#matrimony

There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?" "Are you a young lady?" "I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#expectations #gender #honesty #independence #influence

LEONATO Well, then, go you into hell? BEATRICE No, 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. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#empowerment #freedom #happiness #heaven #husbands

[I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#husbands #inequality #inferiority #marriage #matrimony

If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married. ↗

— Elizabeth I Tudor

#british-monarchy #british-royal-family #dignity #empowerment #freedom

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

— Michel de Montaigne

#captivity #freedom #marriage #married-life #matrimony

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

— Jane Austen

#duty #feelings #integrity #joy #love

My husband would do anything for me ...' It's degrading. No human being ought to have such power over another." "It's a very real power, Harriet." "Then ... we won't use it. If we disagree, we'll fight it out like gentlemen. We won't stand for matrimonial blackmail. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#devotion #dignity #disagreements #domestic-life #equality

A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#intelligence #irritability #marriage #matrimony #recklessness

People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#force-of-nature #marriage #matrimony #nature #pleasure

Marriage is one sweet way in which one can taste heaven on earth. Similarly, I can also become hell on earth. ↗

— Israelmore Ayivor

#happy #heaven #hell #hot #marriage