My wife, Maggie, and I celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary on my writing day, and it seemed inappropriate to spend the day pontificating about my usual subjects.

So let’s take a break from politics and instead test the theory that a woman must possess a sense of humor to have put up with me all these years.

Here’s a tribute to marriage from my favorite quotations on the subject:

>> “Why does a woman work 10 years to change a man’s habits and then complain that he’s not the man she married?” — Barbra Streisand

>> “Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.” — H.L. Mencken

>> “I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” — Rita Rudner

>> “My wife and I had words, but I never got to use mine.” — Fibber McGee

>> “I’ve been married to one Marxist and one Fascist, and neither one would take the garbage out.” — Lee Grant

>> “My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.” — Rodney Dangerfield

>> “The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing — and then marry him.” — Cher

>> “‘I am’ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that ‘I do’ is the longest sentence?” — George Carlin

>> “If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.” — Katharine Hepburn

>> “I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it.” — Lyndon B. Johnson

>> “Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.” — Jean Rostand

>> “I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.” — Groucho Marx

>> “My husband and I didn’t sign a prenuptial agreement. We signed a mutual suicide pact.” — Roseanne Barr

>> “Your marriage is in trouble if your wife says, ‘You’re only interested in one thing,’ and you can’t remember what it is.” — Milton Berle

>> “The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they’re too old to do it.” — Anne Bancroft

>> “I never mind my wife having the last word. In fact, I’m delighted when she gets to it.” — Walter Matthau

>> “Basically my wife was immature. I’d be at home in the bath and she’d come in and sink my boats.” — Woody Allen

>> “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” — Phyllis Diller

>> “The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.