Marriage Quotes



I hope you enjoy this beautiful collection of marriage quotes with good advice and secret to a happy marriage.

Marriage Quotes Index

About Marriage
Beautiful
Benefits of Marital Bliss
Bible Verses
Blended Family
Commitment
Communication
Consequences of Marital Discord
Divorce
Foundation for a Long-Term Marriage
Good Advice
How to Strengthen Your Marriage
Humorous
Husbands
Importance of a Sound Marriage
Importance of Family
Infidelity
Insightful
Intimacy
Keeping the Romance
Laughter
Love
Marital Union
Marriage is Hard Work
Raising Children
Re-Marriage
Romantic
Sappy
Secret to a Happy Marriage
Showing Love
Signs of an Ailing Marriage
What Does Love Mean?
Wives

About Marriage

Marriage orients men and women toward the future, asking them not just to commit to each other but to plan, to earn, to save, and to devote themselves to advancing their children's prospects.
~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.
~ Joseph Barth

I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one's life, the foundation of happiness or misery.
~ George Washington, letter to Burwell Bassett, May 23, 1785

You never know anyone until you marry them.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt, Book of Common Sense Etiquette

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Marriage is a promise. Not just between the couple but to the community at large, to generations past and to those yet to be born.
~ Heritage.org

Marriage, ultimately, is the practice of becoming passionate friends.
~ Harville Hendrix

The First Bond of Society is Marriage.
~ Cicero

Getting married is a way to show family and friends that you have a successful personal life. It's like the ultimate merit badge.
~ Andrew Cherlin, The Marriage-Go-Round, 2009

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Marriage is a career which brings about more benefits than many others.
~ Simone de Beauvoir

Marriage provides the solace of worked-on friendship and the joy of being known profoundly.
~ Imogene Stubbs A happy marriage is the world's best bargain.
~ O.A. Battista

Marriage is a case of "Unite and Conquer"
~ Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

Marriage has some thorns, but celibacy has no roses.
~ Vernon K. Mclellan, Wise Words and Quotes

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Beautiful

New love is the brightest, and long love is the greatest, but revived love is the tenderest thing known on earth.
~ Thomas Hardy

Being married is like having somebody permanently in your corner, it feels limitless, not limited.
~ Gloria Steinem, 2000, upon marrying for the first time at age 66

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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, documentary filmmaker

There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.
~ Ronald Reagan

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Benefits of Marital Bliss

Both men and women live longer, happier, healthier and wealthier lives when they are married. Unmarried co-habitation doesn't cut it. Cohabitation does not bring the benefits - in physical health, wealth, and emotional wellbeing - that marriage does. And, married people have both more and better sex than do their unmarried counterparts.
~ Linda Waite, The Case for Marriage

When a guy is happily married, no matter what happens at work, no matter what happens [during] the rest of the day, there's a shelter when you get home.
~ Danny Perosa, NPR "Story Corps" Morning Edition Listen:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3844820

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Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland asked a simple question of 10,000 married men with no history of chest pains (angina): "Does your wife show you her love?" Those men answering yes were found to experience significantly less angina in the next five years than husbands responding no - despite such negative indicators as elevated cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes or electrocardiogram abnormalities.
~ Bob Condor, Knight Ridder

A study of nearly 6,000 Americans with bladder cancer found that those who were married had better survival rates than single patients. Compared with their married peers, single patients were 26 percent more likely to die during the study period - even when researchers factored in patients' age, race and severity of their cancer.
~ Reuters Health, September 30, 2005, www.cancerpage.com
For adults, a stable, happy marriage is the best protector against illness and premature death, and for children, such a marriage is the best source of emotional stability and good physical health. Decades of research have clearly established these links.
~ Burman & Margolin, 1992; Dawson, 1991; Verbrugge, 1979

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Bible Verses

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
~ Bible - Genesis: 2:24 (NIV)

But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God..."
~ Bible - Ruth 1:16 (NIV)

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD.
~ Bible - Proverbs 18:22 (ESV)

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
~ Bible – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NIV)

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Blended Family

Stepparents, remember this: Your partner will react to an act of kindness directed toward their child as if you had extended two acts of kindness directly towards them (your partner). The same applies for an unkind act, but your partner is likely to react as if you had acted unkindly towards them (your partner) five times.
~ Stepfamily Foundation of Alberta, research study 2006

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Commitment

Motto for the bride and groom:
We are a work in progress with a lifetime contract.
~ Phyllis Koss

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to strengthen each other in all labor, 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 Elliott (aka Mary Anne Evans), Adam Bede

Commitment has kind eyes. He wears sturdy shoes. Everything is vivid when he is around. It is wonderful to sit and have lunch in his gardens around harvest time. You can taste in the vegetables that the soil has been cared for.
~ J. Ruth Gendler

Commitment is making a choice to give up other choices.
~ Scott Stanley

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Marriage is the hardest thing you will ever do. The secret is removing divorce as an option. Anybody who gives themselves that option will get a divorce.
~ Will Smith (11 years into his second marriage)

I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough time for a man and a woman to understand each other and. . . to understand - is to love."
~ William Butler Yeats

As for his secret to staying married: "My wife tells me that if I ever decide to leave, she is coming with me."
~ Jon BonJovi

It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing to a young bride and groom from his prison cell in Nazi Germany in 1943

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Communication

The most important marriage skill is listening to your partner in a way that they can't possibly doubt that you love them.
~ Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
~ Karl Menninger

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.
~ David Augsburger

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.
~ Oscar Wilde

The goal is to have a conversation in a way so that you can have another conversation tomorrow.
~ Unknown

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In a good relationship, people get angry, but in a very different way. The Marriage Masters see a problem a bit like a soccer ball. They kick it around. It's 'our' problem.
~ John Gottman, PhD, on observations at his U. of Washington "Love Lab"

Some of the most important words in marriage are "maybe you are right" and "let's try it your way." As a good friend of mine (a bachelor until he was 38) said to me after his first year of marriage: "I finally learned that the sun will come up tomorrow if we try it her way."
~ Jeff Herring

Committing to staying calm is the first key to committing to staying married.
~ Hal Runkel, founder of the Scream Free Institute

We heard this at a wedding: 'If you are going to argue, argue naked.'
~ Peg and Harry Williams, Nashville, TN

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Consequences of Marital Discord

Researchers found men and women in unhappy marriages suffered from increased stress levels throughout the day at home and at work as well as higher blood pressure at midday at the office, which could raise the risk of heart attack or stroke.
~ Barnett, R. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 2005; vol 30: pp36-43. News release, Brandeis University

Poor social relationships are as damaging to physical health as cigarette smoking. The mortality rates of individuals with poor social relationships are higher than those who smoke cigarettes for many years.
~ House et al, 1988. Social relationships and health. Science, 241 , 540-544

Marital distress is an important health hazard for adults and children. Marital distress leads to depression and reduces immune system functioning in adults. In addition, chronic marital conflict harms the emotional and physical well-being of children.
~ Emery, 1982; Gottman & Katz, 1989; Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1993

Research has shown a child who sees his mother mistreated is more damaged than if the child himself is abused.
~ Steven Stosny, compassionpower.com

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Divorce

Divorce to like an amputation. Sometimes it's necessary but it should be avoided if at all possible because it brings about a permanent disability.
~ Bill Doherty, DrBillDoherty.org

The United States Administration for Children and Families (ACF) spends $46 billion per year operating 65 different social programs. If one goes down the list of these programs… the need for each is either created or exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages.
~ Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families (ACF/HHS) 2004

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.
~ Pat Conroy

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Divorce causes a decrease in wealth that is larger than just splitting a couple’s assets in half. By the same token, married people see an increase in wealth that is more than just adding the assets of two single people. On the other hand, divorce can devastate your wealth. Divorce drops a person's wealth by an average of 77%. Contrary to popular belief, the research shows that the wealth of divorced women wasn't significantly worse than that of divorced men, in terms of real money. If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married.
~ Jay Zagorsky, Ohio State, Journal of Sociology, Jan 2006

To get divorced because love has died, is like selling your car because it's run out of gas.
~ Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

Divorce is a major health risk for American adults and children. In addition to well-established links between divorce and mental health problems, adults who experience divorce more than double their risk of earlier mortality. And children who experience a parental divorce have their life expectancy shortened by an average of four years, according to a fifty-year longitudinal study. These effects are comparable to those of cigarette smoking.
~ Dawson, 1991; Cherlin et al., 1991; Doherty & Needle, 1991; Tucker et al., 1996; Schwartz et al., 1995.

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Foundation for a Long-Term Marriage

Those marriages generally abound most with love and constancy that are preceded by a long courtship.
~ Joseph Addison, The Spectator, Dec. 29, 1711

Lust fades, so you'd better be with someone who can stand you.
~ The Story of Us

The first year of marriage is like wet cement - the impressions made in it are much harder to change once it has set.
~ Robert Wolgemuth

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Good Advice

Don't be a buzz kill. When your spouse shares something exiting, match their enthusiasm.
~ StanCoMarriage

You need only do three things in this country to avoid poverty - finish high school, marry before having a child, and marry after the age of 20. Only 8 percent of the families who do this are poor; 79 percent of those who fail to do this are poor.
~ William Galston, Clinton White House

Get Married
Stay Married
What a concept.
~ The Snipe

For a marriage to have any chance, every day at least six things should go unsaid.
~ Unknown

The divorce rate would be lower if instead of marrying for better or worse people would marry for good.
~ Ruby Dee

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I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person, but I do know that many people have a lot of wrong ideas about marriage and what it takes to make that marriage happy and successful. I'll be the first to admit that it's possible that you did marry the wrong person. However, if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all. On the other hand, if you marry the right person, and treat that person wrong, you certainly will have ended up marrying the wrong person. I also know that it is far more important to be the right kind of person than it is to marry the right person. In short, whether you married the right or wrong person is primarily up to you.
~ Zig Ziglar

Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side.
~ Zig Ziglar

Let there be spaces in your togetherness.
~ Kahlil Gibran

Real giving is when we give to our spouses what's important to them, whether we understand it, like it, agree with it, or not.
~ Michele Weiner-Davis, Divorce Busting

In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, the grounds for marriage.
~ Robert Anderson

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Some pray to marry the man they love,
My prayer will somewhat vary; That I love the man I marry.
~ Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933), U.S. social worker. My Prayer.

Do not pray to marry the one that you love, but to love the one that you marry.
~ Spencer Kimball

Choose your love, then love your choice.
~ Unknown

If you want peace, work for justice. That's true for marriage, or for any other human endeavor.
~ Unknown

Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
~ Martin Luther

Spoil your spouse.....not your children.
~ Unknown

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How to Strengthen Your Marriage

One of the nicest things you can say to your partner, "If I had it to do over again, I'd choose you. Again."
~ Unknown

The Policy of Joint Agreement: Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse.

This policy helps men take their wives' feelings into account whenever they make a decision - avoid thoughtless habits, learn to meet emotional needs with mutual enjoyment and resolve conflicts. This creates marital compatibility and emotional bonding. Whenever he follows it, he learns to think about his wife's reaction to everything he does. Some argue that just an agreement would be a big help, why insist on enthusiastic agreement? It's because couples need to avoid agreements that are coerced or self-sacrificing. Couples need to learn how to come to agreements that take both of their interests into account at once. I have encouraged couples to continue to negotiate until they arrive at an enthusiastic agreement because they're the ones that stand the test of time. Joint agreement means that both must be enthusiastic together, and no one risks losing their identity or subjecting themselves to slavery or control when they themselves must be enthusiastic about each decision. The goal is to become united in purpose and spirit, not to overpower or control each other. Think of it as creating a mutually enjoyable lifestyle.
~ Willard Harley, MarriageBuilders.com

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Write a list of ways that you have benefited from being married to your spouse. Then write a list of your spouses positive patterns and qualities. Keep adding to the lists and reread them frequently.
~ Rabbi Pliskin in Marriage Marriage tip: Reread the cards sent to you on your wedding day.
~ FamilyMin Twitter

Be presidents of each other's fan clubs.
~ Tony Heath

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

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Humorous

If you didn't want to be improved, you shouldn't have gotten married.
~ Nancy (Mrs Scott) Stanley

Charlie Brown kicks a football while saying, "my grampa and gramma have been married for 50 years...." To which his playmate replies "They're lucky, aren't they?" Charlie says, "Grampa says it isn't luck...it's skill."
~ Classic Peanuts - 9/26/01

A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's too late.
~ Frank Sinatra, The Joker Is Wild

Adam and Eve had an ideal marriage. He didn't have to hear about all the men she could have married... and she didn't have to hear about how well his Mother cooked.
~ Unknown

We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.
~ Unknown

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Two women sitting in a restaurant, one is saying to the other: "Sometimes I wonder if it would've been better having one big marriage instead of a lot of little ones."
~ New Yorker Magazine - Nov 28, 2005

Do You Know Your Spouse?
While attending a marriage seminar on communication, David and his wife listened to the instructor declare, "It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other." He addressed the man, "Can you describe your wife's favorite flower?" David leaned over, touched his wife's arm gently and whispered, "Pillsbury All-Purpose, isn't it?"
~ Unknown

Marriage isn't supposed to make you happy -
it's supposed to make you married.
~ Frank Pittman

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Husbands

"Remember, you married her, you didn't hire her!" - said to critical, controlling husband.
~ Dr Phil

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
~ Theodore Hesburgh

My dad told me on the day of my wedding, 'Never go in a place that you wouldn't take your wife.'
~ David Gibbs, Mt. Juliet, TN, married 51 years

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Importance of a Sound Marriage

If the marriage ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
~ Scott Gardner

They say it takes a village to raise a child. That may be the case, but the truth is that it takes a lot of solid, stable marriages to create a village.
~ Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

Healthy marriages are the best way to protect children from abuse.
~ Joe Bennett, Mississippi YMCA

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Importance of Family

All children have the right to live in a two-parent, married family. Talk about a Head Start Program - it's the kids with married parents that get the real head start.
~ Diane Sollee, Head Start Conference, 2001

When the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled.
~ President Lyndon B. Johnson in what he called his "greatest civil rights speech," although he was just about the only one to see it that way.

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Infidelity

Bad marriages don't cause infidelity; infidelity causes bad marriages.
~ Frank Pittman

I'm tempted to go to all the buildings downtown and put up a sign, "DANGER ZONE: Men and Women at Work." Today's workplace is the most common breeding ground for affairs. It's the proximity and collegiality - the intimacy of working together, not bad marriages, that is the slippery slope to infidelity.
~ Shirley Glass, NOT Just Friends

Men's affairs in particular are often the cause of troubled marriages and not the effect. In my data, 56 percent of men who entered into affairs said they had ''happy'' or ''very happy'' marriages, compared with 30 percent of women. For men, the strongest predictor for having an affair is their attitudes and values about monogamy. For women, it's marital unhappiness.
~ Shirley Glass, NOT Just Friends

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What we really need is a time machine so that people entering into an affair could flash forward and see themselves, their kids, their lives at the other end of this "tunnel of love" – at the end of the lust.
~ Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

Stephen Covey was asked after a speech about how to forgive someone who has committed adultery. He said the question made him think of the old prayer, "Oh Lord, let me forgive those who sin differently than I do."
~ Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

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Insightful

When a man marries a woman, they become one--the trouble starts when they try to decide which one.
~ Croft M. Pentz, The Complete Book of Zingers

The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.
~ Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

There is a connection between what you are putting into your marriage and what you are getting out of it.
~ Mark Gungor, Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage

Any fool can have a trophy wife. It takes a real man to have a trophy marriage.
~ Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

If the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, it's because they take better care of it.
~ Cecil Selig

The challenge is to help couples turn "I Do" into "We Can."
~ Scott Stanley, prepinc.com

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Interviewer: "For so long you were the poster boy for American bachelorhood. Now that you've settled into a marriage, do you find monogamy difficult?" Warren Beatty: "No. I would imagine that marriage without it is difficult."
~ NY Times Sunday Magazine, Oct 1, 2006

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

When it comes to marriage, the more you focus on the bad stuff, the more you focus on the bad stuff.
~ Pat Love

It is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel - they get to know each other better.
~ Goethe

The success of marriage comes not in finding the "right" person, but in the ability of both partners to adjust to the real person they inevitably realize they married.
~ John Fischer

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
~ Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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It's true what they say – all the good men are married. But it's marriage that makes them good.
~ Gay Talese, Thy Neighbor's Wife

Empathy means resonating with the “not self”. In empathy you know everything is connected, so whatever you do to something else or someone else is done to you.
~ Harville Hendrix

Love doesn't commit suicide. We have to kill it. Though, it often simply dies of our neglect.
~ Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

No man is truly married until he understands every word his wife is NOT saying.
~ Unknown

Do NOT do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
~ George Bernard Shaw

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.
~ Mignon McLauglin

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So many people have the will to have a strong marriage but don't have the skill.
~ Kathy Beirne, Portland Coalition for Marriage Education

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

If you made a list of reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a lot of overlap.
~ Mignon McLauglin

Marriage, families, all relationships are more a process of learning the dance rather than finding the right dancer.
~ Paul Pearsall

The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out.
~ Ronald Reagan

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

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What makes a relationship work is having things in common. What makes a relationship passionate are our differences.
~ Unknown

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

The three stages of love and marriage:
You don't know em, but you love em.
You know em, and don't love em.
You know em and you love em.
~ Unknown

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

Married life teaches one invaluable lesson: to think of things far enough ahead not to say them.
~ Jefferson Machamer

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Intimacy

There is almost no marital problem that can't be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.
~ Garrison Keillor, "The Old Scout," The Writer's Almanac, Oct. 4, 2005

Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.
~ Peter Ustinov

Tell guys if they make the bed in the morning, they might benefit in that same bed in the evening.
~ Bill Coffin (how's that for learning a useful marriage skill!)

The way you make love is the way God will be with you.
~ Rumi

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
~ Unknown

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Keeping the Romance

Why would a couple that lives and sleeps together every night need dates and rituals? Precisely because they live and sleep together.
~ Bill Doherty, Take Back Your Marriage

The heart of marriage is memories.
~ Bill Cosby

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Laughter

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
~ Victor Borge

Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
~ Rose Franken

In our house we don't take ourselves too seriously, and laughter is the best form of unity, I think, in a marriage.
~ Michele Obama, Feb 2011

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

The more things we can laugh about, the more alive we become: The more things we can laugh about together, the more connected we become.
~ Frank Pittman

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Love

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

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You can't have one without the other.
~ Sammy Cahn, "Love and Marriage"

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

When there is love in a marriage, there is harmony in the home; when there is harmony in the home, there is contentment in the community; when there is contentment in the community, there is prosperity in the nation; when there is prosperity in the nation, there is peace in the world.
~ Chinese proverb frequently quoted by David and Vera Mace

The first duty of love is to listen.
~ Paul Tillich

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Love is no assignment for cowards.
~ Ovid

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
~ Tom Robbins

One of the great illusions of our time is that love is self-sustaining. It is not. Love must be fed and nurtured, constantly renewed. That demands ingenuity and consideration, but first and foremost, it demands time.
~ David Mace

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do?
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Love is a four-letter word spelled T-I-M-E.
~ Unknown

Love is seeking to act for the other person's highest good.
~ Jerry Cook

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Marital Union

To get the full value of joy
You must have someone to divide it with.
~ Mark Twain

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, family therapy pioneer

When love and skill work together expect a masterpiece.
~ John Ruskin

Coming together is the beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.
~ Henry Ford

A problem shared is a problem halved.
~ Unknown

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Marriage is Hard Work

The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding.
~ Gary Smalley, quoted in Worth Repeating

There is such pleasure in long-term marriage that I really would hate to be my age and not have had a long-term marriage. Remember, sustaining a pleasurable, long-term marriage takes effort, deliberateness and an intention to learn about one another. In other words, marriage is for grown-ups.
~ Cokie Roberts, From This Day Forward

The development of a really good marriage is not a natural process. It is an achievement.
~ David and Vera Mace

Love is a feeling, Marriage is a contract, and a Relationship is work.
~ Lori Gordon, pairs.com

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, Seattle Seahawks quarterback

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Profound

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.
~ Leo Tolstoy

One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall out of love with each other, it keeps you together until maybe you fall in love again.
~ Judith Viorst

Marriage, like a submarine, is only safe if you get all the way inside.
~ Frank Pittman

People think they have to find their soulmate to have a good marriage. You're not going to "find" your soulmate. Anyone you meet already has soulmates. Dozens of them. Their mother. Their father. Their lifelong friends. You get married, and after 20 years of loving, bearing and raising children, meeting challenges - then you'll have "created" soulmate status.
~ Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

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And You Wonder *Why* It Didn't Last
She married him because he was such a "strong man" She divorced him because he was such a "dominating male."

He married her because she was so "fragile and cute." He divorced her because she was so "weak and helpless."

She married him because "he is a good provider." She divorced him because "all he thinks about is business."

He married her because "she reminds me of my mother." He divorced her because "she's getting more like her mother every day."

She married him because he was "happy and romantic." She divorced him because he was "shiftless and fun-loving."

He married her because she was "steady and sensible." He divorced her because she was "boring and dull."

She married him because he was "the life of the party." She divorced him because "he's a party boy."
~ Unknown

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Eight-Cow Wife:
Johnny Lingo lived in the South Pacific. The islanders all spoke highly of this man, but when it came time for him to find a wife the people shook their heads in disbelief. In order to obtain a wife you paid for her by giving her father cows. Four to six cows was considered a high price. But the woman Johnny Lingo chose was plain, skinny and walked with her shoulders hunched and her head down. She was very hesitant and shy. What surprised everyone was Johnny's offer -- he gave eight cows for her! Everyone chuckled about it, since they believed his father-in-law put one over on him. Several months after the wedding, a visitor from the U.S. came to the islands to trade and heard the story about Johnny Lingo and his eight-cow wife. Upon meeting Johnny and his wife the visitor was totally taken back, since this wasn't a shy, plain and hesitant woman but one who was beautiful, poised and confident. The visitor asked about the transformation, and Johnny Lingo's response was very simple. "I wanted an eight-cow woman, and when I paid that for her and treated her in that fashion, she began to believe that she was an eight-cow woman. She discovered she was worth more than any other woman in the islands. And what matters most is what a woman thinks about herself."
~ Reader's Digest

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Raising Children

Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.
~ Robert Fulghum

I was talking to a friend who said she wants her children to be able to look back and say, "I want a great marriage like my Mom and Dad had." That struck me. I think we have a good marriage but do we put each other down sometimes? Yup. Do I snap at him for silly reasons? Yup. Do we seem really happy to our kids? Not sure. I hope so.
~ 3Peanuts Blog

Research has shown a child who sees his mother mistreated is more damaged than if the child himself is abused.
~ Steven Stosny, compassionpower.com

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring and integrity, they think of you.
~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
~ Elizabeth Stone

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Re-Marriage

We just say: the divorce didn't work out.
~ Joe, who remarried his wife after they divorced

Parents used to have lots of children – now children have lots of parents.
~ Guro Hansen Helskog

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Romantic

Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be - the last of life for which the first was made.
~ Robert Browning

How Do I Love Thee?
Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right:
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
~ Unknown

We loved with a love that was more than love.
~ Edgar Allan Poe

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Sappy

If you live to be a hundred, I want
To live to be a hundred minus one day,
So I never have to live without you.
~ Winnie the Pooh

My wife, the star I steer by.
~ David McCullough

Being married is like having a color television set. You never want to go back to black and white.
~ Danny Perosa, NPR "Story Corps" Morning Edition Listen:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3844820

No road is long with good company.
~ Turkish proverb

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Secret to a Happy Marriage

A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers.
~ Ruth Bell Graham

The secret to having a good marriage is to understand that marriage must be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.
~ Frank Pittman

Fidelity is the single most important element in solidly enduring marriages.
~ Frank Pittman

When asked his secret of love, being married fifty-four years to the same person, he said, "Ruth and I are happily incompatible."
~ Billy Graham

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

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Dear Abby:
Some months ago, you printed a letter from a reader who was disturbed that the spark was gone from her marriage. I asked my husband whether the spark is gone from our 18-year marriage.
His response: "A spark lasts only a second. It lights a fire. When the flame burns down, we are left with the hottest part of the fire, the embers, which burn the longest and keep the fire alive."
~ Betty in Cap May, N.J.

A happy wedlock is a long falling in love.
~ Theodore Parker

A soulmate marriage does not at all mean that you have found someone you match up with on all the cards – on all the issues, on everything. That would be the most deadly dull thing to even imagine. Instead, it means you've found someone and they don't ever want to blow out that little light inside you. And you feel the same way about them.
~ Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

If a married couple with children has fifteen minutes of uninterrupted, nonlogistical, non-problem-solving talk every day, I would put them in the top 5% of all married couples. It's an extraordinary achievement.
~ Bill Doherty, Take Back Your Marriage

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Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out the trash.
~ Joyce Brothers

A good marriage is a contest of generosity.
~ Diane Sawyer

Sheila and I just celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Somebody asked her, what was our secret? She answered, “On my wedding day, I decided to make a list of ten of Tim’s faults which, for the sake of our marriage, I would always overlook. I figured I could live with at least ten!” When she was asked which faults she had listed, Shelia replied, “I never did get around to listing them. Instead, every time he does something that makes me mad, I simply say to myself, ‘Lucky for him, it’s one of the ten!’”
~ Tim Hudson, Chicken Soup for the Romantic Soul, 2002

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ACCEPT - the secret of a good marriage.
Attraction
Communication
Commitment
Enjoyment
Purpose
Trust
~ Unknown

Gold Medal Marriages: marriages that exhibit longevity, resilience, loyalty, support, service and durability in the face of challenges and trials.
~ Utah Governor's Commission on Marriage

We call upon you to let your "happily-married" light shine. Happily marrieds are not "perfect marrieds," but they have learned some of what it takes to create happiness in marriage. We encourage you to find ways to let people know that you love being married! Let those who are not yet married know that the adventure of marriage is worth the effort - that the rewards are worth the price!
~ Laura Brotherson, StrengtheningMarriage.com

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Showing Love

What I realize as I get older is that Michelle is less concerned about me giving her flowers than she is that “me doing things that are hard for me — carving out time. That to her is proof, evidence that I’m thinking about her. She appreciates the flowers, but to her romance is that I’m actually paying attention to things that she cares about, and time is always an important factor.
~ Barack Obama, Ebony, 2/2007

I asked my husband one day how he felt he showed me he loved me - he told me that he did it by making sure I was safe. That meant fixing my car or truck, checking tires, changing oil, filling it with gas, etc. Also making sure that the house was safe as well and fixing things there.
~ Lorraine Hover

My wife uses fabric softener. I never knew what that stuff was for. Then I noticed women coming up to me, sniffing, then saying under their breath, "Married!" and walking away. Fabric Softeners are how our wives mark their territory. We can take off the ring, but it's hard to get that April fresh scent out of your clothes.
~ Andy Rooney

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Signs of an Ailing Marriage

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse predict an ailing marriage: Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt. The worst of these is contempt.
~ John Gottman, PhD, on observations at his U. of Washington "Love Lab"

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What Does Love Mean?

When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love.
~ Rebecca - age 8

Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.
~ Chrissy - age 6

Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.
~ Terri - age 4

Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.
~ Danny - age 7

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Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.
~ Noelle - age 7

Love is when mommy gives daddy the best piece of chicken.
~ Elaine - age 5

Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.
~ Mary Ann - age 4

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Wives

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
~ Francis Bacon, Essays

A happy wife equals a happy life.
~ Unknown

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