c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
A woman has to change her nature if she is to be a wife. She has to learn to curb her tongue, to suppress her desires, to moderate her thoughts and to spend her days putting another first. She has to put him first even when she longs to serve herself or her children. She has to put him first even if she longs to judge for herself. She has to put him first even when she knows best. To be a good wife is to be a woman with a will of iron that you yourself have forged into a bridle to curb your own abilities. To be a good wife is to enslave yourself to a lesser person. To be a good wife is to amputate your own power as surely as the parents of beggars hack off their children's feet for the greater benefit of the family.
— Philippa Gregory, The Other Queen
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistuinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody—so utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
And your will shall decide your destiny," he said: "I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions." You play a farce, which I merely laugh at." I ask you to pass through life at my side--to be my second self, and best earthly companion." For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide by it." Jane, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still too." A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away--away--to an indefinite distance--it died. The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke; he at last said - Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another." I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot return." But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry." I was silent: I thought he mocked me. Come, Jane--come hither." Your bride stands between us." He rose, and with a stride reached me. My bride is here," he said, again drawing me to him, "because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Eve was not taken out of Adam's head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him.
— Matthew Henry
The moment we decide to throw more energy into fighting for our mate than with him, the crack of a fist on the enemy's jaw splits the ears of angels.
— Beth Moore
If someone were to ask whether communications skills or meekness is most important to a marriage, I'd answer meekness, hands down. You can be a superb communicator but still never have the humility to ask, 'Is it I?' Communication skills are no substitute for Christlike attributes. As Dr. Douglas Brinley has observed, 'Without theological perspectives, secular exercises designed to improve our relationship and our communication skills (the common tools of counselors and marriage books) will never work any permanent change in one's heart: they simply develop more clever and skilled fighters!
— John Bytheway, When Times Are Tough: 5 Scriptures That Will Help You Get Through Almost Anything
A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.
— Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice
My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
— Winston S. Churchill
The chef turned back to the housekeeper. “Why is there doubt about the relations between Monsieur and Madame Rutledge?”The sheets,” she said succinctly.Jake nearly choked on his pastry. “You have the housemaids spying on them?” he asked around a mouthful of custard and cream.Not at all,” the housekeeper said defensively. “It’s only that we have vigilant maids who tell me everything. And even if they didn’t, one hardly needs great powers of observation to see that they do not behave like a married couple.”The chef looked deeply concerned. “You think there’s a problem with his carrot?”Watercress, carrot—is everything food to you?” Jake demanded.The chef shrugged. “Oui.”Well,” Jake said testily, “there is a string of Rutledge’s past mistresses who would undoubtedly testify there is nothing wrong with his carrot.”Alors, he is a virile man . . . she is a beautiful woman . . . why are they not making salad together?
— Lisa Kleypas, Tempt Me at Twilight
Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
But they love each other. Isn't that what love means? That you're supposed to be there for the other person to turn to, no matter what?
— Cassandra Clare
(Regarding Marriage) Both people need to care deeply about the other person, to put the other’s needs before their own, and to make a daily commitment to that person to stick it out.
— Alessandra Torre, Blindfolded Innocence
They say being in love and loving someone are two different things, right? I mean, you love your best friend, but you love your husband, right? Falling in love with someone is easy. It's loving when the newness has worn off, when life gets tough, when things get in the way, when physical passion is gone, that true love remains. When love can conquer it all.
— Mia Asher, Arsen: A Broken Love Story
This is a wonderful day,” Anthony was muttering to himself. “A wonderful day.” He looked up sharply at Gareth. “You don’t have sisters, do you?”“None,” Gareth confirmed.“I am in possession of four,” Anthony said, tossing back at least a third of the contents of his glass. “Four. And now they’re all off my hands. I’m done,” he said, looking as if he might break into a jig at any moment. “I’m free.”“You’ve daughters, don’t you?” Gareth could not resist reminding him.“Just one, and she’s only three. I have years before I have to go through this again. If I’m lucky, she’ll convert to Catholicism and become a nun.Gareth choked on his drink.“It’s good, isn’t it?” Anthony said, looking at the bottle. “Aged twenty-four years.”“I don’t believe I’ve ever ingested anything quite so ancient,” Gareth murmured.
— Julia Quinn, It's in His Kiss
I knew I sounded hysterical, and Adrian’s calmness only drove that home. “I think I have an idea,” he said. “An idea that’ll get us some hardcore protection … but I don’t know how you’ll feel about it.”“I’m open to anything,” I assured him.He hesitated a moment and gave a decisive nod. Then, to my complete and utter astonishment, he got down on his knees before me and clasped my hands in his. “Sydney Katherine Sage,” he said, his green eyes full of love and earnestness. “Would you do a brooding, deadbeat Moroi the honor of being his wife?
— Richelle Mead, Silver Shadows
I am going insane. Yes. That is what´s happening. Good. Insane.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Bushwhacked, I examine my hands. Same hands. Rings still there but no longer valid.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
But just now, he'd gotten on his knees and proposed marriage, like in a television commercial for a diamond ring. Except of course they had the roll of duct tape instead, which, when you came to think about it, was a far more practical item. Such a bad mistake it would be, to embark on marriage and adult life without a nice supply of duct tape.
— Nancy Werlin, Impossible
Each recognized the fact that real commitment could be proven only through the passage of time.
— Nicholas Sparks
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
— Mark Twain
She said she wanted my best line tomorrow after the show, and now I knew what it was going to be.
— Cora Carmack, Losing It
I believe in love. I believe in hard times and love winning. I believe marriage is hard. I believe people make mistakes. I believe people can want two things at once. I believe people are selfish and generous at the same time. I believe very few people want to hurt others. I believe that you can be surprised by life. I believe in happy endings.
— Isabel Gillies, Happens Every Day: An All Too True Story
There must be a stronger foundation than mere friendship or sexual attraction. Unconditional love, agape love, will not be swayed by time or circumstances. 
— Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.
— Peter De Vries
Marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own.
— Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming
The Puritan ethic of marriage was first to look not for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment but rather for one whom you can love steadily as your best friend for life, then to proceed with God’s help to do just that.
— J.I. Packer
Christopher heard a pair of women gossiping nearby, whispering in disapproving undertones. "... Ramsey was found flirting in a corner with a woman. They had to drag him away from her." "Who was it?" "His own wife." "Oh, dear.
— Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,And for thy maintenance; commits his bodyTo painful labor, both by sea and land;To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,Whilst thou li’st warm at home, secure and safe;And craves no other tribute at thy handsBut love, fair looks, and true obedience-Too little payment for so great a debt.Such duty as the subject owes the prince,Even such a woman oweth to her husband;And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,And no obedient to his honest will,What is she but a foul contending rebel,And graceless traitor to her loving lord?I asham’d that women are so simple‘To offer war where they should kneel for peace,Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,Should well agree with our external parts?
— William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
Marriage is a wrestling match where you hold on tight while your mate changes into a hundred different things. The trick is that you're changing into a hundred other things, but you can't let go. You can only try to match up and never turn into a wolf while he's a rabbit, or a mouse while he's still busy being an owl, a brawny black bull while he's a little blue crab scuttling for shelter. It's harder than it sounds.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
After a universal silence, Leo was the first to speak. “Did anyone else notice—”“Yes,” Catherine said. “What do you make of it?”“I haven’t decided yet.” Leo frowned and took a sip of port. “He’s not someone I would pair Bea with.”“Whom would you pair her with?”“Hanged if I know,” Leo said. “Someone with similar interests. The local veterinarian, perhaps?”“He’s eighty-three years old and deaf,” Catherine said.“They would never argue,” Leo pointed out.
— Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon
I nod, thinking of how difficult marriage can be, how much effort is required to sustain a feeling between two people - a feeling that you can't imagine will ever fade in the beginning when everything comes so easily. I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That is the only real way to grow together, instead of apart.
— Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter
I have a new mantra, which I chant softly to myself: "Oh My God Oh My God.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.
— Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves
When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it.
— Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story
It is to be broken. It is to betorn open. It is not to bereached and come to rest inever. I turn against you,I break from you, I turn to you.We hurt, and are hurt,and have each other for healing.It is healing. It is never whole.
— Wendell Berry, The Collected Poems, 1957-1982
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.
— George Bernard Shaw
Did you pick that out?" I asked Dimitri. Honestly, I would have expected him to bend a piece of steel with his bare hands and present her with that.
— Richelle Mead, The Ruby Circle
Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel: sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.
— Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
Do you think it's possible to finally decide that you really, truly love someone but not end up marrying him?
— Robin Jones Gunn, As You Wish
The Cheesecake Factory is a great business model, but if you take your wife there for your 25th wedding anniversary, you might not reach your 26th.
— Scott Adams
Maybe, in the final analysis, they saw me as something I wasn't and I tried to turn them into something they could never be. I loved them all but maybe I never understood any of them. I don't think they understood me.
— Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story
He shook his head in wonder. "You are magnificent.""I keep telling everyone that," she said with a nonchalant shrug, "But you seem to be the only one to believe me.
— Julia Quinn, To Sir Phillip, With Love
Often a Christian man or woman falls prey to that cruel and vexatious spirit, wondering how to find marriage, who, when, where? It is on God that we should wait, as a waiter waits--not for but on the customer--alert, watchful, attentive, with no agenda of his own, ready to do whatever is wanted. 'My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.' (Ps. 62:5 KJV) In Him alone lie our security, our confidence, our trust. A spirit of restlessness and resistance can never wait, but one who believes he is loved with an everlasting love, and knows that underneath are the everlasting arms, will find strength and peace.
— Elisabeth Elliot, Quest for Love: True Stories of Passion and Purity
Nobody knows you as well as our spouse. And that means no one will be quicker to recognize a change when you deliberately start sacrificing your wants and wishes to make sure his or her needs are met. 
— Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare
In the true married relationship, the independence of husband and wife will be equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal.
— Lucretia Mott
My mother is convinced that yellow is a happy color and that a happy girl would get a husband.-Penelope Featherington
— Julia Quinn, The Viscount Who Loved Me
I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.
— Mahatma Gandhi
It´s like watching someone do a triple backflip dismount and land on two feet, solid, arms splayed in the air. I know I could never do it, don´t even know where I would begin to learn, but some people are built for it. He was handcrafted to leave, had practiced on other women since adolescence. I was one of an unnumbered series.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
— Erma Bombeck
What we do for each other before marriage is no indication of what we will do after marriage.
— Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
The Viscount stepped into the room. "Came to see if you was dead," he said. "Laid Pom odds you weren't."Lethbridge passed his hand across his eyes. "I'm not," he replied in a faint voice."No. I'm sorry," said the Viscount simply. He wandered over to the table and sat down. "Horry said she killed you, Pom said So she might, I said No. Nonsense."Lethbridge still holding a hand to his aching head tried to pull himself together. "Did you?" he said. His eyes ran over his self invited guest. "I see. Let me assure you once more that I am very much alive.""Well I wish you'd put your wig on," complained the Viscount. "What I want to know is why did Horry hit you on the head with a poker?"Lethbridge gingerly felt his bruised scalp. "With a poker was it? Pray ask her, though I doubt if she will tell you.""You shouldn't keep the front door open," said the Viscount. "What's to stop people coming in and hitting you over the head? It's preposterous.""I wish you'd go home," said Lethbridge wearily.The Viscount surveyed the supper-table with a knowing eye."Card-party?" he inquired.
— Georgette Heyer, The Convenient Marriage
Some marriages are made in heaven,Mine was made in Hong Kong, by the same people who make those little rubber pork chops they sell in the pet department at Kmart.
— Tom Robbins
When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
I travel back in time, falling back into what I know for certain, the historical data I cling to in order to not go mad, not assume I made a suicidal and well-informed error in marrying this man.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
I am not ready to think of him as either insane or evil, to consider in full how I could love and have a child with such a person. I am not ready to think about anything, except ways in which this may still be averted.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
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
When you have been just told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.
— P.G. Wodehouse, Summer Lightning
A good marriage, like any partnership, meant subordinating one's own needs to that of the other's, in the expectation that the other will do the same.
— Nicholas Sparks, True Believer
Women like clothes, they like shoes, they like flowers and they like people to look at them and think,‘God, she’s gorgeous.’ The more people who think that, the better it is. The one day in your life where you get all that rolled up into one is your wedding day. And itcomes with jewelry and presents and endswith a vacation where it’s practically law that you have to wear fabulous underwear and have lots of sex.
— Kristen Ashley, Mystery Man
You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
In the modern industrialized Western world, where I come from, the person whom you choose to marry is perhaps the single most vivid representation of your own personality. Your spouse becomes the most gleaming possible mirror through which your emotional individualism is reflected back to the world. There is no choice more intensely personal after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
They are the we of me.
— Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding
You'll be happy if you'll remember that men don't change much. Women do. Women adapt themselves, and if you think that means they lose their individuality, you're wrong. Show me a happy marriage and I'll show you a clever woman.
— Elizabeth Cadell
I played possum. I did this, as the possum does, out of fear.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me - whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. And yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: “Yes, this will do”. Who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving… me, and must be punished for it. George and Martha… Sad, sad, sad.
— Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
...marriage is foremost a vocation. Two people are called together to fulfill a mission that God has given them. Marriage is a spiritual reality. That is to say, a man and a woman come together for life, not just because they experience deep love for each other, but because they believe that God loves each of them with an infinite love and has called them to each other to be living witnesses of that love. To love is to embody God's infinite love in a faithful communion with another human being.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit
When you love someone - when you create a child with him - you don't just suddenly lose that bond. Like any other energy, it can't be destroyed, just channeled into something else.
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
Never marry something until you've established the perfect pizza ratio...The premise is simple. My husband and I knew we were made for each other because we're a 6:2 ratio, six slices for him and two for me...Never marry a man who wants two slices one week and four the next. They're undependable and highly unpredictable and will likely dump you for some Internet honey who says she doesn't mind his back hair.
— Celia Rivenbark, Bless Your Heart, Tramp: And Other Southern Endearments
Like the muscles knew from the beginning that it would end with this, this inevitable falling apart... It's sad, but a relief as well to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence, leaving smooth surfaces instead of bloody shreds.
— Julie Powell, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession
Izzy was utterly convinced. Never mind Arabian horses, African cheetahs. No creature in the world could bolt so quickly as a rake confronted with the word "marriage". They ought to shout it out at footraces rather than using starting pi
— Tessa Dare, Romancing the Duke
A man approaching retirement called the retirement office to inquire about his pension. Afterward, he was asked if his wife worked. “She’s worked all her life making me happy”, he replied. “Yes sir, but has she earned money to receive her pension?” “When we got married we agreed on an arrangement”, he said. “I would earn the living, and she would make the living worthwhile”.“Make the living worthwhile”…have we forgotten the very essence of that? Have we forgotten to live for someone else, that doing so IS what makes a living worthwhile?
— Kelly Crawford
It may be that same-sex couples will save the institution of marriage.
— Elizabeth Gilbert
I had that hole in me, that empty space. I could have lived my life with it, content enough. I wasn’t an unhappy man.”.....................The tears came now. He watched them drip down her cheeks, wondered if she were even aware they leaked out of her. “She was part of my life. You are my life. If I have a regret, it’s that even for an instant you could think otherwise. Or that I allowed you to.”-Roarke
— J.D. Robb, Innocent in Death
Well, the one thing I've thought about is having dad give me away. You know when he takes your hand and he puts it in the hand of the person you marry? That's the only part I've ever wanted.
— Kiera Cass, The Elite
In marriage, everyday you love,and everyday you forgive.It is an ongoing sacrament, love and forgiveness
— Bill Moyers
People only get married when they've no other option, out of panic or desperation or so as not to lose someone they couldn't bear to lose. It's always the most conventional things that contain the largest measure of madness.
— Javier Marías
There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Feel no guilt. Getting married and giving birth does not mean that you have sold your life away to perfectly healthy people who can get their own damn socks.
— Jennifer Crusie
Do you know how marriage was defined in ancient Greece? Noel said in a calmer tone. Its really simple. A virgin goes to mans house with the family gathered as witnesses. The virgin and the man share a fire, a meal, and a bed. If the girl wasn't a virgin in the morning, then the couple was considered married. That's it
— Josephine Angelini
I needed to choose between the one thing that really filled m thoughts-my love for that woman-and losing my freedom and all the choices that the future promised me. To be honest, the decision was easy.-Lukas Jessen-Petersen
— Paulo Coelho, The Witch Of Portobello
You know what you are to me? ... You are the most important thing in my life. You are my friend... my lover... my family... the one I trust, the one I fight with, the one I laugh with, the one I trust to enter my body the one I can fall back against with my eyes closed. You are simply part of me. That's what I mean, Anthony, when I say I love you.
— Leslie Esdaile, Love Notes
Every cell in my body was telling me that he was my happily ever after.
— C.J. English, Affairytale
I feel angry but not homocidal
—  this may be unlooked-for progress.
Not only is love blind, it’s a little hard of hearing.
— Brian P. Cleary, You Oughta Know By Now
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
— Voltaire
Those dreaming of the perfect match are outnumbered by those who don't really want it at all, though perhaps they can't admit it. After all, our culture makes individual freedom, autonomy and fulfillment the very highest values, and thoughtful people know deep down that any love relationship at all means the loss of all three. You can say, 'I want someone who will accept me just as I am,' but in your heart of hearts you know that you are not perfect, that there are plenty of things about you that need to be changed, and that anyone who gets to know you up close and personal will want to change them.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
Whatever Jesus lays His hands upon, lives. If He lays is hands upon a marriage, it lives. If He is allowed to lay His hands on the family, it lives.
— Howard W. Hunter
The whole world seems tilted, my inner ear displaced by a hole where my spouse used to be.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Maybe love, unfathomable love, was too much for people, so they had traded it for something easier.
— Gwenn Wright, Filter
Marriage is give and take. You'd better give it to her or she'll take it anyway.
— Joey Adams
I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.
— Willa Cather, My Ántonia
No sooner met but they looked
—  no sooner looked but they loved
When I wake up," he said, "remind me that I'm going to marry her.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Crónica de una muerte anunciada
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
— Oscar Wilde
A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5'4'tall you shouldn't be more than 5'3'tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees.That's the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage...No partnership can ever be equal.It will always be unequal, but take care it is unequal in favor of the husband. If the scales tilt in your favor, God help you, both of you.
— Shashi Deshpande
What kind of wedding would you like?" he asked, and stole another kiss before she could reply."The kind that turns you into my husband." She touched the firm line of his mouth with her fingers. "What kind would you like?"He smiled ruefully. "A fast one.
— Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon
How can two people love each other, create children together, cohabitiate, build a life together, and then end up hating each other in the end.
— Zane
So we fell asleep holding hands. If married couples got to do this all the time, shit if I could understand how there were ever divorces, or even fights.
— John Barnes, Tales of the Madman Underground
That word is 'willing.' It's an attitude and spirit of cooperation that should permeate our conversations. It's like a palm tree by the ocean that endures the greatest winds because it knows how to gracefully bend. 
— Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare
It's weird, marriage. It's like this license that gives a person the legal right to control their spouse / their 'other half.
— Jess C. Scott, Blind Leading Another
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.
— Milton Berle
A young woman, newly wed, may find herself in the delightful position of wanting to do nothing without the company of her darling husband. She may indeed discover that she spends all her waking hours with her fellow to the exclusion of every other friend or family member. This is understandable, but wholly unacceptable, to society.
— Anna Godbersen, Envy
A good marriage is good because one or both of them have learned to overlook the other's faults, to love the other as they are and to not attempt to change them or bring them to repentance.
— Debi Pearl
I wish you knew how I value you; and what an inexpressible blessing it is to have one whom one can always trust, one always the same, always ready to give comfort, sympathy and the best advice. God bless you, my dear, you are too good for me.' -Charles to Emma, 1859
— Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith
My mind floats like ash. I blame myself most cruelly.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Love is it's own protection.
— Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love
Them lady poets must not marry, pal.
— John Berryman, The Dream Songs
An ideal marriage is a true partnership between two imperfect people, each striving to complement the other, to keep the commandments, and to do the will of the Lord ["Our Sacred Duty to Honor Woman," Ensign, May 1999).
— Russel M. Nelson
I read the paragraph again. A peculiar feeling it gave me. I don't know if you have ever experienced the sensation of seeing the announcement of the engagement of a pal of yours to a girl whom you were only saved from marrying yourself by the skin of your teeth. It induces a sort of -- well, it's difficult to describe it exactly; but I should imagine a fellow would feel much the same if he happened to be strolling through the jungle with a boyhood chum and met a tigress or a jaguar, or what not, and managed to shin up a tree and looked down and saw the friend of his youth vanishing into the undergrowth in the animal's slavering jaws. A sort of profound, prayerful relief, if you know what I mean, blended at the same time with a pang of pity. What I'm driving at is that, thankful as I was that I hadn't had to marry Honoria myself, I was sorry to see a real good chap like old Biffy copping it. I sucked down a spot of tea and began brooding over the business.
— P.G. Wodehouse
For a long moment the butler sat in silence, his jaw hanging open. “I . . . my lord, I simply don't feel qualified to advise you about such matters.”“Don't tell me that,” Saint protested. “Tell me whether you can imagine me as a married man or not.”To his surprise, the butler set aside his brandy snifter and sat forward. “My lord, I do not wish to overstep my bounds, but I have noticed a change in your demeanor of late. The question of whether anyone can imagine you married or not, however, is one I believe must be answered by you. And the lady, of course.”Saint frowned. “Coward.”“There is that, as well.
— Suzanne Enoch, London's Perfect Scoundrel
Do we really mean it when we say ‘in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do us part or do we add a silent clause, ‘unless you shame me or disappoint me?’ What is the cost of unconditional love and how capable are we of giving that?
— Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker, The Fugitive's Doctor
What do you think my chances might be of finding a soul mate in the group of you? I'll be lucky if I can just find someone who'll be able to stand me for the rest of our lives. What if I've already sent her home because I was relying on some sort of spark I didn't feel? What if she's waiting to leave me at the first sign of adversity? What if I don't find anyone at all? What do I do then, America?
— Kiera Cass, The Selection
I don't want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting, or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Breaking Bad and if either watches it without the other, they're dead meat. I want to see you guys high-five each other like teammates on a recreational softball team you both do for fun.
— Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.
— Emma Goldman
I'm not the marrying kind -"St. Vincent snorted. "No man is. Marriage is a female invention.
— Lisa Kleypas, Mine Till Midnight
Better die an old maid, sister, than marry the wrong man.
— Billy Sunday
Oh, of course there's a risk in marrying anybody, but, when it's all said and done, there's many a worse thing than a husband.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate 'relationship' involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the 'married' couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other.The modern household is the place where the consumptive couple do their consuming. Nothing productive is done there. Such work as is done there is done at the expense of the resident couple or family, and to the profit of suppliers of energy and household technology. For entertainment, the inmates consume television or purchase other consumable diversion elsewhere.There are, however, still some married couples who understand themselves as belonging to their marriage, to each other, and to their children. What they have they have in common, and so, to them, helping each other does not seem merely to damage their ability to compete against each other. To them, 'mine' is not so powerful or necessary a pronoun as 'ours.'This sort of marriage usually has at its heart a household that is to some extent productive. The couple, that is, makes around itself a household economy that involves the work of both wife and husband, that gives them a measure of economic independence and self-employment, a measure of freedom, as well as a common ground and a common satisfaction. (From "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine")
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
I would not wish to marry someone who had already been married. It would be,' she opined, 'like having someone else break in one's own pony.
— Neil Gaiman, Stardust
When you’ve found the right one - when you see him, when you’re with him - you’ll feel like you’re coming home.
— Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Now I'll Tell You Everything
I knew that most people would consider us too young to talk about lifelong commitments or marriage, but I couldn’t imagine taking her to bed without that promise. Even if it meant never being with her, I didn’t want to have one desperate, hurried, hidden night. I wanted to put a ring on her finger. I wanted a future—or nothing. I knew, in her heart, that she would want that, too
— Beth Fantaskey, Jekel Loves Hyde
A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.
— William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Some marriages are made in heaven, but they all have to be maintained on earth. Mrs Miracle
— Debbie Macomber, Mrs. Miracle
Nobles and peasants marry early. Businessmen tend to wait.
— David Eddings, Polgara the Sorceress
You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all.
— Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
This is your heart. Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the key.
— Jean Webster, Just Patty
The point I was trying to make before you interrupted with your inventoryof my personality is that neither of us is going to be able to stay celibate for the next six months."She dropped her eyes. If only he knew that she'd stayed that way all her life.We'll be living in close quarters," he went on. "We're legally married, and it's only natural that we're going to get it on."Get it on? His bluntness reminded her that none of this meant anything to him emotionally, and contrary to all logic, she'd wanted to hear something romantic. With some pique, she said, "In other words, you expect me to keep house, work for the circus, and 'get it on' with you."He thought it over. "I guess that's about the size of it.
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Kiss an Angel
She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
{Calpurnia)"My mother…she’s desperate for a daughter she can dress like a porcelain doll. Sadly, I shall never be such a child. How I long for my sister to come out and distract the countess from my person."He joined her on the bench, asking, "How old is your sister?""Eight," she said, mournfully."Ah. Not ideal.""An understatement." She looked up at the star-filled sky. "No, I shall be long on the shelf by the time she makes her debut.""What makes you so certain you’re shelf-bound?"She cast him a sidelong glance. "While I appreciate your chivalry, my lord, your feigned ignorance insults us both." When he failed to reply, she stared down at her hands, and replied, "My choices are rather limited.""How so?""I seem able to have my pick of the impoverished, the aged, and the deadly dull.
— Sarah MacLean, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake
Never marry who doesn't love you,If you do it, your ordeal will turn into hell.
— Miguel Ángel Sáez Gutiérrez «Marino», Zori 1ª Parte
My first wife said, 'It's either thatguitar or me,' you know -- and I giveyou three guesses which one went.
— Jeff Beck
I ate all of my husbands. First I ate their love, then their will, then their despair, and then I made pies of their bodies - and those bodies were so dear to me!
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
It was a strange thing, to still be in love with your wife and to not know if you liked her. What would happen when this was all over? Could you forgive someone if she hurt you and the people you love, if she truly believed she was only trying to help?I had filed for divorce, but that wasn't what I really wanted. What I really wanted was for all of us to go back two years, and start over. Had I ever really told her that?
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
Sex isn't all that important, but it is when you love someone very much.
— Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story
Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautiful machines. This makes us the greatest country in the world. Unemployment is a myth. Dissatisfaction is a fable. In preparatory school America is beautiful. It is the gem of the ocean and it is too bad. It is bad because people believe it all. Because they become indifferent. Because they marry and reproduce and vote and they know nothing.
— John Cheever
Soon he was online every night until one or two a.m. Often he would wake up at three of four a.m. and go back online. He would shut down the computer screen when I walked in. In the past, he used to take the laptop to bed with him and we would both be on our laptops, hips touching. He stopped doing that, slipping off to his office instead and closing the door even when A was asleep. He started closing doors behind him. I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?
— H.L. Mencken
Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.
— Amy Bloom
When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience- if only he had had them both at once- would surely have seen them both through.
— Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is thread, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.
— Simone Signoret
Annabelle, what happened to you?” Lillian asked the next morning. “You look dreadful. Why aren’t you wearing your riding habit? I thought you were going to try out the jumping course this morning. And why did you disappearso suddenly last night? It’s not like you to simply vanish without saying—”“I didn’t have a choice in the matter,” Annabelle said testily, folding her fingers around the delicate bowl of a porcelain teacup. Looking pale and exhausted, her blue eyes ringed with dark shadows, she swallowed a mouthful of heavily sweetened tea before continuing. “It was that blasted perfume of yours—as soon as he caught one whiff of it, he went berserk.”Shocked, Lillian tried to take in the information, her stomach plummeting. “It… it had an effect on Westcliff, then?” she managed to ask.“Good Lord, not Lord Westcliff.” Annabelle rubbed her weary eyes. “He couldn’t have cared less what I smelled like. It was my husband who went completely mad. After he caught the scent of that stuff, he dragged me up to our room and…well, suffice it to say, Mr. Hunt kept me awake all night. All night ,” she repeated in sullen emphasis, and drank deeply of the tea.“Doing what?” Daisy asked blankly.Lillian, who was feeling a rush of relief that Lord Westcliff had not been attracted to Annabelle while shewas wearing the perfume, gave her younger sister a derisive glance. “What do you think they were doing? Playing a few hands of Find-the-Lady?
— Lisa Kleypas, It Happened One Autumn
I want to own this transition, not to simply swallow the shame of it entire. I will push for every little irony.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Ethan: "You think I'm a hero?"Beth: "Yes."Ethan: "But lousy husband material?" Like that really mattered to him.Beth: "Don't sweat it. So was Superman.
— Lucy Monroe, Satisfaction Guaranteed
When a girl marries, she exchanges the attention of many men for the inattention of one.
— Helen Rowland
The thrill of falling in love is often the thrill of being loved
—  the thrill of marriage is the thrill of loving someone for the rest of your life. Each day - and year - that passes is a triumph of this act of loving.
Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that's what I like about you most. Your anger.
— Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Her chances of a decent marriage were about to be dashed-and all because of a ferret.
— Lisa Kleypas, Tempt Me at Twilight
I married beneath me. All women do.
— Nancy Astor
I've never really had any luck with women in my life. Well, at first I was fairly lucky. Then all of a sudden, they all thought they had to get married for some reason. And not to me. It's especially strange, because I almost always fell in love with the very smart girls. Even that didn't help matters. I don't see how any intelligent person could seriously want to get married.
— Max Frei, The Stranger
She suggested we 'crouch' buck nekkid on the bed or a dresser and leap out at him from the shadows.Now, my husband can't see all that well in the dark. I think if he comes into a darkened bedroom and finds 140 pounds of cellulite hurtling through space at him, he's going to run like the devil.
— Celia Rivenbark, Bless Your Heart, Tramp: And Other Southern Endearments
Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig--and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you're the only person in the room.
— Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church - read on - and give his life for her (Eph. V, 25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable. For the Church has not beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man's marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence. As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs. He is a King Cophetua who after twenty years still hopes that the beggar-girl will one day learn to speak the truth and wash behind her ears.
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
No measure of time with you will be long enough, but we'll start with forever.
— Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn
It is a splendid thing to think that the woman you really love will never grow old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, through the mask of years, if you really love her, you will always see the face you loved and won. And a woman who really loves a man does not see that he grows old; he is not decrepit to her; he does not tremble; he is not old; she always sees the same gallant gentleman who won her hand and heart. I like to think of it in that way; I like to think that love is eternal. And to love in that way and then go down the hill of life together, and as you go down, hear, perhaps, the laughter of grandchildren, while the birds of joy and love sing once more in the leafless branches of the tree of age.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child