c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Anger WorksAnger can be extremely rewarding in the short term. It can distract you from pain and threatening feelings. You may use anger to provoke fear and anxiety in others. Such anger makes others feel threatened, allowing you to gain control. But regularly directing anger at someone is likely to make him or her even less supportive. Ultimately, that person will withdraw completely- leaving you feeling even more isolated.
— Bernard Golden, Overcoming Destructive Anger: Strategies That Work
At Clochemerle, the greater number of the men put up with their wives, and the great majority of the women with their husbands. If this hardly amounted to adoration, in the majority of homes at any rate the men and women found each other very nearly endurable.
— Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle
You never know the nature of another couple's marriage, do you?
— Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife
I was beginning to fear that you had turned into one of those boring females who can only say 'Yes, my dear' ... You know very well, Peabody, that our little discussions are the spice of life -- 'The pepper in the soup of marriage' -- Very aptly put, Peabody. If you become meek and acquiescent, I will put an advertisement in the Times telling Sethos to drop by and collect you. Promise me you will never stop scolding...
— Elizabeth Peters, Lion in the Valley
True Love… it’s the most wonderful human emotion and one of the most elusive. We search for it, trying to find that one person in the whole world worthy enough to spend our lives with. When you look at the trail of broken hearts, the rivers of tears and the broken dreams, it’s quite obvious that it’s not an easy dream to achieve. Don’t we rightly call it the Quest for Love? That’s why when we think we’ve found the right person, we are giddy with happiness and relief. Finally! The answer to our prayers has come after such a long wait. We are safe. We are loved.A lot of women view marriage this way and I blame that on all the Walt Disney cartoons we watched as little girls. There’s this beautiful helpless princess locked away in a castle and here comes this handsome prince to save her from her miserable life. Classic. Then, after the grand wedding ball, the movie ends with:“And They Lived Happily Ever After.”That’s it? What happened afterwards? Nothing’s mentioned about that. We are made to think that it all ends there, that the couple’s happiness is secured and a given. They love each other, right? They went through all that trouble just to be together. So they’ll be happy. End of story.
— Eeva Lancaster, You're Getting Married Soon... Now What?
MARRIAGE IS NOT AN EVENT. Marriage is a journey. A journey that begins from the very day you hold hands of one another to walk together rest of your journey. During the journey, you LAUGH together; CRY together; care for one another, pacify each other, and you create a new world for yourself. You walk together during all seasons. You share your JOY and you share your PAIN. You continue to walk together until time parts you away.
— Sanjeev Himachali
The unitive capacities of the spouses don't exist for nothing; they exist for motherhood and fatherhood. That is the matrix in which they develop, for children change us in a way we desperately need to be changed. They wake us up, they wet their diapers, they depend on us utterly. Willy-nilly, they knock us out of our selfish habits and force us to live sacrificially for others; they are the necessary and natural continuation of the shock to our selfishness which is initiated by matrimony itself.
— J. Budziszewski
Know this: whenever you think of leaving, a part of you has already left. But it’s never too late to get it back.
— Kamand Kojouri
I love you like the devil loves his pitchfork. I love you like the angel loves his wings. I love you from here to heaven, through hell and back again.
— Robert Thier, The Robber Knight's Secret
Women's work, married or unmarried, is menial and low paid. Women's right to possess property is curtailed, more if they are married. How can marriage provide security? In any case a husband is a possession which can be lost or stolen and the abandoned wife of thirty odd with a couple of children is far more desolate and insecure in her responsibility than an unmarried woman with or without children ever could be.
— Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
All lies, freckled vows, crying-weeping on your toesExpected jelly beans gusto, got yourself a life imperfectoToo good a gal, too arrogant a galToo independent, too in need of ChanelTook a careless ride, leaped for a perilous dive Now look who thrived, who gave you a vibe.  - Chicken In Chicken Out
— Heenashree Khandelwal, Chicken In Chicken Out
Every major life decision I made came from my pain, guilt and shame...even down to the man I chose for a husband.
— Elona Washington, From Ivy League To Stripper Life: 10 Lessons Learned
I also learned what I and many other wives were doing wrong. We were neglecting ourselves. We were born women yet were taking care of our roles as mom, employee or wife before we took care of ourselves. But in order to adequately fulfill those roles, we have to put ourselves first.
— Elona Washington, From Ivy League To Stripper Life: 10 Lessons Learned
They disagreed always about this, but it did not matter. She liked him to believe in scholarships, and he liked her to be proud of Andrew whatever he did.
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
What most couples fail to realize is that marriage vows denote change.
— Elona Washington, From Ivy League To Stripper Life: 10 Lessons Learned
Nevertheless, likin' is a tender plant, and never thrives long when watered with tears. Let the 'arth around your married happiness be moistened by the dews of kindness.
— James Fenimore Cooper
The second class status of marriage became one of the principal issues in the Reformation. Martin Luther, the Augustinian friar, had barely posted his ninety-five theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg when he took himself a wife.
— Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
We are not going to decide this with a game of cards," Sebastian grout. "Besides, the decision has been made.""Oh? Tristan arched a brow. "And who is it to be then?""You. You’re the one who allowed her in here and then let her stay."He’d expected his brother to protest. Instead, he simply gave up curt nod. "Right, then. I’d best go ask for her hand while she still in London. Word is that her father sending her away."He taken but two steps before Sebastian and ground out, "Damn you, Tristan. You know it will be me.
— Lorraine Heath, She Tempts the Duke
At the end of the day -- after work, after trying to spend some sort of meaningful time with Alice and Noomi --Georgie was usually too tired to make things right with Neal before they fell asleep. So things stayed wrong.
— Rainbow Rowell, Landline
Things didn't go bad between Georgie and Neal. Things were always bad -- and always good. Their marriage was like a set of scales constantly balancing itself. And then, at some point, when neither of them was paying attention, they'd tipped so far over into bad, they'd settled there. Now only an enormous amount of good would shift them back. An impossible amount of good.
— Rainbow Rowell, Landline
To don't forget and marriage, the happiness is the from 20 up to 30% out of the 100% the other percentage is anger, and very negative sides. So far most people are dead.
— Deyth Banger
As Liljana sat stitching a sampler or darning a sock, she dreamed her way into life as a grown woman with her own household to run, her own home to tidy, her own children to mind, and her own husband to cheer after a long day's work as they sat together by the fire. The life that future generations would dismiss as dull and degrading offered Liljana the liberating prospect of being mistress in her own home rather than living to serve others.
— Fiorella De Maria, We'll Never Tell Them
It was the ring on the left hand that people at the Old Girls' Reunion looked for. Often, in fact nearly always, it was an uninteresting ring, sometimes no more than the plain gold band or the very smallest and dimmest of diamonds. Perhaps the husband was also of this variety, but as he was not seen at this female gathering he could only be imagined, and somehow I do not think we ever imagined the husbands to be quite so uninteresting as they probably were.
— Barbara Pym
Why hadn't that been part of his stupid lifelong redemption program: Do what my wife asks immediately so she doesn't feel like a nag.
— Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret
I'm not here to grant you the extraordinary love you never had for yourself. I'm here, on my own accord, to love you. So that when you stare into my mirror eyes, you may see how extraordinary you are.
— Kamand Kojouri
I couldn’t have dreamed you into existence because I didn’t even know I needed you. You must have been sent to me.
— Kamand Kojouri
Rules are made to be broken, but hearts are broken to be made.It is a big miracle to be loved "because" of your inadequacies, not "despite" them. And nothing can be as fascinating as walking tall on the same road that once witnessed your fall.
— Olaotan Fawehinmi, The Soldier Within
The only thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give is enough love.
— Henry Miller
Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you?
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
I see marriage as an operation that sews two people together, and divorce is a kind of amputation that can take a long time to heal. The longer you were married, or the rougher the amputation, the harder it is to recover.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Ladies, being able to submit to your future husband requires a deeper trust in God who created him.
— Nicole J. Fortune, From Selfie To Wifey
I've learned not to worry about love
—  but to honor its coming with all my heart.
God gave you the capacity to invent, work, create and to be brilliant.
— Nicole J. Fortune, From Selfie To Wifey
When you consider that a human being has the opportunity of being acquainted with only a few hundred people, and out of the few hundred that there are but a dozen or less whom he knows intimately, and out of the dozen, one or two friends at most, it will easily be seen, when we remember the number of millions who inhabit this world, that probably, since the earth was created, the right man has never yet met the right woman.
— Robert Barr, Out of Thun, and An Alpine Divorce
Love can never let you down because love is perfect.
— Nicole J. Fortune, From Selfie To Wifey
The mere idea that you are not in a place for the rest of your life gives you an awfully unstable feeling. That's why trial marriages would never work. You've got to feel you're in a thing irrevocably and forever in order to buckle down and really put your whole mind into making it a success.
— Jean Webster, Dear Enemy
Their making of love ... had even been something like this, when it became a kind of harmony, enveloping them together and together and for ever into that crescendo. And, yes, now really, really she knew the multitudinous singing of the stars and she wanted everything to stay where it was, now and forever with him ...
— Bryan Islip, Like an Angel Sings
Simple misunderstanding… and couple forget the lovely moments they spent before marriage and during honeymoon.
— Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon
My dear, please be careful.You no longer live only for yourself.You live for me as well.
— Kamand Kojouri
It makes the idea of in sickness and in health that much more real to see it play out in front of you.
— Kiera Cass, The Crown
And while she was fire,So fierce and so wild,I could only hope to be for her;The forests and the winds to carry her flame.
— Morris R. Gates
Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don't know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.
— Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
... He spoke in the deep tenderness of one about to leave his treasure amid perils and foes, where his remembered words would be the only aid he could bequeath to guide her.
— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
The Fear of being lonely and alone after a breakup"If you deal with that fear by finding love in another relationship before finding the love of God, you will find yourself holding to a lesser love that does not cast out fear.You will still live in fear, because that relationship becomes your security, and you will fear losing that relationship. Perfect love casts out all fear - 1 John 4:18There is only one source of perfect love.
— Elias Tan JS
Married love, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon, but which at the same time should be rightly understood. Thus, we do well to consider responsible parenthood in the light of its varied legitimate and interrelated aspects.
— Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae: Of Human Life
Hard hands and no sense of humor makes for a bad marriage.
— George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
I was relying on youth be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness, which our hard-won marriage represents.
— Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
Times and scenes like that put Janie to thinking about the inside state of her marriage. Time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it didn’t do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and he’d keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again. So she put something in there to represent the spirit like a Virgin Mary image in a church. The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired. She wasn’t petal-open anymore with him.
— Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
The romantic vision she’d held of her marriage where the two of them came first and children, no matter whose they were, came after that relationship had disappeared, and she had no idea where to find it.
— Sarah Jo Smith, Entangled Loyalties
That place is happy over which a holy man builds a house, with fire, cattle, wife, children and good followers
— The God
put Rachel facing the door, in a faint subtle effort to make her know that if he had only had enough money and had managed to finish the thesis, he might well have asked her to be his hostess and share her life with him.
— M.F.K. Fisher, Sister Age
Between people long-married there is a diplomacy of the eyes
— Gregory Benford, Foundation's Fear
You cannot really get married by mistake. You can only marry the wrong person.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
You marry who you think your beloved is, and then discover who they really are over the years. It’s that discovery that makes a marriage work.
— Mercedes Lackey, Winds of Fury
In this moment I resolve to kiss my husband with an open mouth forever. I want to freeze him the way I see him in this instant: dark eyebrows, sexy, sleepy hair and sleepy eyes. But we can't freeze the way that we see the people we love, as much as we would wish. I know that I will kiss my husband with a closed mouth again, at some point. I know that I will even kiss him with a closed heart. I pray for our love. I pray that even if I kiss my husband with a closed heart, my heart opens again to him. When I desire my husband. I am grateful to desire my husband. What can we hope for in a marriage but to keep seeing things anew? With the people we love, it is so easy to stop seeing them at all.
— Melissa Broder, So Sad Today: Personal Essays
They sat a moment in embrace of silent mutual comfort, which was, she often thought, the reward of those long married.
— Helen Simonson, The Summer Before the War
There is an unspoken agreement in every successful relationship: "I'm not perfect and you're not perfect. I can ignore your imperfections if you can ignore mine. I choose to spend my life in your company.
— Rick Cormier, MiXED NUTS or What I've Learned Practicing Psychotherapy
That’s what marriage was at its best: You didn’t have to tell your partner to look out, that you were falling. They were just there to catch you.
— Jamie Brenner, The Wedding Sisters
I want you with me, my dearest. Not just as a friend, though also as that. I want you as my wife. I want to know that we share our lives and cares, we share our health and ill, and we share our happiness and sorrow.
— Aleksandra Layland, Far Haven: A Quest for Certitude. A Fight for Justice.
The SleepingI have imagined all this:In 1940 my parents were in loveAnd living in the loft on West 10thAbove Mark Rothko who painted cabbage rosesOn their bedroom walls the night they got married.I can guess why he did it.My mother’s hair was the color of yellow applesAnd she wore a velvet hat with her pajamas.I was not born yet. I was remote as starlight.It is hard for me to imagine thatMy parents made love in a roomful of rosesAnd I wasn’t there.But now I am. My mother is blushing.This is the wonderful thing about art.It can bring back the dead. It can wake the sleepingAs it might have late that nightWhen my father and mother made love above RothkoWho lay in the dark thinking Roses, Roses, Roses.
— Lynn Emanuel, Hotel Fiesta
And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs Willard's kitchen mat
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Many of our flaws are old emotional defenses which may fade away when we're loved in spite of them.
— Rick Cormier, MiXED NUTS or What I've Learned Practicing Psychotherapy
For marriage has nothing in common with love. marriage makes for security; love makes only for suffering. On the other hand, love could be so distilled, spun so fine as to implicate third and fourth persons, as to take up three or four exciting acts in a play.
— Günter Grass, The Flounder
They had lived down the road from each other as children. Everyday they walked home from school hand in hand; they were childhood sweethearts, they were bestfriends. And when they came of age, in the time-honoured Sri Lankan tradition they were given in marriage. To other people.
— Ashok Ferrey, The Good Little Ceylonese Girl
Marrying Gretchen is a good idea, darling; I would enjoy bringing her up. Teaching her to shoot, helping her with her first baby, coaching her in how to handle a knife, working out with her in martial arts, all the homey domestic skills a girl needs in this modern world.
— Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
We take the most difficult relationship of our childhood... and we MARRY it.
— Rick Cormier
I don't understand why anybody old enough to know the score ever gets married, anyway. Why should love require a contract? Why put yourself into the clutches of the state and give it power over you? Why invite lawyers to fuck around with your assets? Marriage is for the immature and the insecure and the ignorant. We who see through such institutions should be content to live together without legal coercion
— Robert Silverberg, Dying Inside
I'll never know the right answer for sex and marriage, sense and mirage.
— James Thurber
His friend laughed. 'You missed your calling, Freddie,' he said. 'You should have been one of the aforementioned clergy. Is this what marriage does to you? One shudders at the very idea.
— Mary Balogh, Dancing with Clara
The idea of marrying Lukan made her skin crawl. He was a Chenayan. She, a Norin. He was her conqueror. She, his conquered. He had been born and raised to lord over her. She had been born and raised to hate him. They might as well have been different species.
— Gwynn White, Rebel's Honor
Oh," she said. "I wasn't going to ask, but then you never said anything about it, so I thought I'd ask.""How about you?""Not me," said Odette. She had a poem about marriage. It began, Marriage is the death you want to die, and in front of audiences she never read it with much conviction. Usually she swung her foot back and forth through the whole thing.
— Lorrie Moore, Like Life
Innocence and experience make for a perfect marriage.
— George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows
In Sri Lanka, the people you lived amongst, the people you went to school with, the people in whose houses you ate, whose jokes you shared: these were not the people you married. Quite possibly they were not your religion. More to the point they were probably not your caste. This word with its fearsome connotations was never, hardly ever used. But it was ever present: it muddied the waters of Sri Lanka's politics, it perfumed the air of her bed-chambers; it lurked, like a particularly noxious relative, behind the poruwa of every wedding ceremony. It was the c-word. People used its synonym, its acronym, its antonym-indeed any other nym that came to mind - in the vain hope its meaning would somehow go away. It didn't. But if the people you chose to associate with were the very ones you could not marry, then the ones you did marry were quite often people you wouldn't dream of associating with if you had any choice in the matter.
— Ashok Ferrey, The Good Little Ceylonese Girl
... You are ignorant of the duties you undertake in marrying...
— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
The apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and why we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love.
— Joan Didion
Thou mayest choose an helpmeet," said the King to me.An helpmeet? What the great googly-moogly was that?
— Michael  Darling, Got Luck
Breakup is hard enough to live with, why do we need the paperwork of divorce.
— Nilesh Rathod, Destiny of Shattered Dreams
Divorce is a bitch and marriage is the mother of that bitch.
— Nilesh Rathod, Destiny of Shattered Dreams
The bond (of marriage) became the bondage itself
— Nilesh Rathod, Destiny of Shattered Dreams
Often, the bonds of marriage kill the purpose of the very marriage.
— Nilesh Rathod
A good marriage is supposed to be one where each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal.
— Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
The secret tugs at my sleeve.A child looking for attention.It is not a big secret.But it is not the only one either.“Strength in numbers” they say.For they are many.Many little things that – together –weigh tonnes.And take up space.And are quite noisy.The way only a lot of whispers can make noise.And they follow me.Little secretsof omission, desire,and denial.Of indulgence, hedonism,and exploration.Of peeves, passion,and deep-seated fear.Little secretsof despairanddisrepairandprohibited thoroughfare.
— Adelheid Manefeldt, Years: a book of tiny poetry
A marriage takes work. You have to constantly put energy into it to keep it from falling apart. Going nowhere takes energy. Stability isn't what you get when you do nothing. It's what you can hope to achieve when you work hard.
— Joshua Edward Smith, Entropy
Home cooking is the true embodiment of love. It makes us show patience, kindness, humility, hope, and perseverance.
— Agus Ekanurdi, Cook Your Way to Love & Harmony
But you will find yourself disarmed utterly, and your accusing spirit transformed into loving forgiveness the moment you remember that you did, in fact, marry only a sinner, and so did he.
— Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me be a Woman
Young men ... learn practical skills that set is in good stead for lives as the husbands of wealthy and educated women: Strong Handshakes, Silence, Rudimentary Car Mechanics, How to Mow the Lawn, Explosive Displays of Authority, Sport and Nutrition Against Impotance.
— Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox
... The continuation of her life was more than another day of breathing, but was the gift of another day of engagement with her beloved across the spectrum of all things.
— Dan Simmons, Olympos
indelible waitingl'art poetique"..I will wait for the night to chase me..."I sit on a rock and watch children playingin the park belowThey don't see meOr know my thoughtsOr that you haven't calledBut I forgive them their indifference todayAbove me a crow cawsPerhaps he smells the crumbs on my dressOr my angerBut he flits away over the treesProbably has a homeProbably has a wifeProbably knew to callThe children leaveThe coffee in my can turns coldThe wind nips at meSome street lights flicker onBut I won't moveNot yetI will wait for the night to chase meBack where I came fromUp the empty streetTo a quiet house
— Adelheid Manefeldt, Years: a book of tiny poetry
When the search for pleasure becomes obsessive, it holds us in thrall and keeps us from experiencing other satisfactions. Joy, on the other hand, increases our pleasure and helps us find fulfilment in any number of things, even at those times of life when physical pleasure has ebbed.
— Pope Francis
I accept you as you are, and I will always hold you close in my heart. I will walk beside you forever.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Night Play
Children are God’s or nature’s practical joke on couples—that which is produced by passion then proceeds to nearly kill it.
— Dennis Prager, Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual
I sit on a rock and watch children playingin the park belowThey don't see meOr know my thoughtsOr that you haven't calledBut I forgive them their indifference todayAbove me a crow cawsPerhaps he smells the crumbs on my dressOr my angerBut he flits away over the treesProbably has a homeProbably has a wifeProbably knew to callThe children leaveThe coffee in my can turns coldThe wind nips at meSome street lights flicker onBut I won't moveNot yetI will wait for the night to chase meBack where I came fromUp the empty streetTo a quiet house
— Adelheid Manefeldt, Years: a book of tiny poetry
It is not what we feel that gets us in to trouble. It is how we express how we feel that causes conflict.
— DeBorrah K. Ogans, Holy Matrimony: Now That We're Married
When you love someone, you can just live without it.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
We sealed it with a kiss, and with the kiss, we sealed what would eventually become an engagement, a marriage, a Cape Cod, a dog, grilled cheese sandwiches on Mondays, and everything in between.
— Lindsay Detwiler, Without You
May I help you?""Mr. Neck-uh-stone-sack please," I replied."Um. You mean Nat?""Yeah. This is Counselor Smallwater's law office. May I speak with Nat?""Well, he's in a class right now. Can I take a message?""Hmm. I suppose it's all right. You can just tell him that his annulment is official now. He and his sister are no longer married.
— Michael  Darling, Got Luck
A person with money who chooses to spend it on you, takes little effort and is meaningless. However, a person with no time who manages to spend what little they have on you... this means everything and should appreciated.
— Mark W. Boyer
Dr. Morris soon recognized that the difference between successful and unsuccessful marriages can often be traced to how well couples are able to "bond" during the courtship period. By bonding he referred to the process by which a man and woman become cemented together emotionally. It describes the chemistry that permits two previous strangers to become intensely valuable to one another. It helps them weather the storms of life and remain committed in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, forsaking all others until they are parted in death. It is a phenomenal experience that almost defies description.
— James C. Dobson
...only the exclusive and indissoluble union between a man and a woman has a plenary role to play in society as a stable commitment that bears fruit in new life.
— Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia: Apostolic Exhortation on the Family
Ariadne made an impression on you, and that's great. But life is not literature. Sooner or later, the spell wears off, the romantic feelings disappear, and you're left watching somebody's body disintegrate. You start with a love story, you end up manacled to an hourglass, watching the sands run out.
— Paul Murray, The Mark and the Void
There comes a time when one suddenly discovers that there will never be a time for the coming of the perfect person, or believe that God sends people from heaven, so one finds a random fellow, either righteous or unrighteous, excellent or Impaired, and in no time become what God had ordained.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Falling in love is a series of moments in which the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Those moments are not continuous, but the sense of union with another person is just about the best thing there is.
— Caroline Kennedy, She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems
It is in the very nature of conjugal love to be definitive. The lasting union expressed by the marriage vows is more than a formality or a traditional formula; it is rooted in the natural inclinations of the human person. For believers, it is also a covenant before God that calls for fidelity.
— Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia: Apostolic Exhortation on the Family
I knew that my husband was a song that I had forgotten the words to and I was a fuzzy photograph of someone he used to love.
— Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing
I am not perfectly certain I believe in marriage. Why have just one bonbon when you can have the box?
— Cassandra Clare, Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale
If we can prevent just one marriage from disintegrating--or just one child from suffering the loss of a family--our effort will be justified.
— James C. Dobson
9/11/01Gina:Especially today, with the enormity of current events, I want to convey to you again, how much you mean to me and how proud I am to be your husband. The hard work that you are engaged in right now is exhausting, invisible and largely thankless in the short term. But honey, please know that buried at the core of this tedium is the most noble and important work in the world- God's work; the fruits of which you and I will be lucky enough to enjoy as we grow old together. Watching these little guys grow into men is a privilege that I am proud to share with you, and the perfect fulfillment of our marriage bonds. You are a great mom. You are a great wife. You are my best friend. You are very pretty.  Happy Birthday.  -Matt
— Michael Spehn
Natural marriage, therefore, is fully understood in the light of its fulfilment in the sacrament of Matrimony: only in contemplating Christ does a person come to know the deepest truth about human relationships.
— Pope Francis
Intimacy is about sharing something with your spouse that you don’t share with anybody else. It’s letting him in. It’s laughing together. And it’s also feeling that deep hunger for each other!
— Sheila Wray Gregoire, Nine Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage: Because a Great Relationship Doesn't Happen by Accident
Man loves pleasure. But women desire purposeful commitment.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Men love pleasure. but women desire purposeful commitment.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.
— Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
If your relationship is draining your energy, making you lose yourself and taking your attention away from God, then you are not in a relationship but a cult. You are busy creating an idol (mini-God) for yourself.
— Kemi Sogunle
Organizing the books was a fun afternoon. We decided to put the thick hardback books, mostly intro. to philosophy textbooks and Norton literature anthologies, on the top shelves where they looked good but stayed out of reach since there's no reason for opening them ever again. Then we went by genre: mysteries, cozies, modernists, mountains, sci-fi, beloved childhood volumes, books we bought abroad, books required in school we couldn't sell back, books bought for us we'll read soon, books bought for us we have no intention of reading, books we want to read but are too long for a commitment with our current schedules...We're not really done with this organization, and I doubt we ever will be, but that's one great part about it.
— Joshua Isard, Conquistador of the Useless
It as mathematical, marriage, not, as one might expect, additional; it was exponential. This one man, nervous in a suite a size too small for his long, lean self, this woman, in a green lace dress cut to the upper thigh, with a white rose behind her ear. Christ, so young. The woman before them was a unitarian minister, and on her buzzed scalp, the grey hairs shone in a swab of sun through the lace in the window. Outside, Poughkeepsie was waking. Behind them, a man in a custodian's uniform cried softly beside a man in pajamas with a Dachshund, their witnesses, a shine in everyone's eye. One could taste the love on the air, or maybe that was sex, or maybe that was all the same then.'I do,' she said.'I do,' he said.They did. They would. Our children will be so fucking beautiful, he thought, looking at her. Home, she thought, looking at him. 'You may kiss,' said the officiant. They did, would. Now they thanked everyone and laughed, and papers were signed and congratulations offered, and all stood for a moment, unwilling to leave this gentile living room where there was such softness. The newlyweds thanked everyone again, shyly, and went out the door into the cool morning. They laughed, rosy. In they'd come integers, out they came, squared. Her life, in the window, the parakeet, scrap of blue midday in the London dusk, ages away from what had been most deeply lived. Day on a rocky beach, creatures in the tide pool. All those ordinary afternoons, listening to footsteps in the beams of the house, and knowing the feeling behind them. Because it was so true, more than the highlights and the bright events, it was in the daily where she'd found life. The hundreds of time she'd dug in her garden, each time the satisfying chew of spade through soil, so often that this action, the pressure and release and rich dirt smell delineated the warmth she'd felt in the cherry orchard. Or this, each day they woke in the same place, her husband waking her with a cup of coffee, the cream still swirling into the black. Almost unremarked upon this kindness, he would kiss her on the crown of her head before leaving, and she'd feel something in her rising in her body to meet him. These silent intimacies made their marriage, not the ceremonies or parties or opening nights or occasions, or spectacular fucks. Anyway, that part was finished. A pity...
— Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies
Such a mad marriage never was before.
— William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
There must be good marriages somewhere, but to me, marriage had the feel of people tolerating each other, enduring each other because they were afraid to be alone or because each was a habit that the other couldn't quite break.
— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
A marriage is meant to be a blessing on the world, because it is a context in which two people might become more than what they would have been alone.  The entire world is healed by the presence of healed people.
— Marianne Williamson
Life was rich with possibility, or life was possibly rich...She felt incandescent with the news.Cold sun. Jack in the pulpits nosing out of the still-frozen mud. Lotto lay watching the world incrementally wake up. They had been married for seventeen years, she lived in the deepest room in his heart, and sometimes that meant that wife occurred to him before Mathilde, helpmeet before herself, abstraction of her before the physical being. But not now. When she came across the veranda, he saw Mathilde all of the sudden, the dark whip at the center of her, how, so gently, she flicked it and kept him spinning. She put her cold hand on his stomach, which he was sunning to banish the winter's white. 'Vain,' she said. 'An actor in a playwright's hide,' he said. 'I'll never not be vain.''Oh well, it's you,' she said. 'You're desperate for the love of strangers, to be seen.''You see me,' he said. And he heard the echo with his thoughts a minute before and was pleased.'I do,' she said. 'Now please, talk.'She stretched her arms over heads...she looked at him, savoring her own knowing, his unknowing...
— Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies
In his business, he observed human nature and came to certain conclusions about it. The conclusions lacked wisdom and originality; in fact, they were tiresome. But they were important to McGarrity because he had figured them out for himself. In the first years of their marriage, he had tried to tell Mae about these conclusions, but all she said was, "I can imagine." Sometimes she varied by saying, "I can just imagine." Gradually then, because he could not share his inner self with her, he lost the power of being a husband to her, and she was unfaithful to him.
— Betty  Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Marriage is a shared sacred life.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Marriage is a mutual faithful friendship
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Nafsha is so concerned with my virginity. I am beginning to think she would wed me herself. Alas, the only tool she might use to make me a woman is her tongue -- and it is far too sharp for me to allow it beneath my skirts.
— Libbie Hawker, Daughter of Sand and Stone
What is life without love?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Marriage is mutual faithful friendship.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Marriage is a long conversation, someone once said, and maybe so is a rock band's life. A few minutes later, both were done.
— Kim Gordon
Mathilde and Lotto held hands in the taxi going to brunch, communicating, not speaking.
— Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies
...then he blushed and seemed to fade where he stood....When the musical star moved on, Lotto turned to her and silently docked his head on her shoulder for two moments, recharged he turned to face the others.
— Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies
You need to be my wife to win with me.
— Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy
In the end, that's why some of us stupid humans get married. Because we know that we can lose each other and find each other again.
— Courtney Maum, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
For the first time, she became vividly aware of how much of her life she had spent with her husband. It had been a period of time utterly devoid of happiness and spontaneity. A time that she'd so far managed to get through only by using up every last reserve of perseverance and consideration. All of it self-inflicted.
— Han Kang, The Vegetarian
If God is going to write your loves story, He's going to first need your pen.
— Eric Ludy, When God Writes Your Love Story: The Ultimate Approach to Guy/Girl Relationships
You have to recognize your inability to love before you can love the way God loves. His version of love is unfamiliar to the natural world
—  It is sacrificial and selfless and the most beautiful love you could experience.
Please don´t drown into his fears, his concrete fists don´t let him again, break the bridge of your nose with his cruel born hits. Then disappear into that mask of misery.
— Anthony Liccione
My husband says spring will be early.He says this every year,And every year I disagree.He needs me, the dark side of the planetary equation.Together we make the equinox.
— Lisel Mueller, Alive Together
Lorenzo: In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love to come again to Carthage Jessica: In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson.  Lorenzo: In such a night did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, and with an unthrift love did run from Venice, as far as Belmont. Jessica: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne'er a true one.  Lorenzo: In such a night did pretty Jessica (like a little shrow) slander her love, and he forgave it her. Jessica: I would out-night you, did nobody come; but hark, I hear the footing of a man.
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
No matter how many rules we make for ourselves, rules don't create godly relationships. Only leaning on our faithful Father and longing to please Him with everything we do will set the stage for a beautiful romance!
— Eric Ludy, When God Writes Your Love Story: The Ultimate Approach to Guy/Girl Relationships
Only about 3 percent of animal species are monogamous. A couple of penguins, some otters and a few other oddball critters. To these select few it comes natural to mate for life and never look at another member of the opposite sex. Humans are not part of that little club. Like the other 97% of species, humans are not monogamous by nature. We just pretend that we are.
— Oliver Markus, Why Men And Women Can't Be Friends
For the crown of our life as it closesIs darkness, the fruit there of dust;No thorns go as deep as the rose's,And love is more cruel than lust.Time turns the old days to derision,Our loves into corpses or wives;And marriage and death and divisionMake barren our lives.
— Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dolores: Notre-Dame Des Sept Douleurs
I have a theory that while a man might not always get the wife he wants or needs, he always gets the wife he deserves.
— Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings
In the break-up of a marriage the world inclines to take the side of the partner with most vitality, rather than the one apparently least to blame.
— Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement
Inviting God to write the chapters of our loves story involves work on our part - not just a scattered prayer here and there, not merely a feeble attempt to find some insight by flopping open the Bible every now and then. It's seeking Him on a daily basis, putting Him in first place at all times, discovering His heart.
— Eric Ludy, When God Writes Your Love Story: The Ultimate Approach to Guy/Girl Relationships
Men (who cheat) do not cheat because they are dogs. They are (regarded as) dogs because they cheat.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The marriage seemed to flourish on Father’s extended absences. ” Ragtime
— E.L. Doctorow
I suppose one oughtn’t to marry anybody, unless one’s prepared to make him a full-time job.”“Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don’t look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night
The difference between the right spouse and the wrong spouse is the difference between a soul mate and a cell mate.
— R.A. Mathis
Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.
— Barnett R. Brickner
Love is a sin...!!!
— M.Rehan Behleem
It made it easier that they both believed in the simplest kind of afterlife - that my father could say to her, even in those last days, joking but without irony, 'You're going to get tired of hearing from me. I'll be asking you for this that and the other thing twenty-four hours a day. JESUS, you'll be saying, here comes another prayer from Dennis.' And my mother would reply, her voice hoarse with pain, 'Jesus might advise you to take in a movie once in a while. Give your poor wife a rest. She's in heaven, after all.'It was a joke, but they believed it, and they believed, too, I think, that their love, their loyalty to one another, was no longer a matter of chance or happenstance, but a condition of their existence no more voluntary or escapable than the pace of their blood, the influx of perception...There was, in their anticipation of what was to come, a queer self-satisfaction. It was clear now that they would love each other until the last moment of her life - hadn't that been the goal from the beginning? They would love each other even beyond the days they had lived together; was there any greater triumph?
— Alice McDermott, Charming Billy
I looked up and she said, "You have to believe I did everything a reasonable person would do. Maybe I didn't reach my hands into toilet water, but I did everything else I could.
— Charlie Close, Burning Embers and Other Stories of Marriage, Work, and Family
Best of all, she waits outside the dressing room while I'm changing. Girlfriends don't do this but wives do, and if there is any better reason to get married than to have someone to hold your hand in a clothing store, I don't know what it is.
— Charlie Close, Burning Embers and Other Stories of Marriage, Work, and Family
In our busy lives, intimacy often becomes a set piece—we sit down and make time for discussions, for togetherness, for sharing. But sometimes the most intimate parts of ourselves—our desires, our fears, our needs and sensitivities—are revealed most strongly in the course of our mundane routines.
— Mathew N.  Schmalz, Mercy Matters: Opening Yourself to the Life-Changing Gift
I find a woman with brains enormously attractive and not threatening in the least. A pretty face is nice, too, but having somebody to converse with and share thoughts for thirty or forty years is very appealing to me.
— Beatriz Williams, The Forgotten Room
Why do ever think about to get married??Do we dare, all life to get worried, to be curious, to be angry, to think for money like they are gold, to think about what next to buy, to cry and even and more to happen?Marriage is like the gold, you find it or not, it depends from you but you once lost you can't find the same gold or the same wife, it's in about of luck to find the same. Imaginate that you have gold, but you don't have money, so you go to a pawnshop and what happens the gold becomes money, but reality you have two diffirent stuff. This doesn't mean that by doing that you get the same, why don't you go and give your wife for other person??? Will be the same like your wife will live in this person for which you have replaced her??Of course, NOT!
— Deyth Banger
Maybe it's a good idea," said Kathy."Why is that?""Well - you have a British sensibility.""What does that mean?""I just mean people over there might like it." She gestured in the direction of England.
— Charlie Close, Burning Embers and Other Stories of Marriage, Work, and Family
Don’t touch me. Don’t tell me how beautiful my eyes are, how soft my hair is, how you love to hear my voice. Don’t. Don’t pretend you are falling in love with me. I know you are lying, and every word you say hurts even more. Let us just be friends, if we can start there. Can’t we? Can’t we at least be friends? Get to know each other a little? Before the wedding, and the bedding, when I will have to take you as my lord and husband?
— Melissa de la Cruz, The Ring and the Crown
When she found a place of her ownand packed her bags he asked her to marry him. She kissed him, and quoted in his ear,"He married a woman to stop her getting away, Now she’s there all day.
— Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
In all marriages there is struggle and ours was no different in that regard. But we always came to the other shore, dusted off, and said, There you are, my love.
— Elizabeth Alexander
Now he must put into practice all his fine poetic thoughts about romantic love.
— Philip Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
Live each day as if it could be the last day that you spend with your husband or wife.
— Lindsey Rietzsch, How to Date Your Spouse: A Couple's Guide to Falling and Staying in Love