Henry Adams Marriage Quotations

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.

The capacity of women to make unsuitable marriages must be considered as the cornerstone of society.

Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.

Probably the institution of marriage had its origin in love of property. Both men and women were united in this--that whatever they loved best, they wished to possess. The usual theory holds that the communal system would not permit the gratification of this desire at the expense of communal rights, and that therefore men were driven to gratify their passion by purchasing or by capturing women from neighboring and hostile tribes.

The common view of marriage as a primitive institution implies in the man more than arbitrary superiority, such as he exercised over the child, which still remained free. The woman's slavery was assumed to be for life.