Wife Quotes

But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. . . . Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer.

“That is the wife for me,” he thought; “but she is too grand, and lives in a castle, while I have only a box to live in, five-and-twenty of us altogether, that is no place for her. Still I must try and make her acquaintance.”

“I am asham’d that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace, Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway, When they are bound to serve, love, and obey. Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth, Unapt to toil and trouble in the world, But that our soft conditions and our hearts Should well agree with our external parts?”

“Hearing thy mildness prais’d in every town, Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded,-- Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,-- Myself am mov’d to woo thee for my wife.”

“This is a way to kill a wife with kindness, And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humour. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak. ‘Tis charity to show.”

“Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody. People will not even turn round in the streets. You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight.”

“He seemed very proud of his clever wife, and to care little that she took no pains to disguise that good-natured contempt which she evidently felt for him, and that she even amused herself by sharpening her ready wits at his expense.”

“For there is nothing better in this world than that man and wife should be of one mind in a house.”

“You know I’d never expect you to change who you are, if you were my wife,” he finally said. “It would change me to be your wife,” she said. He watched her eyes.“Yes. I understand you.”

“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.‘”

“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.”

″‘Little one,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘do not worry – it will not matter to us. We will pay them all somehow. I will work harder.’ That was always what Jurgis said. Ona had grown used to it as the solution of all difficulties – ‘I will work harder!’ He had said that in Lithuania when one official had taken his passport from him, and another had arrested him for being without it, and the two had divided a third of his belongings. He had said it again in New York, when the smooth-spoken agent had taken them in hand and made them pay such high prices, and almost prevented their leaving his place, in spite of their paying. Now he said it a third time, and Ona drew a deep breath; it was so wonderful to have a husband, just like a grown woman – and a husband who could solve all problems, and who was so big and strong!”

“Unless a man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention? Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention? If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.”

″‘I hit him, sir,’ said Jurgis. ‘Say ‘your Honor,″ said the officer, pinching his arm hard. ‘Your Honor,’ said Jurgis, obediently. ‘You tried to choke him?’ ‘Yes, sir, your Honor.’ ‘Ever been arrested before?’ ‘No, sir, your Honor.’ ‘What have you to say for yourself?’ Jurgis hesitated. What had he to say? In two years and a half he had learned to speak English for practical purposes, but these had never included the statement that some one had intimidated and seduced his wife.”

“To resist occupation, whether you’re a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democracy and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line.”

“Nils, a woman who has once sold herself for another’s sake, doesn’t do it a second time.”

“I love you, Gabby, more than you’ll ever know. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a wife. You’re every hope and every dream I’ve ever had, and you’ve made me happier than any man could possibly be. I don’t ever want to give that up. I can’t.”

“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:”

“He eyes were open several seconds before the alarm was supposed to go off. Beside him, his wife touched his arm. He knew what she was going to say. ‘Are we still going?’ she asked.”

“There are three faithful friends, an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.”

“He packed a shawl his wife wove on a loom from yarn spun at the spinning wheel from sheep sheared in April.”

“When his cart was full, he waved good-bye to his wife, his daughter, and his son and he walked at his ox’s head for ten days over hills, through valleys, by streams past farms and villages until he came to Portsmouth and Portsmouth Market.”

“and he carved a new yoke and sawed planks for a new cart and split shingles all winter While his wife made flax into linen all winter, and his daughter embroidered linen all winter, and his son carved Indian brooms from birch all winter, and everybody made candles.”

″ ‘I’ll tell you what, husband,’ answered the woman, ‘early-to-morrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest; there we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them.’ ”

“He takes Rasmus to his home, where Oscar’s wife is already waiting for Oscar. The couple decides to adopt Rasmus as their child.”