The sun will stand as your best man
And whistle
When you have found the courage
To marry forgiveness
When you have found the courage
to marry
Love.

- Hafiz of Persia

In a true partnership, the kind worth striving for, the kind worth insisting on, and even, frankly, worth divorcing over, both people try to give as much or even a little more than they get. "Deserves" is not the point. And "owes" is certainly not the point. The pont is to make the other person as happy as we can, because their happiness adds to ours. The point is -- in the right hands, everything that you give, you get.

- Amy Bloom

I don't like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?

- Paul Newman

The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds -- they mature slowly.

- Peter De Vries

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.

- Doug Larson

We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.

- Ellen Goodman

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.

- Simone Signoret

I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make my marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

- Anna Quindlen

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

- Erma Bombeck

You can't be value free when it comes to marriage.

- Al Gore

When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.

- Joseph Campbell

What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked.

- Paul Newman

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy, you must have somebody to divide it with.

- Mark Twain

The real act of marriage takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It's a choice you make - not just on your wedding day, but over and over again -- and that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband or wife.

- Barbara De Angelis

Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.

- Barbara De Angelis



The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they're right if you love to be with them all of the time.

- Julia Child



Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day.

- Barbara De Angelis



Many people marry for the wrong reasons, among them 1) to overcome loneliness, 2) to escape an unhappy parental home, 3) because they think that everyone is expected to marry, 4) because only "losers" who can't find someone to marry stay single, 5) out of a need to parent, or be parented by another person, 6) because they got pregnant, 7) because "we fell in love," ... and on goes the list.

- Bruce Fisher and Robert Alberti



The modern fairy tale ending is the reverse of the traditional one: A woman does not wait for Prince Charming to bring her happiness; she lives happily ever after only by refusing to wait for him -- or by actually rejecting him. It is those who persist in hoping for a Prince Charming who are setting themselves up for disillusionment and unhappiness.

- Susan Faludi



Someone asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true and incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.

- Gloria Steinem



Most people who meet my wife quickly conclude that she is remarkable. They are right about this. She is smart, funny and thoroughly charming. Often, after hearing her speak at some function or working with her on a project, people will approach me and say something to the effect of, you know, I think the world of you, Barack, but your wife, wow!

- Barack Obama



An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband.

- Booth Tarkington



My wife has been my closest friend, my closest advisor. And ... she's not somebody who looks to the limelight, or even is wild about me being in politics. And that's a good reality check on me. When I go home, she wants me to be a good father and a good husband. And everything else is secondary to that.

- Barack Obama



All young women begin by believing they can change and reform the men they marry. They can't.

- George Bernard Shaw



Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.

- Dick Gregory



One of the first things a relationship therapist learns is that couples argue to burn up energy that could be used for something else. In fact, arguments often serve the purpose of using up energy, so that the couple do not have to take the courageous, creative leap into an unknown they fear. Arguing serves the function of being a zone of familiarity into which you can retreat when you are afraid of making a creative breakthrough.

- Gay Hendricks



Elections are a good deal like marriages. There's no accounting for anyone's taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it's the same with public officials.

- Will Rogers



Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

- Marilyn Monroe



Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, the the other, to let her have it.

- Lyndon B. Johnson



Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.

- Georg C. Lichtenberg



He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

- Douglas Adams



All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different.

- John Berger



Marriage, like death, is a debt we owe to nature.

- Julia Ward Howe



The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together.

- Robert C. Dodds



The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which "the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one's skin or color or race" are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs. [Dissent, Winter 1959]

- Hannah Arendt



Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.

- Helen Rowland



We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited.

- Alfred Adler



He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.

- Francis Bacon



Getting a dog is like getting married. It teaches you to be less self-centered, to accept sudden, surprising outbursts of affection, and not to be upset by a few scratches on your car.

- Will Stanton



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



A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.

- Rainer Maria Rilke



A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

- Mignon McLaughlin



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



I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.

- Rita Rudner