A happy marriage is a long conversation which
always seems too short. - Andre Maurois
A
good marriage is good for you. That isn't just a platitude. Mounting
research shows that it is the literal truth. When your marriage is
healthy, your body and mind are healthier. - Cliff Isaacson
A
great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together.
It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences. -
Dave
Meurer
A
great marriage isn’t something that just happens; it’s something
that must be created. - Fawn
Weaver
A
happy man marries the girl he loves; a happier man loves the girl he
marries. -
Unknown
A
happy marriage doesn’t mean you have a perfect spouse or a perfect
marriage. It simply means you’ve chosen to look beyond the
imperfections in both. - Fawn
Weaver
A
happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendships,
all the enjoyment of sense and reason – and indeed all the sweets
of life. -
Joseph Addison
A
happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers. -
Robert Quillen
A
husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each
other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment
after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable
tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration. - Percy Bysshe Shelley
A
long-lasting marriage is built by two people who believe in – and
live by – the solemn promise they made. - Darlene
Schacht
A
man never has good luck who has a bad wife. - Henry Ward Beecher
A
single life is doubtless preferable to a married one, where prudence
and affection do not accompany the choice; but where they do, there
is no terrestrial happiness equal to the married state. - Wellins
Calcott
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always
with the same person. - Mignon McLaughlin
All
of us, at least unconsciously, marry in the hope of healing our
wounds. Even if we do not have a traumatic background, we still have
hurts and unfilled needs that we carry inside. We all suffer from
feelings of self-doubt, unworthiness, and inadequacy. No matter how
nurturing our parents were, we never received enough attention and
love. So in marriage we look to our spouse to convince us that we are
worthwhile and to heal our infirmities. - Leslie L. Parrott
Before you marry keep both eyes open;
after marriage keep one eye shut. - Jamaican Proverb
Being
in a long marriage is a little bit like that nice cup of coffee every
morning – I might have it every day, but I still enjoy it. -
Stephen
Gaines
But marriage goes
in waves. You’ve got to be patient. People bail and give up on
their marriages way too early. They just don’t put the work and the
effort into it. You’ve got to suck up your ego a lot of times,
because that can be a big downfall. -
Anna Benson
Car
manufacturer’s formula for a successful marriage: Stick to one
model! -
Unknown
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
Coming
together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working
together is success. - Henry
Ford
Courtship
to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull Play. - William
Congreve
Experts
on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a
passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a
genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good
definition for friendship. -
Marilyn
Monroe
Focus
on your marriage. Because that's the nucleus of the home, whatever
you do to restore its health and strength will naturally restore
what's broken among the other relationships. If you have no children
yet, this will make a comfortable nest for them to begin life well.
If you have children, the changes you make in your marriage will
affect the rest of the household more quickly and dramatically than
you think. - Charles
R. Swindoll
Getting
married is easy. Staying married is more difficult. Staying happily
married for a lifetime should rank among the fine arts. - Roberta
Flack
Happily
ever after is not a fairy tale. It’s a choice. -
Fawn
Weaver
Happy
marriage is the greatest wealth a man can possess, and one that a
peasant can have as easily as a king. - Douglas
Carlton Abrams
How
you end something as profound and important as a marriage is a
reflection of how you live your life – financially, emotionally,
and spiritually. - Suze
Orman
Ideally, couples need three lives; one for him,
one for her, and one for them together. - Unknown
If
you can hang in there through minor and major differences of opinion,
through each other's big and little screwups, year after year, you
come to understand that the person you married is really, terribly
flawed. There isn't a human being you can hang out with, day in and
day out, for over a decade and not come to the same inescapable
realization. - Kyran
Pittman
If
you have the least doubt about it, do not marry. - John
Lubbock
If
you made a list of the reasons why any couple got married, and
another list of the reasons for their divorce, you’d have a hell of
a lot of overlapping. -
Mignon
McLaughlin
In
courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and
the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee
delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal.
But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is
concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital
voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and
that the sea is not within sight – that, in fact, you are exploring
an enclosed basin. - George
Eliot
In
every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce.
The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage. -
Robert
Anderson
In marriage do thou be wise; prefer the person before money; virtue
before beauty; the mind before the body. - William Penn
In
that family where the husband is pleased with his wife, and the wife
with her husband, happiness will assuredly be lasting. - Brahma
In
the choice of a wife, we ought to make use of our ears, and not our
eyes. - Wellins
Calcott
It is not a lack of love, but a
lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. - Friedrich Nietzsche
It takes two to make a marriage a success and only one to make it a
failure. - Unknown
Keep
the eyes wide open before marriage and half shut afterwards. -
Benjamin
Franklin
Keep
the fire lit in your marriage and your life will be filled with
warmth. - Fawn
Weaver
Let the wife make her husband glad
to come home and let him make her sorry to see
him leave.
Martin Luther
Love
is one long sweet dream, and marriage is the alarm clock. - David
Minkoff
Many
marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly
understood that they are on the same side. -
Zig
Ziglar
Many
marriages would be saved if we would only listen with the same
passion that we feel about wanting to be heard. - Harriet
Lerner
Marriage does not guarantee you
will be together forever, it’s only paper. It takes love respect, trust,
understanding, friendship and faith in your relationship to make it last. - Unknown
Marriage
follows on love as smoke on flame. - Chamfort
Marriage
is a commitment - a decision to do, all through life, that which will
express your love for one’s spouse. -Herman
H. Kieval
Marriage
is a mosaic you build with your spouse. Millions of tiny moments that
create your love story. - Jennifer
Smith
Marriage
is a pretty amazing thing when you think about it. For two people to
live together for so long under the same roof is a big
accomplishment. Fifty-year anniversaries are becoming extinct, yet
again proving that long marriages deserve awards and praise. - Jenny
McCarthy
Marriage
is hard work; the illusion that you get married and live happily ever
after is absolute rubbish. - Julie
Andrews
Marriage is like a deck of cards. In the
beginning, all you need is two Hearts and a Diamond. By the end, you wish you
had a Club and a Spade. -
Aunty Acid
Marriage is like a house. When a
light bulb burns out you don’t not go and buy a new house, you fix the light
bulb. - Unknown
Marriage is like a public toilet. Those
waiting outside are desperate to get in and those inside are desperate to come
out. - Unknown
Marriage
is like life in this – that it is a field of battle, and not a bed
of roses. - Robert
Louis Stevenson
Marriage
is like watching the color of leaves in the fall; ever changing and
more stunningly beautiful with each passing day.
-
Fawn
Weaver
Marriage
is more than just finding a man that you like the looks of or that
you don't mind being touched by. Marriage is for a mighty long time
and unless you figure it that way, there's no sense in going into it
to begin with. Marriage calls for a lot of thought. - Cheyenne
Bodie
Marriage
is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance
together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and
your choice of partner. -
Amy
Bloom
Marriage
is one long conversation, chequered by disputes. - Robert
Louis Stevenson
Marriage
is the comfort of the considerate and prudent; but the torment of the
inconsiderate and self-willed. - William
Scott Downey
Marriage
is the lightning rod that absorbs anxiety and stress from all other
sources, past and present. When marriage has a firm foundation of
solid friendship and mutual respect, it can tolerate a fair amount of
raw emotion. A good fight can clear the air, and it's nice to know we
can survive conflict and even learn from it. Many couples, however,
get trapped in endless rounds of fighting and blaming that they don't
know how to get out of. When fights go unchecked and unrepaired, they
can eventually erode love and respect, which are the bedrock of any
successful relationship. - Harriet
Lerner
Marriage
is the most natural state of man, and the state in which you will
find solid happiness. -
Benjamin
Franklin
Marriage
is the only war in
which you sleep with the enemy. -
Unknown
Marriage
is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism are
extracted without an anaesthetic. - Helen
Rowland
Marriage
is the sanctuary of the heart. You have been entrusted with the heart
of another human being. Whatever else your life’s great mission
will entail, loving and defending this heart next to you is part of
your great quest.
- John
Eldredge
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over
intelligence. -
Unknown
Marriage
is, in actual fact, just a way of living. Before marriage, we don't
expect life to be all sunshine and roses, but we seem to expect
marriage to be that way. - Leslie
L. Parrott
Marriage
may sometimes be compared to a lottery, in which it is better not to
have purchased a ticket than to have drawn a blank. - Norman
MacDonald
Marriage
must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything:
familiarity. - Honore
de Balzac
Marriage
problems are relationship problems, they are the result of
how two people interact with each other. You may abandon a
troubled marriage, but you will still bring the way you
interact with others along with you. - Mark
Gungor
Marriage,
ultimately, is the practice of becoming passionate friends. -
Harville
Hendrix
Marriages
are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find
ourselves in winter--discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other
times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and
anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of
summer – comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall
with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats
itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the
seasons repeat themselves in nature. - Gary
D. Chapman
Marriages
are like diets – they can be ruined by having a little dish on the
side. - Croft
M. Pentz
Marry'd
in haste, we oft repent at leisure. - Benjamin
Franklin
Marrying
a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a long time
in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it
doesn't always go with everything else in the house. - Jean
Kerr
Marrying
to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose
what little stock you had before. - William
Wycherley
Matrimony
is an engagement which must last the life of one of the parties, and
there is no retracting ... therefore, to avoid all the horror of a
repentance that comes too late, men should thoroughly know the real
causes that induce them to take so important a step, before they
venture upon it; do they stand in need of a wife, an heiress, or a
nurse; is it their passions, their wants, or their infirmities, that
solicit them to wed? - Charles
Caleb Colton
Men
marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both
are disappointed. - Oscar
Wilde
More
marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the
better comes after the worse. -
Doug
Larson
Most
couples get married because it’s time, not because they’re in
love. They might have money issues, parental pressure, or they’re
simply tired of being alone – so they pick Mr. Good Enough and tie
the knot. - H.M.
Ward
Most people get married believing
a myth that marriage is a beautiful box full of all the things they have longed
for: companionship, intimacy, friendship, etc. The truth is that marriage at
the start is an empty box. You must put something in before you can take
anything out. There is no love in marriage. Love is in people. And people put
love in marriage. There is no romance in marriage. You have to infuse it
into your marriage. A couple must learn
that the art and form the habit of giving, loving, serving, praising keeping
the box full. If you take out more than you put in, the box will be empty. - Unknown
Much
of the quarrels and hatred which arise between married people come,
in my mind, from the husband's rage and revolt at discovering that
his slave and bedfellow, who is to minister to all his wishes, and is
church-sworn to honour and obey him – is his superior; and that he,
and not she, ought to be the subordinate of the twain. - William
Makepeace Thackeray
Mutual
suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of
any marriage. - James
Thurber
No
one can go back and change how it started but a new future for any
marriage can begin the moment one person begins to invest in it. -
Fawn
Weaver
No,
there are three people in a marriage, there's the woman, there's the
man, and there's what I call the third person, the most important,
the person who is composed of the man and woman together. - Jose
Saramago
Often
the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one
consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid. - Harlan
Miller
One
advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or
he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall
in again. -
Judith
Viorst
One was never married, and that's his
hell; another is, and that's his plague. - Robert Burton
Our
natural tendency in the middle of winter is to avoid the elements as
much as possible. When the weather turns frigid, we retreat inside
for survival and wait for it to warm up or for the season to change.
In a winter marriage, there may be a similar tendency to "avoid
the elements." Spouses may withdraw within themselves, hunkering
down and trying to ride out the cold season, hoping for spring but
not taking any positive steps to move their marriage toward spring.
However, unlike the natural seasons, the seasons of a marriage do not
typically change without some positive action – unless it's a
change from bad to worse. - Gary
D. Chapman
People
marry with a deep longing that their partner will tend to their
wounds, not throw salt in them. Honour your partner's vulnerability.
- Harriet
Lerner
Possibilities
for the success of a marriage are endless. But you have to be willing
to search for them. - Jason
R. Redmond
Sexiness
wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a man
who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that’s a real treat.
- Joanne
Woodward
She
is always married too soon, who gets a bad husband, and she is never
married too late, who gets a good one. - Daniel
Defoe
Show
me a man who is smiling from ear-to-ear and living a beautiful life,
and I’ll show you a man who is grateful for what he has and utterly
in love with his wife. - Fawn
Weaver
Some
people put up and shut up and give their life into a miserable future
in a marriage. This is not healthy for all who are connected with the
marriage be it the couple, children and the external family. The
ultimate problem lays in the couple who stick it out for all those
years for the sake of the kids, money, time invested in each other,
social, religious or family commitments, status or whatever their
reason may be to hold that marriage together ignoring their own
feelings for the external feelings and commitments. Then comes a time
that we get all the freedom and the money we want to live comfortable
but your heart is not comfortable because the dreams, goals and
senses are lost and there is no vision for tomorrow. - Jeanette
de Jonk
Sometimes
I think marriage licenses should be like driver's licenses. They
expire after a number of years, and in order to keep going you have
to renew. Wouldn't that be kind of genius? It would force you both to
look at the relationship, and if it's not working, the marriage would
expire so you could go on your merry way, or on the positive side of
it, you could look at each other and say we really want to renew.
What a way to keep it fresh! - Jenny
McCarthy
Strike
an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before
she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterwards,
and you will have the truth about him. -
H.L.
Mencken
Success
in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but
through being the right mate. -
Barnett
R. Brickner
The
bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds – they mature slowly. -
Peter
De Vries
The
difference between an ordinary marriage and an extraordinary marriage
is in giving just a little ‘extra’ every day, as often as
possible, for as long as we both shall live. -
Fawn
Weaver
The
essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find
variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to
where you begin. - Jeffrey
Eugenides
The
expectations you bring to your partnership can make or break your
marriage. Don't miss out on the sterling moments of marriage because
your ideals are out of sync with your partner's. Don't believe the
myth that you and your partner automatically come with the same
expectations for marriage. Instead, remember that the more openly you
discuss your differing expectations, the more likely you are to
create a vision of marriage that you agree on – and that is unique
to the two of you. - Leslie
L. Parrott
The great secret of a successful marriage is to
treat all disasters as incidents and none of the
incidents as disasters. - Harold Nicolson
The
greatest marriages are built on teamwork. A mutual respect, a healthy
dose of admiration, and a never-ending portion of love and grace. -
Fawn
Weaver
The
key to a successful marriage is accepting that you're not going to
change the other person. - Patrick
Dempsey
The
longer a marriage is put off, the less probability that it will occur
at all. - Edgar
Watson Howe
The
only way you can make a marriage work is as free, independent people.
It needs to be based on the good feelings that you have for each
other, not on need. - Alexander
Lowen
The
secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know
they’re right if you love to be with them all the time. -
Julia
Child
The
secret to a good marriage, as far as I am concerned, is a joke I
make: Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty. - Michael
J. Fox
The
secret to a happy marriage is if you can be at peace with someone
within four walls, if you are content because the one you love is
near to you, either upstairs or downstairs, or in the same room, and
you feel that warmth that you don’t find very often, then that is
what love is all about. - Bruce
Forsyth
The
secret to a long and healthy marriage is to work at it and don't try
and change each other. - Jack
LaLanne
There
are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in
their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the
way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands. - Doris
Lessing
There
is a connection between what you are putting into
your
marriage and what you are getting out
of
it.
- Mark Gungor
There
is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or
company than a good marriage. -
Martin
Luther
There is no such thing as a solid marriage. Marriage is more like an
airplane than a rock. You have to commit the thing to flight, and then it
creaks and groans, and keeping it air borne depends entirely on attitude.
Working at it, though, you can fly forever. Only you and your partner know how
hard it has been, or how worthwhile.
- Unknown
There
is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye
to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and
delighting their friends. -
Homer
They
dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake. - Alexander
Pope
They
stand at the altar before the minister and emotionally utter the
words, "I do." It is a pivotal moment – the end of the
wedding, but the start of the marriage. This is either the
inauguration of a covenant or partnership that either expresses
divine love that transcends all or (as is increasingly the case) the
fractious nature of a communion unplanned, unevenly yoked, and
selfishly formed. - Sam
Ohene-Apraku
Those who enter into marriage, must be fully
prepared to establish their marriage, as the first priority in their lives. -
James E. Faust
To
keep your marriage brimming with love in the loving cup, to
keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever
you’re wrong, admit it; whenever you’re right, shut up. - Ogden
Nash
Unfortunately,
a marriage license doesn't come with a job description or a set of
instructions. There is definitely "some assembly required."
In fact, putting together a modern-day marriage can be likened to
assembling an air-plane
in flight. - Patricia
Love
Well-married,
a man is winged – ill-matched, he is shackled. - Henry
Ward Beecher
Were
the husband as blind to the faults of the wife, as the lover to the
faults of the maiden, few unhappy marriages would follow happy
courtships. - Ivan
Panin
What counts in making a happy
marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with
incompatibility. - Leo Tolstoy
What
greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are
joined for life – to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest
on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain,
to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the
moment of the last parting? - George
Eliot
When
a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of
her acquaintance for the inattention of just one. - Helen
Rowland
When
marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be
able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything
else in marriage is transitory. -
Friedrich Nietzsche
When
most people enter marriage, they have only had an "up close and
personal" view of a small number of marriages, perhaps only one
(i.e., their parents' marriage). Although you likely have known many
married people throughout your lifetime, your vision of most
marriages is limited to the images that the couples project to the
world. You can never really know what another person's marriage is
like behind closed doors. Therefore, most people enter into marriage
with gaps in their understanding of what marriage entails. -
Christine
E. Murray
When
the hour of adversity arrives, when false friends are scattered, when
we are moving through the keen atmosphere of selfishness, then it is
that the virtuous wife, like an angel of light, shines with peculiar
lustre. - William
Scott Downey
Without
sounding pessimistic, I learned that I don't believe in marriage. I
believe in a commitment that you make in your heart. There's no paper
that will make you stay. - Diane
Kruger
Write
a list of ways that you have benefited from being married to your
spouse. Then write a list of your spouse’s positive patterns and
qualities. Keep adding to the lists and reread them frequently. -
Rabbi
Pliskin
You
can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that
each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting
back angry words. - Elizabeth
Gilbert
You
don’t marry one person; you marry three: the person you think they
are, the person they are, and the person they are going to become as
a result of being married to you. - Richard
Needham
You
don’t marry someone you can live with; you marry the person who you
cannot live without. -
Unknown
You
know it’s never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It’s always
seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone
puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep
things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride. -
Jodi
Picoult
You
meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you, and then
you meet one person and your life is changed forever. - Jamie
Randall
You
never know anyone until you marry them. - Eleanor
Roosevelt
