Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

Beginning | Marriage | Question | World |

Robert Grudin

Sexual boredom, that predator of marriages, is generally ascribed to overfamiliarity; but I think it mighty more aptly be blamed on the lack or failure of true intimacy... Sex thrives on the dynamics between novelty and intimacy... What is inalienably shared... for brief encounters, in which little is genuinely discovered or given, tend to emphasize people’s sameness rather than their individuality, and hence to obliterate the novelty that is sought. Intimacy, which demands time and trust, is available almost exclusively through marriage and long friendship.

Failure | Individuality | Little | Marriage | Novelty | People | Time | Trust | Novelty | Failure | Think |

Robert Quillen, fully Verni Robert Quillen

The one word above all others that makes marriage successful is "ours".

Marriage |

Robert Quillen, fully Verni Robert Quillen

A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.

Good | Happy | Marriage |

Stephen Covey, fully Stephen Richards Covey

Creating the unity to run an effective business or a family or a marriage requires great personal strength and courage. No amount of technical administrative skill in laboring for the masses can make up for lack of nobility of personal character in developing relationships. It is a t a very essential, one-on-one level, that we live the primary laws of love and life.

Business | Character | Courage | Family | Life | Life | Love | Marriage | Nobility | Skill | Strength | Unity | Business |

Suzanne LaFollette, fully Suzanne Clara La Follette

For man, marriage is regarded as a station; for women, as a vocation.

Man | Marriage |

Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

When love became devotion instead of possession, marriage reached the climax of its slow ascent from brutality.

Brutality | Devotion | Love | Marriage |

Thomas Moore

Wisdom is the marriage of intellect's longing for truth and soul's acceptance of the labryinthine nature of the human condition.

Acceptance | Longing | Marriage | Nature | Soul | Truth | Wisdom |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

Friendship is the marriage of souls, and this marriage is subject to divorce.

Marriage |

Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

I believe marriage to be the best and most important relation that can exist between two human beings. If it has not often been realized hitherto, that is chiefly because husband and wife have regarded themselves as each other’s policeman. If marriage is to achieve its possibilities, husbands and wives must learn to understand that whatever the law may say, in their private lives they must be free.

Husband | Important | Law | Marriage | Wife | Learn | Understand |

Freeman John Dyson

I am acutely aware of the fact that the marriage between mathematics and physics, which was so enormously fruitful in past centuries, has recently ended in divorce.

Marriage | Mathematics | Past |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Without love, marriage becomes, for man or for woman, a source of gratification, of conflict, of fear and pain. Love comes into being only when the self is absent. Without love, relationship is sorrow, however physically exciting it might be; such relationship breeds contention and frustration, habit and routine. Without love there can be no chastity, and sex becomes an all-consuming problem.

Contention | Fear | Habit | Love | Man | Marriage | Relationship | Self |

Jean Cocteau

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

Marriage |

Joseph Campbell

When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.

Love | Marriage | People | Think |

M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck

The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a “good” marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off.

Anger | Experience | Force | Guilt | Marriage | Relationship | Unique |

Margaret Sanger, fully Margaret Higgins Sanger Slee

The marriage bed is the most degenerating influence in the social order.

Influence | Marriage |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door.

Learning | Life | Life | Marriage | Plan | Poem |

Merle Shain

You tend to have far more real, intense friendships when you are single, perhaps because you can be more honest when you do not have the marriage or someone else's feelings to protect.

Feelings | Marriage |