Marriage Quote by Ingrid Bergman

It lands like a laugh with teeth: Ingrid Bergman, the screen’s apostle of luminous devotion, tossing marriage into the trash with a brisk “Never again!” The punch isn’t just in the vow; it’s in the final tally. “Three times is enough” turns romantic failure into a completed experiment, as if she’s closing a case file. The rhythm is blunt, almost comic, but the comedy protects something raw: exhaustion with an institution that promised stability and delivered scrutiny.

Bergman’s intent reads as self-defense and reclamation. She’s not musing on love; she’s refusing a contract. “I can see no reason” is the language of someone who’s done the math and found the cultural pitch wanting. That cool, rational phrasing is a shield against the sentimental narrative that women, especially glamorous ones, are supposed to keep chasing the altar like it’s redemption.

The subtext is inseparable from her era and her particular scandal. Bergman’s affair with Roberto Rossellini detonated her American image in the early 1950s; she was publicly punished not for loving badly, but for violating the script. When she later dismisses marriage altogether, it’s not cynicism for its own sake. It’s a refusal to keep offering her private life up as moral theater.

What makes the line work is its collision of personas: the woman who played aching sincerity admitting that the “reason for marriage” has been oversold. It’s a celebrity quip that doubles as a quiet feminist shrug: if the institution can’t hold what it claims to honor, why keep auditioning for it?