Contrary to what we’ve seen in the movies, happily ever after doesn’t “just happen” in a marriage. It requires commitment, effort, and sacrifice to build something that’s meant to last.
Whether you’ve hit a stumbling block in your marriage, or just want to share some words of wisdom with the newlyweds — you’re sure to find a marriage advice quote that resonates with you.
Marriage Advice Quotes
1. “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
— Mignon McLaughlin
2. “To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.”
— Ogden Nash
3. “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
4. “Every couple has ups and downs, every couple argues, and that’s the thing—you’re a couple, and couples can’t function without trust.”
― Nicholas Sparks
5. “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”
― Benjamin Franklin
6. “When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you’re sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.”
― Joseph Campbell
7. “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
― John Steinbeck
8. “Marriage should be a duet – when one sings, the other claps.”
― Joe Murray
9. “A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.”
― Honore de Balzac
10. “But marriage goes in waves. You’ve got to be patient. People bail and give up on their marriages way too early. They just don’t put the work and the effort into it. You’ve got to suck up your ego a lot of times, because that can be a big downfall.”
― Anna Benson
11. “In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.”
― Gerald Brenan
12. “All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little.”
― Oliver Goldsmith
13. “A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.”
― Andre Maurois
14. “Every good relationship, especially marriage, is based on respect. If it’s not based on respect, nothing that appears to be good will last very long.”
― Amy Grant
15. “You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.”
― Jodi Picoult
16. “Marriages, like careers, need constant nurturing… the secret of having it all is loving it all.”
― Joyce Brothers
17. “We support each other in everything that we do. I love seeing her succeed at the things she loves to do and she loves seeing me succeed at things that I love to do. That’s the way you should be with your partner.”
— John Legend
18. “Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. It’s the way you love your partner every day.”
― Barbara De Angelis
19. “One of the coolest things is how supportive and happy and proud he is of my success lately. I’m with someone who is totally secure in himself. He’s not trying to be anything other than who he is. The confidence he has brings it to me. ”
— Chrissy Teigen
20. “So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.”
― Nicholas Sparks
21. “Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.”
― Roy T. Bennett
22. “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
23. “Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.”
― Charles Dickens
24. “We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness. ”
― Ellen Goodman
25. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”
― Marcus Aurelius
26. “A real man loves his wife, and places his family as the most important thing in life. Nothing has brought me more peace and content in life than simply being a good husband and father.”
― Frank Abagnale
27. “Marriage is not kick-boxing, it’s salsa dancing.”
― Amit Kalantri
28. “You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”
― Henry Drummond
29. “Husbands and wives, first be faithful to each other. Second, keep the romance going all of your life by courting each other every day.”
― Zig Ziglar
30. “The great marriages are partnerships. It can’t be a great marriage without being a partnership.”
― Helen Mirren
31. “But the key to our marriage is the capacity to give each other a break. And to realize that it’s not how our similarities work together; it’s how our differences work together.”
― Michael J. Fox
32. “It’s so important to keep a marriage alive with small treats and doing little things for each other. Just remembering to say nice things and to have listening time is vital. That ghastly phrase ‘quality time’ means taking three minutes to sit down and be still with someone rather than yelling over your shoulder as you rush out.”
― Joanna Lumley
33. “Remember that creating a successful marriage is like farming: you have to start over again every morning.”
― H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
34. “Marriage is not all rainbows and butterflies; you have to give in to your partner’s whims every now and then, and that’s a two-way street.”
― Asha Parekh
35. “A sense of humor is great – it goes a long, long way in a marriage.”
― Chris Rock
36. “The great secret of a successful marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters.”
― Harold Nicolson
37. “The more time you invest in a marriage, the more valuable it becomes.”
― Amy Grant
38. “I think of marriage as a garden. You have to tend to it. Respect it, take care of it, feed it. Make sure everyone is getting the right amount of, um, sunlight.”
― Mark Ruffalo
39. “Love without sacrifice is like theft.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
40. “Both people need to care deeply about the other person, to put the other’s needs before their own, and to make a daily commitment to that person to stick it out.”
― Alessandra Torre
41. “Compromise, communicate, and never go to bed angry – the three pieces of advice gifted and regifted to all newlyweds.”
― Gillian Flynn
42. “When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold
43. “Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning.”
― Esther Perel
44. “You’ll never experience the joy and tenderness of a lifelong love unless you fight for it.”
― Chris Fabry
45. “Don’t ever stop dating your wife and don’t ever stop flirting with your husband.”
― Anonymous
46. “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”
― Donald Miller
47. “Every couple needs to argue now and then. Just to prove that the relationship is strong enough to survive. Long-term relationships, the ones that matter, are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys.”
― Nicholas Sparks
48. “When you don’t talk, there’s a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock
49. “Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.”
— Martin Luther
50. “Relationships are mysterious. We doubt the positive qualities in others, seldom the negative. You will say to your partner: do you really love me? Are you sure you love me? You will ask this a dozen times and drive the person nuts. But you never ask: are you really mad at me? Are you sure you’re angry? When someone is angry, you don’t doubt it for a moment. Yet the reverse should be true. We should doubt the negative in life, and have faith in the positive.”
― Christopher Pike
51. “I find the best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.”
― Steve Maraboli
52. “Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”
― Henry Winkler
53. “If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.”
― Sue Monk Kidd
54. “You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
55. “Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side.”
― Zig Ziglar
56. “Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.”
― Susan B. Anthony
57. “When you hold a grudge, you want someone else’s sorrow to reflect your level of hurt but the two rarely meet.”
― Steve Maraboli
58. “The best relationships in our lives are the best not because they have been the happiest ones, they are that way because they have stayed strong through the most tormentful of storms.”
― Pandora Poikilos
59. “When you struggle with your partner, you are struggling with yourself. Every fault you see in them touches a denied weakness in yourself.”
― Deepak Chopra
60. “Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”
― Stephen R. Covey
