#matrimony

"LEONATOWell, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.BEATRICENot till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred."

"Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection."

"I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle.... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody)"

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose."

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

"[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine."

"I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother."

"LEONATOWell, then, go you into hell?BEATRICENo, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long."

"Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse."

"They say all marriages are made in heaven, but so are thunder and lightning."