c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Still, his apartment has that dreamlike qualityof feeling like home though I know it’s not. Not mine anymore — but how many people get to visit the past without hurting anything?To come back and drink the same coffeefrom the same never-quite-clean cup?
— Jameson Fitzpatrick
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
You can't compare and rank heartache. Pain is pain is pain. There is no precise measurement. No quarter cup.
— Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Possibilities
Difficulties of life are valuable opportunities for self-discovery.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
When you face any difficulty, do not panic but pray.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
It is almost an unbearable pain, to suddenly recognize the value of what you had being ignorant of which had been your possession
— Sunday Adelaja
Whoever you are. Where ever you are. With whom so ever you are & were. Whatever may be your past. What so ever may be the truth. I will wait for you & I will fade away just like a daffodil when storm comes.
— Srinivas Shenoy
When someone comes around at that dreary moment, when all hope was lost, and thorns emerged. And that fellow, walks on that thorn just to cross to your side, to bear the pains for your sake, to bleed, to self-destroy himself, just to protect you. He places you above his priorities, and doesn't give a damn whatsoever taunt he receives, his foremost desire is to make sure you are save, feel loved and cared for, and that's the true definition of love.
— Michael Bassey Johnson, The Infinity Sign
This pain is comfort. It is the solace of physicality, like a touch.
— Johnny Rich, The Human Script
... some wounds refuse the remedy of time.
— Robert McCammon, Speaks the Nightbird
The more you try to protect yourself from love, the more pain you bring to yourself and those that love you
— April Mae Monterrosa
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potters oven?And is not the lute that soothes your spirits the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
One major cost of self-deception is that we use painful life experiences to justify being non-ideal versions of ourselves.
— Cortney S. Warren, Lies We Tell Ourselves: The Psychology of Self-Deception
I should love her like there is an ache that won't go away unless I'm with her.
— Amy A. Bartol, Under Different Stars
My body is cracking from the pain I have swallowed so Many times, heaving with sobs I can no longer suppress, my dignity dissolving in my tears, the agony of these past few days ripping my skin to shreds.
— Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me
Do not run away from your challenges. You must endure and overcome each challenge.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
We would all benefit by shifting our focus from seeing pain as bad to seeing pain as motivation to change.
— Cortney S. Warren, Lies We Tell Ourselves: The Psychology of Self-Deception
Be free to do what you want to... before the time is through.
— RSCruz
It’s not that I don’t suffer, it’s that I know the unimportance of suffering, I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one’s soul and as a permanent scar across one’s view of existence.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Don't turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Write about fear. Write about pain. Write about heartache and resentment. Nothing worth reading comes from writing what can be said out loud.
— Alexandra Cruz
She survived it. She was able to survive it, because she did not believe in suffering. She faced with astonished indignation the ugly fact of feeling pain, and refused to let it matter. Suffering was a senseless accident, it was not part of life as she saw it.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The truth is that pain is not inherently bad for us
—  pain is information.
They’re scared of the other kind of love. The one which lacks hurt, but pains after awhile.
— Dominic Riccitello
She surveyed the undergrowth and focused on a cluster of fern fronds curled tightly against the new life they had been given. She often wondered why the fern’s new existence was so firmly wound up. But she questioned their response no longer. Oaklee felt every muscle in her body want to curl up in self-protection, to comfort the pain, anger, and fear.
— Jesikah Sundin, Elements
I wonder what will happen when you actually enjoy the pains that life gives us sometimes. You'll be above them.
— Innocent Mwatsikesimbe, The Reason
It is the nature of human that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else.
— Robin Hobb
You'll notice that pain isn't solid or constant but rather a series of sensations, sometimes hard, sometimes light, and even sometimes gone altogether
— Ruby Wax, Sane New World: Taming The Mind
In friendship you are free, you don’t hurt much. But love when comes to hurt hollows your identity, peace, mind and body so intensely making blank mind.
— Sadashivan Nair, Negative-Positive and We
May God protect us from every calamity.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Give me all your pain, I will give you all my love!
— Preeth Nambiar
Lord keep us from all evil so that our lives will be free of pain.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
But pain is an impatient customer. It wouldn't be long before it demanded attention.
— Jill Alexander Essbaum
The human body may need to receive sunlight through the tree canopy in order to be in a healthy state. I call this light “Interference Green Light” and it may be the top thing that you need to be receiving in order to be in good health and free of pain.
— Steven Magee, Solar Radiation, Global Warming and Human Disease
Lord heal the broken hearted.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes,” I say,“I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.“Enough to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”“Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River of pain.” “You drunk?” “Not yet.
— Charles Bukowski
Nobody can see pain. They have no frame of reference for pain that's happening to someone else. They can only see inactivity - which they interpret as laziness.
— Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains
Fake love, is just as damaging as open hate.
— Anthony Liccione
Embrace the pain, Sharum.
— Peter V. Brett, The Desert Spear
You know what happens when you slide your cheek on the edge of a sharp razor blade? Yes! That's how it feels when you slide your dreams into the palms of toxic and negative people! Save your dreams from defamation and disfigurement!
— Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365
Ahab and aguish lay stretched together in one hammock.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Everyone hurts us. If we stopped loving them because of pain, we'd never love anyone.
— Courtney C. Stevens, The Blue-Haired Boy
I’m not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it’s not really pain.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Love is like slamming into a wall of concrete and asking to do it all again once the rubble is cleared.
— Alexandra Toscano
We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear.
— Elie Wiesel
Be strong. You will overcome the challenge.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
She found a dark satisfaction in pain—because that pain came from him.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
The worst pain you can imagine is when something you love goes away and nothing you can do will ever bring it back.
— M.K. Meredith, Malibu Betrayals
When love plays your life, and left you nothing but a memory of a broken heart heart,let the pain runs out in your eyes, it will make you feel better.Don't think you're strong when you're not, it will only makes you feel weaker.Be wise, accept, forgive and forget with no regret.
— Bradley B. Dalina
The evidence of death is before my eyes constantly. Moving from me outward. My death always a step in advance. The world is a mirror of myself dying. The world not dying anymore than I die. I more alive a hundred years from now. Than at this very moment.
— Lydia Lunch
In the preshent human condition, pain is unavoidable. As long as you inhabit a physical body, you have to experience pain from time to time. Suffering is of a different nature. It is a reaction of the manas/mind that magnifies the pain and adds various emotional frills and thrills to it. In many cases, pain is only transient; but if one wishes, one can always add to it and suffer more - there is no limit.
— Samuel Sagan
A person you loved has used you and hurt you, but there are more people to love, new paths to pursue, and noble tasks that only you can accomplish-for you and for your entire kingdom. If you must dwell on something dwell on that.
— Kelli Swofford Nielsen, Journey to the Fringe
Sometimes people come to heal your pain and end up by giving you bit more of that
— Paul karan
When love plays your life, and left you nothing but a memory of a broken heart,let the pain runs out in your eyes, it will make you feel better.Don't think you're strong when you're not, it will only makes you feel weaker.Be wise, accept, forgive and forget with no regret.
— Bradley B. Dalina
Pain is knowledge, knowledge is to heal the future.
— Sixeye
Without pain, how would we know what true joy feels like?
— Tim Hiller, Strive: Life is Short, Pursue What Matters
...baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. So don't let Mrs Dubose get you down. She had enough troubles or her own.
— Harper Lee
No other creature on the face of this planet inflicts more suffering than humans.
— Mischa Temaul
You reach a point where the pain gets so acute you do not feel it anymore, but to reach that point, you experience so much pain that you're unable to forget the suffering that led you there.
— Christopher Rees
I can see her struggling to find the right word. Death seems so harsh. Passing so oblique. Some things are beyond words, I suppose, and she never finishes the statement. It seems right, that her words should fall into oblivion; after all, she—like me, like everyone—has no words for what follows, for the unknowable, only her hopes and prayers and an unwavering faith in something more.
— Kelseyleigh Reber, If I Resist
Don't leave the classroom of pain without gathering wisdom from its instruction.
— Tim Hiller, Strive: Life is Short, Pursue What Matters
Complicated things CHALLENGE us most,HURTS us most,and there, we LEARN the most.
— Bradley B. Dalina
And it seemed as though for a moment, the world encapsulated them in a giant sigh. As if the world was exhausted by humanity—by the bellows of war and bullets, of hateful cries and grieving tears. Of all the pain, the endless pain humanity had brought into its peaceful existence. A great heaving sigh to wash it all away. But like the sea, when washed away, war only crashed harder, a surging line of arched backs and brackish tears.
— Kelseyleigh Reber
Reframing your past painful experiences and seeing them in a humorous light takes away the power and emotional charge attached to the memory of the hurtful event.
— Miya Yamanouchi, Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women
Art is pain. And so is life.
— Robyn Schneider, Extraordinary Means
I shook again, tasted plum, and suddenly the words were pouring out of me."She said I sang before I spoke. She said when I was just a baby she had the habit of humming when she held me. Nothing like a song. Just a descending third. Just a soothing sound. Then one day she was walking me around the camp, and she heard me echo it back to her. Two octaves higher. A tiny piping third. She said it was my first song. We sang it back and forth to each other. For years."I choked and clenched my teeth."You can say it,"Auri said softly."It's okay if you say it.""I'm never going to see her again,"I choked out. Then I began to cry in earnest."It's okay,"Auri said softly."I'm here. You're safe.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
You are afraid to let anyone in, but you still leave the door open, hoping someone good will shut the door behind him and throw away the keys.
— Jenim Dibie, The Calligraphy of God
I write, write and write but I can't find words that define what I feel inside.
— Azereth Skivel
Heaven left a hole in your heart. But it’s up to you to choose if that hole will be filled with pain, anger, and the eternal darkness of loss . . .	Or if you will choose to fill it with light and love and have that hole shine out of you like a spotlight into your life, keeping their memory alive . . .{It’s up to you.}
— Tessa Shaffer, Heaven Has No Regrets
Anyone could see that this woman is living a nightmare. Except that she goes through her daily life wide awake, knowing that she could make a mistake at any moment.
— Núria Añó
I knew that suffering can purify, that it's a kind of fire that can be worth enduring, but there were degrees of it to which I chose not to subject myself.
— Dean Koontz, Saint Odd
Only pain can define the meaning of tears.
— Munia Khan
It is an unwritten rule of life that when you are in acute pain and have no one to console you, someone, from somewhere, will emerge in your life to offer you comfort. However, ‘that’ someone will vanish from the scene once you begin to regain grip on your life, leaving you with another sense of loss to nurse.
— Hari Parameshwar, Chase of Choices
Sometimes you try to fly and you fall. Remember your falls are not fatal, they're just a little painful. Endure the pain, clean the blood stain, you'll surely gain! Get up and fly again!
— Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365
One of the things he had learned in life, and which he hoped he could rely on, was that a greater pain drives out a lesser one. A strained muscle disappears before toothache, toothache disappears before a crushed finger. He hoped - it was his only hope now - that the pain of cancer, the pain of dying , would drive out the pains of love. It did not seem likely.
— Julian Barnes
Be willing to pass through a short term pain so that you can come out with a long term gain. Don't fear the horrible waves of the waters
—  just dare to cross and you get there!
Sometimes I wish I could feel more painso I could touch that much more beauty.
— Edward Fahey, The Mourning After
We must graciously endure the times.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Never expect someone to care for you or to care about your feelings and emotios Everyone's fucking heartless, people just don't give a damn about your stupid feelings or your boring stories. People only know how to fool you around and use you for their own benefits.
— Taimoor Madni
As I sat up I turned my head to the side, but immediately straightened it again when I felt a sharp pain shoot through my neck.
— Jennifer Starzec, 5k, Ballet, and a Spinal Cord Injury
Man is not suffering by external forces as much as his own dysfunctional mind and self inflicted negative stimulus.
— Aditya Ajmera
That her own self-deception and self-absorption, her own slavery to the society and family in which she had been brought up, had reduced this blameless man to a weeping wreck struck her as horrific. She saw more clearly than she had ever seen before that she must change, or keep hurting the people who truly loved her.
— Shamim Sarif, I Can't Think Straight
Pain can mask itself as a righteous companion
—  silently forming a barrier between you & all that is good for you. Identify Pain. Now thank Pain for showing you that all of your senses & emotions are working as you send him on his way. Traveling with pain can slow you down & limit the distance you travel.
Though I'm not sure, I thought I saw women dressed in black, with her head and face covered by a black veil, duck behind a tree as we approached the road and parked car. Hiding so we wouldn't see her. But I caught a glimpse, enough to reveal the rope of lustrous pearls she wore. Pearls that were there for a thin white hand to lift and nervously, out of long habit, twist and untwist into a knot. Only one women I knew did that--and she was the perfect one to wear black, and should run to hide!Forever hide! Color all her days black! Every last one!
— V.C. Andrews
The limitations in life do not necessary limit you.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
We will not open healed wounds!""My wounds are not healed!" I stated just as firmly. "They will never be healed until justice is done!
— V.C. Andrews
Just before the men closed the tail gate on the float, she strained her head to see me and nodded her head so hard her blonde mane flew around her face—she looked like she was standing in a cloud of icing sugar. She uttered such a quiet neigh, it seemed only I heard it. She stared at me, and closed her eyes. Then she was gone.
— Kelly Batten, One Day You'll Find Me
Pain in life is inevitable.
— Sunday Adelaja
I’d like to think that the day I realize we will always be miserable will differ from every other. I hope it will so obnoxiously stand out from the monotonous cycle of my days, that I wouldn’t forget that sorrowful moment of comprehension. But, when that breeze of reality comes by, it wont be a memorable hurricane, nor a momentous tornado. It will be the same, sad, soft wind that I felt the day before, and the day before that. Because the moment you understand your inevitable misery in life, may also be the day you see you are to always be dejected.
— Temperance
I firmly believe that life will continually try to teach you the same lesson, with increasing pain, until you heed the call.
— Chris Matakas, My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu
Jude taught me what love was: to be willing to hold on to another person's pain. That's it.
— Stephanie Oakes, The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
Pain only disables the weak.
— Erika Johansen, The Invasion of the Tearling
The true test of a warrior is how your 'stance' holds up after any 'circumstance'. Meaning, even after the stormiest weather, a true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lightning or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Life cracks us into unrecognizable shards of former incarnations. Slivers of our hurt and our pain and our shame nestles next to fragments of our truth, our divinity, our fierce reclamation of power.It is this very brokenness that allows us to knit together, kaleidoscope style. And we spin and shift and turn to the light until we appear brilliant, lit from within. Suddenly we are revealed; unexpected beauty born directly from brokenness.We have to be willing to break in order to become.
— Jeanette LeBlanc
I was overpowered by the mere sensation of that dream and it alone survived in my sorely wounded heart.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
In life you find pleasure. In life you find pain. Pain and pleasure is an example of the duality in life. Enjoy them both, they are part of the ride. The key is to not turn the pain into something else - regret.
— J.R. Rim
To live this life. To live it with wholeness and gratitude and trust. In the pain and the glory. In the mess and the grace. In the sacred and the desperation. This is the stuff of which real superheros are born.
— Jeanette LeBlanc
Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after a while and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
Often, things are left unsaid. Everyone is guilty of thinking and feeling things... of loving or appreciating others... and of taking for granted that those others will just be there... to continue to share life's journey with...Then when one is gone... so quickly... all those things left unsaid... they matter more, because they were unspoken...Everyone fights their own battles inside themselves... often no one outside them even knows the wars that rage inside even those who they are closest to...I'd like to take the time, here and now, to tell all of you... those close to me, and those who aren't... those who matter so much... and those who have influenced me in even the smallest ways... all of you... that you matter. You are important. You are appreciated. Don't for a moment think otherwise. Don't, for even an instant, think or feel that you are not a wonder... a gift to the world... that makes it a better place to be... or that it would ever, in any way, be anything less than a tragedy for you to leave before your time.
— Dennis Sharpe
Yes, some mistakes leave their mark, like the infidelity stains in the backseat. But in time they do fade.
— Crystal Woods, Better to be able to love than to be loveable
To be happy to be sad and sad to be happy is to sing an echo in that beautiful language called Sorrow.
— Criss Jami, Healology
Pleasure and pain are on the same side of the coin of human experience. The opposite is indifference or numbness.
— R. N. Prasher
It is strange how easy it is to remember pain.
— Eric Lomax, The Railway Man
He tried to get drunk, “to forget about life for awhile,” as that oldBilly Joel song once said, but the scotch couldn't anesthetize his painand provide a retreat from the reality of his latest failures.
— Keith Steinbaum, The Poe Consequence
We are more sensitive to losses than to gains
—  the pleasure of winning is less than the pain of losing.
The victory over our inner self is a daily struggle. Be strong and do not give up.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Sometimes... I feel like I can't picture him anymore. Like I'm forgetting him... I forget the way he looked when he smiled. The sound of his voice. The way his hand felt wrapped around mine. And it hurts so badly, Jack. It hurts so fucking bad. Sometimes, it's so painful I can't breathe. Like the pain just sucks all of the air out of me... until there's nothing left. I don't want to forget. I really don't. But I don't know what to do. I don't know how to make it stop. It hurts to remember. But it hurts even more to forget.
— Britney King, Somewhere With You
For human nature is such that grief and pain - even simultaneously suffered - do not add up as a whole in our consciousness, but hide, the lesser behind the greater, according to a definite law of perspective. It is providential and is our means of surviving in the camp. And this is the reason why so often in free life one hears it said that man is never content.
— Primo Levi
When you open your heart to someone, you're also exposing it to pain.
— Lisa De Jong
We must read, mediate and affirm the writings of Holy Scriptures, to partake in the divine nature and overcome the struggles of life.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Withdraw from talking about leaving someone behind. Just rekindle the friendship and love while you still have that moment together.
— RSCruz
I shut my eyes, turned away for a moment, and it came: a shiver of finality like the one when you decide, in your own mind, that you’re going to have to tell someone who loves you that you don’t want to be with them anymore. Terror, and relief; relief and terror, so intermingled that they feel like the same thought.
— Michael Marshall Smith, Spares
Have you ever been lost hope in what you believed so far in life as no meaning? And when started adapting to the life what you got and moving forward, suddenly something comes up and glitters a shine on the hope you lost belief. Your brain is never believed the glitter, but heart attracts to the stuff which you may get hurt. Why I am always been the victim of the life’s crisis. Hope makes the life a life, in the meantime it is the source of all pains.
— Vivek Thangaswamy
I hate everyone because everyone's same as others
—  and everyone hates me because I'm unique. They hate me because I have a heart
... he does pledge to reweave your pain for a higher purpose.
— Max Lucado, You'll Get Through This: Hope and Help for Your Turbulent Times
You really fucked me up this time for good, even though you didn't mean to
— Real Friends
I was going into shock. The pain wasn’t getting any better, and I thought that I would probably black out before I found out how this was going to end. Just as well—I was never particularly good at finishing things.
— Joe Schreiber
I miss women,” he went on. “I miss that kind of intimacy. But I think whatever people do; they do in search of pleasure. Or trying to get rid of pain or fear, which is the same thing, basically. Everything, everything is really about that. Everything is about bringing your mind to a place where it’s at peace
— Roland Merullo, A Little Love Story
The pain never goes away, Freya, but it becomes manageable. One day, you'll wake up and realize you can breathe a little easier than the day before. Until then, all you can do is lean on people closest to you... lean on me. I want you to.
— Jessica Prince, Scattered Colors
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.
— Charlotte Brontë
And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.
— P.G. Wodehouse, Mostly Sally
I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.
— Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
If I get married, I want to be very married.
— Audrey Hepburn
Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
— Margaret Atwood
Aim high, but do not aim so high that you totally miss the target. What really matters is that he will love you, that he will respect you, that he will honor you, that he will be absolutely true to you, that he will give you the freedom of expression and let you fly in the development of your own talents. He is not going to be perfect, but if he is kind and thoughtful, if he knows how to work and earn a living, if he is honest and full of faith, the chances are you will not go wrong, that you will be immensely happy.
— Gordon B. Hinckley
Someone told me the delightful story of the crusader who put a chastity belt on his wife and gave the key to his best friend for safekeeping, in case of his death. He had ridden only a few miles away when his friend, riding hard, caught up with him, saying 'You gave me the wrong key!
— Anaïs Nin
An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
— Socrates
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.
— Agatha Christie
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
No long-term marriage is made easily, and there have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt that I thought my love would never recover. And then, in the midst of near despair, something has happened beneath the surface. A bright little flashing fish of hope has flicked silver fins and the water is bright and suddenly I am returned to a state of love again — till next time. I've learned that there will always be a next time, and that I will submerge in darkness and misery, but that I won't stay submerged. And each time something has been learned under the waters; something has been gained; and a new kind of love has grown. The best I can ask for is that this love, which has been built on countless failures, will continue to grow. I can say no more than that this is mystery, and gift, and that somehow or other, through grace, our failures can be redeemed and blessed.
— Madeleine L'Engle
Men don't settle down because of the right woman. They settle down because they are finally ready for it. Whatever woman they're dating when they get ready is the one they settle down with, not necessarily the best one or the prettiest, just the one who happened to be on hand when the time got to be right. Unromantic, but still true.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, A Kiss of Shadows
Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.
— Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.
— Dave Meurer
I think we ought to live happily ever after," and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more hair-raising than any storybook made it sound, though she was determined to try. "It should be hair-raising," added Howl. "And you'll exploit me," Sophie said."And then you'll cut up all my suits to teach me.
— Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle
There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will.
— Robert Frost
Whoa, I'm your girlfriend now?" Archer shrugged. "We've tried to kill each other, fought ghouls, and kissed a lot. I'm pretty sure we're married in some cultures.
— Rachel Hawkins, Spell Bound
Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves. 
— Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare
So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
The remedy for most marital stress is not in divorce. It is in repentance and forgiveness, in sincere expressions of charity and service. It is not in separation. It is in simple integrity that leads a man and a woman to square up their shoulders and meet their obligations. It is found in the Golden Rule, a time-honored principle that should first and foremost find expression in marriage.
— Gordon B. Hinckley, Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
Never forget the nine most important words of any family-I love you.You are beautiful.Please forgive me.
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists. 
— Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia
I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.
— Nikola Tesla
Men are my hobby, if I ever got married I'd have to give it up.
— Mae West
I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
Such silence has an actual sound, the sound of disappearance.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
There are guys who grow up thinking they'll settle down some distant time in the future, and there are guys who are ready for marriage as soon as they meet the right person. The former bore me, mainly because they're pathetic; and the latter, frankly are hard to find.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song
When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.
— Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?
— George Carlin
My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
— Rodney Dangerfield
Your relationship may be "Breaking Up," but you won't be "Breaking Down." If anything your correcting a mistake that was hurting four people, you and the person your with, not to mention the two people who you were destined to meet.
— D. Ivan Young, Break Up, Don't Break Down
Patience gives your spouse permission to be human. It understands that everyone fails. When a mistake is made, it chooses to give them more time that they deserve to correct it. It gives you the ability to hold on during the rough times in your relationship rather than bailing out under the pressure.
— Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think youcontrol it.
— John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
My husband and I have never considered divorce... murder sometimes, but never divorce.
— Joyce Brothers
I take thee... to be my awful wedded husband
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Kiss an Angel
A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.
— Anne Lamott, Joe Jones
Sexiness wears thin after awhile and beauty fades, but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that is a treat.
— Joanne Woodward
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
— Oscar Wilde
On our wedding night," she said, "I will cut out your tongue and swallow it. Then both tongues that spoke our marriage vows will belong to me, and I will be wed only to myself. You will most likely choke to death on your own blood, which will be unfortunate, but I will be both husband and wife and therefore not a widow to be pitied.
— Kiersten White, And I Darken
Love is an act of endless forgiveness
—  a tender look which becomes a habit.
The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition
—  that to go forward you have to come back to where you begin.
Become the kind of person the kind of person you would like to marry would like to marry.
— Douglas Wilson
Yes, I am finally a match for Amy. The other morning I woke up next to her, and I studied the back of her skull. I tried to read her thoughts. For once I didn't feel like I was staring into the sun. I'm rising to my wife's level of madness. Because I can feel her changing me again: I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I'm the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage. It's a story I can live with. Hell, at this point, I can't imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist.We are one long frightening climax.
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Yet each disappointment Ted felt in his wife, each incremental deflation, was accompanied by a seizure of guilt; many years ago, he had taken the passion he felt for Susan and folded it in half, so he no longer had a drowning, helpless feeling when he glimpsed her beside him in bed: her ropy arms and soft, generous ass. Then he’d folded it in half again, so when he felt desire for Susan, it no longer brought with it an edgy terror of never being satisfied. Then in half again, so that feeling desire entailed no immediate need to act. Then in half again, so he hardly felt it. His desire was so small in the end that Ted could slip it inside his desk or a pocket and forget about it, and this gave him a feeling of safety and accomplishment, of having dismantled a perilous apparatus that might have crushed them both. Susan was baffled at first, then distraught; she’d hit him twice across the face; she’d run from the house in a thunderstorm and slept at a motel; she’d wrestled Ted to the bedroom floor in a pair of black crotchless underpants. But eventually a sort of amnesia had overtaken Susan; her rebellion and hurt had melted away, deliquesced into a sweet, eternal sunniness that was terrible in the way that life would be terrible, Ted supposed, without death to give it gravitas and shape. He’d presumed at first that her relentless cheer was mocking, another phase in her rebellion, until it came to him that Susan had forgotten how things were between them before Ted began to fold up his desire; she’d forgotten and was happy — had never not been happy — and while all of this bolstered his awe at the gymnastic adaptability of the human mind, it also made him feel that his wife had been brainwashed. By him.
— Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.
— John Wilmot
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
— Rita Rudner
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love. 
— Pearl S. Buck
Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot. 
— Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Marriage isn't a love affair. It isn't even a honeymoon. It's a job. A long hard job, at which both partners have to work, harder than they've worked at anything in their lives before. If it's a good marriage, it changes, it evolves, but it does on getting better. I've seen it with my own mother and father. But a bad marriage can dissolve in a welter of resentment and acrimony. I've seen that, too, in my own miserable and disastrous attempt at making another person happy. And it's never one person's fault. It's the sum total of a thousand little irritations, disagreements, idiotic details that in a sound alliance would simply be disregarded, or forgotten in the healing act of making love. Divorce isn't a cure, it's a surgical operation, even if there are no children to consider.
— Rosamunde Pilcher, Wild Mountain Thyme
Women leave their marriages when they can't take any more. Men leave when they find someone new.
— J. Courtney Sullivan, Commencement
And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
It's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works hard to keep things rolling smoothly, someone else sails along for the ride. Someone who would do anything to keep it the way it was in the beginning.
— Jodi Picoult
When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.
— Philippa Gregory, The Other Queen
A heart can stop beating for a while, one can still live.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Jane: Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life-if ever I thought a good thought-if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer-if ever I wished a righteous wish-I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.Mr. Rochester: Because you delight in sacrifice.Jane: Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value-to press my lips to what I love-to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Then, slowly, like the sunrise peeking over the horizon, she smiled.She snapped the box closed.She didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She didn’t faint.There might have been a little crying.But mostly… she danced.
— Cora Carmack, Losing It
I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
— Gloria Steinem
Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries.
— Elizabeth Peters, The Mummy Case
If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.
— Katharine Hepburn
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
— Benjamin Franklin
Marrying means to halve one's rights and double one's duties
— Arthur Schopenhauer
To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.
— G.K. Chesterton
To catch a husband is an art
—  to hold him is a job.
Until now, you have always lived your life alone. Every decision you’ve made has been for you and you alone. Now, and for the rest of your days, your life will be tied to another’s. Every decision you make will be for both of you. What one does affects the other. You are a family, a team … inseparable and unbreakable.
— Richelle Mead, Silver Shadows
A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
I know one thing about men," Bunny says with finality, leaving the room to check on A. "They never die when you want them to.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
I imagine there must be only a very, very few men in the world, that I should like to marry; and of those few, it is ten to one I may never be acquainted with one; or if I should, it is twenty to one he may not happen to be single, or to take a fancy to me.
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Marriage is about compromise; it's about doing something for the other person, even when you don't want to.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding
I must court her now,' said the Prince. 'Leave us alone for a minute.' He rode the white expertly down the hill.	Buttercup had never seen such a giant beast. Or such a rider.	'I am your Prince and you will marry me,' Humperdinck said.	Buttercup whispered, 'I am your servant and I refuse.'	'I am your Prince and you cannot refuse.'	'I am your loyal servant and I just did.'	'Refusal means death.'	'Kill me then.'	'I am your Prince and I’m not that bad — how could you rather be dead than married to me?'	'Because,' Buttercup said, 'marriage involves love, and that is not a pastime at which I excel. I tried once, and it went badly, and I am sworn never to love another.' 	'Love?' said Prince Humperdinck. 'Who mentioned love? Not me, I can tell you. Look: there must always be a male heir to the throne of Florin. That’s me. Once my father dies, there won’t be an heir, just a king. That’s me again. When that happens, I’ll marry and have children until there is a son. So you can either marry me and be the richest and most powerful woman in a thousand miles and give turkeys away at Christmas and provide me a son, or you can die in terrible pain in the very near future. Make up your own mind.'	'I’ll never love you.'	'I wouldn’t want it if I had it.'	'Then by all means let us marry.
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
And everyone is always saying that marriage is really hard and takes a lot of work. But the thing is, when you know that you love someone, those things don’t matter. You have to push all the everyday things and the outside world away, and just enjoy knowing that this is the man who has the chest your head is meant to lie on.
— Erin McCarthy, Hot Finish
Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational women to set her straight.
— Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Princess Ben
Alexia figured, delightedly, that this meant he did, in fact, tend to traipse around his private apartments in the altogether. Marriage was becoming more and more of an attractive prospect.
— Gail Carriger, Soulless
When you have been with your partner for so many years, they become the glove compartment map that you've worn dog-eared and white-creased, the trail you recogonize so well you could draw it by heart and for this very reason keep it with you on journeys at all times. And yet, when you least expect it, one day you open your eyes and there is an unfamiliar turnoff, a vantage point taht wasn't there before, and you have to stop and wonder if maybe this landmark isn't new at all, but rather something you have missed all along.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
The hardest lesson is Clare’s solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I’ve interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare’s face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I’ve discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieved to see me.
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
Two TreesA portion of your soul has beenentwined with mineA gentle kind of togetherness, whileseparately we stand.As two trees deeply rooted inseparate plots of ground,While their topmost branchescome together,Forming a miracle of laceagainst the heavens.
— Janet Miles, Images of Women in Transition
He left a bit too easily and with obvious relief. His feet were swift and sure on the muddy path.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.
— Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree
Two people can only live as one when each is prepared to give and receive trust and understanding. Above that lies respect. Without respect for how the other feels, no marriage is worthwhile.
— Helen Hollick, The Kingmaking
Years of love, followed by heartache. Those are the years that define me.Those are the years that know– love’s eternity is you.
— C. Elizabeth
If I had a girl I should say to her, 'Marry for love if you can, it won't last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven's sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.
— Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding
You know what my mum once said?’ said Rosie… ‘She said that if a just-married couple put a coin in a jar every time they make love in their first year, and take a coin out for every time that they make love in the years that follow, the jar will never be emptied.’And this means…?’Well’, she said. ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it?
— Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Of all the Hathaway sisters,” Cam said equably, “Beatrix is the one most suited to choose her own husband. I trust her judgment.”Beatrix gave him a brilliant smile. “Thank you, Cam.”“What are you thinking?” Leo demanded of his brother-in-law. “You can’t trust Beatrix’s judgment.”“Why not?”“She’s too young,” Leo said.“I’m twenty-three,” Beatrix protested. “In dog years I’d be dead.
— Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon