― Antoine De Saint-Exupery

• “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.” ― Robert Fulghum

• “Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.”― Henny Youngman

• “There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?” ― Mary Oliver

• “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin

• “A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.” ― Pearl Buck

• “That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger ― not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.” ― George Eliot

• “I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you, not only for what you have made of yourself but for what you are making of me.” ― Roy Croft

• “I will follow you to the ends of the world.” ― Khaled Hosseini

• “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.” ― Helen Keller

• “True love stories never have endings.” ― Richard Bach

• “Oh continue to love me — never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved. Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours.”  ― Ludwig van Beethoven

• “The power of vulnerability is also truly magic. Vulnerability, I’ve become convinced, is the way to get love. And, of course, many of us decide not to be vulnerable because we’re afraid. But vulnerability is the way to get love, romantic or otherwise.” ― Cheryl Strayed

• “I want to marry a [guy], so i can rest my soul with [him] till we both get old. This can’t go on all the time ― all this franticness and jumping around. We’ve got to go someplace, find something.” ― Jack Kerouac

• “Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.” ― J.D. Salinger

• “Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.” ― Bruce Lee

• “I need so much the quiet of your love / After the day’s loud strife; / I need your calm all other things above / After the stress of life. / I crave the haven that in your dear heart lies, / After all toil is done; / I need the star shine of your heavenly eyes, / After the day’s great sun.”  ― Charles Hanson Towne

• “Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.” ― Simone Signoret

• “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.” ― Leo Tolstoy

• “Love is most nearly itself / When here and now cease to matter.” ― T.S. Eliot

• “Any good marriage is secret territory, a necessary white space on society’s map. What others don’t know about it is what makes it yours.” ― Stephen King

• “’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” ― Alfred, Lord Tennyson

• “The art of love...is largely the art of persistence.” ― Albert Ellis

• “To keep your marriage brimming, / With love in the loving cup, / Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; / Whenever you’re right, shut up.” ― Ogden Nash

• “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

• “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

• “The way I feel about him is like a heartbeat ― soft and persistent, underlying everything.”― Becky Albertalli

This article was originally published on TODAY.com