Lindsey

“No sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage...”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of a marriage conducted with economy
In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.
We’ll live in a dear little walk-up flat
With practically room to swing a cat
And a potted cactus to give it hauteur
And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water.
We’ll eat, without undue discouragement,
Foods low in cost but high in nouragement
And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily,
The peculiar wine of Little Italy.
We’ll remind each other it’s smart to be thrifty
And buy our clothes for something-fifty.
We’ll bus for miles on holidays
For seas at depressing matinees,
And every Sunday we’ll have a lark
And take a walk in Central Park.
And one of these days not too remote
You’ll probably up and cut my throat.”
― Ogden Nash, Hard Lines

“To wait so long/And want a man refined and strong/Is not at all uncommon. And yet to wait one hundred years/Without a tear, without a care/Makes for a very rare woman. So here our tale appears to show/How marriage deferred/Brings joy unheard/Nothing lost after a century or so. But others love with more ardor/And wed quickly out of passion/Whatever they do/I won’t deplore/Nor shall I preach a lesson.”
― Charles Perrault, The Sleeping Beauty and Other Classic French Fairy Tales

“Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader