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Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation.

Marriage is a core institution of societies throughout the world and throughout history. It's something that has provided permanence and stability for our very social structure.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

Marriage encourages the men and women who together create life to unite in a bond for the protection of children.

Marriage, in its truest sense, is a partnership of equals, with neither exercising dominion over the other, but, rather, with each encouraging and assisting the other in whatever responsibilities and aspirations he or she might have.

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

Marriage is a commitment for life. It is a permanent, lifelong relationship.

There is no doubt that, as a society, we have become blase about the importance of marriage as a stabilising influence and less inclined to prize it as a worthwhile institution.

The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last.