marriage Quotes

“Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?” “What’s that?” “Why, engaged to be married.” “No.” “Would you like to?” “I reckon so. I don’t know. What is it like?” “Like? Why it ain’t like anything. You only just tell a boy you won’t ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that’s all. Anybody can do it.”

“Do anything rather than marry without affection.”

“From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish distain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of the disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world on whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.”

“I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest -- blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine.”

“I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a pedestal of gold and to see the world worship the woman who is mine. What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. You mock at it for that. Ah! don’t mock. It is an irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. I become different from what you have known me to be. I am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane’s hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.”

“What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong?”

“My mom used to tell me that whatever you do, marry someone who loves you more than you love him.”

“Her tone was surprisingly tender, and probably she sensed how important he really was to her, because when he did die, two years further on, she went right after, and most of the people who knew her well agreed it was the sudden lack of opposition that undid her.”

“I think, sweetest child, that we should strike a bargain, you and I: if Westley wants to marry you still, bless you both. If, for reasons unpleasant to mention, his pride will not let him, then you will marry me, as planned, and be the Queen of Florin.”

“As for my husband, she said, he’s just that. My husband. I want that to be perfectly clear. Till death do us part. It’s final.”

“Our society teaches a woman at a certain age who is unmarried to see it as a deep personal failure. While a man at a certain age who is unmarried has not quite come around to making his pick. It is easy to say, ‘But women can just say no to all this.’ But the reality is more difficult, more complex. We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.”

“When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.”

“The French fashion — of the parents arranging their children’s future — was not accepted; it was condemned. The English fashion of the complete independence of girls was also not accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of matchmaking by the officer of intermediate persons was for some reason considered disgraceful; it was ridiculed by everyone, and by the princess herself. But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no one knew.”

“Why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, yet we don’t teach boys to do the same?”

“When woman work outside the home and share breadwinning duties, couples are more likely to stay together. In fact, the risk of divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework.”

“His ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned.”

“It was true; always had been. Friendships were like marriages in that way. Routines and patterns were poured early and hardened like cement.”

When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other’s ultimate comfort.

Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.

I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.

A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.

If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded, I thought it was to duty; but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred and all duty violated.

“I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him.”

“I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself.”

The more he talked the more he remembered, and then he thought to himself, “Those were happy days, but they may come again. Humpty Dumpty fell down stairs, and yet he married the princess; perhaps I may marry a princess too.” And the fir-tree thought of the pretty little birch-tree that grew in the forest, which was to him a real beautiful princess.

A wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young.

“When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”

“I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.”

“If she do bid me pack, I’ll give her thanks As though she bid me stay by her a week. If she deny to wed, I’ll crave the day When I shall ask the banns, and when be married.”

“How can I live without thee, how forgoe Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn’d?”

“And you do not seem to realize, dear Doctor, that by persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful; this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray.”

“Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which is never advisable.”

“You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel?”

“I really don’t see what is so romantic about proposing. One may be accepted - one usually is, I believe - and then the excitement is ended. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

“I am glad I have found this napkin. This was her first remembrance from the Moor. My wayward husband hath a hundred times Wooed me to steal it. But she so loves the token (For he conjured her she should ever keep it) That she reserves it evermore about her To kiss and talk to. I’ll have the work ta’en out And give ‘t Iago. What he will do with it Heaven knows, not I. I nothing but to please his fantasy.”

“How many wars have been put to rest in a prince’s bed? Few. A bride can bring a little peace, make spears silent for a time, but not long.”

“She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.”

“Thinking of Father’s scheme to marry me off, I said, “Sometimes people are forced into wedlock. If they must marry, perhaps it’s better if they must love.”

“So the very next morning Janie got ready to pick beans along with Tea Cake. There was a suppressed murmur when she picked up a basket and went to work. She was already getting to be a special case on the muck. It was generally assumed that she thought herself too good to work like the rest of the women and that Tea Cake “pomped her up tuh dat.” But all day long the romping and playing they carried on behind the boss’s back made her popular right away. It got the whole field to playing off and on. Then Tea Cake would help get supper afterwards.”

“Being twenty-nine, she was by Chinese standards well into old-maid territory, and even though her busybody relatives were perpetually trying to set her up, she had spent the better part of her twenties focused on getting through grad school, finishing her dissertation, and jump-starting her career in academia.”

“No matter how advanced we’ve become, there’s still tremendous pressure for girls to get married. Here, it doesn’t matter how successful a woman is professionally. She isn’t considered complete until she is married and has children.”

“Do you think I’m that simple-minded, that I think I’m the first woman whose husband ever had an affair? I’m not going anywhere, Michael. I’m standing right here, trying to work through this with you, for the sake of our marriage. For the sake of our son.”

“Eleanor had a long-held theory about men. She truly believed that for most men, all that talk of ‘being in love’ or ‘finding the right one’ was absolute nonsense. Marriage was purely a matter of timing, and whenever a man was finally done sowing his wild oats and ready to settle down, whichever girl happened to be there at the time would be the right one.”

“Astrid rushed to the door, greeting him with a long embrace. They had been married for more than four years now, but the sight of him still sent an electric spark through her, especially after they had been apart for awhile. He was just so startlingly attractive, especially today with his stubble and the rumpled shirt that she wanted to bury her face in—secretly, she loved the way he smelled after a long day.”

“Marry me, Ella,” he said again, the order a whisper now. “Say you’ll marry me.” Anyone else could have said yes or no. This wasn’t a royal command. Char probably had no idea he’d given an order.”

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.”

“Ah, I forgot, your husband is an exception. Mine is the general rule, and nothing ages a woman so rapidly as having married the general rule.”

“Ah, nowadays people marry as often as they can, don’t they? It is most fashionable.”

“It is the growth of the moral sense in women that makes marriage such a hopeless, one-sided institution.”

“In Austen’s world there was no such thing as a fling. Every romance was intended to lead to marriage.”

“She couldn’t have him, and there was no mistaking it. She could never be his wife. She could not steal herself back from Randa only to give herself away again—belong to another person, be answerable to another person, build her very being around another person. No matter how she loved him.”

“If she took Po as a husband, she would be making promises about a future she couldn’t yet see. For once she became his wife, she would be his wife forever. And no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know it was a gift. Her freedom wouldn’t be her own; it would be Po’s to give or withhold. That he would never withhold it made no difference. If it did not come from her, it wasn’t hers.”

“Lord Davit,” she said, “have you a wife?” He shook his head. “It’s the only thing my estate lacks, My Lady.” Katsa kept her eyes on her venison and carrots. “My uncle is very disappointed in me, because I never intend to marry.”

“The tears came so fast to Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes that the damp sleeve of her peignoir no longer served to dry them. She was holding the back of her chair with one hand; her loose sleeve had slipped almost to the shoulder of her uplifted arm. Turning, she thrust her face, steaming and wet, into the bend of her arm, and she went on crying there, not caring any longer to dry her face, her eyes, her arms. She could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life. They seemed never before to have weighed much against the abundance of her husband’s kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit and self-understood.”

“And she would be married, and to Giddon. She would be his wife, the lady of his house. She’d be charged with entertaining his wretched guests. Expected to hire and dismiss his servants, based on their skill with a pastry, or some such nonsense. Expected to bear him children, and stay at home to love them. She would go to bed at night, Giddon’s bed, and lie with a man who considered a scratch to her face an affront to his person. A man who thought himself her protector—her protector when she could outduel him if she used a toothpick to his sword.”

“Edna arose, cramped from lying so long and still in the hammock. She tottered up the steps, clutching feebly at the post before passing into the house. ‘Are you coming in, Leonce?’ she asked, turning her face toward her husband. ‘Yes, dear,’ he answered, with a glance following a misty puff of smoke. ‘Just as soon as I have finished my cigar.‘”

“‘I want to get married,” she said quietly. ‘And when I do, I want my father to walk me down the aisle and I want everyone I know to be there. I want the church bursting with people.’”

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries.

A good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust.

“In my mind, it was the first time that God had ever spoken directly to me, and I knew with certainty that I wasn’t going to disobey.”

“In front of God and everyone else, I’d promised my love and devotion. In sickness and in health, and I’d never felt so good about anything. It was, I remember, the most wonderful moment of my life.”

“Marriage can wait, education cannot.”

“Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse.”

“of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from ‘being in love’ — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God.”

“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. ”

“I did know his condition. Edward promised that he would change me himself whenever I wanted… just as long as I married him first.”

″ I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”

“It was nearly a year and a half ago that Jurgis had met Ona, at a horse fair a hundred miles from home. Jurgis had never expected to get married – he had laughed at it as a foolish trap for a man to walk into; but here, without ever having spoken a word to her, with no more than the exchange of half a dozen smiles, he found himself, purple in the face with embarrassment and terror, asking her parents to sell her to him for his wife – and offering his father’s two horses he had been sent to the fair to sell. But Ona’s father proved as a rock – the girl was yet a child, and he was a rich man, and his daughter was not to be had in that way. So Jurgis went home with a heavy heart, and that spring and summer toiled and tried hard to forget. In the fall, after the harvest was over, he saw that it would not do, and tramped the full fortnight’s journey that lay between him and Ona.”

“There is that about you which makes me think of one of the lords in the great house.” Wang Lung laughed loudly then and he said, “And am I always to look like a hind when we have enough and to spare?” But in his heart he was greatly pleased and for that day he was more kindly with her than he had been for many days.”

“We Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.”

“My father says a girl who fails to marry is veering from God’s plan - that’s what he’s got against college...”

“The chief component in the family as a system is the marriage. If the marriage is healthy and functional, the family will be healthy and functional. If the marriage is dysfunctional, then the family is dysfunctional.”

“People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.”

“‘You make it sound like she’s an accessory he needs to go with his outfit.’”

“Whatever one of us asked the other to do - it was assumed the asker would weigh all the consequences - the other would do.”

“If its half as good as the half we’ve known, heres Hail! to the rest of the road.”

“That death, so full of suffering for us both, suffering that still overwhelmed my life, was yet a severe mercy. A mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love.”

“Well, you see, there are some people whom one loves, and others whom it’s almost more fun to be with.”

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.”

“Emasculation happens in marriage as well. Women are often attracted to the wilder side of a man, but once having caught him they settle down to the task of domesticating him. Ironically, if he gives in he’ll resent her for it, and she in turn will wonder where the passion has gone.”

“But just think how it would be if every one else looked at things as you do – what would the world be like?”

“But if thou live, remember’d not to be, Die single and thine image dies with thee.”

“Look! . . . What a pity! A young fellow that age tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger than his wife.”

“Martha: I swear…if you existed I’d divorce you…I haven’t been able to see you for years…you’re a blank, a cipher.”

“Nick: I wouldn’t say there was any…particular passion between us, even at the beginning…of our marriage, I mean.”

“George (Long silence) : It will be better. Martha (Long silence): I don’t…know. George: It will be…maybe. […] Martha: Just…us? ”

“And here we come to an unpleasant subject which it will be well to pass over as quickly as possible. There was only one thing that worried Benjamin Button; his wife had ceased to attract him.”

“Marriage, each of them realized intuitively, was about compromise and forgiveness. It was about balance, where one person complemented the other.”

“But I wasn’t getting married. There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice – patched, retreaded, and approved for the road, I was trying to think of an appropriate one when Doctor Nolan appeared from nowhere and touched me on the shoulder.”

“Of course, our mothers were good friends. They had gone to school together and then both married their professors and settled down in the same town.”

“You were in love when you married her, and if you’re in love once, you can be in love again…You’re just not trying hard enough!”

“The two of you, there’s something uncanny about the way you two are with each other. I mean everything--the way you look at each other, the way she relaxes when you put your hand on her back, the way you both seem to know what the other is always thinking, it’s always struck me as extraordinary. That’s another reason I keep putting marriage off. I know I want something like what you two share, and I’m not sure I’ve found it yet. I’m not sure I ever will. And with love like that, they say anything’s possible, right?”

“Sometimes, when I’m in bed, I close my eyes and remember the look – and especially the feel – of a woman’s naked body. Usually it’s my wife’s, but not always. I was completely faithful to her. Not once in more than sixty years did I stray, except in my imagination, and I have a feeling she wouldn’t have minded that. She was a woman of extraordinary understanding.”

“Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I’m afraid even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up they were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.”

“‘I got the sense that he was the kind of person who couldn’t hold anger for more than a few minutes, because it just wasn’t in him. It could never grow into resentment or bitterness, and I knew then that he was the kind of man who would be married forever. And I decided then and there that I should be the one to marry him.’”

“But he fell gradually in love and began to speculate wildly on marriage.”

“People are meant to go through life two by two. ’Tain’t natural to be lonesome.”

“You know how it is: you’re twenty-one or twenty-two and you make some decisions; then whisssh! you’re seventy: you’ve been a lawyer for fifty years, and that white-haired lady at your side has eaten over fifty thousand meals with you.”

“Almost everybody in the world gets married,—you know what I mean? In our town there aren’t hardly any exceptions. Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.”

“I was the scaredest young fella in the State of New Hampshire. I thought I’d make a mistake for sure. And when I saw you comin’ down that aisle I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, but the only trouble was that I’d never seen you before. There I was in the Congregation Church marryin’ a total stranger.”

“Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals who are terrified by their basic aloneness, as so commonly is the case, and seek a merging in marriage. Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually seeks to cultivate it, even at the risk of separation or loss.”

“It’s not right, Marilyn. It’s not right. ”

“This is what marriage is—safe, warm, comfortable.”

“Twice we stood beside each other at the altar, Rosie. Twice. And twice we got it wrong. I needed you to be there for my wedding day but I was too stupid to see that I needed you to be the reason for my wedding day. ”

“My story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage.”

“The queen, whom sense of honor could not move, No longer made a secret of her love, But call’d it marriage, by that specious name To veil the crime and sanctify the shame.”

“I married your daddy and settled down to cooking his supper and keeping clean sheets on the bed. When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave some room for me. . . . But at that time I wanted that.”

“Why, Troy? After all these years to come dragging this in to me now. It don’t make no sense at your age. I could have expected this ten or fifteen years ago, but not now. . . . I done tried to be everything a wife should be. Everything a wife could be. Been married eighteen years.”

“I gave everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn’t the finest man in the world. And wherever you was going . . . I wanted to be there with you. Because you was my husband. Cause that’s the only way I was gonna survive as your wife.”

“Many a one courted her; she hated all wooers; not able to endure, and quite unacquainted with man, she traverses the solitary parts of the woods, and she cares not what Hymen, what love, or what marriage means.”

“No youths have sung the marriage song for me, My bridal bed No maids have strewn with flowers from the lea, ‘Tis Death I wed.”

“But she had often said to him that she had been right not to marry Peter Walsh; which, knowing Clarissa, was obviously true; she wanted support. Not that she was weak; but she wanted support.”

“The preparations for marriage and the beginning of married life, with its conjugal caresses, the new furniture, new crockery, and new linen, were very pleasant until his wife became pregnant”

“Healthy dependence is the essence of romantic love.”

“To achieve a lasting loving bond, we have to be able to tune in to our deepest needs and longings and translate them into clear signals that help our lovers respond to us. We have to be able to accept love and to reciprocate.”

“See, a marriage needs love. And God. And a little money. That’s all. The rest you can deal with. It’s not about black or white.”

“When you have a safe connection in your relationship, you can pass the quality on, not just to your kid but to your kid’s future partners. (...) When we love our partner well, we offer a blueprint for a loving relationship to our children and their partners.”

“To shape love, we have to be open and responsive, emotionally as well as physically.”

“A major part of keeping love alive is recognizing moments of connection and holding them up where you both can see them (...). They remind us of how precious our relationship is and what close connection feels like. They remind us of the simple ways we can transform our partner’s world with the power of our caring.”

“Caretaking and pragmatic support come naturally when we feel close and connected. ‘When you love, you wish to do things for,’ Ernest Hemingway wrote. ‘You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.’ We know from research that secure partners are more sensitive to each other’s needs for care.”

What a place for you to come to! This is a murderers’ den. You think yourself a promised bride, and that your marriage will soon take place, but it is with death that you will keep your marriage feast. Look, do you see that large cauldron of water which I am obliged to keep on the fire! As soon as they have you in their power they will kill you without mercy, and cook and eat you, for they are eaters of men. If I did not take pity on you and save you, you would be lost.”

“I hate to be thought men’s property in that way—though possibly I shall be had some day.”

″‘Yes, you were right. It’s going to be wet tomorrow. You won’t be able to go.’ And she looked at him smiling. For she had triumphed again. She had not said it: yet he knew.”

“Thank God I am not married: what would she have done in the poverty now coming upon me!”

“For she felt that he was still looking at her, but that his look had changed. He wanted something—wanted the thing she always found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found talking so much easier than she did. He could say things—she never could. ”

“It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession.”

“Such women as you a hundred men always covet—your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing fancy for you—you can only marry one of that many.”

“At Pappachi’s funeral, Mammachi cried and her contact lenses slid around in her eyes. Ammu told the twins that Mammachi was crying more because she was used to him than because she loved him. ”

“As for a divorced daughter – according to Baby Kochamma, she had no position anywhere at all. And as for a divorced daughter from a love marriage, well, words could not describe Baby Kochamma’s outrage. As for a divorced daughter from an intercommunity love marriage – Baby Kochamma chose to remain quiveringly silent on the subject.”

“I mean, marriage drinks up all of our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear—but it murders our marriage—and then the marriage stays with us like a murder—and everything else is gone.”

“A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.”

“She was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers; she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her husband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently to his heart-beats, but only felt that her own was beating violently.”

“Let not the piece of virtue which is set Betwixt us, as the cement of our love To keep it builded, be the ram to batter The fortress of it. For better might we Have loved without this mean, if on both parts This not be cherished.”

“Actually, I am a very lucky person and I know it. I am about to marry a wonderful little girl. There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look. I am proof of that.”

“And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn’t even bother to do anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding…”

“One of Gottman’s findings is that for a marriage to survive, the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a given encounter has to be at least five to one.”

“Gottman has found, in fact, that the presence of contempt in a marriage can even predict such things as how many colds a husband or wife gets; in other words, having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stressful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system.”

“All goes to show that marriage is a misery and a woe”

“Duplicity of any sort is exceedingly objectionable between married people of any rank, not to say kings and queens; and the most objectionable form duplicity can assume is that of punning.”

“What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.”

“If he be like your brother, for his sake Is he pardoned; and, for your lovely sake, Give me your hand and say you will be mine. He is my brother too. But fitter time for that. ”

“Sacrificing her future in favor of Pasha’s, Lara held the candle as low as possible ... it always came out that her candle was higher than his.”

″‘Well, Your Majesty knows what romantic minds these young princes have, so suppose we hired a dragon to—to lay waste the countryside—?’ (Here the Minister of Public Safety looked alarmed and the Minister for Agriculture and Fishery was heard to protest.) ‘We might then imprison Her Royal Highness in a tower and send out a proclamation to say that any prince who slew the dragon should be rewarded by the princess’s hand in marriage.‘”

″‘All right,’ said the Ordinary Princess. ‘I’m listening.’ ‘Well, first of all,’ said the King, ‘will you marry me?’ ‘Perry!’ gasped the Ordinary Princess. ‘Yes or no,’ demanded Peregrine. ... ‘Yes,’ said the Ordinary Princess promptly. ‘Darling kitchen maid!’ said Peregrine, catching her into his arms and kissing her. ‘I knew you wouldn’t desert me. Then that’s all right. And now to business. You can’t go on being a kitchen maid, and anyway, you’ve been fired. So you can’t go on staying here.‘”

“If you love me and want to keep me from perishing, don’t put it off, let’s get married quickly.”

“O my dear lord, I crave no other nor no better man. ”

“Thus stands it with me: upon a true contract I got possession of Julietta’s bed. You know the lady. She is fast my wife, Save that we do the denunciation lack Of outward order:”

″‘That whole business about Clary’s mother being married to Valentine,‘said Isabelle. [...] ‘So now he’s back from the dead and he’s come looking for her. Maybe he wants to get back together.‘”

“I will encounter darkness as a bride, And hug it in mine arms.”

“This past summer, the priests of the creator god took council on the birthday of the prince. They read the omens and divined the home of his future bride. All the signs indicated Mount Eskel.”

″Dear Catherine, I’ve been sitting here thinking about all the things I wanted to apologize to you for. All the pain we caused each other. Everything I put on you. Everything I needed you to be or needed you to say. I’m sorry for that. I’ll always love you ‘cause we grew up together and you helped make me who I am. I just wanted you to know there will be a piece of you in me always, and I’m grateful for that. Whatever someone you become, and wherever you are in the world, I’m sending you love. You’re my friend to the end. Love, Theodore.”

“There are good marriages, but there was none of delicious.”

“So what was it like being married?” “Well, it’s hard, for sure. But there’s something that feels so good about sharing your life with somebody.”

“Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love.”

“When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”

“Over the years you will go through seasons in which you have to learn to love a person who you didn’t marry, who is something of a stranger. You will have to make changes that you don’t want to make, and so will your spouse. The journey may eventually take you into a strong, tender, joyful marriage. But it is not because you married the perfectly compatible person. That person doesn’t exist.”

“A common vision can unite people of very different temperaments.”

“Within this Christian vision of marriage, here’s what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of what God is creating, and to say, ‘I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, ‘I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!’ ”

“It is the illusion that if we find our one true soul mate, everything wrong with us will be healed; but that makes the lover into God, and no human being can live up to that.”

“Marriage is a major vehicle for the gospel’s remaking of your heart from the inside out and your life from the ground up.”

“The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

“If we look to our spouses to fill up our tanks in a way that only God can do, we are demanding an impossibility.”

“Whether we are husband or wife, we are not to live for ourselves but for the other. And that is the hardest yet single most important function of being a husband or a wife in marriage.”

“Friendship is a deep oneness that develops when two people, speaking the truth in love to one another, journey together to the same horizon.”

“Only with time do we really learn who the other person is and come to love the person for him- or herself and not just for the feelings and experiences they give us.”

“A sudden fear takes root […] conversations I’ve overhead in my father’s study—tales […] about the fate of an unescorted woman, overpowered by bad men, her life ruined forever.”

“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.”

“Only if you have learned to serve others by the power of the Holy Spirit will you have the power to face the challenges of marriage.”

“While your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage.”

“Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won’t matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength.”

“There are three possibilities: you can offer to serve the other with joy, you can make the offer with coldness or resentment, or you can selfishly insist on your own way.”

“Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us.”

“When you first fall in love, you think you love the person, but you don’t really. You can’t know the person right away. That takes years. You actually love the idea of the person – and that is always, at first, one-dimensional and somewhat mistaken.”

“Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence.”

“Medea: how I bless you both… not here—beyond… every blessing here you father has despoiled.”

“The greatness and glory of marriage is beyond our ability to think or feel without divine revelation and without the illumining and awakening work of the Holy Spirit.”

“God joins a husband a wife into a one-flesh union.God does that. The world does not know this. Which is one of the reasons marriage is treated so casually.”

“Some [cultures], like our own, have such low, casual, take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards marriage as to make the biblical vision seem ludicrous to other people.”

“Crass materialism sustains very few marriages. The vestiges of God’s vision for marriage remain. They may be distorted and nameless, but they still remain. God’s common grace grants many cut flowers to flourish for a lifetime.”

“Marriage is not mainly about being or staying in love. It’s mainly about telling the truth with our lives.”

“Being united to Christ by faith is a greater source of marital success than perfect sex and double-income prosperity.”

“All of us, married and single, are supposed to live hour by hour by the forgiving, justifying, all-supplying grace of God and then bend it out to all the others in our lives.”

“Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church.”

“The most foundational thing we can say about marriage is that it is God’s doing.

“Jesus says that all of life, not just marriage, is a showcase of God’s glory.”

“The world cannot know what marriage is without learning it from God.”

“Marriage is not mainly about prospering economically; it is mainly about displaying the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church.”

″[Marriage is] about portraying something true about Jesus Christ and the way he relates to his people. It is about showing in real life the glory of the gospel.”

“The natural man does not have the capacities to see or receive or feel the wonder of what God has designed for marriage to be.”

“Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. And ultimately, marriage is the display of God.”

“When a couple speaks their vows, it is not a man, or a woman, or a pastor, or a parent who is the main actor - the main doer. God is.”

“The first time you see your grown-up little miss looking back at you from a sea of white chiffon or beaded satin glory, indeed your heart will skip a beat. You’ll find yourself blinking back tears. ”

“A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders.”

“All I know is, you can fight against your wife, and probably hold your own, but if God is fighting for her, you can hit the gym all you want to, but it’s not looking too good for you.”

“Very few of us know how to fight the right way.”

“I think of Sarah. The rest is easy.”

″‘You been married?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Mental Cruelty,’ according to the divorce papers. ‘Was it true?’ she asked. ‘Of course: both ways.‘”

″[. . . H]e proposed marriage. She did not believe him at first, but he swore solemnly that he meant it.”

“She kept a journal, where [her husband’s] faults were noted.”

“I’m not a good lier. Except Brewster. It takes a lot of lies to keep a marriage going.”

“See that’s where you’re wrong baby. When you find your man, it’s almost too easy. Gettin’ married and haven’ a mortgage, kids and a business to run and findin’ a way to stay love day in and day out, that’s the tougher part.”

“I can bear pain, myself, but I couldna bear yours. That would take more strength than I have.”

“Listen to me. If you ever raise a hand to me again, James Fraser, I will cut out your heart and eat it for breakfast, do you understand me?”

“Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone. I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One. I give ye my Spirit, ‘til our Life shall be Done.”

“Ye werena the first lass I kissed,” he said softly. “But I swear you’ll be the last.” And he bent his head to my upturned face.

“My pride is hurt. And my pride is about all I’ve got left to me....You’re tearin’ my guts out, Claire.′

“Or we fall in love with someone who incarnates the virtues or vices opposite our own. An orderly man who plans his days marries a spontaneous woman who lets things lie where they fall, lives in the moment, and is perpetually late for appointments.”

”And thanking God I have two hands. That I have two hands to hold you with. To serve you with, to love you with.”

“As to that, sir, I swore an oath before the altar of God to protect this woman. And if you’re tellin’ me that ye consider your own authority to be greater that that of the Almighty, then I must inform ye that I’m no of that opinion, myself.”

“The Prince and Princess were married. And everyone lived happily, though maybe not honestly, ever after.”

“It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about - war, work, marriage, democracy, love, it all fails because everybody gives up trying after a while, we can’t help ourselves.”

″‘Call,’ I would say, watching dawn break crimson over the Chesapeake Bay, ‘I hope I have a sky like this the day I get married.’ ‘Who would marry you?’ Call would ask, not meanly, just facing facts.”

″‘So. What’s Miss Caroline got to say for herself these days?’ Call’s face flamed in pleasure. It was the question he had been bursting to answer. ‘She—she said, ‘Yes.’ I knew, of course, what he meant. There was no need to press him to explain. But something compelled me to hear my own doom spelled out. ‘Yes’ to what?′ I asked.”

″‘For instance, I know that Angela doesn’t want to marry that sappy intern.’ ‘Ridiculous. You’re just jealous of your sister.’ ‘Maybe,’ Turtle had to admit, ‘but I am what I am. I don’t need a crutch to get attention.’ Oh, oh, she had gone too far.”

“If only I had not wondered about my sister Ulape, where she was, and if the marks she had drawn upon her cheeks had proved magical. If they had, she was now married to Nanko and was the mother of many children. She would have smiled to see all of mine, which were so different from the ones I always wished to have.”

“They didn’t get married after all.”

“There was a lot to do to get ready for the wedding.”

“I didn’t mind the idea of marriage to one of the girls I’d grown up with, and that summer I worked harder alongside him, ready to make my place among the men of the village. But every now and then, I could no resist the lure of the mountain and at the end of the day I slipped away.”

“Oh, my precious Mistress Stahlbaum, you see at your feet the happiest of men, whose life you saved on this very spot. You were kind enough to say that you would not scorn me as that nasty Princess Pirlipat did, for becoming ugly on your account. In that instant, I ceased to be a lowly nutcracker and regained my former, not unpleasant aspect. Oh, precious Mistress Stahlbaum, favor me with your hand, share my crown and kingdom with me, reign with me over Marzipan Case, for I am king there now.”

“She had bribed a teacher. She had stolen opium. She had burned herself, lied to her foster parents, abandoned her responsibilities at the store, and broken a marriage deal. And she was going to Sinegard.”

“What we do for each other before marriage is no indication of what we will do after marriage.”

“Then, when I’ve got a degree in Maths, or Physics, or Maths and Physics, I will be able to get a job and earn lots of money and I will be able to pay someone who can look after me and cook my meals and wash my clothes, or I will get a lady to marry me and be my wife and she can look after me so I can have company and not be on my own.”

“Since the disintegration of her parents’ marriage, she’d only loved two things. The first was her long blonde hair. The second was how easily she could cut it off... And feel nothing.”

“He knew that most young men made nothing at all of giving a pretty girl a kiss, and he remembered that the night before, when he had put his arm about Mattie, she had not resisted. But that had been out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable.”

“When a man loves a woman, he desires union, that is, the goal of union which exists in love. In the elemental form, there is no greater union than marriage. (10) By this appetite encompasses all parts. For that reason, complete ritual washing is prescribed after intercourse. Purification envelops him as annihilation in the woman was complete in the obtainment of appetite. Allah is very jealous of His slave if He believes that he finds pleasure in other than Him. So man purifies himself by ritual washing in order to return to Him in whom he was annihilated, since that is all there is.”

“Lord, I’d need a million years to reach this woman. Are you sure this is the one you meant for me?”

“When Mary Ellen left home, she took the quilt with her. When she became a bride, the quilt became her huppa.”

“What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a “decent” fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?”

″...with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.”

“Most people will never become wealthy in one generation if they are married to people who are wasteful. A couple cannot accumulate wealth if one of its members is a hyperconsumer.”

“Just then Sergio walked up. He is the nicest boy in the class- the most fun, with the best ideas. I love talking to him. Sometimes I think the two of us should get married when we grow up. I would like to spend the rest of my life looking at him, listening to him tell me things, doing things together. And I wanted him to meet Bisa Bea.”

“This gave him peace and hope, that anything he’d missed out on when he married Rachel so young was still there, waiting. That other people had screwed up and were starting over, too.”

“There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I’d like to know. I wish someone could tell me.”

“Really, if people weren’t so intent on keeping young women completely ignorant of the realities of marriage, scenes like this could be avoided.”

″ ‘I don’t care who marriage-ring it was,’ cries Angelica. ‘Marry the person who picks it up if she’s a woman; you shan’t marry ME. And give me back MY ring. I’ve no patience with people who boast about the things they give away! I know who’ll give me much finer things than you ever gave me, A beggarly ring indeed, not worth five shillings!’ ”

″‘...no doubt you will soon be marrying a duchess or something.’ ‘Not at all said Mr. Salteena you must know Ethel he said blushing a deep red I always wished to marry you some fine day.‘”

“When you will marry me Ethel he uttered you must be my wife it has come to that I love you so intensely that if you say no I shall perforce dash my body to the brink of yon muddy river he panted wildly.”

“I will indeed marry you.”

″‘Kit, do you s’pose we’ve got to be married?’ ‘It looks like it,’ said Kit. Things seemed very dark indeed to the twins.”

″‘I suppose I shall HAVE to be married some day,’ said Peter, ‘but it will be an awful bother having her round all the time. I’d like to marry a lady who had trances, and only woke up once or twice a year.”

“If I see anything tonight why I should not marry her, tomorrow in the congregation where I intended to wed her, there will I shame her.”

“When I married Jacques I understood it as an exchange. My youth and beauty for his wealth. Over the years, as is the way with this particular kind of contract, my worth only diminished as his increased.”

“If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield,” said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, “and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for.”

I wish Jane success with all my heart; and if she were married to him tomorrow, I should think she had as good a chance of happiness, as if she were to be studying his character for a twelvemonth.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least.

“My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish. Secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly⁠—which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness.

For her only one reparation could make up for the loss of her daughter’s honour: marriage.

His instinct urged him to remain free, not to marry. Once you are married you are done for, it said.