SAY WHAT? EXPERTS AND OBSERVERS GIVE QUOTES ON MARRIAGE

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways," so goes the often-quoted poem of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her husband Robert Browning. That the two are both poets of high acclaim adds to the romance between the two. That they end up married to each other promoted perhaps more poetic quotes on marriage that about any other couple.

Many high-profile marriages have been created that added content to the literature of this institution considered as sacred both by legal and religious people. An unknown author wisely says this about marriage, that if there is such a good thing about marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love. And how true is that? The good quotes on marriage almost always involve the two people - husband and wife - being good friends as well as lovers.

Comics and authors intending to be funny also join in the fold. Lord Byron said of his life partner that she "has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe." Rodney Dangerfield quipped, "All tragedies are finished by a death, all comedies by a marriage."

Surprisingly, usually funny author Mark Twain was quoted as having uttered this somewhat serious quote on love and marriage: "To get the full value of joy,
you must have someone to divide it with."

Perhaps, the most romantic quote on marriage was given by Thornton Wilder in "The Skin of Our Teeth": "I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them - it was that promise."

On the love aspect, there are plenty of quotes on marriage. Some authors quipped about the romantic relationship between couples. We have heard about the stock phrase, usually from the religious, about a man and a woman entering into matrimony and emerging as one person. Croft M. Pentz wrote in his book a funny version of this stock quote: "When a man marries a woman, they become one - the trouble starts when they try to decide which one." The more traditional Nathaniel Hawthorne joined in when he said, "What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow."