Marriage Quote by Sacha Guitry

Marriage, in Guitry's hands, isn’t a sanctified institution so much as a high-wire act performed by two people with imperfect judgment. The joke hinges on a reversal: we expect forgiveness for betrayals, bad habits, or the slow grind of domestic compromise. Instead, he suggests the original offense is the decision itself: marrying you. It’s a brutally efficient bit of self-deprecation that doubles as a shrewd diagnosis of intimacy. If your partner chose you, they also chose your blind spots, your petty routines, your future self. The “secret” isn’t romance; it’s mercy.

The line works because it flatters and insults everyone at once. You get to laugh at your own unworthiness while also enjoying the sly implication that your partner is the one who made the questionable call. That shared sting is the point: comedy as marital glue, a way of metabolizing disappointment before it hardens into resentment. Guitry frames marriage not as a promise of perpetual compatibility but as a long-term pact to keep revising your opinion of each other without weaponizing regret.

Context matters. Guitry was a French playwright and film director steeped in boulevard wit, a culture of polished cynicism and romantic skepticism. He also lived loudly in public, with a famously complicated love life. The line carries the seasoned tone of someone who has watched desire turn into negotiation, then decided the only sustainable posture is amused humility. Forgiveness here isn’t a moral gesture; it’s a survival skill, dressed up as a punchline.