"I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well."

Oliver Goldsmith, writer (1728-74) in his novel The Vicar of Wakefield

"My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain."

W H Auden, poet (1907-73)

GERRY: "We can't get married at

all...I'm a man."

OSGOOD: "Well, nobody's perfect."

Closing lines of Some Like It Hot written and directed by Billy Wilder

"Do you think your mother and I should have lived comfortably for so long together, if ever we had been married?"

John Gay, poet and dramatist (1685-1732) in The Beggar's Opera

"We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart."

Saki, writer (1870-1916)

"One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance."

Iris Murdoch, novelist (1919-99) in A Severed Head

"Chumps always make the best husbands. All the unhappy marriages come from the husbands having brains."

P G Wodehouse, writer (1881-1975) in The Adventures of Sally

" Powerful men often succeed through the help of their wives. Powerful women only succeed in spite of their husbands."

Lynda Lee-Potter, journalist

" My definition of marriage? It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them."

The Rev Sydney Smith, journalist, clergyman and preacher (1771-1845)

" Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor - which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony."

Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817)

" In married life three is company and two none."

Oscar Wilde, poet and playwright (1854-1900)

" A girl must marry for love and keep on marrying until she finds it."

Zsa Zsa Gabor, actress (1919- )