John Smith > John's Quotes

“Marriage is a partnership, not a democracy.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Best of Me

“The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.”
― Peter De Vries

“There must be a stronger foundation than mere friendship or sexual attraction. Unconditional love, agape love, will not be swayed by time or circumstances. ”
― Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare

“Marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“The moment we decide to throw more energy into fighting for our mate than with him, the crack of a fist on the enemy's jaw splits the ears of angels.”
― Beth Moore

“Marriage is a wrestling match where you hold on tight while your mate changes into a hundred different things. The trick is that you're changing into a hundred other things, but you can't let go. You can only try to match up and never turn into a wolf while he's a rabbit, or a mouse while he's still busy being an owl, a brawny black bull while he's a little blue crab scuttling for shelter. It's harder than it sounds.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“I nod, thinking of how difficult marriage can be, how much effort is required to sustain a feeling between two people - a feeling that you can't imagine will ever fade in the beginning when everything comes so easily. I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That is the only real way to grow together, instead of apart.”
― Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter

“Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”
― Mark Twain

“The Cheesecake Factory is a great business model, but if you take your wife there for your 25th wedding anniversary, you might not reach your 26th.”
― Scott Adams

“Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.”
― Honore de Balzac

“Be careful whom you choose to love. This decision will impact your future life and happiness in ways you cannot yet imagine.”
― Toni Coleman, MSW

“In the true married relationship, the independence of husband and wife will be equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal.”
― Lucretia Mott

“The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“For [erotically intelligent couples], love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning. They know that they have years in which to deepen their connection, to experiment, to regress, and even to fail. They see their relationship as something alive and ongoing, not a fait accompli. It’s a story that they are writing together, one with many chapters, and neither partner knows how it will end. There’s always a place they haven’t gone yet, always something about the other still to be discovered.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.”
― Erma Bombeck

“What we do for each other before marriage is no indication of what we will do after marriage.”
― Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate

“A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up.”
― Jodi Picoult , Handle with Care

“Why should love require a contract? Why put yourself into the clutches of the state and give it power over you? Why invite lawyers to fuck around with your assets? Marriage is for the immature and the insecure and the ignorant. We who see through such institutions should be content to live together without legal coercion.”
― Robert Silverberg

“A good marriage, like any partnership, meant subordinating one's own needs to that of the other's, in the expectation that the other will do the same.”
― Nicholas Sparks, True Believer

“Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take…If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season

“You'll be happy if you'll remember that men don't change much. Women do. Women adapt themselves, and if you think that means they lose their individuality, you're wrong. Show me a happy marriage and I'll show you a clever woman.”
― Elizabeth Cadell

“George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me - whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. And yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: “Yes, this will do”. Who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving… me, and must be punished for it. George and Martha… Sad, sad, sad.”
― Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

“Every culture has some ritual for joining two people together and making them stay that way, and ours is giving tax breaks.”
― Bauvard, Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic

“The man may be the head of the household. But the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head whichever way she pleases.”
― Nia Vardalos

“A man approaching retirement called the retirement office to inquire about his pension. Afterward, he was asked if his wife worked. “She’s worked all her life making me happy”, he replied. “Yes sir, but has she earned money to receive her pension?” “When we got married we agreed on an arrangement”, he said. “I would earn the living, and she would make the living worthwhile”.

“Make the living worthwhile”…have we forgotten the very essence of that? Have we forgotten to live for someone else, that doing so IS what makes a living worthwhile?”
― Kelly Crawford

“In marriage, everyday you love,and everyday you forgive.It is an ongoing sacrament, love and forgiveness”
― Bill Moyers

“…marriage, they say, halves one's rights and doubles one's duties.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Izzy was utterly convinced. Never mind Arabian horses, African cheetahs. No creature in the world could bolt so quickly as a rake confronted with the word "marriage". They ought to shout it out at footraces rather than using starting pistols.
Ready, steady... matrimony!”
― Tessa Dare, Romancing the Duke