c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Don't allow yourself to get into the habit of dressing carelessly when there is 'only' your husband to see you. Depend upon it he has no use for faded tea-gowns and badly dressed hair, and he abhors the sight of curling pins as much as other men do. He is a man after all, and if his wife does not take the trouble to charm him, there are plenty of other women who will.
— Blanche Ebbutt, Don'ts for Wives
I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband.It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast andcoffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he'd left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he'd expect a big dinner, and I'd spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted. This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.
— Sylvia Plath
Marriage is very important. Marrying a girl is the most important thing a man can do. Never mind business or politics or sport or any of that, there's nothing so vital to the world as a man marrying a woman. That's where we get our children from, that's how the human race goes forward. And if it's too late for children, there's the companionship of a safe and trusted person.
— Frank Delaney, The Matchmaker of Kenmare
You have worked to build me what I asked for all the days of our lives. Even when the task seemed impossible, even when it would have been easier to give it up, you did not, but kept on going. You have kept me warm in winter, and cool in summer. You have laughed with me, and you have cried. You have given me children who are almost, but not quite, my greatest joy.For the greatest joy of all is the way you held my wish in the center of your heart thorough all the days of our lives. That is where the room that you have built for me lies. Just as the room I built for you lies within mine. And in this way have all our wishes been granted. Together, we have made ourselves a home.
— Cameron Dokey, Golden:  A Retelling of Rapunzel
I know not which lives more unnatural lives, obeying husbands, or commanding wives.
— Benjamin Franklin
Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?""They're beanies.""They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn.""But I'm not in Brooklyn.""But you're still a Brooklynite.""I wouldn't want that to get around, Annie.""You don't mean that, Carl.""Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie.""Why?""When in Rome do as the Romans do.""Do they call them beanies in Rome?" she asked artlessly."This is the silliest conversation...
— Betty  Smith, Joy in the Morning
It is within the bonds of marriage that I, for one, found a greater freedom to be and to become and to share myself thatn I can imaine ever having found in any other kind of relationship.
— Frederick Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation
What's it like? Being married?Cold feet. Middle of the night you're sleeping, suddenly, wham, you've got ice cold feet warming themselves on the back of your legs.
— Alan Brennert, Moloka'i
Think of your husband as a house. You are allowed to give him a fresh coat of paint and change out the furniture now and then. But if you're constantly trying to pour a new foundation or replace the roof, you're in serious trouble.
— Peter Scott, There's a Spouse in My House: A Humorous Journey Through the First Years of Marriage
People told me not to get married; I didn´t listen. No one ever listens, it seems to me now. Perhaps people should stop trying to communicate. N was not a communicator; early on, I´d insisted on communication. Now I see his point acutely. I would love to have him back to not communicate with me. I would never ask for communication again, I would simply go elsewhere for the deep fish. Also, I´m not at all sure I want to hear what he has to say in this new vista. This works out well.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
...sometimes I do actually forget that the person to whom I owe that love is a real person, complete in himself, not someone who should make do with some rather diffuse emotion which gradually resigns itself to its own fatal vagueness, as if that were a fate against which there were no possible appeal...
— José Saramago
There are trials and mistakes and even wars along the path of marriage.
— Patti Callahan Henry, Between The Tides
It took nearly a year to finish the ever-changing [marriage candidates] list, with the assistance of his sister and his aging spinster aunt, who lorded over their affairs as the self-appointed voice of cultivated reason. During this time, Gabriel struggled to convince straight-from-Oxford Tristan that he must marry, produce heirs, and maintain the family dukedom for Gabriel himself wouldn't marry. He knew he simply did not have the compulsion to inflict that sort of aggravation on a woman.
— Olivia Parker, At the Bride Hunt Ball
William: My brother has an appreciation of art, so I imagine the woman he chooses must be beautiful beyond the pale. Once he outgrows his current predilection with painting and accepts his family responsibilities, he'll need a wife who can move throughout society. She must have proper carriage and be a witty conversationalist. She should have excellent bloodlines as well, in the event of offspring.Emma: With the possible exception of a witty conversationalist, I believe you've described all the attributes of a racehorse.
— Donna MacMeans, The Education of Mrs. Brimley
If you wanted to kidnap someone, what would you use?" she asked Amit. They were lying in bed, with the lights off. To knock them unconscious. So that you could drag them into the back of your van."Chloroform, I guess."Really?" She brightened. It made her happy that the person she was marrying would commit crimes in the same way as she would.
— Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Ms. Hempel Chronicles
Should I tell her of the moments of joy, the intense pleasure of holding the hand of the one you love and wishing that time would stand still?
— Kelly Long, Lilly's Wedding Quilt
In any relationship, there will be frightening spells in which your feelings of love dry up. And when that happens you must remember that the essence of marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love. So what do you do? You do the acts of love, despite your lack of feeling. You may not feel tender, sympathetic, and eager to please, but in your actions you must BE tender, understanding, forgiving and helpful. And, if you do that, as time goes on you will not only get through the dry spells, but they will become less frequent and deep, and you will become more constant in your feelings. This is what can happen if you decide to love.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
Sometimes the one thing you need for growth is the one thing you are afraid to do.
— Shannon L. Alder
Has no one ever told you that it is the height of impropriety to kiss any gentleman, unless you have the intention of accompanying him immediately to the altar?
— Georgette Heyer, Black Sheep
Marriage isn't for the weak or lazy. It's work, and it should be. What would be the point otherwise?
— J.D. Robb, Portrait in Death
..but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Them lady poets must not marry, pal . . . It is a true error to marry with poets / or to be by them.
— John Berryman, The Dream Songs
Because the night you asked me,the small scar of the quarter moonhad healed - the moon was whole again;because life seemed so short;because life stretched out before melike the halls of a nightmare;because I knew exactly what I wanted;because I knew exactly nothing;because I shed my childhood with my clothes -they both had years of wear in them;because your eyes were darker than my father's;because my father said I could do better;because I wanted badly to say no;because Stanly Kowalski shouted "Stella...;"because you were a door I could slam shut;because endings are written before beginnings;because I knew that after twenty yearsyou'd bring the plants inside for winterand make a jungle we'd sleep in naked;because I had free will;because everything is ordained;I said yes.
— Linda Pastan
And it feels good to feel young with you, and at the same time to grow old with you. And it's all those things together at the same moment.
— Dave Isay, All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps
She took comfort in the familiarity of his smell, knowing that if she lost all her possessions and her home, at least she would have her family.
— Sage Steadman, Upon Destiny's Song
Every girl would like to marry a rich husband. I did twice. But what divides girls into two groups is this question - do you first think of money and then love, or vice versa?
— Hedy Lamarr
Rocky, if I’ve learned anything from my train wreck of a marriage, it’s that no one can take care of me better than I can.
— Starr Ambrose, Thieves Like Us
Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.
— Edith Wharton
... it is quite funny really when you think that probably I would have married him if he'd been at all clever about it. But instead of putting it to me as a sensible business proposition he would drag in all this talk about love the whole time, and I simply can't bear those showerings of sentimentality. Otherwise I should most likely have married him ages ago.
— Nancy Mitford, Christmas Pudding
It's as important to marry the right life as it is the right person.
— Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver
But as his wife - at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked - forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital - this would be unendurable.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Marriage is one sweet way in which one can taste heaven on earth. Similarly, I can also become hell on earth.
— Israelmore Ayivor
My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe.
— Jimmy Durante
I'd be staring at you and thinking, I should ask, I should ask, I should ask; do you want to be in a stable monogamous relationship for the rest of your life?
— Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue
I am not a twenty-two-year-old boy; I am not a besotted fool. If you think to jilt me, think again. For I will not turn tail and run the other way as he did, oh no. I will find you, and I will drag you to the altar on your back if need be, no matter how you might be screaming. No matter how scandalous it might be.
— Brenda Joyce, Scandalous Love
Many women to whom I have preached the doctrine of freedom have weakly replied, 'But who is to support the children?' It seems to me that if the marriage ceremony is needed as a protection to insure the enforced support of children, then you are marrying a man who, you suspect, would under certain conditions, refuse to support his children, and it is a pretty low-down proposition. For you are marrying a man whom you already suspect of being a villain. But I have not so poor an opinion of men that I believe the greater percentage of them to be such low specimens of humanity.
— Isadora  Duncan, My Life
She did understand, or at least she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive, and did forgive. But he can't have found living with her forgiveness all that easy. Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, porridge with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast. He would have been helpless against it, for how can you repudiate something that is never spoken? She resented, too, the nurse, or the many nurses, who had attended my father in the various hospitals. She wished him to owe his recovery to her alone—to her care, to her tireless devotion. That is the other side of selflessness: its tyranny.
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
For me, marriage should be about partnership. How can you love someone you have to take care of like a child all the time? A wife is supposed to be a partner, and yes partners help each other when they need it, but they are supposed to be together because they want to in my book, not because one needs the other.
— Lynsay Sands, A Quick Bite
In all things in this life, we are told "It's okay if you don't make it the first time!", "It's fine if you don't get it right the first time, just try again and again!" We are told this in learning how to ride a bike, in learning how to bake a cake, in solving our math equations...in everything. Except marriage. Why are we all expected to get such an enormous and weighty thing right, the very first time, and if we don't we're considered as failures? I beg to differ! This is a stupidity!
— C. JoyBell C.
As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other’s angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
... there is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means.
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
The youngest one,” she interrupted. “The youngest son, I mean. The one who is unmarried.”“I know who he is.”“Very well, then. What is wrong with him?” At that she cocked her head to the side and waited expectantly.He thought for a moment. “Nothing.”“You—wait.” She blinked. “Nothing?”He shook his head, then shifted his weight a little; his good foot was beginning to fall asleep. “Nothing comes immediately to mind.” It was true. She could do a good deal worse than Gregory Bridgerton.“Really?” she asked suspiciously. “You find nothing at all objectionable about him.”Marcus pretended to think about this a bit longer. Clearly he was supposed to be playing a role here, probably that of the villain. Or if not that, then the grumpy old man. “I suppose he’s a bit young,” he said.
— Julia Quinn, Just Like Heaven
I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight—that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
...it seemed marriage by its very design was meant to seek out love and destroy it.
— Kelly O'Connor McNees, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott
A witty vicar once said that a good marriage is like a pair of scissors with the couple inseparable joined, often moving in opposite directions, yet always destroying anyone who comes between them. The trick is for the blades to learn to work smoothly together, so as not to cut each other.
— Mary Jo  Putney
There is no such thing as a perfect match. There are only somewhat good and somewhat bad matches. A couple are like two pebbles that are next to each other on a beach. They will have rough edges and rub each other the wrong way initially. But as they spend time together and the waves pound them, the edges rub off and they will seem made for each other.
— Farahad Zama, The Many Conditions of Love
I got married because I fell in love with this woman. I had a baby with her because we wanted to have children. But that's not because of some philosophical ideal at all, no.
— Ewan McGregor
I consider marriage a very important institution, but it is important when and if two people have found the person with whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives—a question of which no man or woman can be automatically certain. When one is certain that one’s choice is final, then marriage is, of course, a desirable state. But this does not mean that any relationship based on less than total certainty is improper. I think the question of an affair or a marriage depends on the knowledge and the position of the two persons involved and should be left up to them. Either is moral, provided only that both parties take the relationship seriously and that it is based on values.
— Ayn Rand
What about me?” Wes snapped. “Don’t I get a vote?”Daniel shook his head. “She’s willing and you’re breathing. I pronounce you man and wife.
— Jodi Thomas, To Kiss a Texan
Colt, you’re a cop. I’m fairly certain you realize what you are proposing is illegal. As in bigamy.”He laughed. “You don’t legally marry us both. Just one of us. Then the three of us make our own private vows.”“Fine,” she leaned back and gave him a smug look as if expecting her next question to jar some sense into them. “Who am I going to legally marry?”He grinned at her transparency. Obviously, she thought this was going to be a sticking point. “We’ll arm wrestle to decide that.
— Mari Carr, Tequila Truth
That's the mistake people make - always searching for the perfect match, when they would be just as happy if they settled for somebody reasonably good.
— Farahad Zama, The Marriage Bureau for Rich People
Allow me to spell it out for you,” I said calmly. “I am still absolutely terrified of marriage, but I would marry you tonight if it was a way for me to prove how much I believe that you’re the guy for me.
— Monica Alexander, Just Watch the Fireworks
I had this whole plan when I graduated high school: I was going to go to college, date a few guys, and then meet THE guy at the end of my freshman year, maybe at the beginning of my sophomore year. We'd be engaged by graduation and married the next year. And then, after some traveling, we'd start our family. Four kids, three years apart. I wanted to be done by the time I was 35.
— Rainbow Rowell, Attachments
You need to play to your strengths as a couple. Sharing is really awesome when you're messing around with Play-Doh in kindergarten. It's less awesome when you're adults and one of you is good at something and the other person sucks at it. So just let the more skilled person take the reins.
— Peter Scott, There's a Spouse in My House: A Humorous Journey Through the First Years of Marriage
I'm getting stale. I always do this time of year. I keep my nose to the grindestone and put in long hours and rustle up good meals and do all the chores and run errands and get along with people -- and have a fine time doing it and enjoy life. Then I realize, bang, that I'm tired and I don't want to wait on my family for a while and I wish I could go away somewhere and have people wait on me hand and foot, and dress up and go to restaurants and the theater and act like a woman of the world. I feel as if I'd been swallowed up whole by all these powerful DeVotos and I'd like to be me for a while with somebody who never heard the name.
— Joan Reardon, As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto: Food, Friendship, and the Making of a Masterpiece
This woman lawyer said the best men wanted to be pure for their wives, and even if they weren't pure, they wanted to be the ones to teach their wives about sex. Of course they would try to persuade a girl to have sex and say they would marry her later, but assoon as she gave in, they would lose all respect for her and start saying that if she did that with them she would do that with other men and they would end up by making her lifemiserable.
— Sylvia Plath
Never marry a person who is not a friend of your excitement.
— Nathaniel Branden, The Psychology of Romantic Love
Before taking her into the library, my wife told me she was an old friend in a marriage crisis. A fatuous lie; at her age there are no crises left in marriage, only acceptance and extraction. (General Villiers)
— Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity
Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she expressed uncertainty,--how could he affect her as a lover? The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
I think: I would like to take N back to a story right now, like a rake.  I would say, "Oh, this rake is uneven. Do you have any where the tines go straight across?" I would like to do a straight exchange. But there are things that cannot be returned. Errant husbands are one of them. Wives are not. Wives can be exchanged; I have always known this.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Mutuality is accomplished by two whole persons; and if each partner truly intends to be but the fraction of a relationship (thinking my whole makes up half of us) he or she will soon discover that these halves do not fit perfectly together. The mathematics can work only if each subtracts something of himself or herself, shears it off, and lays it aside forever. There will come, then, a moment of shock when one spouse realizes, ‘you won’t want the whole of me? Not the whole of me, but only a part of me, makes up the whole of us?” P 45
— Walter Wangerin Jr., As For Me And My House: Crafting Your Marriage To Last
In 1895 Lady Londonberry commented acidly on a bridegroom who had 'married the 10,000 a year as well as the lady.
— Pamela Horn, Life As A Victorian Lady
Don't expect to know your husband inside and out within a month of marriage. For a long time you will be making discoveries
—  file them for future reference.
Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics.
— Samuel Butler
Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
All things being equal, why not be married to a rich man? (Somewhere, Hannah thinks, there must be a needlepoint pillow asking this very question in a cleverer way.)
— Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams
She hoped that her baby was happy and would be waiting for her when she herself left Botswana and went to heaven. Would Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni get round to naming a wedding date before then? She hoped so, although he certainly seemed to be taking his time. Perhaps they could get married in heaven, if he left it too late. That would certainly be cheaper.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Kalahari Typing School for Men
A fit encomium for marital bliss," Beaumont said, putting down his knife and fork. "Dancing to a tune one neither likes nor understands, with a partner who thinks you a cadaver.
— Eloisa James, Desperate Duchesses
In every marriage more than a week old there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find and continue to find grounds for marriage.
— Robert  Anderson
A piece of advice his father had given him surfaced in Edgar's mind. Sometimes, he had said, it's better just to keep quiet and think with your heart.
— Sharan Newman, The Devil's Door
Because you are not scared to admit out loud that you're afraid. Or to ask questions... and because you know that your husband is in pain, you will go to him and not threaten his ability to provide with words that cut and burn in another's mind forever, until death do you apart. Because you will tell him that its right for him to change profession and that it is not his fault that the shoe he first brought to your marriage no longer fits. You'll say that you don't care what your parents think , or people think, and material things can always be replaced, but not him. And because you will have the patience and wisdom to understand everything that he is afraid of, you'll kiss his boo-boos instead of rubbing salt in the wounds of his failures...
— Leslie Esdaile, Love Notes
It is possible, he thought, to be completely happy in marriage--though you must be willing to hold on when your ship was lost at sea and there was no guarantee of rescue.
— Adam Ross, Mr. Peanut
Seven of those days were pretty good. The eighth day was the bad one.
— Dennis Hopper
Tired as I was of conflict, I felt that I must not shrink from the fight, nor abandon in cowardice the attempt to prove, as no theories could ever satisfactorily prove without examples, that marriage and motherhood need never tame the mind, nor swamp and undermine ability and training, nor trammel and domesticise political perception and social judgement. Today, as never before, it was urgent for individual women to show that life was enriched, mentally and spiritually as well as physically and socially, by marriage and children; that these experiences rendered the woman who accepted them the more and not the less able to take the world's pulse, to estimate its tendencies, to play some definite, hard-headed, hard-working part in furthering the constructive ends of a political civilisation
— Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
I told him I had, perhaps, different notions of matrimony from what the received custom had given us of it; that I thought a woman was a free agent as well as a man, and was born free, and, could she manage herself suitably, might enjoy that liberty to as much purpose as the men do; that the laws of matrimony were indeed otherwise, and mankind at this time acted quite upon other principles, and those such that a woman gave herself entirely away from herself, in marriage, and capitulated, only to be, at best, but an upper servant, and from the time she took the man she was no better or worse than the servant among the Israelites, who had his ears bored—that is, nailed to the door-post—who by that act gave himself up to be a servant during life; that the very nature of the marriage contract was, in short, nothing but giving up liberty, estate, authority, and everything to the man, and the woman was indeed a mere woman ever after—that is to say, a slave.
— Daniel Defoe
You may be married to a star, but that doesn't mean they'll treat you like one.
— Jess C. Scott, I'm Pretty
You can only afford to be generous if you actually have some money in the bank to give. In the same way, if your only source of love and meaning is your spouse, then anytime he or she fails you, it will not just cause grief but a psychological cataclysm. If, however, you know something of the work of the Spirit in your life, you have enough love "in the bank" to be generous to your spouse even when you are not getting much affection or kindness at the moment.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
Like most girls, her imagination carried her just as far as the altar and no further.
— Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
But playing your music as loud as you want and coming home drunk aren't real life. Real life, it turns out, is diapers and lawnmowers, decks that need painting, a wife that needs to be listened to, kids that need to be taught right from wrong, a checkbook, an oil change, a sunset behind a mountain, laughter at a kitchen table, too much wine, a chipped tooth, and a screaming child.
— Donald Miller, To Own a Dragon: Reflections on Growing Up Without a Father
Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.
— John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy
She was probably the girl I loved the most of all my girlfriends, but also the toughest one to make things work out with. If I had put that much effort into any of my other relationships, I'd be married with five kids now.
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
And believe me, darling, there's no man more faithful than a reformed playboy. They make far better husbands than men who haven't had time to sow their wild oats before they marry, so go off the rails at about forty-five because they suddenly realise that they've missed out on life and if they don't hurry up it's going to be too late.
— Sally Wentworth, Flying High
It’s important to have a husband that lives and believes the same way you do. Otherwise, you’re asking for problems.
— J.E.B. Spredemann, An Unforgivable Secret
And of course I didn't know who would marry me now that I'd been where I had been. I didn't know at all.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
I trust my wife's judgement... That's what Philippe says about Granny, just before all hell breaks loose.
— Deborah Harkness, Shadow of Night
People stand in front of an officiant and say 'I do' but that shouldn't mean 'I'm done' when comes to putting time and effort to grow their relationship.
— Beth Ehemann, Room for More
I don’t respect my husband because he is the man and I am the woman, and it’s my “place” to submit to him. I respect Dan because he is a good person, and because he has made me a better person too.
— Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood
They were partners. She would always make impulsive decisions and he would make slow, reasoned ones. He would always be a little terrified that she would look at him with the scorn he saw in his mother's eyes. And she would always be a little terrified that he would look at her and not love her enough.In short, they were made for each other.
— Eloisa James, When the Duke Returns
Meanwhile, Susan looked carefully into each of our faces. She was actually waiting for us to answer, to give reasons why people fall in love and get married. Nobody knows, I wanted to say. Nobody really knows. But that doesn't mean you're allowed to not do it.
— Rebecca    Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories
I’m married, honey. My social life consists of work, church, taxiing the kids around and trying to schedule sex with my husband at least once a month.
— Marilyn Pappano, Passion to Die For
Marriage is a partnership, not a corporate venture.
— Sophie Page, To Marry a Prince
Nick and I, we sometimes laugh, laugh out loud, at the horrible things women make their husbands do to prove their love. The pointless tasks, the myriad sacrifices, the endless small surrenders. We call these men the dancing monkeys. Nick will come home, sweaty and salty and beer-loose from a day at the ballpark,and I’ll curl up in his lap, ask him about the game, ask him if his friend Jack had a good time, and he’ll say, ‘Oh, he came down with a case of the dancing monkeys – poor Jennifer was having a “real stressful week” and really needed him at home.’ Or his buddy at work, who can’t go out for drinks because his girlfriend really needs him to stop by some bistro where she is having dinner with a friend from out of town. So they can finally meet. And so she can show how obedient her monkey is: He comes when I call, and look how well groomed! Wear this, don’t wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely, give up the things you love for me, so I will have proof that you love me best. It’s the female pissing contest – as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: ‘Ohhh, that’s so sweet.’ I am happy not to be in that club. I don’t partake, I don’t get off on emotional coercion, on forcing Nick to play some happy-hubby role – the shrugging, cheerful, dutiful taking out the trash, honey! role. Every wife’s dream man, the counterpoint to every man’s fantasy of the sweet, hot, laid-back woman who loves sex and a stiff drink. I like to think I am confident and secure and mature enough to know Nick loves me without him constantly proving it. I don’t need pathetic dancing-monkey scenarios to repeat to my friends, I am content with letting him be himself. I don’t know why women find that so hard.
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
From flophouse bedTo poorhouse bread,all outhouse sorrow:I thee wed.
— Roman Payne
I like the way we talk to each other. It feels honest. It was different with Manuel. One of us always had to win. Husbands and wives do that, worry more about being right than being truthful.
— Richard Lange
Revolution in Love’. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Do you want free love as against bourgeois marriage, or monogamy as against bourgeois promiscuity?
— Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere
There's a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more.
— Dave Grohl
A man's world is different from a woman's world and a man's emotions are different from a woman's emotions and only marriage can bring the two different sets of emotions together properly.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
... the story of my marriage, which is the great joy and astonishment of my life, is too much like a fairy tale, the German kind, unsweetened by Disney.
— Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
And I’m sorry,” Big Earrings said, “But how is some course going to teach them how marriage works? I’ve been married three times, and I haven’t figured it out yet.” She snorted. “I figured out how to call a lawyer, though.
— Kristin Walker, A Match Made in High School
Inside marriage, those feelings are pure. God wouldn't order us to be fruitful and multiply if He didn't want us to share intimacy. It fosters a special closeness.
— Cathy Marie Hake, Serendipity
how shall I get through the months or years of my future life, in company with that man -- my greatest enemy -- for none could injure me as he has done? Oh! when I think how fondly, how foolishly I have loved him, how madly I have trusted him, how constantly I have laboured, and studied, and prayed, and struggled for his advantage, and how cruelly he has trampled on my love, betrayed my trust, scorned my prayers and tears, and efforts for his preservation --crushed my hopes, destroyed my youth's best feelings, and doomed me to a life of hopeless misery -- as far as man can do it -- it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband -- I HATE him! The word stares me in the face like a guilty confession, but it is true: I hate him -- I hate him!
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
A young man married is a man that's marred.
— William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well
Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an apalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle, - a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium. Edna vaguely wondered what she meant by "life's delirium." It had crossed her thought like some unsought, extraneous impression.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Sex is not about genitalia. It’s about relationship. When God said ‘the two shall become one flesh,’ he didn’t mean it only physically.
— Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex: And You Thought Bad Girls Have All the Fun
JACKThat is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.ALGERNONThen your wife will. You don't seem to realize, that in married life three is company and two is none.JACKThat, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.ALGERNONYes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Someone once said that marriage is like standing in a corridor lined with doors. You go off through your door, he goes through his, but at the end of the day you have to come back to the corridor, touch base, hold hands, because through every door are more doors, and beyond them, more again, and if you both go through too many without coming back to the corridor, you may never find your way back.
— Carrie Adams, The Godmother
So many television marriages -that playing out of lives against a background of the tube.Instead of two lives filing the room,There are their two lives and the eleven o'clock news withConstant commercial interruption.Instead of what you say and what I say.You don't laugh with me;I don't laugh with you.All the wit comes pouring out of the tube.And we laugh at it together.The more we avoid talkingthe more passive the relationship becomes.Television permits us to walk through lifewith minor speaking parts.And the more we fail to speak,the more difficult speaking becomes
— Lois Wyse, Lovetalk; how to say what you mean to someone you love
I had seen the light, come to believe that a wedding should be about a feeling between two people, not a show for the masses...It was a magical, romantic evening, and although I occasionally wish I had worn a slightly fancier dress, and that Nick and I had danced on our wedding night, I have no real regrets about the way we chose to do things.
— Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter
Taking up marriage is a good excuse for taking up cursing."These is my words
— Nancey E. Turner
Marriage is a necessary evil
— Amit Abraham
His eyes ignited into a color found only in the heart of the sun. ‘‘Yes?’’‘‘Yes, already. I’ll marry you. Yes. Hell, yes. What am I, stupid?
— Rachel Caine, Gale Force
Well married, a man is winged—ill-matched, he is shackled.
— Henry Ward Beecher, Norwood: or, Village life in New England
The question was whether James would love me if I was someone else.
— Barbara Delinsky, Escape
Not all marriages are made in heaven. Some, probably most, are constructed here on earth for any number of reason.
— Farahad Zama, The Wedding Wallah
Oh! How many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding-ring!
— Colley Cibber, The Double Gallant
The last time I was this confused I was watching a Fassbinder film.
— Ken  O'Neill, The Marrying Kind
The importance of falling in love lies not in how it feels, but in what it perceives. And as always with our feelings, the key moral issue is how truthful the perception is... Falling in love is a sign that this might be someone with whom you could make a good marriage. Still, it's not enough, because the feeling is not always as perceptive as it should be... So falling in love is not the basis for a good marriage. It's not even a requirement. Marriage does not depend on falling in love; it depends on the promises you make to each other in your wedding vows and then spend a lifetime keeping. As many people have pointed out, you can't promise how you'll feel. But you can promise to cultivate a virtue, such as the virtue of love.
— Phillip Cary, Good News for Anxious Christians: Ten Practical Things You Don't Have to Do
This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong artsMake of so noble individual partsOne fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.
— John Donne, Complete Poems
An emptiness rules at its core, a rottenness, a silence when one of you retires to bed without saying good night, when you eat together without conversation, when the phone's passed wordlessly to the other. An emptiness when every night you lie in the double bed, restlessly awake, astounded at how closely hate can nudge against love, can wind around it sinuously like a cat. An emptiness when you realize that the loneliest you've ever been is within a marriage, as a wife.
— Nikki Gemmell, The Bride Stripped Bare
Leaning against my car after changing the oil,I hold my black hands out and stare into themas if they were the faces of my children lookingat the winter moon and thinking of the snowthat will erase everything before they wake. In the garage, my wife comes behind meand slides her hands beneath my soiled shirt.Pressing her face between my shoulder blades,she mumbles something, and soon we are laughing,wrestling like children among piles of old rags,towels that unravel endlessly, torn sheets,work shirts from twenty years ago when I stoodin the door of a machine shop, grease blackened,and Kansas lay before me blazing with new snow,a future of flat land, white skies, and sunlight.After making love, we lie on the abandonedmattress and stare at our pale winter bodiessprawling in the half-light. She touches her belly,the scar of our last child, and the black printsof my hand along her hips and thighs.
— B.H. Fairchild
I pay very little regard," said Mrs. Grant, "to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.
— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
He knew himself well enough to know his own faults. Impatient and judgmental and stubborn and often too quick to act: he would try never to crush her, never to overwhelm her or bend her to his will, but if she did not demand only the best from him, it would happen. It might happen. Possibly.
— Meredith Duran, Wicked Becomes You
My friend Kate once went to a concert of Mongolian throat singers who were traveling through New York City on a rare world tour. Although she couldn't understand the words to their songs, she found the music almost unbearably sad. After the concert, Kate approached the lead Mongolian singer and asked, "What are your songs about?" He replied, "Our songs are about the same things that everyone else's songs are about: lost love, and somebody stole your fastest horse.
— Elizabeth Gilbert
They say marriages work better if you don't know the person too well. Maybe we should stop writing each other posthaste.
— Bill Callahan, Letters to Emma Bowlcut
The wedding was in Monterey, a sombre boding ceremony in a little Protestant chapel. The church had so often seen two ripe bodies die by the process of marriage that it seemed to celebrate a mystic double death with its ritual.
— John Steinbeck, To a God Unknown
You don't do so well with marriage. I don't think you've begun to realize all there is for you to love. And I know you better than anyone & here's what I know about you: You have so much love to give! But I feel like you're all the time digging in the tomato bin, saying, "Where are the apples?
— Elizabeth Berg
Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits. ... We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children .... [p. 15]
— Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing
Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had long suspected him of being unfaithful to her and was looking the other way. It even seemed to him that she, a worn-out, aged, no longer beautiful woman, not remarkable for anything, simple, merely a kind mother of a family, ought in all fairness to be indulgent. It turned out to be quite the opposite.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I know that many, if not most, women would have a problem with my acceptance of what happened with Lara.  The reality is I shall always be grateful to Lara for helping my husband when I could not do so. I couldn’t have chosen a better or kinder surrogate.
— Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker, The Fugitive's Doctor
But a good wife—a good unworldly woman—may really help a man, and keep him more independent.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
I'm married. And pregnant.
— Edan Lepucki
The next morning he drove the stranger’s car half way to the Registry of Motor Vehicles before he realized he could not apply for a driver’s license. He suddenly realized he had left his name at the prison.
— Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker, The Fugitive's Doctor
I have spent my whole life preparing to be William Wallace’s wife. The choices I make are defined by the person I am.“I am Mrs. William Victor Wallace. I am married to a federal felon whom I love unconditionally.I hold my head high, I take pride in my life and I walk this world without regret.I will be the perfect wife and my husband deserves nothing less.
— Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker, The Fugitive's Doctor
Philosophers have a long tradition of marrying stupid women, from Socrates on. They think it clever.
— Simon Gray, Otherwise Engaged
Eyyia?" said her husband, and Eliane bet Danel heard the mangling of her name as music."You sound like a marsh frog," she said, moving to stand before his chair.By the flickering light she saw him smile."Where have you been," she asked. "My dear. I've needed you so much.""Eyyia," he tried again, and stood up. His eyes were black hollows. They would always be hollows.He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief.
— Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan
Why is it that married people always say "Come in" when everything they do says "Get out"? They talk about their miseries and then ask you why you're unmarried.
— Malcolm Bradbury, The History Man
She had a vision of the two of them trapped on a tiny raft surrounded by miles of open water. It would be a kind of test, like surviving on a desert island--but that's what a marriage was, wasn't it? They would have to help each other or die.
— Stewart O'Nan, Songs for the Missing
For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves.
— Arnold Schwarzenegger
Not every woman is obsessed with shoes. But every woman is more obsessed with shoes than her husband is (although that's not too difficult to accomplish, since your husband has exactly two pairs--black shoes that are ten years old and barely broken in and sneakers that are so dirty they classify as a biohazard).
— Peter Scott, There's a Spouse in My House: A Humorous Journey Through the First Years of Marriage
Livvy noted there seemed some communal feeling between the married: any wife could be faintly rude to anyone else's husband.
— Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September
Those were the best days in the life of Tancredi and Angelica, lives later to be so variegated, so erring, against the inevitable background of sorrow. But that they did not know then; and they were pursuing a future which they deemed more concrete than it turned out to be, made of nothing but smoke and wind. When they were old and uselessly wise their thoughts would go back to those days with insistent regret; they had been days when desire was always present because it was always overcome, when many beds had been offered and refused, when the sensual urge, because restrained, had for one second been sublimated in renunciation, that is into real love.
— Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard