Michel de Montaigne Marriage Quotations

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.

Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.

Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want then when you see what the other person has, you wish you had ordered that.

We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.

A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

When a Roman was returning from a trip, he used to send someone ahead to let his wife know, so as not to surprise her in the act.

We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry just as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us.