Quotes, quotations and passages on marriage

relationships

A great marriage is not when the
"perfect couple" comes together.
It is when an imperfect couple learns
to enjoy their differences.

Dave Meurer

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. That is what makes a marriage last--more than passion or even sex. Simone Signoret

Seldom, or perhaps never, does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises; there is no coming to consciousness without pain. Carl Jung

The kind of marriage you make depends upon the kind of person you are. If you are a happy, well-adjusted person, the chances are your marriage will be a happy one. If you have made adjustments so far with more satisfaction than distress, you are likely to make your marriage and family adjustments satisfactorily. If you are discontented and bitter about your lot in life, you will have to change before you can expect to live happily ever after. Evelyn Duvall and Reuben Hill

Husband and wife are like the two equal parts of a soybean. If the two parts are put under the earth separately, they will not grow. The soybean will grow only when the parts are covered by the skin. Marriage is the skin which covers each of them and makes them one. Hari Dass Marriage is not a reform school. Ann Landers

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth
in the individuals and in the way they express their love.

Pearl S. Buck

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Now you will feel no rain,
for each of you will be the shelter to the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
for each of you will be the warmth to the other.
Now there is no loneliness for you,
now there is no more loneliness.
Now you are two persons, but there is one life before you.
Go now to your dwelling place
to enter into the days of your togetherness.
And may your days be good and long upon this earth.

Apache Blessing

Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love,
and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.

Tom Mullen

I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry
you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a
promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise
I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married
and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our
children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them;
and it wasn't our love that protected them--it was that promise.

Thornton Wilder

Marriage--as its veterans know well--is the continuous process of getting used to things you hadn't expected.

Tom Mullen

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship
that makes unhappy marriages.

Friedrich Nietzsche

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.

Mark Twain

I pay very little regard. . . to what a young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they haven't seen the right person yet.

Jane Austen

A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.

Robert Quillen

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong admit it;
Whenever you're right shut up.

Ogden Nash

I'm very neat. My wife is messy--never picks anything up.
Doesn't even notice the mess--it's below her radar. I cured
myself from my annoyance with her by imagining that she had died
and then asking myself, "If you could bring her back to life but she'd
still be messy, leave clutter all over the house--5 pairs of shoes in the
living room, would you still want her back?" "Yes, for sure!"
And it cured me. Whenever I get annoyed
with her mess, I rerun the script.

Sam Bradley

For "I" to become "we" and yet remain "I," is
one of the great challenges of marriage.

Nathaniel Branden
Self-Esteem Every Day

Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of marriage, master?
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days,
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Khalil Gibran

relationships

People are often enamored with my Super Bowl ring. But it's
my wedding ring that I'm most proud of. And having a good
marriage takes even more work than winning a Super Bowl.

Trent Dilfer

Marriage is not just spiritual communication and passionate embraces;
marriage is also three meals a day, sharing the workload,
and remembering to take out the trash.

Joyce Brothers

The Art Of Marriage

A good marriage must be created.
In the art of marriage the little things are the big things. . .

It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say "I love you" at least once each day.

It is never going to sleep angry.
It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.

It is speaking words of appreciation and
demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.

It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.
It is finding room for the things of the spirit.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.

It is not only marrying the right partner. . .
It is being the right partner.

Wilferd Arlan Peterson

All those "and they lived happily ever after" fairy tale endings need to be
changed to "and they began the very hard work of making their marriages happy."

Linda Miles

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is tahtthe frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

Guess this means I don't have to feel so bad about my spelling. Also makes me think we should be able to apply this principle to marital communication. Try to listen for the meaning instead of nit-picking at the fine points.

Diane Sollee

As much as I would miss my wife if she were to die,
I would miss what we are together even
more. Our "we-ness," our "us-ness."

Carl Whitaker

Articles and book excerpts on marriage:

Sixty Years, Headed to Forever Staci Stallings

Marriage is not a matter of creating a quick community of spirit
by tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good
marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his or
her solitude. . . . Once the realization is accepted that even between
the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful
living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance
between them no less than one another.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Love is an ideal thing, marriage is a real thing; a confusion
of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

And when will there be an end of marrying?
I suppose, when there is an end of living.

Quintus Tertullian

To marry a woman with any success a man must have a total experience
of her, he must come to see her and accept her in time as well as in space.
Besides coming to love what she is now, he must also come to realize
and love equally the baby and the child she once was, and the middle-aged
woman and the old lady she will eventually become.

James Keyes

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Why do so many marriages fail? Because nobody gets taught how to be
married. We're not taught how to pick a mate, or why to pick a mate;
we don't know how to manage our emotions once we're in a marriage;
we don't know how to resolve marital conflict. Married people have never
been taught why they or their spouses feel the way they do and act the
way they do. Nobody has ever taught us the fundamentals.

Phil McGraw

In marriage, each partner is to be an encourager rather
than a critic, a forgiver rather than a collector of hurts,
an enabler rather than a reformer.

H. Norman Wright and Gary J. Oliver

While you don't need a formal written contract before you get married,
I think it's important for both partners to spell out what they expect from
each other. . . . There are always plenty of surprises--
and lots of give and take--once you're married.

Muriel Fox

I know some good marriages--marriages where both people
are just trying to get through their days by helping
each other, being good to each other.

Erica Jong

relationships

The Vital C's in Marriage:
Communication Consideration Cooperation
Companionship Commitment

unattributed

Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship
smoothly and without crisis. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

Carl Jung

Lasting love is something a person has to decide to experience. Lifelong
monogamous devotion is just not natural—not for women even, and
emphatically not for men. It requires what, for lack of a better term, we
can call an act of will. . . . This isn't to say that a young person can't hope
to be seized by love. . . . But whether the sheer fury of one's feelings
accurately gauges their likely endurance is another question. The ardor
will surely fade, sooner or later, and the marriage will then live or die on
respect, practical compatibility, simple affection, and (these days,
especially) determination. With the help of these things, something worthy
of the label 'love' can last until death. But it will be a different kind of love
from the kind that began the marriage. Will it be a richer love, a deeper
love, a more spiritual love? Opinions vary.
But it's certainly a more impressive love.

Robert Wright
The Moral Animal

In marriage people may have differences and periods of weariness and boredom,
but they have also built up an axis of relationships that constitutes a steady center.
There's a story by Flannery O'Connor in which she tells about
an old couple who had lived in the Appalachians all their lives in a little cabin
overlooking the opposite mountain. They were sitting there--both very aged
people--in their rocking chairs on a spring day. The man said, "Well, Sarah,
I see there's still some snow up there on the mountain." Now he knew there
was snow on the mountain every year. So why does he have to say it? Because
to perceive that, to know at times there is snow and at times there is not snow--
this was part of the observation of an eternal rhythm which made their life together.
In marriage you say the same things over and over, you inquire about the same
people; and this is ho-hum in one way. But it is breathtaking in another.

Joseph A. Sittler
Grace Notes and Other Fragments

Unfortunately, our closest relationships are easily neglected. In marriage,
people remember the promise “until death do us part,” but often forget
the vow to love, honor, and cherish—behaviors that make a lifetime of
love (and happiness together) possible. By making your relationship
a priority, you are more likely to stay connected.

Deborah K. Heisz
Live Happy: Ten Practices for Choosing Joy

This is what marriage really means: helping one another to reach
the full status of being persons, responsible and autonomous
beings who do not run away from life.

Paul Tournier