c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
But women have to give hard thought to the men we'll wind up with. Make a mistake and get a drunk, a spendthrift, a cruel man. A man who won't keep his word. ... In marriage, man and woman become one, and that one is the husband.
— Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter
I was terrified of opening my marriage to outside influence. Because it was the center of my life and meant more than anything. But as I thought through my fears, I realized something: Testing that bond was a win-win scenario.Best case, we would weather the challenges, and I would have a wealth of experiences and emotional bonds with others that could complement my life.Worst case, I was wrong about the strength of what we I had together, and it would tear us apart.But if what we had were that easily ruined, was it really all that great in the first place? And wouldn’t I want to know now, 4 years into the marriage, rather than another 20 or 30 years down the road?
— Page  Turner, Poly Land: My Brutally Honest Adventures in Polyamory
Don’t be late or I may end up marrying the judge.
— Melinda Heald, The Promise of Sunrise
Now she saw that marriage was like being in a three-legged race with the same person for the rest of your life. Your hopes, your happiness, your luck, your moods, all yoked to his.
— J. Courtney Sullivan, Saints for All Occasions
Wyatt’s lips flatten into a serious line. His voice goes low, laced with passion. “Marrying one woman doesn’t mean spending your life with one woman, because the funny girl you fall in love with on a first date at twenty-eight eventually becomes the fascinating creature you propose to at thirty, then evolves into the stunning bride you wait for at the end of an aisle at thirty-two, and finally grows into the astounding mother to your children at thirty-four. By forty, she has blossomed into the businesswoman, the force to be reckoned with. By the time you’re fifty or sixty or seventy or a hundred, she’s been everything — your wife, your lover, your friend, your companion, your sous-chef, your travel partner, your life coach, your confidant, your cheerleader, your critic, your most stalwart advisor. She grows with you. She changes with you. She is always stable, but never stagnant. She is not one woman. She is a thousand versions of herself, a multitude of layers, an infinite ocean whose depths you plumb over a lifetime, whose many treasures and intricacies, quirks and idiosyncrasies you need an entire marriage to explore.” His voice softens. “A man should be so lucky to spend his life stuck with one woman such as that.”-Julie Johnson, "The Monday Girl
— Julie Johnson
Marrying one woman doesn’t mean spending your life with one woman, because the funny girl you fall in love with on a first date at twenty-eight eventually becomes the fascinating creature you propose to at thirty, then evolves into the stunning bride you wait for at the end of an aisle at thirty-two, and finally grows into the astounding mother to your children at thirty-four. By forty, she has blossomed into the businesswoman, the force to be reckoned with. By the time you’re fifty or sixty or seventy or a hundred, she’s been everything — your wife, your lover, your friend, your companion, your sous-chef, your travel partner, your life coach, your confidant, your cheerleader, your critic, your most stalwart advisor. She grows with you. She changes with you. She is always stable, but never stagnant. She is not one woman. She is a thousand versions of herself, a multitude of layers, an infinite ocean whose depths you plumb over a lifetime, whose many treasures and intricacies, quirks and idiosyncrasies you need an entire marriage to explore.” His voice softens. “A man should be so lucky to spend his life stuck with one woman such as that.
— Julie Johnson
There had been no moments when she could differentiate and say: Then, at such a moment, I love him; and again, Then, at such another, I loved him not. The stress had been constant. her love for him had been a straight black line drawn right through her life. It had hurt her, it had damaged her, it had diminished her, but she had been unable to curve away from it.
— Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent
My dear Mr FitzGeorge!' cried Lady Slane. 'You really mustn't talk as though my life had been a tragedy. I had everything that most women would covet: position, comfort, children, and a husband I loved. I had nothing to complain of - nothing.''Except that you were defrauded of the one thing that mattered. Nothing matters to an artist except the fulfilment of his gift. You know that as well as I do. Frustrated, he grows crooked like a tree twisted into an unnatural shape. All meaning goes out of life, and life becomes existence - a makeshift. Face it, Lady Slane. Your children, your husband, your splendour, were nothing but obstacles that kept you from yourself. They were what you chose to substitute for your real vocation. You were too young, I suppose, to know any better, but when you chose that life you sinned against the light.
— Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent
he way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.
— Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
In fighting its war, the Ministry of the Interior has resorted to a novel tactic–marriage. No Saudi official will admit on the record that the Kingdom’s terrorist problem might boil down to sexual frustration, but if a social system bans hot-blooded young men from contact with the opposite sex in their most hot-blooded years, perhaps it is hardly surprising that some of them channel this frustration into violence. One cornerstone of the extremist rehab program is to get the “beneficiaries,” as they are called, settled down with a wife as soon as possible. The Ministry of the Interior pays each unmarried beneficiary 60,000 riyals (some $18,000), the going rate for a dowry, or bride price. The family arranges a marriage, and whenever he can, Prince Mohammed turns up for the wedding.When Khaled Al-Hubayshi was released from Al-Haier prison early in 2007, he wasted no time finding himself a bride at government expense.
— Robert Lacey, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
In this regard, Daisy reflected, her marriage to Matthew would not be unlike Lillian's with Westcliff. As two strong-willed people with very different sensibilities, Lillian and Westcliff often argued and negotiated... and yet this didn't seem to weaken their marriage. Quite the opposite, in fact- their union seemed all the better for it.She considered her friends' marriages... Annabelle and Mr. Hunt as a harmony of similar dispositions... Evie and Lord St. Vincent with their opposite natures, as necessary to each other's existence as day and night. It was impossible to say that any of these pairings was superior to the others.Perhaps, in spite of all she had heard about the ideal of a perfect marriage, there was no such thing. Perhaps every marriage was a unique creation.
— Lisa Kleypas, Scandal in Spring
Don't tell your friend you are fighting with your wife, it gives him pleasure
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
The flowers in the bride’s hand are sadly like the garland which decked the heifers of sacrifice in old times!”“Still, Sue, it is no worse for the woman than for the man. That’s what some women fail to see, and instead of protesting against the conditions they protest against the man, the other victim; just as a woman in a crowd will abuse the man who crushes against her, when he is only the helpless transmitter of the pressure put upon him.
— Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
I dont know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful it will make little difference whether she lives at all.
— Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Be that as it may, I think someday you'll meet a man worth giving up your independence for.
— Lisa Kleypas, Mine Till Midnight
I have been looking at the marriage service in the Prayer-book, and it seems to me very humiliating that a giver-away should be required at all. According to the ceremony as there printed, my bridegroom chooses me of his own will and pleasure; but I don’t choose him. Somebody gives me to him, like a she-ass or she-goat, or any other domestic animal.
— Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
I am certain one ought to be allowed to undo what one has done so ignorantly ! I daresay it happens to lots of women; only they submit, and I kick.... When people of a later age look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions of the times that we have the unhappiness to live in, what will they say!
— Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
What is life, without someone to share with?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I was scarcely the first, nor the only current, girl of impressive derivation to be unceremoniously thrust through the iron gate at the entrance of Le Murate by parents whose aspirations for their daughters did not include marriage. Our paths to the convent were varied, but no matter. We all wound up in the same habit.
— Kelsey Brickl, Paint
First wives are a rite of passage into adult life. In many ways it’s important that first marriages go wrong. That’s how we learn the truth about ourselves.
— J.G. Ballard, Millennium People
Husbands are the leftovers of a stew called love –she thought—, and with hair on their faces.
— Javier Enríquez Serralde
I listened impatiently to the wisdom of the O'Neills for about twenty minutes until I could take no more (by this time Steve and Susan had me thumbing through the paperback). I slid the book across the desk at them and said, 'This is so much shit.'That was a mistake because the word 'shit' on the lips of a pastor deeply offended their moral sensibilities. Such was the state of things among us. They took grave exception to the word SHIT, while I was expected to remain noddingly neutral toward their adultery. WELL, SHIT, I thought. Without apologizing, I tried to convince them I was merely 'upset' by the prospects of their separation. Gradually, I achieved the clinical tone that they so admired in the O'Neills and evidently expected in their country parson.
— Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery
Thus, the Law under which the marriage is solemnized would play a major role in determining the status; and consequent reliefs, if need be, at a subsequent stage.
— Henrietta Newton Martin -Senior Legal Consultant & Author in law. (B.Com,LLB-goldmedalist, LLM-Gold
The marriage ceremony is sexist beyond parody. The bride appears in a fussy white dress that symbolizes her virtue and virginity, and everyone keeps on remarking on how thin and beautiful she looks. Her father walks her down the aisle to ‘give her away’, and she passes, like property, from one man to another. The minister, who is traditionally a man, gives the man permission to kiss the woman, as if that is in the minister’s authority and the woman has none. The man kisses, the woman is kissed. At the reception, only men are given to speak, while the bride remains seated and silent. Henceforth, the woman will adopt the man’s name, as will their eventual offspring. Despite all this, the wedding day is said to belong to the woman. This, would you believe, is ‘her day’.
— Neel Burton, For Better For Worse: Should I Get Married?
The yearn of the faithfulThe call of the wildTwo conflicting worlds collideSteadfast in a world spiraling out of control. One foot to the earthOne head in the clouds
— Morris R. Gates
The man loves you with everything he has, everything he is. Eve, that means you can hurt him.
— J.D. Robb, Judgment in Death
A man had better study what a human being is, because he's marrying one - assuming that merely being one has not been sufficient stimulus to that study.
— Pope Pius XI
A loyal friend, who can find?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
He evidently did not care that they were in full view of a cluster of dog-owners walking their dogs. He stopped and took her in his arms, kissing her passionately and urgently.
— Alexander McCall Smith, A Distant View of Everything
When you dig just the tiniest bit beneath the surface, everyone's love life is original and interesting and nuanced and defies any easy definition.
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Sweetheart, my heart is your home, you can always stay there.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
My darling husband, my heart is your home.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
He better call Becky with the good hair.
— Beyoncé Knowles
God created a woman to be the keeper of her home. She sets the tone, and where her mind and heart goes, her home and marriage tend to follow.
— Ngina Otiende, The Wedding Night: Embracing Sexual Intimacy as New Bride
On Marie's eight visit, Raymond met her at the airport with a skinny woman he said was his wife. She had dark-blond hair and one of those unset permanents, all corkscrews. Marie looked at her, and looked away. Raymond explained that he had moved back to Hollywood North. Marie said she didn't care, as long as she had somewhere to lay her head.They left the terminal in silence. Outside, she said, "What's this car? Japanese? Your father liked a Buick.""It belongs to Mimi," he said.Marie got in front, next to Raymond, and the skinny woman climbed in behind. Marie said to Raymond, in French, "You haven't told me her name.""Well, I have, of course. I introduced you. Mimi.""Mimi isn't a name.""It's her's," he said."It can't be. It's always short for something - for Michele. Did you ever hear of a Saint Mimi? She's not a divorced woman, is she? You were married in church?""In a kind of church," he said. "She belongs to a Christian movement."Marie knew what that meant: pagan rites.
— Mavis Gallant, Across the Bridge: Stories
There comes a point when you win, and you can either soothe the loser into thinking there was something in it for them or kick them while they're down to make sure they know what just happened.
— C.D. Reiss, Marriage Games
I think I was just overly excitable about it because I loved him in a way I'd never thought possible. I knew that if I lost him, if I had to live without him, it would crush me. I needed him and I didn't just need him now, I needed him in the future. I needed him always. I wanted him always. I wanted him to be the father of my children. It's such a silly statement now; people say it all the time, they throw it around like it's nothing. And some people treat it like it is nothing, but it wasn't nothing to me. I wanted to have children with him someday. I wanted to be a parent with him. I wanted to have a child that was half him and half me. I wanted to commit to him and sacrifice for him. I wanted to lose part of myself in order to gain some of him. I wanted to marry him. So I wanted him to have meant it. I wanted it to be real.
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, Forever, Interrupted
The point is, what sort of a time can a man give a woman? Can he give her a damn good time, or can't he? If he can't he's no right to the woman...
— D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
I got a text from my husband. “Manal, you are divorced,” it read. “Your papers are in the court of Khobar.” I was divorced in my absence, just as I had been married.
— Manal Al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening
Our level of appreciation shows in how we treat our husband. If he’s first in our minds, he’ll be first in our priorities. If he’s indeed special, you pursue him, initiate intimacy, and go out of your way to make him cherished.
— Ngina Otiende, The Wedding Night: Embracing Sexual Intimacy as New Bride
Their manipulation is psychological and emotionally devastating – and very dangerous, especially considering the brain circuitry for emotional and physical pain are one and the same (Kross, 2011). What a victim feels when they are punched in the stomach can be similar to the pain a victim feels when they are verbally and emotionally abused, and the effects of narcissistic abuse can be crippling and long-lasting, even resulting in symptoms of PTSD or Complex PTSD.
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
To any survivor who may be doubting whether what they’ve experienced is truly abuse, remember that emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse will never be, and should never be, considered part of the messy equation of a normal relationship. As both metal health professionals and survivors can attest to, the traumatic highs and lows of being with a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath are not the natural highs and lows of regular relationships. That suggestion is quite damaging to society and to survivors all around the world.
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
A good marriage is not a gift
—  it is an achievement.
Love and marriage are completely unrelated enterprises. Marriage bears as little resemblance to love as competing in the Olympics does to your afternoon jog.
— Zinzi Clemmons, What We Lose
Here are officers enough in Meryton to disappoint all the young ladies in the country.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
He was terribly conscious that he only had one life and with seemed to sad to think that he had wasted it. He could never surmount his immeasurable regret. And that's why I tell you that Byring is right. Even though it only lasts five years, even though he ruins his career, even though this marriage ends in disaster, it will have been worth while. He will have been satisfied. He will have fulfilled himself.
— W. Somerset Maugham
He was terribly conscious that he only had one life and it seemed to sad to think that he had wasted it. He could never surmount his immeasurable regret. And that's why I tell you that Byring is right. Even though it only lasts five years, even though he ruins his career, even though this marriage ends in disaster, it will have been worth while. He will have been satisfied. He will have fulfilled himself.
— W. Somerset Maugham
But there is no Messiah of Sitka. Landsman has no home, no future, no fate but Bina. The land that he and she were promised was bounded only by the fringes of their wedding canopy, by the dog-eared corners of their cards of membership in an international fraternity whose members carry their patrimony in a tote bag, their world on the tip of the tongue.
— Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union
He loved dogs.She loved cats.That's the only possible reason they could figure out for their after-marriage fighting like Cats & Dogs.
— Bhavik Sarkhedi
I will deny thee nothing: Whereon, I do beseech thee, grant me this, To leave me but a little to myself.
— William Shakespeare, Othello
Marriage union goes beyond the actual ceremony. It goes beyond intimacy and remains a solid foundation for happiness
—  if only partners remain optimally loyal to the mission.
The one who wins the argument is usually the one who acts less like Christ.
— Francis Chan, You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity
she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she was in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeing to her interminable. If life had to be looked at in terms of high moments. or peaks, then nothing had "happened" to her for a long time; snd she could look forward to nothing much but a dwindling away from full household activity into getting old
— Doris Lessing
Men grew up receiving from their mothers without giving anything in return and they expect the same from their women. Could this unintendedly taught and unknowingly learnt selfishness be responsible for break-ups and divorce. Give at least a promise to your woman and keep it.
— Haruna Idowu
Are you ready to go home, Catherine?” he asked. “It’s warm inside the house. I kept a fire going for you.”I continued looking at him, unsure how to respond. “Thanks,” I managed to say and then glanced in the direction of his house—our house. “Well, you are my wife. And I know you don’t like the cold.”I’m his wife, I thought to myself. He had said the words as if that simple fact made it necessary to be both thoughtful and kind. As if having gained a wife or husband meant having also gained her or his concerns, and hence the need to consider the person’s needs, wants, and preferences as strongly as one’s own. It struck me as a perfect description of what marriage ought to be. An agreeable notion that had not entered into my petty way of viewing matrimony. I would have assumed it to be above Thaddeus’ egotistical mindset as well.“Catherine?” he said again, watching me regard him with a quizzical expression. “Are you ready to go home?”I nodded, which made him smile.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, The Tarishe Curse
Love is deep spiritual affection in two souls but one spirit.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Sometimes divorce isn’t an earth-shattering loss. Sometimes it’s just two people waking up out of a fog.
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
And here’s why it worked: man or woman, gay, straight, bisexual, you name it, we all just want to be teased.
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Heartbreak is a loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
I almost thought that marriage was a cure to loneliness, alas! so many are lonely inside marriage. Then I realized it's not marriage that takes the loneliness away, but when both within marriage honour God and the vows made before Him.
— Gift Gugu Mona
Since marriage is for two people, it is difficult to remain in it when one person steps out of it.
— Gift Gugu Mona
(...) and I tell you, Austin Ruthyn, if you won't look about and marry somebody, somebody may possibly marry you.
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Uncle Silas
When a lady is ready to marry, she has to wait for a man to come for her.When a man is ready to marry, he just has to make his choice
— Faithful Akpaloo
All due respect to the Resurrection, but two-becoming-one might be the greatest miracle ever.
— Jen Hatmaker, For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards
Divorce and separation, is the realization that, one of the two, no longer is growing his or her way to prosperity, next to that other person.
— Efrat Cybulkiewicz
What’s that saying? Behind every gorgeous woman, there’s a man sick of screwing her? Well, it works both ways. No one mentions that part.
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
As she breaks the silence, the upscale abused wife begins to feel affirmed and validated. The rationalizations she once relied on to sustain her within the marriage and to maintain the marital relationship begin to break down. Soon they become useless and obsolete. She slowly rejects them as she confronts the cognitive dissonance, the contradiction between her own knowledge and what she sees going on. It is remarkable yet not surprising that battered women have the highest tolerance for cognitive dissonance and can square two disparate realities that will never match – hatred and violence in a “loving marriage.” At this point the woman is relieved to step away from her self-deception.
— Susan Weitzman, Not To People Like Us: Hidden Abuse In Upscale Marriages
When others witness or comment on abusive behaviors, the little voice that the upscale abused wife once heard inside her and ignored or muffled becomes amplified. Slowly she starts to recognize that she must stop enduring the abuse. . . . each woman comes to grips with her situation at her own pace. However, talking to others is key to her growing capacity to recognize and label her experiences, reclaim herself, target important turning points, and ultimately leave her tormentor.
— Susan Weitzman, Not To People Like Us: Hidden Abuse In Upscale Marriages
But if he is angry at the world for doing him harm, why does he take it out on his loving partner? Couldn’t he just as readily express his rage by playing racquetball or pounding pillows. His ideas about her role seem paradoxical. On the one hand, the narcissistic husband has vested his wife with tremendous power. She is necessary for his self-repair, but instead of valuing her and seeking comfort in her arms, he beats and humiliates her. Because he sees her as available to meet any and all of his needs, he releases his rage and any self-hate at her; such an act helps him ultimately feel powerful again, making him realize he is not weak and shattered.When the narcissistic man eels the terror and rage associated with his own internal fragmentation, his outburst restores his sense of power and control. He turns the anger expanding within him away from himself, toward his wife. He insists that she’s the defective one, she’s to blame, because she has not met his needs. Such acts of externalization are key to the NPD batterer. His violent behavior restores his self-esteem. He believes that his actions are not his fault; he is just trying to take care of himself.
— Susan Weitzman, Not To People Like Us: Hidden Abuse In Upscale Marriages
When a woman is convinced that she can stop the violence in her marriage, her stubborn determination feeds her sense of failure each time she sees that she can’t regulate her husband’s demands and abuses. In a perverse type of review, she may then ask herself how she could have been so stupid as to overlook the early warnings. This further diminishes her self-esteem.
— Susan Weitzman, Not To People Like Us: Hidden Abuse In Upscale Marriages
Once this bubble of self-deception is burst and the mask that shielded her and others from what she wished to ignore is lifted, it is difficult for the woman to return to her life as it was. It has been said that “the discovery of a deceiving principle, a lying activity within us, can furnish an absolutely new view of all conscious life.” This reawakened awareness changes the upscale abused woman’s life forever. Suddenly, new choices stand before her. This can be a frightening and sad phase in therapy, a moment when the woman is grappling with a kaleidoscope of loss and potential future gain. Some women experience this period as the dark night of the soul. It can be sickening to face the truths one has chosen to ignore in hopes of maintaining the status quo. Even if the woman wishes to stay married, she will never perceive her life in the same way again.
— Susan Weitzman, Not To People Like Us: Hidden Abuse In Upscale Marriages
Canadian researcher Donald Dutton . . has written that marital work with a man who has a history of relationship violence may be a “conflict-generator” and that individual work . . should come first for both husband and wife. …Marital therapy does not provide the battered woman the kind of safety she needs for rebuilding her strength and finding her identity. The consequences may be severe if she is truthful in a couple’s session. She may be too afraid. Moreover, many upscale batterers can be charming and persuasive and may convey a far different image of themselves to the therapist than the one that reflects the woman’s reality at home.
— Susan Weitzman, Not To People Like Us: Hidden Abuse In Upscale Marriages
It doesn’t upset me to think about dying. What upsets me is the idea of John being alone after his spell passes. The idea of one of us without the other. (p.127)
— Michael Zadoorian, The Leisure Seeker
Hi lover," he says to me, completely forgetting what happened before.He knows who I am. He knows that I am the one person who he loves, has always loved. No disease, no person can take that away.(p.205)
— Michael Zadoorian, The Leisure Seeker
He loved her. He loved her because nature willed it. Because they were already united and of one body. The bare flesh on every part of her belonged to him. The scent emitting from her skin was his.
— Alexandra Silber, After Anatevka: A Novel Inspired by Fiddler on the Roof
How many times, in those first weeks, did he enter the room and stand by the door, unable to speak? How many times did she ask, "Do you need anything?"And he would say, "No."And she would say "Are you sure?"And he would say, "Yes," but think, Ask again.And she would say, "I know," but think, Come to me.And he would say , "Ask again."And she would say, "Come to me."And saying nothing, he would.There they would be, side by side, her hand on his thigh, his head resting on her chest. If they had been teenagers, it would have looked like the beginning of love, but they'd been married for twenty years, and it was the exhumation of love.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am
Marriage is like a long conversation that always ends too soon.
— Cassandra Clare, A Long Conversation
Any marriage can last forever, as long as both partners remain committed to their vows.
— Gift Gugu Mona
The one trying to have the last word is rarely walking in the Word.
— Hollisa Alewine
If they could not prove adultery or extreme cruelty, Nina's attorneys had an alternate strategy available. Rhode Island was unique in allowing divorce based upon other, more ambiguous grounds, as well...[as] an omnibus clause in the state's legal code authorized divorce based upon..."gross misbehavior and wickedness in either of the parties repugnant to and inconsistent with the marriage contract"...the relative vagueness of the terms "gross misbehavior and wickedness" left room for interpretation by Rhode Island judges. Therefore, it was crucial NIna's attorneys prove she had legitimate standing to file for divorce in Rhode Island.
— Jean Elson, Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America
Nina could scarcely believe a house could be as quiet as the one on Washington Street. Although there were moments when she missed her children, her main response to living apart from her husband was relief…[H]er current solitude was not just a respite, it was a time to contemplate her future options. Nina marveled that she had choices to consider.
— Jean Elson, Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America
Leaving James was not something Nina had thought possible, but if she could do so and still keep her children, it might be better for them, as well as for her.
— Jean Elson, Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America
When her husband recovered, it was to shout abusively at her…. Later, when she reflected on it throughout the tedious courtroom proceedings, she realized this was the moment she had irrevocably determined to divorce her husband.
— Jean Elson, Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America
As a hedge against possible failure to prove adultery, this alleged “that for a period of time from 1901 and continuing thereafter he [had] kept up and continued an undue, improper, indecorous and licentious association and intimacy with a woman, named Mabel Cochrane, many years his junior, and of questionable character and immoral habits.”[i] Furthermore, Nina accused James of “bestowing upon and receiving marked and improper attention” beginning in the fall of 1901, “indulging in undue and improper familiarity and intimacy” with Mabel Cochrane.
— Jean Elson, Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America
One of the great benefits of being married is always having someone to tie one's tie.
— Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Goodbye Piccadilly
The unconscious operation of the attachment system via internal working models probably plays an important part in the choice of marital partner and relationship patterns in marriage. Holmes (1993) has described a pattern of 'phobic-counterphobic' marriage in which an ambivalently attached person will be attracted to an avoidant 'counter-phobic' spouse in a system of mutual defence against separation anxiety.
— Jeremy Holmes, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory
The man who marries a woman for her beauty will be deceived
—  he who marries a woman for good sense can truly say he is married. - Sultana
(Take a deep breath for this next run-on sentence) I believe that two people can fall madly in love and sift that fairy-tale feeling up through the raging sands of reality to settle on top as a polished stone of true joy, where the "happily ever after" will be something two mortals are working towards and not a finished product.
— Zack Oates, Dating Never Works... until It Does: 100 Lessons from 1,000 Dates
she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she ws in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeming to her interminable. If life had to be looked at in terms of high moments or peaks, then nothing had "happened" to her for a long time; and she could look forward to nothing but a dwindling away from full household activities and getting old.
— Doris Lessing, The Summer Before the Dark
Pardon me for not being willing to commit my entire future to you based on two kisses and a blueberry muffin.
— Laura Lee Guhrke, Catch a Falling Heiress
It is not nice to play for marriage, whether your own or that of someone else, as a soda stopper. The result is the unclean of the human dignity. Respect your marriage to take care of your dignity.
— Simon Mashalla
If you fall in love, you feel forever young.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Then in June Linda got sick. Word went around town that Roger was looking real serious 'cause his wife was 'took ill bad'. So my mother cooked up a big casserole to take up there; they could eat off it for says, she said. 'The poor young couple, with her sick I guess they must have to make do with canned pork and beans. Take this on over there,' she told me.'She can't cook anyways,' I said. 'I told you that.''Nonsense. Every woman can cook, now go on.'I went on up there, carrying the heavy casserole. Even cold it smelled good and if it hand't been for Roger I would have sat down and eaten it on the ways. Waste of good food to take it to 'her', I thought; she'd probably preferred canned beans.I got up to the farm and found the door locked. That was strange, let me tell you. Around here nobody locks the door, even at night or when they're out. You just never know, a farmer or a kid like me might have to come in and use the phone in a hurry, or the bathroom, and everybody knows everybody anyway. But the door was locked. I put the casserole dish down on the front step and sat there on the steps awhile, to see if Roger or Linda came along.Nobody came and the June sun was hot. Roger doesn't have a brook up there, like we do, so I couldn't get wading. I looked around for a hose or something. I walked to the back of the house and decided to climb the apple tree there; that was something to do at least. Up in the apple tree I could see into the windows of the house; they were too high for me to see in from the ground. I was looking into the bedroom. There was Linda, sleeping. In the day! But she was supposed to be sick, so it was all right. Except that then I saw that she wasn't lying in that bed alone. There was another head there, on the pillow beside her. Roger has dark hair and this person didn't. This person was a man with blond hair. I didn't get a good look at his face. I was seeing the side of his head, then the head went over LInda's face and she was covered up by him.
— Deborah Moffatt
You know you are alone in marriage when your spouse is ignorant of your daily needs.
— Gift Gugu Mona
Blind passion was one thing, all-knowing intimacy a rarer commodity.
— Stacy Schiff, Vera
Marry someone who loves you because he was not only going to make you happy but he would never hurt you one millimeter too
— Diadjeng Laraswati H
I realized that marriage is not only about exchanging vows, but it's about two people who equally make a continuous effort to honour their vows.
— Gift Gugu Mona
I'm just thinking, you might be the modern version of a war bride.""The what?""You know, like when we were kids. Guy's shipping out, gets all panicked, pulls the trigger so to speak. This is the same thing, in reverse. Girl's got a job, heading for parts unknown, guy...You know.""Pulls the trigger. So to speak.
— Malcolm Brooks, Painted Horses
When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, he's thinking of pulling up roots.
— Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
Every person, young or old, risks the possibility of their life not turning out as planned. Especially when it comes to marriage. They might find they aren't suited for marriage after all. Or their spouses might die of an early illness. Taking a risk on another person is what marriage is all about.
— Sabrina Jeffries, Married to the Viscount
Devote yourself to your partner's sense of safety and security and not simply to your idea about what that should be. What may make you feel safe and secure may not be what your partner requires from you. Your job is to know what matters to your partner and how to make him or her feel safe and secure.
— Stan Tatkin, Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship
The couple bubble is an agreement to put the relationship before anything and everything else. It means putting your partner's well-being, self-esteem and distress relief first. And it means your partner does the same for you. You both agree to do it for each other. Therefore, you say to each other, "We come first." In this way, you cement your relationship. It is like making a pact or taking a vow, or like reinforcing a vow you already took with one another.
— Stan Tatkin, Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship
Couples in distress too often turn to solutions that can be summed up by "You do your thing and I'll do my thing" or "You take care of yourself and I'll take care of myself." We hear pop psychology pronouncements such as "I'm not ready to be in a relationship" and "You have to love yourself before anyone can love you."Is any of this true? Is it really possible to love yourself before someone ever loves you?Think about it. How could this be true? If it were true, babies would come into this world already self-loving or self-hating. And we know they don't. In fact, human beings don't start by thinking anything about themselves, good or bad. We learn to love ourselves precisely because we have experienced being loved by someone. We learn to take care of ourselves because somebody has taken care of us.
— Stan Tatkin, Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship
You have to believe in marriage and you have to believe in a relationship between two people. If you really think in your life that you have found the right person, you have to stick to it, even though there are ups and downs. If you really believe in your union, you have to nourish it and work for it, then you can really spend your life together forever.
— Sophia Loren
Aikhenvald saw Véra as a fearless guide to Vladimir on “the poetic path.” She was on every count his champion. The wife of another émigré writer phrased it differently: “Everyone in the Russian community knew who and what you meant when you said ‘Verochka.’ It meant a boxer who went into the fight and hit and hit.
— Stacy Schiff, Vera
Liberty is terrifying but it is also exhilarating.
— Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
The woman who realizes that she is bound by a million Lilliputian threads in an attitude of impotence and hatred masquerading as tranquility and love has no option but to run away, if she is not to be corrupted and extinguished utterly.
— Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
The most crucial thing to know about true love is that, it is not something you can find, rather you need to build it with the person in whose eyes you see your soul.
— Abhijit Naskar, The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality
Let [the wife] guard, as much as possible, against a gloomy and moody disposition, which causes her to move about with the silence and cloudiness of a spectre; for who likes to dwell in a haunted house?
— John Angell James, The Marriage Ring: Or How to Make Home Happy
Only the most passionate love could ever induce me to marry.
— Melanie Dickerson, A Viscount's Proposal
If I had to marry someone, it wouldn't be a bossy little gal with a tongue like barbed-wire and a mind about as narrow.
— Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me
Don't people get married because they're full of love and then divorced when they run out of it?" (Elsa)"Did you learn that one in school?" (Mom)"It's my own theory." (Elsa)
— Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
Marriage cannot be a job as it has become.
— Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
To be happily married, as I've been fortunate enough to be, is to be a partner in a conversation that can last a full adult life. To have a true friend is to be able to test your hypotheses against someone who's receptive, but who won't give ground forever, and then let your friend try his wares out on you. At its best, friendly conversation is about giving up all claims to property and priority and engaging in collaboration--so that, at least for the two of you, something like an improvised musical composition in two parts is taking place. You do some rhythm to his lead; he lays down a bass line when you want to run the thing out into space. You both wind up saying things and thinking things that, alone, you never could have. This kind of hybrid mixing, this collaborative creation, is greatly to be treasured: it's one of the best parts of life.
— Mark Edmundson
I'd go to the end of the world for my husband. Of course, if he'd just stop and ask directions, I wouldn't have to.
— Martha Bolton
They are married, after all, in every way that matters. The difficulty is that they appear not to have noticed. And one is somewhat wary, given the history, of bringing that fact to their attention.
— Chris Dee, Polishing Silver: The Journal of Alfred Pennyworth
Small wonder that love would break under circumstances like these. Standing there in the soddie door, she seemed two personalities. One argued bitterly that it was impossible for love to keep going when there was no hope for the future, suggested that there was no use trying to keep it going. The other said sternly that marriage was not the fulfillment of a passion, - marriage was the fulfillment of love. And love was sometimes pleasure and sometimes duty.
— Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand
My wife divorced me because she could not trust me anymore.I never want a divorce because I love and care about our daughter.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
I'm too busy being the bad guy.” It was one of those things that get said in a marriage, something that starts out as a genuine compliment but turns into a criticism without either party noticing or caring all that much.
— Sarah Dunn, The Arrangement
It doesn't matter where she looks, there are always the beautiful imperfections of a marriage.
— Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds
Véra assumed her married name almost as a stage name; rarely has matrimony so much represented a profession. It was one of the ironies of the life that – born at a time and place where women could and did lay claim to all kinds of ambitions – she should elevate the role of wife to a high art. […] Traditionally, a man changes his name and braces himself for fame; a woman changes hers and passes into oblivion. This was not to be Véra’s case, although she did gather her married name around her like a cloak, which she occasionally opened to startling effect. She would never be forced to make a woman’s historic choice between love and work. Nor would Verochka, as Vladimir called her, squander any of her professional training, though as it happened her husband would be the direct (and sole) beneficiary of that expertise.
— Stacy Schiff, Vera
... There may not be even two men living in the world whom I would have agreed to marry, certainly not on such short notice. But I do not need two; I only need one.
— Marie Brennan, In the Labyrinth of Drakes
When Sweetu wasn’t being reduced to merely existing as a bride, as a piece of meat to be handled and prodded, to have decorative contraptions stuck into her skull, her interests were otherwise unexpressed. She rarely complained, hardly asked for anything, and maybe that’s because Indian girls grow up going to weddings and we watch the procedure and we know our roles: be demure, don’t complain, cry but don’t scream, get tea for anyone older than you, and calmly meet expectations.
— Scaachi Koul, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
Marriages are like pianos. They go in and out of tune.
— Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests
Sometimes a rut can be a comfortable place to be, but ours was full of too many differences and resentments to be wholly comfortable. I had always had my own way in the marriage — about what we’d do, where we’d do it, when, how. Katharine had always argued, and always given in. In the process she’d become more resentful, I guess, except that I was too busy with my own work to notice. But in turn she was less and less appealing to me. She’s a couple of years older than me, I guess you know that, but that wasn’t all. Those stolid American middle-class values, her sensible clothes, her sense of responsibility, her moderation in all things — frankly, they bored me. We made love less and less, and she didn’t even seem to miss it. I did.
— Shashi Tharoor
Will the stars say yes? Will the moon say yes? Will the sky say yes? Who will say yes when I will ask you.. will you marry me?
— Dr. Karan M Pai
Above all, he loathed men who beat women; for, real men didn’t exercise their strength on frail creatures, they joined the army and put Shazaria’s enemies in their graves.
— A.H. Septimius, Crowns Of Amara: The Return Of The Oracle
So what's the secret to staying together?" I asked her. "Be nice?" she offered. I laughed, but that may be it, the way a secret to losing weight is to eat less. Be nice. Don't leave. That's all.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
I want to say that at various points in your marriage, may it last forever, you will look at this person and feel only rage.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
...there is so much beauty in the trying, and in the failing, and in the trying again.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
The romantic fairy tales we grew up with -- where marriage is the happy ending rather than the opening scene -- are not useful for grown-ups.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Forgiveness is difficult,” she said, making me feel small-hearted and brittle. “You don’t have to trust Adam again, not right away, but it does mean you have to accept what’s happened and start to take steps away from the infidelity.” So once again, the burden is on me. Planning the wedding, though it was a genuine joy, was on me. Once we figured out why we couldn’t get pregnant, the burden was on me, too, with those horrible shots that made me so hormonal I had to go into the bathroom at work and cry, and everyone knew and was so nice, which made me cry more. All Adam had to do was switch to wearing boxers and have more sex. The pregnancy—me again. I’m the one with a four-inch scar and a pooch of skin. The house decorating, painting, hiring people to overhaul the plumbing and electric… me. His mother’s birthday—also mine to remember. Holidays, vacations, weekend plans, all mine. And while I would never call my girls a burden, the huge responsibility of raising them is 99 percent mine. And now the future of our marriage is on me. I have to forgive him. I have to accept his apology. I have to get past this. That first night, I lay stiffly next to him. He gave me a meaningful basset-hound look and said, “Thank you, Rachel,” and it was all I could do not to flip him off.
— Kristan Higgins, If You Only Knew
Book club meets every other month or so. Besides marriage counseling and the very occasional night out with my sister, I’m home twenty-nine nights out of thirty, and still the girls resent me. Not once have they ever complained about Adam’s late meetings—which may or may not have been booty calls for amazing porno sex. Me, I go out to my stupid book club, and I’m punished for it.
— Kristan Higgins, If You Only Knew
(Personally, I have avoided many fights by going to bed angry and waking up to realize that I'd just been tired.)
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give