MARRIAGE is a serious matter, no doubt, deserving our most conscientious efforts to be made a success of. It is a premier institution of society, but that has not stopped some bubbly souls from taking a witty dig at it. After all, even Shakespeare thought it fit to insert occasional doses of comedy and tomfoolery right in the midst of serious plays. Here is a rollicking treat of some humorous digs at the institution of matrimony.

Well, let us see what Robert Burton said about it.

"One was never married, that’s his hell; another is, and that is his plague."

Montaigne said, "It (marriage) is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in and those inside desperate to get out."

A. Gibbs playfully gives this piece of advice to young women, "If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married."

George Bernard Shaw said, "The psychiatrists say girls tend to marry men like their fathers, that’s probably the reason mothers cry at weddings."

Helen Rowland has another explanation to offer for the hesitation some young men feel to enter the state of matrimony, when she says. "It isn’t tying himself to one women that a man dreads when he thinks to marriage, it is separation from all the rest of them."

Sometime back, when the general mood was jovial during a party thrown to celebrate the wedding anniversary of a very old couple, I heard a gentleman say, with a twinkle in his eyes, "Previously, it was said that the wife is the better half and the husband the worse half, but now the equations seem to have undergone a twisted change, for now the women are the bitter half and men, the bitten half."

George Eliot, the famous writer who had to use this name because women writers were not favourably looked upon in those days, wrote. "I am not denying that women are foolish; God Almighty made them to match the men."

Once Lady Astor said to Sir Winston Churchill, "If I were your wife, I would flavour your coffee with poison." Sir Winston bowed chivalrously and replied, "And if I were your husband, madam, I should drink it."

Thomas Moore wrote that a father said to his son, "It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife."

The son agreed, "Why, so it is father; whose wife should I take?"

Rudyard Kipling, author of the famous Jungle Book, wrote: "The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a foolish man."

There is a popular joke about a man whose wife had died because she was bitten by their dog. Another man approached him with the request to borrow his dog for a few days. That man pointed to the long lime of the men following the funeral procession of his wife and said, "Okay, just stand in the queue and wait for your turn."

Reflecting the feelings of approximately the same type, of a fed-up husband, Dryden wrote, "Here lies my wife — here let her lie, she is at rest, and so am I."

There is a French saying that love is the dawn of marriage and marriage is the sunset of love. But shouldn’t this problem be solved? Here is a funny solution given by Montaigne. He says, "A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband."

Previously the adventurers used to follow the Pole Star in order to find their way in the high seas. Then came the compass to show them which way to go. But Heine says, "Matrimony, the high seas for which no compass has yet been invented!"

Richard Brinsley Sheridan wrote a play The School for Scandal, in which he demonstrates in a very gripping yet mirth-provoking manner how quickly the rumours spread, distorting the facts completely in the process. A character in this play says, "Tis now six months since Lady Teazle made me the happiest of men — and I have been the most miserable dog ever since."

Wilkie Collins says, "I am not against hasty marriages, where mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income."

Someone has said that marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women, their happiness.

To be on the safer side, some agree with the wish expressed by Ambrose Bierce when he says, "Here’s to woman! Would that we could fall into her arms without falling into her hands!"

Lots of understanding, mutual respect and adjustment is required to make a marriage succeed, but just look at the way some one has put this feeling in a humorous way, "Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it."

Enough of looking at the witty side of a subject as serious as marriage. As Noel Conard has wisely said, "Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviare; never spread it about like marmalade.’