#matrimony

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman. ↗

— Antonia Fraser

#empowerment #feminism #gender #history #independence

Expect nothing at all and accept as a joyful surprise whatever good you find in matrimony. ↗

— Frank Leslie

#expect #find #good #joyful #matrimony

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

— Martha Gellhorn

#feminism #hate #love #marriage #married-life

There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance ... some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#happiness #harmony #keystones #love #marriage

No: I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne." "I ask why? I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy of you." She stood on the hearth; she was pale as the white marble slab and cornice behind her; her eyes flashed large, dilated, unsmiling. "And I ask in what sense that young man is worthy of me? ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#courtship #dignity #empowerment #equality #feminism

Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#courtship #dignity #empowerment #happiness #husbands

Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#gay-marriage #gay-rights #homosexual #humor #marriage

[I]n the end this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin. ↗

— Elizabeth I Tudor

#dignity #freedom #good-governance #government #independence

If [God] send me no husband, for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening ... ↗

— William Shakespeare

#blessings #empowerment #freedom #happiness #husbands

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) ↗

— Elizabeth Peters

#humor #husbands #intelligence #intelligent #marriage