Famous Quotes & Sayings

Rajneesh

We have forced everyone to go into marriage because of love. Because you cannot love outside it, so we have unnecessarily forced love and marriage to be together - unnecessarily. Marriage is for deeper things - even more deep: for intimacy, for a "co-inherence," to work on something which cannot be done alone, which can be done together, which needs a togetherness, a deep togetherness. Because of this love-starved society, we fall into marriage out of romantic love.

Rajneesh

When I say this, I don't mean that if you can love more people you will not go into marriage. As far as I see, a person who can love more will not go into marriage only for love. He will go into marriage for deeper things. Please understand me: if a person loves many people, then there is no reason to marry someone only because of love - because he can love many people without marriage, so there is no reason.

Rajneesh

It is a way to avoid difficulties, but whenever you avoid difficulties and challenges you have avoided growth also. Married people never grow. Lovers grow, because they have to meet the challenge every moment - and with no security. They have to create an inner phenomenon. With security you need not bother to create anything; the society helps.

Rajneesh

Marriage is more permanent than love. Love may be eternal, but it is not permanent. It may continue forever and forever, but there is no inner necessity for it to continue. It is like a flower: bloomed in the morning, by the evening gone. It is not like the rock. Marriage is more permanent; you can rely on it. In old age it will be helpful.

Rajneesh

Man has to create marriage because man is afraid of the unknown. On all levels of life and existence, man has created substitutes: for love there is marriage; for real religion there are sects - they are like marriages. Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Jainism - they are not real religion. Real religion has no name; it is like love. But because love is dangerous and you are so afraid of the future, you would like to have some security. You believe more in insurance companies than in life. That's why you have created marriage.

Rajneesh

Because love is dangerous, insecure.... And nobody knows where love will lead. It is just like a cloud - moving with no destination. Love is a hidden cloud, whereabouts unknown. Nobody knows where it is at any moment of time. Unpredictable - no astrologer can predict anything about love. About marriage? - astrologers are very, very helpful; they can predict.

Rajneesh

So remember, if marriage arises out of intimacy then it is beautiful. That means that everybody should have lived together before they get married. The honeymoon should not happen after marriage, it should happen before marriage. One should have lived the dark nights, the beautiful days, the sad moments, the happy moments, together. One should have looked into each other's eyes deeply, into each other's being.

Rajneesh

Marriage is very secure. It is safe. There is no growth in it. One is simply stuck. Marriage is a sexual arrangement; intimacy is a search for love. Marriage is a sort of prostitution, a permanent sort. One has got married to a woman or to a man - it is a permanent prostitution. The arrangement is economical, not psychological, not of the heart.

Rajneesh

Man is less interested in marriage, very much less interested. In fact not interested at all. If he agrees, he agrees only reluctantly - because marriage means responsibility. Marriage means bondage, marriage means now you are imprisoned. Now you are no more free to move with other women. For a man, marriage looks like a prison. For a woman, marriage looks like safety, security, a home. For a woman marriage means home, and for a man marriage means slavery. Total different beliefs, so they act differently. Conflicting beliefs.

Rajneesh

When a man thinks about a woman he thinks about love, he never thinks about marriage. When a woman thinks about a man, she thinks about marriage. Love is secondary, security is first. She lives in a different kind of world - maybe in the future she may not, but in the past the only problem for the woman was how to be secure.

Rajneesh

What is the difference between a prostitute and a wife? One is a temporary arrangement, the other is a little more permanent. Marriage is a permanent kind of prostitution; deep down, it is not different. Hence marriage and prostitution have both existed together.

Rajneesh

Marriage is a plastic flower - marriage is an institution. And who wants to live in an institution?

Rajneesh

Marriage is a plastic flower. Love is a real rose, but the real rose is beautiful in the morning; by the evening it is gone. Nobody can say when it will disappear, when the petals will start falling. Just a strong wind and it is no more, just a strong sun and it is no more. But the plastic flower will be there; come rain, come sun, come anything, the plastic flower will be there. In fact, plastic is the only permanent thing in the world.

Rajneesh

I don't know! Nobody has ever known. Why would Jesus have remained unmarried if he had known the secret? He knew the secret of the kingdom of God, but he did not know the secret of remaining happy in marriage. He remained unmarried. Mahavira, Lao Tzu Chuang Tzu, they all remained unmarried for the simple reason that there is no secret; otherwise these people would have discovered it. They could discover the ultimate - marriage is not such a big thing, it is very shallow - they even fathomed God, but they could not fathom marriage.

Rajneesh

Religion exists not because of God or for God; it is because of marriage. Marriage creates so much misery that one has to meditate; meditation is a byproduct. Without marriage, who will bother to meditate? For what? You will be already blissful!

Rajneesh

Everybody hates dependence, and that's why couples are continuously fighting, not knowing why they are fighting. They have to meditate over it, they have to contemplate over it, why they are fighting. Everything is just an excuse to fight. If you change one excuse, another excuse will be found; if no excuse is left then excuses will be invented, but somehow the fight has to be there.

Rajneesh

The ordinary marriage is an unconscious bondage: you cannot live alone so you become dependent on the other; the other cannot live alone so he or she becomes dependent on you. And we hate the person on which we are dependent; nobody likes to depend on anybody. Our deepest desire is to have freedom, total freedom - and dependence is against freedom.

Rajneesh

Marriage has become a battlefield where two persons are fighting for supremacy. Of course, the man has his own way: rough and more primitive. The woman has her own way: feminine, softer, a little more civilized, more subdued. But the situation is the same. Now psychologists are talking about marriage as an intimate enmity. And that's what it has proved to be. Two enemies are living together pretending to be in love, expecting the other to give love; and the same is being expected by the other. Nobody is ready to give - nobody has it. How can you give love if you don't have it?

Rajneesh

You are asking, 'Is the concept of soul mates more useful than marriage?' Concepts don't matter. What matters is your understanding. You can change the word marriage to the word soul mates, but you are the same. You will make the same hell out of soul mates as you have been making out of marriage - nothing has changed, only the word, the label. Don't believe in labels too much.

Rajneesh

As I see it, out of a hundred marriages ninety-nine marriages are just licensed prostitution. They are not marriages. A marriage is only a real marriage when it grows out of love. Legal, illegal, does not matter. The real thing that matters is love.

Rajneesh

To me, marriage is a dead thing. It is an institution, and you cannot live in an institution; only mad people live in institutions. It is a substitute for love. Love is dangerous: to be in love is to be in a storm, constantly. You need courage and you need awareness, and you are to be ready for anything. There is no security in love; love is insecure. Marriage is a security: the registry office, the police, the court are behind it. The state, the society, the religion - they are all behind it. Marriage is a social phenomenon. Love is individual, personal, intimate.

Rajneesh

I am all for love, because love fails. You will be surprised - I have my own logic. I am all for love, because love fails. I am not for marriage, because marriage succeeds; it gives you a permanent settlement. And that is the danger: you become satisfied with a toy, you become satisfied with something plastic, artificial, man-made.

Noel Coward

Marriage is the aftermath of love.

John Steinbeck

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

Theodor Reik

In our civilization men are afraid they will not be man enough, and women are afraid that they might be considered only women.

Margaret Mead

The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations.

King Vidor

Take it from me, marriage isn't a word - it's a sentence.

Max Frisch

The point is to show who is the cross and who the crucified.

Plautus

What is yours is mine, and all mine is yours.

Philip Larkin

He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.

John Stuart Mill

Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.

John Scalzi

My marriage had its ups and downs like anyone's, but when it came down to it, I knew it was solid. I miss that sort of security, and that sort of connection with someone.

Nicolas Chamfort

Marriage, as practised by high society, is arranged indecency.