c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
By staying married, we give something to ourselves and to others: hope. Hope that in steadfastly loving someone, we ourselves, for all our faults, will be loved; that the broken world will be made whole. To hitch your rickety wagon to the flickering star of another fallible human being -- what an insane thing to do. What a burden, and what a gift.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Then Wanda proposed a health. "Health to abandoned wives!" she said. "Well now," I said. "'Abandoned,' that's a little strong." "Pushed out, jettisoned, abjured, thrown away," she said. "I remember," I said, "a degree of mutuality, in our parting." "And when guests came," she said, "you always made me sit in the kitchen." "I thought you liked it in the kitchen," I said. "You were forever telling me to get out of the bloody kitchen." "And when my overbite required correction," she said, "you would not pay for the apparatus." "Seven years of sitting by the window with your thumb in your mouth," I said. "What did you expect?" "And when I needed a new frock," she said, "you hid the Master Charge." "There was nothing wrong with the old one," I said, "that a few well-placed patches couldn't have fixed." "And when we were invited to the Argentine Embassy," she said, "you made me drive the car in a chauffeur's cap, and park the car, and stand about with the other drivers outside while you chatted up the Ambassador." "You know no Spanish," I pointed out. "It was not the happiest of marriages," she said, "all in all." "There has been a sixty percent increase in single-person households in the last ten years, according to the Bureau of the Census," I told her. "Perhaps we are part of a trend.
— Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories
...even good marriages sometimes involve flinging a remote control at the wall.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
People who don't marry miss both the pelting hardships of marriage and its warm rewards.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Lady Windermere: Windermere and I married for love.Duchess of Berwick: Yes, we begin like that. It was only Berwick's brutal and incessant threats of suicide that made me accept him at all, and before the year was out, he was running after all kinds of petticoats, every colour, every shape, every material.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
Marriage is situational but love is accidental.
— TRIPURARI
As married people, we dwell on a spectrum between happy and unhappy, in love and out of love, and we move back and forth on that line decade by decade, year by year, week by week, even hour by hour.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Failure is part of being human, and it is definitely part of being married.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
...that's part of what marriage means: sometimes hating this other person but staying together because you promised you would.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Dating is poetry. Marriage is a novel. There are times, maybe years, that are all exposition.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Forsaking all others means going deep with one person -- exhaustingly deep.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Wherever you go, there you are. You would just have different problems. Are the problems you have now so bad that any other problems would be better?
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
The boring parts don't last forever. In retrospect, they aren't even boring.
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
To love somebody is not just a strong feeling -- it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise," writes psychologist Erich Fromm. "If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?
— Ada Calhoun, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
YOU HAVE THE POWER TO KEEP THE LOVE ALIVE BUT TAKING IN CONSIDERATION WHAT IT IS IMPORTANT FOR YOUR MAN
— Linda Alfiori
Let's go to bed. Those four words differentiate a marriage from every other kind of relationship. We aren't going to find a way to agree, but let's go to bed. Not because we want to, but because we have to. We hate each other right now, but let's go to bed. It's the only one we have. Let's go to our sides, but the sides of the same bed. Let's retreat into ourselves, but together. How many conversations had ended with those four words? How many fights?
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am
This is not the story of my marriage. I cannot tell that story: I cannot take hold of, or lay out for anyone, the many swamps and grasses and pockets of fresh air and dank air that have gone over us.
— Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton
In most marriages, lust and love become tempered by normalcy. If you hear your husband farting in the bathroom seconds before he emerges and asks if you want to fool around, you generally don’t want to fool around. You might, after a few minutes, but you have to forgive your husband for… well, for being human. For eating a bean burrito. After all, you ate the bean burrito, too.
— Kristan Higgins, If You Only Knew
Treaties are like marriage: they aren't entered in to with the thought of betrayal, and once they're concluded one shouldn't be suspicious. And if that doesn't suit somebody, they shouldn't get married. Because you can't become a cuckold without being a husband, but you'll admit that fear of wearing the horns is a pitiful and quite ridiculous justification for enforced celibacy.
— Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki
Some people live for the sake of their partners and derive their strength and energy from them
— Sunday Adelaja
Even a good family can become a trap for one’s destiny when the family becomes your aim
— Sunday Adelaja
Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.Poverty: The result of marriage.
— Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams
Intelligence in a spouse is a timeless quality.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Families share relationships based not only blood, but also the unique affiliation of a terribly long cord when measured in comparison with any other undertaking in a person’s life, from cradle to the grave if you will. These intimate associations create a bond of love, affection, goodwill, and joy that we seek to duplicate when we marry and begin creating our extended families.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
It's worked! Our marriage has outlasted all of the world leaders, except for Castro. And if we keep talking, arguing, making love and dancing to the Ramones- it'll probably keep working.
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I've always said, stuff the engagement ring! Just build me a really big library.
— Emma Watson
One should marry when one stops having a good time and settle down.
— Apurva sharma, Every girl has a love story
When, some months later, Zoltan emailed me about his decision to run for president, I immediately called him. The first thing I asked was what his wife thought of the plan.“Well, in a way,” he said, “it was Lisa who gave me the idea. Remember how I said she wanted me to do something concrete, get some kind of a proper job?”“I do,” I said. “Although I’m guessing running for president on the immortality platform was not what she had in mind.”“That’s correct,” he confirmed. “It took a little while for her to come around to the idea.”“How did you break it to her?”“I left a note on the refrigerator,” he said, “and went out for a couple hours.
— Mark O'Connell, To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
The amount of women you hear say, "If Donald—or Arthur—or whatever his name was—had only lived." And I sometimes think but if he had, he'd have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.
— Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia
May your union be filled with loveAnnealed by passion Built on a strong foundation And tempered by time
— Richard L.  Ratliff
No finer, greater gift in the world than that: When man and woman possess their home, two minds, two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies, a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.
— Homer, The Odyssey
I welcome you to my home as my son, as the husband of my daughter who is the noor of my eye. Your pain will be our pain, your joy our joy. I hope that you will come to see your Khala and Jamila and me as a second set of parents, and I pray for your and our lovely Soraya jan's happiness. you both have our blessings.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Should I get married? Should I be good?
— Gregory Corso, Marriage
We're going to be okay. Lainey isn't the glue that keeps us together. We are. We're the glue. Okay?
— Susan Meissner, Stars Over Sunset Boulevard
You are not a biomass, you were not born only to be like a bush or tree, just to marry, reproduce and die
— Sunday Adelaja
Before marriage keep your eyes wide open, after marriage keep them half closed.
— Ivana Trump, The Best is Yet to Come: Coping with Divorce and Enjoying Life Again
It is important to create a family and bring up a child: these things are good and even necessary
— Sunday Adelaja
It’s a trinity ring. Pink for love, yellow for fidelity and white for friendship. I liked the symbolism of three—you, me and baby-to-be.
— Belle, Kimberly
By the moonlight he watched his wife for the last time. His hand sought the adjacent flesh and sorrow paralleled desire in the immense complexity of love.
— Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories
That single moment's intensity hasn't been matched in my life before or since. A woman I didn't know had chosen to accept me, in body and mind. Perhaps it is this instant that forms the basis of traditional marriage—a complete stranger is suddenly mine. And then, I am hers, too; I must offer her my all. I want her to wield her power over me as an acknowledgment of my love. The rush of those feelings all at once is too much to describe. Language communicates in terms of what is already known; it chokes up when asked to deal with the entirely unprecedented.
— Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar
We're part of a mixed marriage -- he's male
—  I'm female.
There is silence and then the familiar smack of Beatrice Muriel’s palm against her forehead. “A love marriage,” she says. In her opinion, love marriages border on the indecent. They signify a breakdown of propriety, a giving in to the base instincts exhibited by the lower castes and foreigners.
— Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors
Lou asked point-blank, Can love last? (Rural people get to philosophizing, and will say anything.)—Oh, darling! No, not that heart-thumping passion. Give that eighteen months. But it’s replaced by something even better.Lou waited.—Lovers!
— Annie Dillard, The Maytrees
If I could mimic the dynamic of any Shakespearean marriage, I’d choose to mimic the Macbeths—before the murder, ruthless ambition, and torturous descents into madness and death, that is.
— Jillian Keenan, Sex with Shakespeare: Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love
For Christians, especially postmodern Christians bereft of any consensus, sexual difference is a similar category. We will not know what it means until we allow God to tell us what it means. The tradition has claimed that we do not know who we are and what it means to find ourselves differentiated as men and women until we allow the premises and practices of revelation to unfold. In the tradition, stretching from Augustine to John Paul II, sexual difference is not mute, inert, nonexistent, or indifferent. In this tradition, God brings man to woman and tells the two sexes something they would not otherwise know: that their creation is good, that their creation as two sexes is for the sake of enabling a church and a covenant, and that, despite their fallenness, their twoness can in itself become a witness to reconciliation and redemption through marriage. Marriage gives this aspect of our creation the power to testify, and the nonmarried offer supporting testimony through their chastity, which creates the social ecology supporting marriage.
— Christopher C. Roberts
I am scared, numbed from the marital wars - that deadly, deadening combat which is the opposite, the antithesis of the sharp painful struggles of lovers. Lovers fight with knives and whips, husbands and wives poisoned marshmallows, sleeping pills, and wet blankets.
— Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
Natural lovers remain committed to the circumstances of their marriage as long as it continues to work for them. Because persons of faith remain committed to their marriage, regardless of circumstances, it continues to work for them.
— James Castleton, MD, Mending of a Broken Heart
It's about making a choice to make your marriage a priority, to, kind of, put that at the top of the page, as your mission statement or something.
— Liane Moriarty, Truly Madly Guilty
Nothing makes sense, not that much of the world ever did."  Quote from the book: "UnHoly Pursuit: The Devil on My Trail.
— A. White, 25 Things Moms hope don't happen for the Holidays
No matter how much I tried to justify the affair, the fact remained that I was a deceitful person. One moment I was making out with a man and an hour later I was in bed with another man. Who had I become? What had I lost in life that led me to do this? Did I not have a perfect life? Was I not happy? Of course, I was happy. I knew I was happy and content. Had I become greedy? I was in a maze and I could not find a way out.
— Jagdish Joghee, In Love and Free: The tale of a woman caught between two men...
Furi found Patrick in the kitchen loosening his tie. Damn the man could wear a suit. The black designer suit had fine lavender pinstripes that Patrick accented perfectly with a light purple tie. Furi would no doubt be responsible for getting the suits his husband traveled with to the cleaners and returned to his closet. He didn’t know how he’d become his husband's personal assistant, but it had happened, and to avoid argument, Furi didn’t refuse Patrick's requests.
— A.E. Via
At times as he lay in bed listening to her breathing, a fear came over him that after marriage death was the next major event.
— Leonard Gardner, Fat City
A young woman faces the decision of whether to marry a certain man whom she loves but who has deeply rooted, traditional ideas concerning marriage, family life, and the roles of men and women in each. A sober assessment of her future tell the woman that each of the two alternatives offers real but contrasting goods. One life offers the possibility of a greater degree of personal independence, the chance to pursue a career, perhaps more risk and adventure, while the other offers the rewards of parenting, stability, and a life together with a man whom, after all, she is in love with. In order to choose in a self-determined mode the woman must realize that the decision she faces involves more than the choice between two particular actions; it is also a choice between two distinct identities. In posing the questions "Who am I? Which of the two lives is really me?" she asks herself not a factual question about her identity but a fundamental practical question about the relative values of distinct and incommensurable goods. The point I take to be implicit in Tugendhat's (and Fichte's) view of the practical subject is that it would be mistaken to suppose that the woman had at her disposal an already established hierarchy of values that she must simply consult in order to decide whether to marry. Rather, her decision, if self-determined, must proceed from a ranking of values that emerges only in the process of reflecting upon the kind of person she wants to be.
— Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity
Like many who'd married in the war, my parents were finding it hard to survive the peace. This wasn't because they had discovered that they didn't love each other once their life together wasn't spiced with constant separations and the threat of death. Far from it. But they hadn't chosen each other so much against the social grain that they were tense, self-conscious, embattled, as though something was supposed to go wrong. Their families didn't like their marriage, nor did the village.
— Lorna Sage, Bad Blood
You are the joy in my life. I am a mess but I will be the joy in yours … When you touch me, you feel through me, through the ugliness beneath my skin, you make me feel, you hold me together, you push my skin back into its proper place. When you see me next, I will be wearing your ring on my left finger. I will say yes. You will hear me.
— Roxane Gay, Difficult Women
Hey, my spaghetti’s moving!” cried Mr. Twit, poking around in it with his fork.“It’s a new kind,” Mrs. Twit said, taking a mouthful from her own plate which of course had no worms. “It’s called Squiggly Spaghetti. It’s delicious. Eat it up while it’s nice and hot.
— Roald Dahl, The Twits
[The Devil and his angels] have... persuad[ed]... humans that a curious, and usually short-lived, experience which they call "being in love" is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding. This idea [comes from their] parody of an idea that came from [God]... Things are to be many, yet somehow also one. The good of one self is to be the good of another. This... He calls Love, and this... can be detected under all He does and even all He is... He introduces into matter... the organism, in which the parts are [set at odds with] their natural destiny of competition and made to cooperate... In... humans [God] has... associated affection between the parties with sexual desire. He has also made the offspring dependent on the parents and given the parents an impulse to support it-thus producing the Family, which is like the organism, [but] the members are more distinct, yet also united in a more conscious and responsible way... [Heavenly Father] described a married couple as "one flesh." He did not say "a happily married couple" or "a couple who married because they were in love"...
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured.
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
I do not care about power and wealth, father. I want to marry for love.”“You want to marry for love?” The elder Valentino scoffed. “Que mierda. Marrying for love is like adding extra picante to your meal. It may seem like a good idea at the time, but your stomach will curse you for it with ulcers in the end.
— Felix Alexander, The Last Valentine
Their marriages had been Old Testament, hers a matter of honoring her covenant with Charles, Tom's a matter of fearing Anabel's wrath and judgement. In the New Testament, the only things that mattered were love and free will.
— Jonathan Franzen, Purity
Marryin' is the one thing people seem to get worse at the more they do it. Well, that and bein' alive.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Bands of Mourning
[On Jane Austen] She was fully possessed of the idealism which is a necessary ingredient of the great satirist. If she criticized the institutions of earth, it was because she had very definite ideas regarding the institutions of heaven.
— Rebecca West
There are no whores in Scaithe’s Ebb, or none that consider themselves as such, although there have always been many women who, if pressed, would describe themselves as much-married, with one husband on this ship here every six months, and another husband on that ship, back in port for a month or so every nine months.The mathematics of the thing have always kept most folk satisfied; and if ever it disappoints and a man returns to his wife while one of her other husbands is still in occupancy, why, then there is a fight—and the grog shops to comfort the loser. The sailors do not mind the arrangement, for they know that this way there will, at the least, be one person who, at the last, will notice when they do not come back from the sea, and will mourn their loss; and their wives content themselves with the certain knowledge that their husbands are also unfaithful, for there is no competing with the sea in a man’s affections, since she is both mother and mistress, and she will wash his corpse also, in time to come, wash it to coral and ivory and pearls.
— Neil Gaiman
Love and marriage are of the Father's most powerful means for the making of his foolish little ones into sons and daughters. But so unlike in many cases are the immediate consequences to those desired and expected, that it is hard for not a few to believe that he is anywhere looking after their fate--caring about them at all. And the doubt would be a reasonable one, if the end of things was marriage. But the end is life--that we become the children of God; after which, all things can and will go their grand, natural course; the heart of the Father will be content for his children, and the hearts of the children will be content in their Father.
— George MacDonald, Mary Marston
I must show the blacksmith and the shopkeeper once more--two years after marriage--time long enough to have made common people as common to each other as the weed by the roadside; but these are not common to each other yet, and never will be. They will never complain of being _desillusionnes_, for they have never been illuded. They look up each to the other still, because they were right in looking up each to the other from the first. Each was, and therefore each is and will be, real.
— George MacDonald, Mary Marston
I would not want a husband who valued my appearance more than my wit.
— Michaela MacColl, Secrets in the Snow
If you want to see God do wonders in your marriage, start praising your spouse. Start appreciating and encouraging her. Every single day, a husband should tell his wife, “I love you. I appreciate you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” A wife should do the same for her husband. Your relationship would improve immensely if you’d simply start speaking kind, positive words, blessing your spouse instead of cursing him or her.
— Joel Osteen (Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)
Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time
— Patrick Lencioni, Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators
We can’t stop smiling at each other. I can’t believe that adults get to do this every day. And I don’t even mean sex, though it’s wonderful, but things like this. Brushing our teeth at the same sink. Do adults realize how lucky they are? Or do they forget that these small moments are actually small miracles? I don’t want to ever forget.
— Stephanie Perkins, Isla and the Happily Ever After
Everything about Jocelyn had been ordinary. A Norman Rockwell painting of mom, dad, one boy, one girl. Scott was her wild storm, her great American novel, her epic story. Every extraordinary moment she experienced was because of him.
— Jessica Shook, Shrapnel
Honey, when you say we can't communicate... what exactly do you mean?
— Randy Glasbergen
All I need to dois place my pen against paperand your lovewrites for me.
— Kamand Kojouri
Think long and hard whether you have reached that mature stage of selflessness for this one you think you love so much. The love you enjoy will be the best thing that ever happened to you, but it will cost you your independence.... The responsibility of marriage and family demands time, and when we cheat on that, we rob ourselves of the investment returns.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
Each day, take a good look at that face before you and see, in the light of God's grace, the face of God reflected in that precious face. Know that while each distinct feature is unique there is a common blueprint for both of you. See the beauty or frailty, as the case may be, as the characteristic given to the individual and the trust given to you. The embrace, then, is an embrace of pure love and trust. Don't turn your back to the other's plea. As you look at each other face to face and see the face of God, you move the home and history in the right direction. May that be our joy and hope.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
Marriage brings face to face two people committed to God whose face is distinctively revealed in each as they see each other in the light of God, shining on each countenance. God brought them close to each other because each was the other's answer from God, to rescue them from being alone.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
Work hard at keeping in tune with the way your children think. Your efforts may not always bring the desired result, but we must do our part. Keep close contact with them. Teach them with regularity, both by word and by deed. Love them and let them know you care for them because of who they are and not for anything else. Answer their questions with candor and thoughtfulness. Do not ignore their struggles. Deal with their difficulties, and spare them a cynical attitude. Stay tuned in to their struggles. Most of us learn the hard way that our children were in a very different world in their own thoughts than we realized.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
In Marriage You Learn To Give Up The "Me ness for We ness!
— DeBorrah K. Ogans, How Do I Love Thee: Food for Thought Before You Say "I DO"
Become a man or woman of prayer...Let your heart and mind be kept close to the principal calling of your life, which is to hunger and thirst after God and His righteousness...Let the thoughts and intents of your heart be shaped and guided by time spent in His presence.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
A worshiping community should be the fountain from which life flows and the ocean into which your efforts are merged. That is where identity is defined, refined, and consolidated and where continuity remains.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
Many pray for the right partner but cease to pray for the right union--that they be one as Jesus and the Father are one and so experience the full measure of His joy in the relationship.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
Culture is critical in marriage because in a real sense, culture is the behavioral expression of one's values, appreciations, tastes, and relational style in both simple and serious matters of life. Add to this the dimensions of language and cultural memory, and you have worlds within worlds. In effect, culture provides the how and why of an individual's behavior.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
For love to work, each spouse has to realize his or her freedom. And boundaries help define the freedom we have and the freedom we do not have. Marriage is not slavery. It is based on a love relationship deeply rooted in freedom. Each partner is free from the other and therefore free to love the other. Where there is control, or perception of control, there is not love. Love only exists where there is freedom.
— Henry Cloud, Boundaries in Marriage
Create miracles everyday with the one you love.
— Nisla Love
Opposities are married.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
The institution of marriage would be damaged. Ideologically, marital morality must be kept intact, in spite of the contradictory facts of sexual life, because marriage is the backbone of the authoritarian family, which in turn is the breeding ground for authoritarian ideologies and character structure.
— Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure
A good marriage is a love that lingers a lifetime in one's heart; never fading, only growing in abundance with each year that passes.
— Allene van Oirschot
Myrtle shook her head. "I told myself that I was lucky," she said. "Your father never struck me, never drank and if he had mistresses he had the good grace to be discreet. He provided for me and my children, and yet I tried, year after year, to make myself his companion. The doors never opened, Faith. In the end I lost hope. Ah, but I cannot complain!" Myrtle swatted away the past with one delicate little hand. "It has made me what I am. When every door is closed, one learns to climb through windows. Human nature, I suppose.
— Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree
True love is 80% giving 20% receiving
— Manuel Corazzari
Without the will, marriage is a mockery; without the emotion, it is a drudgery. You need both.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
Mostly, what people mean by love is laziness.
— Amanda Craig, A Vicious Circle
She broke off a piece of bacon and offered it to the cat who sat staring holes through her.“For him, this is makeup sex. That’s all you get,” she said when Galahad inhaled the bacon then affectionately butted his head against her calf.“Just FYI, if you let another man rub up against you, and I sniff it out, you won’t be able to buy me off with bacon.” He handed her the syrup pitcher so she could drown her French toast.“So noted.
— J.D. Robb, Calculated in Death
Of course, these were only dreams. How could a sensible woman leave a happy marriage? All the same, a seductive voice from afar kept breaking into her conjugal peace: it was the voice of solitude.
— Milan Kundera, Immortality
You should look for qualities in your prospective partner which are similar to your opposite parent or sibling. You will never go wrong, as you have over two decades of experience of managing with them.
— Sandeep Sahajpal
Marriage is the harmony of God synchronizing two wills with the will of the Father.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
You need to calm down.'Saying this to a man who may already be fired up is like adding gasoline to the fire.
— Mark Merrill, Lists to Love By for Busy Wives
The wife’s gotta know. You can’t hook up like that for what looks like about six or seven years without the wife figuring it out. Unless she’s another idiot.“I’m not an idiot.”Smiling, Roarke continued to stroke. “I’ll keep that in mind when I decide to have a long-term affair.”“Yeah, you do that. They’ll never find your body,” she murmured, then dropped into sleep.His smiled warmed, and feeling well loved, he dropped off with her.
— J.D. Robb, Calculated in Death
I'll follow this good man, and go with you;And, having sworn truth, ever will be true.
— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
I discovered, however, in the early days of our marriage that, in having her way, she put my interests ahead of her own.
— Saul Bellow, Novels, 1984-2000
We bring champagne to Franklin and Jeffrey, and I offer a final toast, 'Wishing you all good things in your life together.' Short, simple, to the point. I look at Meredith, relaxed in her ivory gown, my sister is all grown up. I'm grateful we did our growing up together.
— Steven Rowley, Lily and the Octopus
Just married! A bright past is ahead of them!
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
Forever doesn't feel like eternity when you're by my side
— Musawir Masood
Now go with me and with this holy manInto the chantry by: there, before him,And underneath that consecrated roof,Plight me the full assurance of your faith.
— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
She had gambled with marriage, just like most people, but she had gambled unluckily and had lost.
— Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen
I wouldn’t be a good wife, but I would be a wife in a way that was cinematically compelling.
— Gabby Bess, Alone with Other People
I am sure that there is many a young man who would think it a great honor to exchange his name for yours.
— Erik Christian Haugaard, The Samurai's Tale
Nothing between us was ever planned--not even you. We were both 24 years old when you were born, the normal age for most Americans, but among the class we soon found ourselves, we ranked as teenage parents. With a whiff of fear, we were very often asked if we planned to marry. Marriage was presented to us as a shield against other women, other men, or the corrosive monotony of dirty socks and dishwashing. But your mother and I knew too many people who'd married and abandoned each other for less. The truth of us was always that you were our ring. We'd summoned you out of ourselves, and you were not given a vote. If only for that reason, you deserved all the protection we could muster. Everything else was subordinate to this fact. If that sounds like a weight, it shouldn't. The truth is that I owe you everything I have. Before you, I had my questions but nothing beyond my own skin in the game, and that was really nothing at all because I was a young man, and not yet clear of my own human vulnerabilities. But I was grounded and domesticated by the plain fact that should I go down now, I would not go down alone.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
There was a certain usefulness in having a husband whom most people could barely tolerate: it deflected envy, for one thing.
— Amanda Craig, A Vicious Circle
Marriage is a great blessing, but it can be a great lesson
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
It’s all biology. If it weren’t for two thousand years of the Christian tradition we wouldn’t think of pretending otherwise…Romance is the true opiate of the masses.
— Amanda Craig, Love in Idleness
I had been much more in love with my wife than she with me, that was all. Somehow, you were supposed to be ashamed of this, as though love were a perpetual jostling for the roles of pursuer and pursued. As if it didn’t take more courage to admit that someone held your hopes of happiness in their hands. As if it were a choice.
— Amanda Craig, In a Dark Wood
There is a perfect marriage. Any marriage counselor can tell you that.
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
She said yes. If only she didn't talk so much!
— Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land
She wondered how she would feel to be a married woman. It would be the end of her life, she decided, if life was a time of choices.
— Neil Gaiman, The Sleeper and the Spindle
I remember thinking that no one had ever told me how much I would love my child; now, of course, I realized something else no one tells you: that a child is a grenade. When you have a baby, you set off an explosion in your marriage, and when the dust settles, your marriage is different from what it was.
— Nora Ephron, Heartburn
If you’d rather watch your kids grow up than see the face of your Savior today, you don’t grasp the beauty of God. If you worry about what would happen to your children if you were gone, you don’t understand the providence of God.
— Francis Chan, You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity
Real love, true love is not like the shooting star that makes you go, "ooh, aah". Real, true love is like the constancy of the sun that comes up slowly every morning - sometimes too hot; sometimes hidden behind the clouds, but always there. Therefore, often take for granted.
— Lucille Anderson
Parent may hinder their children's marriage
—  but children cannot interfere with the insane acts of their parents in their second childhood.
You understand why you must go through with this marriage.”“You say you couldn’t live with yourself if anything happened to Caspida. Yet you ask me to live with myself, knowing I sentenced you to this!” He holds up the lamp. “What’s the difference?”I look away angrily. “The difference is that this is my choice, Aladdin.”“Well, it’s a stupid choice!”I stand up. “Promise me you’ll go through with it.”He shuts his eyes.“Promise me! Please!”He opens his eyes then, and they are filled with pain. But he nods.“I have to hear you say it.”“I promise.
— Jessica Khoury, The Forbidden Wish
Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate “relationship” involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the “married” couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other.
— Wendell Berry, What Are People For?
Henry and I have always talked about partnership, working together to make things work. He's always said he'd never divorce. That divorced rich men are inevitably poor men. That any marriage can be fixed, that love fluctuates.
— Kate Moretti, The Vanishing Year
When you believe marriage is your answer, you'll often give something that eventually hurts you both.
— Craig Groeschel, Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working
When you live with a woman you learn something every day. So far I have learned that long hair will clog up the shower drain before you can say 'Liquid-Plumr'
You want someone in the ballpark and then you grow together. Thats what a relashionship's about: changing each other.
— Grayson Perry
There are no buts," she said. "Not about this. Not with me. I love you, Wilson, and I know that you love me. And if we're going to make it work between us, we're both going to have to give a little. I'm not asking you to believe. I'm asking you to it's acome with me to church. Marriage is about compromise; it's about doing something for the other person, even if you don't want to. Like I did with the wedding.
— Nicholas Sparks
But marriage is forever.''Oh, not really,' he assured her. 'Only until one of us dies.'Her eyes widened. 'I do not want you to die,' she said.'Perhaps you will go first,' he said, 'though I rather think I hope not. I would probably have grown accustomed to you by then and would miss you.
— Mary Balogh, Someone to Love
But marriage is forever.''Oh, not really,' he assured her. 'Only until one of us dies.'Her eyes widened. 'I do not want you to die,' she said.'Perhaps you will go first,' he said, though I rather think I hope not. I would probably have grown accustomed to you by then and would miss you.
— Mary Balogh, Someone to Love
Whatever name civilizations give to the arrangement where a man lives with a woman, it is always better to call it a marriage.
— Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon
A poetess is not as selfishas you assume.After months of agonising over her marriage of words—the bride—and spaces—the groom,she knows that as soonas she has penned the poem,it’s yours to consume.So, without giving it a think,she blows on the inkand the letters fly awaylike dandelions on a windy day,landing on hands and lips, on hearts and hips.But more often than not,you can easily spotthem trodden and forgotten,becoming sodden and rotten.Yet, she will continue to makewhat’s others to takebecause selfishness is not the mark of a poetess.
— Kamand Kojouri
When I left my first marriage, I left the insanity, the indifference, the negativity. In my world, LOVE MUST WIN. It can’t just be the answer. It must conquer all evil, all hatred, all indifference. Yes, Love is the always the answer, no matter the question. But Love always wins. Love always conquers (if we allow it).
— Sharon E. Rainey, The Best Part of My Day Healing Journal
Loving her is so damn easy. It’s as natural as breathing or the beating of a heart.
— Adriana Locke, Written in the Scars
In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the alter, a couple would speak thus: "We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species."After the solemn repetition of the last sentence by the congregation, the couple would continue: "We will endeavor to be faithful. At the same time, we are certain that never being allowed to sleep with anyone else is one of the tragedies of existence. We apologize that our jealousies have made this peculiar but sound and non-negotiable restriction very necessary. We promise to make each other the sole repository of our regrets rather than distribute them through a life of sexual Don Juanism. We have surveyed the different options for unhappiness, and it is to each other we have chosen to bind ourselves."Spouses who had been cheated upon would no longer be at liberty furiously to complain that they had expected their partner to be content with them alone. Instead they could more poignantly and justly cry, "I was relying on you to be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness which our hard-won marriage represents."Thereafter, an affair would be a betrayal not of intimate joy but of a reciprocal pledge to endure the disappointments of marriage with bravery and stoic reserve.
— Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
when you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there was no such thing as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery. And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a full-fledged pocket of alien strangeness, something like the clear-air turbulence that can buffet an airliner for no reason at all. An attitude or belief which you had never suspected, one so peculiar (at least to you) that it seemed nearly psychotic. And then you trod lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; you tried to remember that anger at such a discovery was the province of fools who really believed it was possible for one mind to know another.
— Stephen King
If you take you away from me, you take everything.
— Adriana Locke, Written in the Scars
O'rourke's alienation from the married woman comes in part because she's filling in the imaginative blank of that woman's union with a fantasy of fulfillment. If loneliness is a want of intimacy, then being single lends itself to loneliness because the loving partnerships we imagine in comparison are always, in our minds, intimate; they are not distant or empty of abusive or dysfunctional. We don't fantasize about being in bad marriages, or about being in what were once good marriages that have since gone stale or sexless or hard, creating their own profound emotional pain.
— Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
people have managed to marry without arithmetic
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
You’re all right, Blue Eyes.” She lifted her head to look into them. “You’re all right, down the line. You ever want a free bang, you got one coming.”“It would, no doubt be a memorable bang. But my wife is fiercely jealous and territorial.” He grinned over at a very cold-eyed Eve.“Her? You? That’s a kick in the ass.”“Every damn day,” Eve muttered, and strode out.She kept striding, out of the club, back into the comparatively fresh air of the city street. And fisted her hands on her hips as she spun to him. “Did you have to do the ‘my wife’ crap?”His grin remained, and only widened. “I did, yes. I felt a desperate need for your protection. I believe that woman had designs on me.”“I’ll put a design on you that won’t come off in the shower.”“See, now I’m excited.” Reaching out, he toyed with the lapel of her coat."What have you got in mind ?
— J.D. Robb, Strangers in Death
I've always known that whatever marriage I made would be political. It would be about power, not love. But we might get lucky. In time, we might have both.''Or the third amplifier will turn me into a power-mad dictator and you'll have to kill me.''Yes, that would make for an awkward honeymoon.
— Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising
Few things are as exhilarating and challenging for a man as winning a woman’s heart.Few things are as efficient in preserving your marriage as doing it every day, for the rest of your life.
— Zoran Stojkovski
Some of the 'New Women' writers will some day start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the New Woman won't condescend in future to accept; she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it, too!
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
The mature response, however, is not to leave; it's to change -- ourselves.Whenever marital dissatisfaction rears its head in my marriage -- as it does in virtually every marriage -- I simply check my focus. The times that I am happiest and most fulfilled in my marriage are the times when I am intent on drawing meaning and fulfillment from becoming a better husband rather than from demanding a "better" wife.If you're a Christian, the reality is that, biblically speaking, you can't swap your spouse for someone else. But you can change yourself. And that change can bring the fulfillment that you mistakenly believe is found only by changing partners. In one sense, it's comical: Yes, we need a changed partner, but the partner that needs to change is not our spouse, it's us!I don't know why this works. I don't know how you can be unsatisfied maritally, and then offer yourself to God to bring about change in your life and suddenly find yourself more satisfied with the same spouse. I don't why this works, only that it does work. It takes time, and by time I mean maybe years. But if your heart is driven by the desire to draw near to Jesus, you find joy by becoming like Jesus. You'll never find joy by doing something that offends Jesus -- such as instigating a divorce or an affair.
— Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy?
Instead of the country agreeing with her community on the natural rightness of heterosexual marriage as the center of family life, she was now obliged to defend herself against the idea that these views were sexist, homophobic, old-fashioned, and backward.
— Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
you will not be master of my body & my property
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
The wife's list, no matter how long or short, communicates to the husband, "I don't like you. I don't accept you. But if you perform the way I think you should, then I will like and accept you." And no matter how long the husband's list may be, it says in like manner to his wife, "I don't like you either. But if you stop caring about things so much, if you stop feeling the way you feel and noticing the things you notice, then I will accept and like you.
— Jeff VanVonderen, Families Where Grace Is in Place
The ''good-enough marriage'' is definitely not good enough for today's singles. We're not content to marry someone who happens to live down the street and gets along okay with our parents.
— Aziz Ansari, Modern Romance
I remembered my mother's speech at my wedding. "In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it." Who will believe my pain? Who will be present for it?
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am
Oddly enough you can get married and live happily ever after without spawning. Spawning is optional.
— Merlyn Gabriel Miller, Sex, Death, Drugs & Madness
If your spouse wants to cheat on you, he or she will. This world is a haven of opportunities. But no matter what, in any relationship, one must never doubt the spouse
— Jagdish Joghee, In Love and Free: The tale of a woman caught between two men...
It is far better to make mistakes, than to marry them.
— Merlyn Gabriel Miller, Sex, Death, Drugs & Madness
the fact about marriage is that it's never perfect, there is always struggle but you have to pick who you willing to struggle with
— D WordSmith