Marriage Quote by Ogden Nash

Marriage advice rarely comes packaged as a gag line, but Nash understood that humor is a delivery system for uncomfortable truth. The sing-song rhyme and nursery-meter sweetness are a feint; they let him smuggle in a blunt thesis about domestic power. A “loving cup” sounds quaint, almost ceremonial, yet “brimming” hints at overflow: affection isn’t a permanent state, it’s a level you manage. Nash is really writing about maintenance, not romance.

The couplet’s genius is its asymmetry. “Whenever you’re wrong, admit it” is straightforward moral hygiene. “Whenever you’re right, shut up” is where the knife turns. Being right becomes a social problem, not a personal victory, because marriage isn’t a courtroom. Nash strips away the fantasy that truth automatically deserves airtime. He’s pointing at the small, cumulative violence of winning arguments at home: the way correctness can read as contempt, how a well-timed “actually” can drain the room faster than any betrayal.

There’s also a sly gender-and-era subtext. Mid-century marriage scripts often demanded female tact and male authority; Nash reassigns restraint as a universal marital duty, but the line still echoes a culture where peace was frequently purchased with silence. That tension is part of why it lands now: it’s funny, yes, but it also dares you to ask who gets to be right, who has to be quiet, and what kind of love survives on that bargain.