Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Marriage
Marriage is like to casting dice. If chance bring you a virtuous and good-tempered wife, your lot is happy. If you gain instead a gadding, gossiping, and thriftless queen, no wife is yours, but everlasting plague in woman’s garb; the habitable globe holds not so dire a torment anywhere.
—Epicharmus
Like a dog with a bottle fast tied to his tail,
Like vermin in a trap or a thief in a jail,
Like a Tory in a bog
Or an ape with a clog:
Such is the man who, when he might go free,
Does his liberty lose
For a matrimony noose,
And sells himself into captivity.
—Thomas Flatman
Marriage is not like the hill of Olympus, wholly clear, without clouds.
—Thomas Fuller
Marriage to maids is like a war to men; the battle causes fear, but the sweet hope of winning at the last still draws them on.
—Nathaniel Lee
It is a signe that nothing will asswage your love but marriage: for such is the tying of two in wedlocks, as is the tuning of two lutes in one key, for striking the strings of one, strawes will stirre upon the strings of the other, and in two mindes linked in love, one cannot be delighted, but the other rejoiceth.
—John Lyly
You know some of our Grub Street wits compared marriage to a country dance, which scheme I extremely approved, but when I read it I thought it should have been set to the tune of “Love forever”; but they say it never did go to that tune, nor ever would.
—Elizabeth R. Montagu
Marriage is like a flaming candle-light
Placed in the window on a summer’s night,
Inviting all the insects of the air
To come and singe their pretty winglets there.
—English Song