12 Funny Love Quotes for Him, and Who Really Said Them

The funniest marriage line on the internet is probably the one about archaeologists: the older a wife gets, the more interested her husband becomes. It is pinned to Agatha Christie, who was married to the archaeologist Max Mallowan. According to a 1967 biography, she said she never made the remark and would not have found it very complimentary or amusing anyway. Funny love quotes travel fast and lose their owners on the way. This collection keeps only lines we could trace to a book, a play or a recording, and groups them by the moment you would actually use them.

Each quote comes with a note on where it is from and how to use it on a card or in a text. Near the end there is a table of famous jokes credited to the wrong person, so you don't sign a birthday card with Groucho Marx's name under a line he never said.

Lines for an anniversary card he'll actually read

Long-married couples tend to find their humor in repetition: the same thermostat argument, the same lost keys. These three lines are about staying power, not sparks.

I love being married, I do. It's so great to find that one special person that you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

— Rita Rudner, stand-up set on Best of the Improv, Vol. 3, 2003

Rudner, a former Broadway dancer, built her act on deadpan marriage observations, and this is the line most often printed on wedding napkins. The recorded version starts with "I love being married, I do". The little "I do" works as a wink if you are writing for a wedding anniversary. It suits a card where you add one specific annoyance below it, such as the alarm he snoozes five times. Naming the real habit is what makes it read as affection rather than a complaint.

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

— Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, ch. 1, 1966

McLaughlin was a magazine editor who published short aphorisms in The Atlantic under the heading "The Neurotic's Notebook" before collecting them in books. This line is more wry than funny, which makes it a good bridge in a card that starts with a joke and ends sincerely. If you have been together a long time, try following it with a list of the "versions" of him you fell for: the one with the bad haircut in year two, the one who learned to cook.

To keep your marriage brimming, / With love in the loving cup, / Whenever you're wrong, admit it; / Whenever you're right, shut up.

— Ogden Nash, "A Word to Husbands", Marriage Lines: Notes of a Student Husband, 1964

Nash wrote light verse for The New Yorker for decades, and Marriage Lines is a whole book of poems about being a husband. Because the poem addresses husbands, it works best when you give it to him with mock solemnity: "Framed advice for the next forty years." Quote all four lines. The joke only lands after "loving cup" sets up a toast.

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After a row, when you are ready to laugh about it

A joke after an argument is a peace offering, so it has to make fun of the two of you, never only of him. Send these when the fight is already over, not halfway through it.

Never go to bed mad—stay up and fight.

— Phyllis Diller, Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints, 1966

Diller twisted the old advice-column rule "never go to bed mad" into a heading in her mock-domestic book. Quote Investigator found the earnest version in a 1945 newspaper column, so the joke was parodying real advice. On the same page, Diller tells her imaginary husband "Fang" that they have a storybook romance, and he answers, "Yes, and every page is ripped." Either line makes a good sticky note on the coffee machine the morning after a late-night argument.

I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?

— William Shakespeare, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV, Scene 1, first printed 1600

Benedick and Beatrice spend most of the play insulting each other. This is the moment he finally admits his feelings, and even then he can't resist calling it strange. Beatrice answers with a tangle of half-confessions: "I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing." If the two of you bicker for sport, this is the line to write after you have made up. It says "I love you" and "you are ridiculous" in a single sentence.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

— Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 4, 1891

Lord Henry Wotton is Wilde's professional cynic, and nearly every line he says is built to shock a dinner party. On its own, this line is too sharp for a card. It works as the setup in a toast or a note that ends with you turning it around: "Wilde was wrong. I was curious, and I am still not disappointed." Use it only if he knows you well enough to wait for the second sentence.

For the man who swore he would never settle down

Every couple has a friend, or a groom, who once announced he would stay single forever. These lines are made for reminding him of that.

When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

— William Shakespeare, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene 3, first printed 1600

Benedick says this alone on stage, right after overhearing (in a trick set up by his friends) that Beatrice loves him. He spent Act I swearing off marriage, and here he talks himself out of it in one sentence. It is a good fit for an engagement card, a wedding-morning note to the groom, or the toast from a best man who remembers the old vows of bachelorhood.

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I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

— William Shakespeare, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Act I, Scene 1, first printed 1600

Beatrice's opening position on romance, delivered in the first scene so the audience can enjoy watching her abandon it. It makes a good card from a woman who also said she would never marry: quote it, then add "and yet here we are." Pair it with the Benedick line above if you are writing to someone who made the same vow.

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished.

— Zsa Zsa Gabor, quoted in Newsweek, 28 March 1960

Gabor married nine times and turned that record into a stream of one-liners for interviewers. This one depends on a double meaning ("finished" as complete, and as done for), so it reads best out loud. Keep it for a bachelor-party card or a joking engagement message. It is probably too barbed for an anniversary.

When you want the joke to land softly

The gentlest kind of funny love note teases him and then turns tender. The three lines below come from two novels and a comic diary, and each one does that turn on its own.

He is self-educated, and does really know a multitude of things, but they are not so.

— Mark Twain, Eve writing about Adam in Eve's Diary, 1906

Twain's short comic book imagines Eve's diary in Eden. Eve spends pages puzzling over the strange creature who names nothing correctly and finds her flowers "rubbish". The book first appeared in Harper's Magazine's Christmas issue of 1905 and as a book in 1906. Any partner who confidently explains things he half-knows will recognise himself in this line. A few sentences later Eve adds that it is "not on account of his brightness" that she loves him, which is the sweet half of the joke.

Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.

— Mark Twain, Adam at Eve's grave in Eve's Diary, 1906

This is the last line of the same book. After all the comedy, Adam's single sentence at the end has been quoted at weddings and funerals for over a century. In 1906, the year the book came out, Twain was still grieving his wife Olivia, who had died in 1904, and many readers take the ending as his tribute to her. Write it with "he" in place of "she" for a partner, and note that you have borrowed and changed it.

I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.

— Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bennet's letter in Pride and Prejudice, ch. 60, 1813

Elizabeth writes this to her aunt right after her engagement to Darcy, a man who, two chapters earlier, "had yet to learn to be laughed at". The joke is her competitive streak, ranking her happiness above her sister's. "She only smiles, I laugh" is a near-perfect caption for a photo of the two of you mid-laugh, or a closing line for a card to a partner who finally learned to take a joke.

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Which line for which card

A funny quote needs one sentence of your own after it, or it reads like a forwarded meme. Use this table to match the line to the occasion and the sentence that follows it.

If you would rather write your own line, the easiest formula is an exaggerated complaint followed by a plain admission. Here are three examples we wrote for this guide, not quotations:

• "You steal the duvet, mispronounce 'espresso' and think every map is wrong. I'd still pick you in every timeline."
• "Ten years, four flat-pack wardrobes, no divorce. That's love."
• "I've checked, and you are still the only person whose snoring I'd forgive."

For something longer that keeps the warmth but drops the jokes, our sample love letters for him are arranged by occasion, and how to write a love letter shows how real letter-writers mixed teasing with sincerity. If you only need a line or two, there are more in 100 short love messages for handwritten notes.

Famous funny lines with the wrong name attached

These lines are all over quote sites and printed mugs. We left them out of the collection because the attribution doesn't hold up. If you use one, sign it "anonymous", or use the more accurate credit shown here.

If you love one of these, you can still use it. Write "as the saying goes" instead of a name. It is more honest, and nobody at the party will correct you.

For the less joking side of the same feeling, romantic love quotes for him from letters and literature gathers the tender lines. A good card often needs one of each.