Marriage
LDS Quotes on Marriage
“Knowing, then, that marriage and family come first, what should we think about education and careers? Remember—the issue is not marriage or education; the issue is marriage and education. . . It has been said that before becoming somebody’s wife, before becoming somebody’s mother, become somebody.”
| “Celebrating Womanhood”
“True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well-being of one’s companion.”
“One of the grand errors we tend to make when we are young is supposing that a person is a bundle of qualities, and we add up the individual’s good and bad qualities, like a bookkeeper working on debits and credits. If the balance is favorable, we may decide to take the jump (into marriage). … The world is full of unhappy men and women who married because … it seemed to be a good investment. Love, however, is not an investment; it is an adventure. And when marriage turns out to be as dull and comfortable as a sound investment, the disgruntled party soon turns elsewhere. …Ignorant people are always saying, ‘I wonder what he sees in her [or him],’ not realizing that what he [or she] sees in her [or him] (and what no one else can see) is the secret essence of love.”
| "And the Greatest of These Is Love"
“Under the plan of heaven, the husband and the wife walk side by side as companions, neither one ahead of the other, but a daughter of God and a son of God walking side by side. Let your families be families of love and peace and happiness.”
| Ensign, Mar. 2001, 64.
“Soul mates’ are fiction and an illusion; and while every young man and young woman will seek with all diligence and prayerfulness to find a mate with whom life can be most compatible and beautiful, yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price.”
“You should express regularly to your wife and children your reverence and respect for her. Indeed, one of the greatest things a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
| Being a Righteous Husband and Father
“Love is the very essence of life. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet it is not found only at the end of the rainbow. Love is at the beginning also, and from it springs the beauty that arched across the sky on a stormy day. Love is the security for which children weep, the yearning of youth, the adhesive that binds marriage, and the lubricant that prevents devastating friction in the home; it is the peace of old age, the sunlight of hope shining through death. How rich are those who enjoy it in their associations with family, friends, and neighbors! Love, like faith, is a gift of God. It is also the most enduring and most powerful virtue.”
| Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
“Your lives, your friendships, your marriages, your families, your neighbors and coworkers currently constitute the sample of humanity which God has given you. We are each other’s clinical material, and we make a mistake when we disregard that sober fact. . . . These special moments – one-on-one, in small groups, in corridors, hallways, or wherever – do something so subtle that we are scarcely aware that it is happening. Yet these help to further define our relationships with the Lord and with each other. It is often the one-liners that come from these special moments which have such a long shelf life and which help us long after the dispersal of those friends has occurred.”
| “Jesus, the Perfect Mentor,” Ensign, February 2001, p. 8
“As Latter-day Saints, we know we do not earn heaven; we co-create heaven, and we do so by participating in the celestial relationships that are its essence (and which temple ordinances eternalize).”
“Zion-building is not preparation for heaven. It is heaven, in embryo. The process of sanctifying disciples of Christ, constituting them into a community of love and harmony, does not qualify individuals for heaven; sanctification and celestial relationality are the essence of heaven. Zion, in this conception, is both an ideal and a transitional stage into the salvation toward which all Christians strive.”
“Real, lasting happiness is possible, and marriage can be more an exultant ecstasy than the human mind can conceive. This is within the reach of every couple, every person. . . . It is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price.”
| (1976, September 7). Marriage and divorce. BYU Devotional
“Happiness in marriage and parenthood can exceed a thousand times any other happiness.”
“The expression of our procreative powers is pleasing to God, but he has commanded that this be confined within the relationship of marriage”
| Conference Report, Oct. 1993, 99; or Ensign, Nov. 1993, 74
“Those in happy marriages noticed almost all of the positive things their partners did for them, while those in unhappy marriages failed to recognize 50% of the positive acts their spouses performed.”
| (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. New York: Three Rivers Press.
“Under the plan of heaven, the husband and wife walk side by side as companions, neither one ahead of the other, but a daughter of God and a son of God walking side by side. Let your families be families of love and peace and happiness.”
“How sweet is the assurance, how comforting is the peace that come from the knowledge that if we marry right and live right, our relationship will continue, notwithstanding the certainty of death and the passage of time. Men may write love songs and sing them. They may yearn and hope and dream. But all of this will be only a romantic longing unless there is an exercise of authority that transcends the powers of time and death.”
“I am satisfied that if we would look for the virtues in one another and not the vices, there would be much more of happiness in the homes of our people. There would be far less of divorce, much less of infidelity, much less of anger and rancor and quarreling. There would be more of forgiveness, more of love, more of peace, more of happiness. This is as the Lord would have it.”
| Living Worthy of the Girl You Will Someday Marry
“Of course, all in marriage is not bliss. . . . The remedy for most marriage stress is not in divorce. It is in repentance. It is not in separation. It is in simple integrity that leads a man to square up his shoulders and meet his obligations. It is found in the Golden Rule. . . .There must be a willingness to overlook small faults, to forgive, and then to forget. There must be a holding of one’s tongue. Temper is a vicious and corrosive thing that destroys affection and casts out love. . . . There may be now and again a legitimate cause for divorce. I am not one to say that it is never justified. But I say without hesitation that this plague among us, which seems to be growing everywhere, is not of God, but rather is the work of the adversary of righteousness and peace and truth.”
| What God hath joined together. Ensign, 21(5), 72–74.
“Any man in this church who abuses his wife, who demeans her, who insults her, who exercises unrighteous dominion over her is unworthy to hold the priesthood. In the marriage companionship there is neither inferiority nor superiority. The woman does not walk ahead of the man, neither does the man walk ahead of the woman. They walk side by side as a son and daughter of God on an eternal journey.”
| General Conference Priesthood Session, April 6, 2002
“I am satisfied that the more unkindly a wife is treated, the less attractive she becomes. She loses pride in herself. She develops a feeling of worthlessness. Of course it shows.
“A husband who domineers his wife, who demeans and humiliates her, and who makes officious demands upon her not only injures her, but he also belittles himself. And in many cases, he plants a pattern of future similar behavior in his sons.”
| Ensign, November 1991, p. 51
“Pride adversely affects all our relationships—our relationship with God and His servants, between husband and wife, parent and child, employer and employee, teacher and student, and all mankind. Our degree of pride determines how we treat our God and our brothers and sisters. Christ wants to lift us to where He is. Do we desire to do the same for others?”
| “Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989
“Fidelity to one’s marriage vows is absolutely essential for love, trust, and peace. Husbands and wives who love each other will find that love and loyalty are reciprocated.”
| October 1982 general conference
“Christ’s ideal pertaining to marriage is the unbroken home, and conditions that cause divorce are violations of his divine teachings. Except in cases of infidelity or other extreme conditions, the Church frowns upon divorce”
| (IE 72 [June 1969]:2-5)
“Husbands and wives need time together to fortify themselves and their homes against the attacks of the adversary.”
| Marriage Is Essential to His Eternal Plan
“Husbands love your wives well! Your children are noticing how you treat her. You are teaching your sons how they should treat women and you are teaching your daughters what they should expect from men.”
“Under the law of the Lord, a marriage, like a human life, is a precious, living thing. If our bodies are sick, we seek to heal them. We do not give up. While there is any prospect of life, we seek healing again and again. The same should be true of our marriages, and if we seek Him, the Lord will help us and heal us”
| (2007, May). Divorce. Ensign, 37(5), 70–73.
“a good marriage does not require a perfect man or a perfect woman. It only requires a man and a woman committed to strive together toward perfection.”
| Divorce. Ensign, 37(5), 70–73.
“For most marriage problems, the remedy is not divorce but repentance. . . . The first step is not separation but reformation.”
| Divorce. Ensign, 37(5), 70–73.
“The [current] American story about marriage, as told in the law and in much popular literature, goes something like this: marriage is a relationship that exists primarily for the fulfillment of the individual spouses. If it ceases to perform this function, no one is to blame and either spouse may terminate it at will”
| Protect the children. Ensign, 42(11), 43–46.
“A Husband can love his wife best when he loves God first.”
“God and a good wife are the two best things a man can have.”
“Love is when you give someone else the power to destroy you, and you trust them not to do it.”
Without the sealings that create eternal families and link generations here and hereafter, we would be left in eternity with neither roots nor branches—that is, neither ancestry nor posterity.
Neither man nor woman is perfect or complete without the other. Thus, no marriage or family, no ward or stake is likely to reach its full potential until husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, men and women work together in unity of purpose, respecting and relying upon each other’s strengths.
| It Is Not Good for Man or Woman to Be Alone
“In the Lord’s plan, it takes two—a man and a woman—to form a whole. Indeed, a husband and wife are not two identical halves, but a wondrous, divinely determined combination of complementary capacities and characteristics.”
| “The Joy of Living the Great Plan of Happiness,” Ensign, November 1996, 73–74
“The [current] American story about marriage, as told in the law and in much popular literature, goes something like this: marriage is a relationship that exists primarily for the fulfillment of the individual spouses. If it ceases to perform this function, no one is to blame and either spouse may terminate it at will. … Children hardly appear in the story; at most they are rather shadowy characters in the background.”
| Abortion and Divorce in Western Law: American Failures, European Challenges (1987), 108.
May I suggest that human intimacy, that sacred, physical union ordained of God for a married couple, deals with a symbol that demands special sanctity.
Such an act of love between a man and a woman is—or certainly was ordained to be—a symbol of total union: union of their hearts, their hopes, their lives, their love, their family, their future, their everything. It is a symbol that we try to suggest in the temple with a word like seal.
The Prophet Joseph Smith once said we perhaps ought to render such a sacred bond as “welding”—that those united in matrimony and eternal families are “welded” together, inseparable if you will, to withstand the temptations of the adversary and the afflictions of mortality.
| Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments
There is great power in a strong partnership. True partners can achieve more than the sum of each acting alone. With true partners, one plus one is much more than two.
| Disciples of Jesus Christ—Defenders of Marriage
“The lawful association of the sexes is ordained of God, not only as the sole means of race perpetuation, but for the development of the higher faculties and nobler traits of human nature, which the love-inspired companionship of man and woman alone can insure.”
“Physiologically, we are created as men and women to fit together in such a union. In this ultimate physical expression of one man and one woman they are as nearly and as literally “one” as two separate physical bodies can ever be. It is in that act of ultimate physical intimacy we most nearly fulfill the commandment of the Lord given to Adam and Eve, living symbols for all married couples, when he invited them to cleave unto one another only, and thus become ‘one flesh’”
| Of Souls Symbols and Sacraments
“Do you want capability, safety, and security in dating and romance, in married life and eternity? Be a true disciple of Jesus. Be a genuine, committed, word-and-deed Latter-day Saint. Believe that your faith has everything to do with your romance, because it does. You separate dating from discipleship at your peril. Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, is the only lamp by which you can successfully see the path of love and happiness. How should I love thee? As He does, for that way ‘never faileth.’”
| “How Do I Love Thee?” New Era, Oct. 2003, 8.
“I have strong feelings about what is not provocation for breaking the sacred covenants of marriage. Surely it is not simply ‘mental distress’ or ‘personality differences’ or having ‘grown apart’ or having ‘fallen out of love.’ This is especially so where there are children.”
| Conference Report, Apr. 1993, 46; or Ensign, May 1993, 36–37
“Keep yourselves above any domineering or unworthy behavior in the tender, intimate relationship between husband and wife. Because marriage is ordained of God, the intimate relationship between husbands and wives is good and honorable in the eyes of God. He has commanded that they be one flesh and that they multiply and replenish the earth.”
“Tenderness and respect—never selfishness—must be the guiding principles in the intimate relationship between husband and wife. Each partner must be considerate and sensitive to the other’s needs and desires. Any domineering, indecent, or uncontrolled behavior in the intimate relationship between husband and wife is condemned by the Lord”
| Conference Report, Oct. 1994, 68; or Ensign, Nov. 1994, 51
“Fidelity to one’s marriage vows is absolutely essential for love, trust, and peace.”
“The more uncertain people are that any partnership will last, the more they act as individuals and the less they act as permanent partners. But the more spouses act as separate individuals, the less they get from the marriage partnership, and the more likely the marriage will fail”
| The case for marriage. New York: Doubleday.
“Even though Sexcan be an important and satisfactory part of married life, we must remember that life is not designed just for sex. Even marriage does not make proper certain extremes in sexual indulgence. To the Ephesian saints Paul begged for propriety in marriage: ‘So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.’”
| Miracle of Forgiveness, 73
“You ask, “What is the price of happiness?” First you must live the gospel of Jesus Christ in its purity and simplicity – not a half-hearted compliance, but hewing to the line. And this means an all-out devoted consecration to the great program of salvation and exaltation. An orthodox manner. The second, you must forget yourself and love your companion more than yourself. As you do these things, happiness can be yours in great and never-ending abundance.”
“Marriage can be more an exultant ecstasy than the human mind can conceive. This is within the reach of every couple, every person.”