Mark Twain Marriage Quotations

If husbands could realize what large returns of profit may be gotten out of a wife by a small word of praise paid over the counter when the market is just right, they would bring matters around the way they wish them much oftener than they usually do. Arguments are unsafe with wives, because they examine them; but they do not examine compliments. One can pass upon a wife a compliment that is three-fourths base

Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

Men and women -- even man and wife are foreigners. Each has reserves that the other cannot enter into, nor understand. These have the effect of frontiers.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

Marriage -- yes, it is the supreme felicity of life. I concede it. And it is also the supreme tragedy of life. The deeper the love the surer the tragedy. And the more disconsolating when it comes.

I would rather go to bed with Lillian Russell stark naked than Ulysses S Grant in full military regalia.

My advice to girls: first, don't smoke - to excess; second, don't drink - to excess; third, don't marry - to excess.

Love is an irreresisistible desire to be irresistibily desired.

What a world of trouble those who never marry escape! There are many happy matches, it is true, and sometimes "my dear," and "my love" come from the heart; but what sensible bachelor, rejoicing in his freedom and years of discretion, will run the tremendous risk?

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

God's great cosmic joke on the human race was requiring that men and women live together in marriage

Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths