The June 20 service was devoted to various epigrams relating to marriage and to "marriage music." Here are the quotes that were used:
MARRIAGE, n.
. . .the dawn of romance and the commencement of history;
. . .a word that should be pronounced as "mirage";
. . .a very good way to promote civilization - if you get a good wife you will be happy, if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher (Socrates);
. . .a process much like a cafeteria - you carefully look over the choices, select what looks the best - and pay later;
. . .the only adventure open to the cowardly;
. . .the alliance of two people, one who never remembers birthdays, and the other who never forgets them;
. . .that ceremony which makes more strange bedfellows than politics;
. . . a rite where two people, under the influence most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal and exhausting condition until death do them part;
. . .the continuous process of getting used to things you never expected;
. . .a status which depends upon two to be successful but only one to turn into a failure;
. . .is a book in which the first chapter is written in poetry and the rest of the pages is prose;
. . .a confrontation which always demands the greatest understanding of the subtle art of insincerity possible between two human beings;
--Lee Daniel Quinn, Quinn's Devious Dictionary
Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage
--Gloria Steinem
Marriages are made in heaven. But, again, so are thunder, lightning, tornados and hail
--Anonymous
Getting married for sex is like buying a 747 for the free peanuts
--Jeff Foxworthy
Marriage is the only war where you sleep with the enemy.
--Gary Busey
There's only one way to have a happy marriage, and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.
--Clint Eastwood
They say love is blind...and marriage is an institution. Well, I'm not ready for an institution for the blind just yet.
--Mae West
If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.
--Katherine Hepburn
The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing -- and then marry him.
--Cher
I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
--Rita Rudner
Marriage is like a pair of shears Oft times working in opposite directions, but punishing anyone that comes between them.
--Sydney Smith
One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until maybe you fall in again.
--Judith Viorst
A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people achieve it.
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh
A great marriage is not when the "perfect couple" come together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.
--Dave Meurer
Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
--Sam Levenson
For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.
--Bill Cosby
Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.
--Tom Mullen
In a great romance, each person plays a part the other really likes.
--Elizabeth Ashley
A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.
-- Andre Maurois
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
-- Mignon McLaughlin
Marriage is not a word; it is a sentence.
--King Vidor
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
--Benjamin Franklin
Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world or even with a little more care in this imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are married to.
--J.R.R. Tolkien
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