Love After Marriage Quotes & Sayings

The best romance is inside marriage; the finest love stories come after the wedding, not before. — Irving Stone

A husband and wife found themselves in love with each other for the first time after twenty-seven years of marriage. — Honore De Balzac

The emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Had the love been permanent, there won't have been divorces after love marriages. Had the love been everlasting, there won't have been bad blood in the family. — Girdhar Joshi

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. — Mark Twain

And when Aphrodite was told about Cupid's rapid progress, she asked Zeus whether he would take her other son, Hymen, along too, since Hymen was already twenty-one & was about to be appointed as the God of Marriage, but knew precious little about love & sex, let alone, marriage.
And thus Zeus took Hymen along too on his oyster hunt. But the Nymphs did not like Hymen. They shrieked & ran in all directions at his approach. But Hymen turned out to be a worthy oyster hunter. He caught the Nymphs easily enough & after catching them, he fed them with wine which his father, the God of Wine, made. And thus drugged, he harvested their oysters painlessly. And this was how all virgin Nymphs & girls got their oysters named after him, the God of Marriage. — Nicholas Chong

It was as if they'd discovered something that had once been there but had gotten hidden or misunderstood or forgotten over time, and they were charmed by it once more, and by one another. Which seems only right and expectable for married people. They caught a glimpse of the person they fell in love with, and who sustained life. For some, that vision must never dim - as is true of me. But it was odd that our parents should catch their glimpse, and have frustration, anxiety and worry pass away like clouds dispersing after a storm, refind their best selves, but for that glimpse to happen just before landing our family in ruin. — Richard Ford

Love and marriage are of the Father's most powerful means for the making of his foolish little ones into sons and daughters. But so unlike in many cases are the immediate consequences to those desired and expected, that it is hard for not a few to believe that he is anywhere looking after their fate--caring about them at all. And the doubt would be a reasonable one, if the end of things was marriage. But the end is life--that we become the children of God; after which, all things can and will go their grand, natural course; the heart of the Father will be content for his children, and the hearts of the children will be content in their Father. — George MacDonald

My mother once told me that if a married couple puts a penny in a pot for every time they make love in the first year, and takes a penny out every time after that, they'll never get all the pennies out of the pot. — Armistead Maupin

It doesn't matter who you marry, as long as he thinks like you and is a gentleman and a Southerner and prideful. For a woman, love comes after marriage."
"Oh, Pa, that's such an Old Country notion!"
"And a good notion it is! All this American business of running around marrying for love, like servants, like Yankees! The best marriages are when the parents choose for the girl. For how can a silly piece like yourself tell a good man from a scoundrel? — Margaret Mitchell

The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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

In the same five years three new colleges were founded at Cambridge - Trinity, Corpus Christi, and Clare - although love of learning, like love in marriage, was not always the motive. Corpus Christi was founded in 1352 because fees for celebrating masses for the dead were so inflated after the plague that two guilds of Cambridge decided to establish a college whose scholars, as clerics, would be required to pray for their deceased members. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Because, though I'd seen and felt just a fraction of all the love in the world, I knew that when people thought of love they thought of moments. Whether or not a marriage worked out, or if they stayed together after graduation, or if they did go to the big dance together, the story's end mattered less, and the highlights in between mattered more. Those are what lingered, and what people can go back to, even when they had nothing left. — Mina V. Esguerra

However important it is that love shall precede marriage, it is far more important that it shall continue after marriage. — Samson Raphael Hirsch

... Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as interesting as his character and points of view. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

What I used to fear was growing old - not the aches and pains part or the what-have-I-done-with-my-life part or the threat of illness, none of that. I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like without the option of looking good. I had a piece of good luck. I married Rich in my late forties and thus was eased into middle age while living with a man who approved of the way I looked. When after three years of marriage I lamented the fact that I had put on a good deal of weight, he said, "Don't worry. I love it all. You can get as fat as you want." Then, upon reflection, he added sweetly, "As long as you can still get up from your chair. — Abigail Thomas

She said she wanted my best line tomorrow after the show, and now I knew what it was going to be. — Cora Carmack

Before marriage, we are carried along by the force of the in-love obsession. After marriage, we revert to being the people we were before we fell in love. — Gary Chapman

Yet, after all, Jenny thought she had been granted more than she hoped for when she married him. He did love her: differently, but perhaps more enduringly; and he had grown to depend on her. She thought that they would have many years of quiet content: never reaching the heights, but living together in comfort and deepening friendship. — Georgette Heyer

Loving isn't merging, surrendering, uniting with the other. Rather, it's a kind of solitude; of profound aloneness. It induces you to mature and become whole for the sake of your beloved ... to truly love another, you must first wholly love yourself. Love therefore exacts the most demanding claim of all; it both chooses you and pursues you, and reaches out, as if over vast distances, to call and draw you into your now and future self.
John VanDyke Wilmerding, ideas put forth inspired by ('after') Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet — Rainer Maria Rilke

She was not certain what she wanted from life, or what to expect from it, for she had seen so little of it, but she was sure that in some way - because she willed it to be so - her wants and her expectations were the same.
For a while after their marriage she was in such demand that it was not unpleasant when he fell asleep. Presently, however, he began sleeping all night, and it was then she awoke more frequently, and looked into the darkness, wondering about the nature of men, doubtful of the future, until at last there came a night when she shook her husband awake and spoke of her own desire. Affably he placed one of his long white arms around her waist; she turned to him then, contentedly, expectantly, and secure. However, nothing else occurred, and in a few minutes he had gone back to sleep.
This was the night Mrs. Bridge concluded that while marriage might be an equitable affair, love itself was not. — Evan S. Connell

Here it is. Let's say you're married, you love your wife, but you're attracted by another woman.'
'Excuse me, but I absolutely cannot understand how after eating my fill here I could go past a bakery and steal a roll. — Leo Tolstoy

If you were to succeed in prolonging the deliriously ecstatic puppy-dog love stage of the first months of courtship through-out the entire relationship itself-through marriage, unto death-would this same love, so celebrated, so sought after, break down in utter incredulity at the duration of its own existence? — Courtney Maum

She was in a terrible marriage and she couldn't talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him. He swore that it wouldn't and she believed him. But it only got worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she mentioned that she'd visited with one of the neighbors who was walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night, her husband threw her into a mirror. — Nicholas Sparks

Friendship in marriage is its own thing: friendship in a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, or a cappuccino every Sunday morning. Friendship in buying undershirts and underpants. Friendship in picking up a prescription or rescuing the towed car. Friendship in waiting for the phone call after the mammogram. Friendship in toast buttered just so. Friendship in shoveling the snow. I am the one you want to tell. You are the one I want to tell. — Elizabeth Alexander

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement - the number restriction (two and only two) - is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice. — Charles Krauthammer

A choice had to be made when your husband said something unkind. Specifically: be cruel, be strong, or sulk. 'Be cruel' by saying an unkind thing back. 'Be strong' by choosing not to mind. But to do this, you have to use up a piece of your love. You have to shave off enough of the love to forgive. After a while, the piece might grow back, but sometimes not. And if you shave off all the soft curves, you'll be left with a sharp-edged love. 'Sulk' by sulking. Sulking is simply delaying the choice to be cruel or strong. — Jaclyn Moriarty

I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.. I have reached this definitive conclusion after 20 years of study and prayer. — Rowan Williams

I want a little girl with your smile and your smarts. I want Christmases and birthdays and a chocolate Lab who wears an American flag bandana that you name after a political philosopher or something. We can even include him in the family campaign photos. — Chanel Cleeton

After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6 degrees of marriage. — Mignon McLaughlin

After she married the Duke of York, she immediately transformed his life, bringing him love, understanding, sympathy and support for which he had always craved. She inspired him, she calmed him and she enabled him for the first time in his life to believe in himself. Her sense of humor awoke his own, her natural gaiety lightened him. Their marriage was a rare union in which each complemented and enhanced the other. — William Shawcross

I do think that marriage can be a wonderful thing if it's the right thing for the two people involved. I believe in love - very much so - how can you not believe after you've experienced it? I believe in relationships. One day, I know I'll find the right woman and get married myself. — Michael Jackson

After 7 years of marriage, I am sure of 2 things: First, never wallpaper together and second, you'll need 2 bathrooms ... both for her. The rest is a mystery, but a mystery I love to be involved in. — Dennis Miller

Around the time my first marriage of twenty-one years was ending, I had spent a lot of time reflecting on the fairytale promises of living "happily ever after and being "forever in love." I thought about how the expectations of our families, friends, religion and society each contribute to the guilt and shame many of us experience when our partnerships and marriages do not work out the way we expected. The familiar promises of being together until death do us part" seemed antiquated and misguided in our modern world. Why wan't being happy, in love and committed 'for now' a more widely accepted and reasonable vision? — Theresa J. Knight

When you fall in love, two people are mad for each other, When these two people get married, others say that they are made for each other, After marriage, the same two people are mad at each other. — Santosh Avvannavar

In nature, a rainbow appears after a storm. It is luminous and shiny after the dark and rainy event that gave birth to it. Likewise with each of us, events both dark and stormy, but also ones that are bright and full of life, have made us who we are individually, and in turn who we are together as a couple.

The colors of our relationship rainbow really do blend together to create a close and exciting marriage that is also full of contentment, safety, and predictability for both of us. That way, as life's storms do rage around us, and the rainbows appear, we are consistent in our love for one another always. — Jeffery W. Turner

I realized today that a daughter is born twice. For nine months, a mother carries and nourishes her daughter in her stomach, then gives birth to her. It's a happy occasion, but the mother is left feeling sadly empty inside ... But I realized today that, after raising her within my love and embrace and sending her off in marriage, this day is just as sad and leaves me just as empty as the one when I first gave birth to her.
Picture Man: Only after a parent has let go of their child will the parent truly be an adult. Living creatures leave their nest when ready. But the ones sending them off still anxiously and unnecessarily spread out their hands to catch them. — Kim Dong Hwa

Practically all girls are capable of pulling off the
Lady Love stunt before marriage but alas, only too
many of them think a wedding ring gives them the
right to flop down on the do-nothing stool, get fat
and eat onions... When a man see his beauteous
pride slouching around the house in a soiled house-
coat with cold cream on her face, he feels he got
cheated at the altar.
Too often after the first baby, [women] cease
being wives and are only mothers... giving all their
tenderness to Junior and letting poor husband go
heart-hungry. — Carol Shields

There's a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more. — Dave Grohl

I tilt my head and ask "What firsts have we
already passed?"
"The easy ones," he says. "First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together,
although I wasn't the one sleeping. Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to
sleep together when we're both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We're done
after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I'll have to divorce you and
marry a wife who's twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and
you'll be stuck raising the kids." He bring his hand to my cheek and smile at me. "So you
see, babe? I'm only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer
it'll be before I'm forced to leave you high and dry. — Colleen Hoover

I want to try with someone who loves me enough to try with me. I want to grow old looking at the same face every morning. I want to grow old looking at the same face every night at the dinner table. I want to be one of those old couples you see still holding hands and laughing after fifty years of marriage. That's what I want. I want to be someone's forever. — Rachel Gibson

My friend Kate once went to a concert of Mongolian throat singers who were traveling through New York City on a rare world tour. Although she couldn't understand the words to their songs, she found the music almost unbearably sad. After the concert, Kate approached the lead Mongolian singer and asked, "What are your songs about?" He replied, "Our songs are about the same things that everyone else's songs are about: lost love, and somebody stole your fastest horse. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I was acting like a child. Wanting his full attention. His declarations of love. I wanted to be his little princess, I guess. The one he worshiped and adored. Well, life's not like that. And after thinking it through, I actually wouldn't want it to be. We aren't put together in a marriage to stroke each other's ego. Marriage is a partnership. A blending of two lives working together. That's where the commitment comes in. It's a determination of the head - not the heart. No, I shouldn't say it that way. It still involves the heart. It still is based on love, but it's new kind of love. A mature love. One that doesn't ask, "What will you do for me?" but rather "What can I do for you?" or "What can we do for each other? — Janette Oke

His child. His child with Caroline. Their child. After the things he'd said to her this morning, this would likely be their only child. Would it be a little bespectacled boy who wore his clothes haphazardly and followed his papa around holding a magnifying glass in one hand and notebook in the other? Or would it be a beautiful, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl who was always getting into trouble for dragging the hem of her skirt through the mud while she dug around in the flowerbeds? He smiled at mental image. Most men wished for a boy, but he'd gladly take a little girl who was just like Caroline. — Rose Gordon

This is much worse than losing a cat. You do not wish the cat dead, for example, after the first two days. You still love the cat and presumably the cat still loves you, or some variation of love that may in fact be dependence and even indifference. — Suzanne Finnamore

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

After a while in marriage, it doesn't work anymore. There is something missing, there is something wrong. There are few marriages that stay alive forever. We like something, and after a while, we hate what we used to love. — Monica Bellucci

I fell in love the moment I saw her in her grandfather's kitchen, her dark curls crashing over her Portuguese shoulders. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she smiled.
'I'm really not that thirsty.'
'What? What you say?' Her English wasn't too good. Now I'm seventy-three and she's just turned seventy. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she asked me today, smiling.
'I'm really not that thirsty.'
'What? What you say?' Neither of us has the gift of language acquisition. After fifty years of marriage we have never really spoken, but we love each other more than words can say. — Dan Rhodes

In a lot of ways home improvement is like marriage. It's not glamorous. It can take a lot of hard work and effort. There are days it feels like it might be easier to burn the whole thing to the ground and start all over again. Then you remember how much you love the house or your husband and you recommit yourself to what it takes to see the whole thing through. Even when it might involve paintbrushes and compromise and sanding and scraping all the rough edges. And when you look back on a tough patch a few months after the worst has passed, you don't remember all the hard work and the tears. You just have the satisfaction of knowing you've made something beautiful. — Melanie Shankle

he almost never spoke about himself, in my hearing at least: though once, shortly after his marriage, when he brought his wife to lunch with me, he said...looking at her across the grassy quadrangle, 'I never expected to have, in my sixties, the happiness that passed me by in my twenties. — Jocelyn Gibb

All marriages were a consequence of security, tradition, money and beauty. Love was a chance, a lucky coincidence. Its existence was an after-thought, for more serious matters cemented marriage. — Meghna Pant

After endless textbook readings and interviewing 'experts,' I still could not grasp the full concept of 'love,' the mystique of it, why people killed for it, or died for it. Even the experts were confused. Biologists said the phenomenom we called love was just a bombardment of chemicals that affected our brain: dopamine, which grabbed us the throat in the guise of lust, and oxytocin, which settled us down to the mundane complacencies of marriage. On the other hand, Behaviorists thought love was really the search for God. No one agreed. The thing most humans thought we knew about love, we didn't know at all. And all that we did not know was astonishing. Even more astonishing was what passed for love. — Kiana Davenport

Inside each man, though he did not know it, nor ever considered it, was the image of the woman he someday must love. Whether she was composed of all the music he had ever heard or all the trees he had ever seen or all the friends of his childhood, certainly no one could tell. Whether the eyes were his mother's, and the chin that of a girl cousin swimming in a summer lake twenty-five years ago, this was unknowable also. But most men carried this image, like a locket, like a pearl-cameo, in their head a lifetime, taking it out only rarely, taking it never, after marriage, afraid then to compare it to the reality. And most men never saw the woman they would love anywhere, in the dark theatre, in a book, or passing on the street. They saw her only after midnight when the city was asleep and the pillow was cool under their heads. And she was a composite of all dreams and all women and every moonlit night since the calendar began. — Ray Bradbury

Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love
it just happens!
but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left
the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together. — Sherman Alexie

Dear Charles, she wrote.
After writing to express my appreciation for all the generosity of our friends, I would be remiss indeed if I did not include a missive to you. Out of all the new blessings in my new life, the one I thank God for the most is you. I thank you for writing to me through Genteel Correspondence, and for choosing me out of all the other women eager for adventure in the wild west.
I thank you for your kindness, and your gentleness toward me. Only very strong men can be gentle. I thank you for sharing your home and your life with me. I thank you for inventing delicious breakfasts. And chicory flavored coffee. And prayers that ease my mind and inspire my spirit and lift my heart. For your smile and the way you hold your hat in your hands. For the things you say and how you say them.
Did you know that I pray for you each day? I do. I pray for your safety and happiness.
Yours in Christ,
Rose — Jan Holly

Why did I stay? My self-esteem was ruined for a very long time. I was socially isolated from my family and friends. I kept everything that was going on in my marriage a secret. I feared for my safety if I left him. I was financially dependent on my spouse. I am an educated woman who was working towards a master's degree when I met him. He persuaded me to stop school after the birth of our first son. Eventually, he trapped me in his web of lies. I believe I suffered from Stockholm syndrome for many years. It isn't easy to leave. Unless you have lived in an abusive relationship, a typical person wouldn't understand. It seems perfectly logical to an outsider that it would be easy to leave an abusive relationship. It truly isn't and walking away is terrifying for a victim. No one deserves to live his or her life as a prisoner. Love shouldn't hurt and abuse is not love. - Mary Laumbach-Perez — Bree Bonchay

It's such a lovely feeling to be in love, to marry the person you love and finally to be with that person. I feel the romance should never go out of any marriage. Even after one has had kids, etc. Love never ends, na? — Riteish Deshmukh

The other Miller was different. Quieter. Sad, maybe, but at peace. He'd read a poem many years before called "The Death-Self," and he hadn't understood the term until now. A knot at the middle of his psyche was untying. All the energy he'd put into holding things together - Ceres, his marriage, his career, himself - was coming free. He'd shot and killed more men in the past day than in his whole career as a cop. He'd started - only started - to realize that he'd actually fallen in love with the object of his search after he knew for certain that he'd lost her. He'd seen unequivocally that the chaos he'd dedicated his life to holding at bay was stronger and wider and more powerful than he would ever be. No compromise he could make would be enough. His death-self was unfolding in him, and the dark blooming took no effort. It was a relief, a relaxation, a long, slow exhale after decades of holding it in. — James S.A. Corey

He had no idea about the 'loving deeply' part. Scarlet was the one love he'd had. They'd married the weekend after they'd discovered they both like sangria. He'd thought they were waltzing through life and it turned out she was line dancing. — Jodi Thomas

(Take a deep breath for this next run-on sentence) I believe that two people can fall madly in love and sift that fairy-tale feeling up through the raging sands of reality to settle on top as a polished stone of true joy, where the "happily ever after" will be something two mortals are working towards and not a finished product. — Zack Oates

Every person, young or old, risks the possibility of their life not turning out as planned. Especially when it comes to marriage. They might find they aren't suited for marriage after all. Or their spouses might die of an early illness. Taking a risk on another person is what marriage is all about. — Sabrina Jeffries

A wife! No one else could love a man who had been trampled on by iron feet. She would wash his feet after he had been spat on; she would comb his tangled hair; she would look into his embittered eyes. The more lacerated his soul, the more revolting and contemptible he became to the world, the more she would love him. She would run after a truck; she would wait in queues on Kuznetsky Most, or even by the camp boundary fence, desperate to hand over a few sweets or an onion; she would bake shortbread for him on an oil stove; she would give years of her life just to be able to see him for half an hour ...
Not every woman you sleep with can be called a wife. — Vasily Grossman

Ah, God, Lys he breathed, and she opened her eyes to look up at him. She was the love of his heart, his true partner in both work and life, and the idea of losing her to the violence of the world they lived in scared the living shit out of him.
But her smile lit her eyes, her face, and he pushed the darkness away and let himself grin back at her like the damn fool that he was. This moment-now-was perfect, and he wasn't going to let his fears interfere. — Suzanne Brockmann

As they stood there together, Ekwefi's mind went back to the days when they were young. She had married Anene because OKonkwo was too poor then to marry. Two years after her marriage to Anene she could bear it no longer and she ran away to Okonkwo. It had been early in the morning. The moon was shining. She was going to the stream to fetch water. Okonkwo's house was on the way to the stream. She went in and knocked at his door and he came out. Even in those days he was not a man of many words. He just carried her into his bed and in the darkness began to feel around her waist for the loose end of her cloth. — Chinua Achebe

One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love. Taken together, these convictions lead to the conclusion that marriage and romance are essentially incompatible, that it is cruel to commit people to lifelong connection after the inevitable fading of romantic joy. The Biblical understanding of love does not preclude deep emotion. As we will see, a marriage devoid of passion and emotional desire for one another doesn't fulfill the Biblical vision. But neither does the Bible pit romantic love against the essence of love, which is sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. If we think of love primarily as emotional desire and not as active, committed service, we end up pitting duty and desire against each other in a way that is unrealistic and destructive. — Timothy Keller

It's hard to say which I like more, the perfectly happy days or the hours right after we've ended a good fight. — Crystal Woods

In fact i only contemplated one thing - a happy marriage. About that i had complete self-assurance - as all my friends did. We were conscious of all the happiness that awaited us. We looked forward to love, to being looked after, cherished and admired, and we intended to get our own way in the thiggs which mattered to us while at the same time putting our husband's life, career and success before all, as was our proud duty. we didn't need pep pills or sedatives; we had belief and joy in life. We had our own personal disappointments - moments of unhappiness - but on the whole life was fun. — Agatha Christie

I want to fall asleep next to you every night even when you're cranky. I want to wake up next to you every morning even when I'm grumpy. I love the fact that when you snore it sounds a little like your wolf. I love that your mind is just as scheming as mine. I love the tiny smile you show only me after we've made love. I love the compassion you show to your subjects when other Rulers wouldn't, but at the same time your intelligence and determination when you know you can't. I love how loyal you are to those you love. And when it's time to have children, you're the one I want to have them with. — Scarlett Dawn

Elizabeth was so sweet this afternoon trying to show P.B. his sitting room. He became absorbed in some jungle prints along the passage and would not come. The corners of her mouth went down after the third attempt & putting both hands on his shoulders she said angelically: 'Bertie do listen to me.' He kissed her and came at once. — William Shawcross

Wedlock is the deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise lounge. — Mrs. Patrick Campbell

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
"It is why we are drawn to babies ... " He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals. — Mitch Albom

When Stephen talked about stalking chamois his whole expression changed. The features became more aquiline, the nose sharpened, the chin narrowed, and his eyes-steel blue - somehow took on the cold brilliance of a northern sky. I am being very frank about my husband. He attracted me at those times, and he repelled me too. This man, I told myself when I first met him, is a perfectionist. And he has no compassion. Gratified like all women who find themselves sought after and desired - a mutual love for Sibelius had been our common ground at our first encounter - after a few weeks in his company I shut my eyes to further judgment, because being with him gave me pleasure. It flattered my self-esteem. The perfectionist, admired by other women, now sought me. Marriage was in every sense a coup. It was only afterwards that I knew myself deceived. ("The Chamois") — Daphne Du Maurier

About their wedding on a beach of Nantucket, after nearly 50 years together as a couple: "After years of being who we truly were only in the privacy of our homes or with a few friends, we were out in the world, under the sky, no longer pretending." - Norman Sunshine, co-author, Double Life — Norman Sunshine

I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person. But I do know that if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all. It is far more important to BE the right kind of person than it is to marry the right person. — Zig Ziglar

He took a deep breath. It was no matter. Of course his feelings were stronger, as they should be. He was to be the leader of their household, after all; it would not do for him to feel less than she did. And she was a lady. She would have kept her feelings in check until she was sure of his. Poor dear, she likely wondered why he had not spoken up. He had walked with her almost daily but spoken nothing of love or marriage. How could he have let her suffer so? — Elizabeth Adams

A formal period in life where there isn't the worry of another person's dramas and insecurities can be of great advantage, especially when used for growing into the full and wholesome beings we intended to be when choosing to come to this material manifestation.
"Even after ending a long relationship or a marriage, it seems normal to have some alone-time to reflect, meditate, explore areas of interest, find meaning in one's suffering and try to placate the void felt in the heart before attempting to enter into new relationships, otherwise the same old mistakes will surely re-emerge.
"Once we're at the stage of life where we can stand our own silence, where we've made peace with our past, where we've accepted and grown from its lessons, and we would like to share our independence without becoming dependent on someone else for love and affection, then we can choose to commit to a two bodied intimate relationship. — Nityananda Das

...mismatched attachment styles can lead to a great deal of unhappiness in marriage, even for people who love each other greatly. If you are in such a relationship, don't feel guilty for feeling incomplete or unsatisfied. After all, your most basic needs often go unmet, and love alone isn't enough to make the relationship work. — Amir Levine

Lady Windermere: Windermere and I married for love.

Duchess of Berwick: Yes, we begin like that. It was only Berwick's brutal and incessant threats of suicide that made me accept him at all, and before the year was out, he was running after all kinds of petticoats, every colour, every shape, every material. — Oscar Wilde

After 40 years of marriage, isn't it amazing when you can look at your partner sound asleep next to you and still believe they have potential. — Kaylin McFarren

Frances, who also was feeling distant from her husband. Though still deeply in love after ten years of marriage, Frances worried that her husband's passion for politics and worldly achievement surpassed his love for his family. She mourned "losing my influence over a heart I once thought so entirely my own," increasingly apprehensive that she and her husband were "differently constituted. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

What's wrong with the world Peter?
God, I don't know. Where do you start? People give up. We're defeatists and we stop striving or fighting or enjoying things. It doesn't matter what you're talking about - war, work, marriage, democracy, love, it all fails because everybody gives up trying after a while, we can't help ourselves. And don't ask me to solve it because I am the worst. I'd escape tomorrow if I could, from every single thing I've always wanted. — Jenny Valentine

On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. — Emma Goldman

There is a huge college about how men and women interact with each other after marriage. But people get married without learning. — Dada Bhagwan

It takes a CONSTANT flowing of gas from the cylinder to keep the fire burning under your pot. "WOOING your woman" should be a continuous process. It should NEVER end after you get your "yes" from her. If you did a lot to get her, you should do more to keep her. — Olaotan Fawehinmi

We could go back," he said. In the dome light of the car, his face looked hard as stone. "We could go back to your house. I can stay with you always. We can know each other's bodies in every way, night after night. I could love you." His nostrils flared, and he looked suddenly proud. "I could work. You would not be poor. I would help you."
"Sounds like a marriage," I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. But my voice was too shaky.
"Yes," he said. — Charlaine Harris

I've always felt comfortable amongst the horrors. I married your uncle Gerard, after all. — Melika Dannese Lux

It is strange,' pursued he, 'that while I love Rosomond Oliver so wildly-with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, and fascinating
I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness, that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months' rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know. — Charlotte Bronte

After twenty-five years of marriage, they could see each other clearly without having to look. — Orson Scott Card

Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife. — Raymond Carver

That's a much better kiss than the one you gave her when you won the shooting match!"
"And a much better proposal of marriage than the one you gave her yesterday morning!" Minerva chimed in.
"Leave him be!" Celia chided as Jackson went red about the ears. "He saved my life twice, figured out who killed Mama and Papa, and taught Gran some humility. We can't all be good at everything, you know."
Amid the laughter, he kissed her again, but her family didn't let that go on for long. It was cold outside, after all. Gran herded them inside to the great hall, where the servants had brought out refreshments. There, everyone had to take turns congratulating them and clamoring for all the usual details of how it had started and when it had become true love. — Sabrina Jeffries

Love makes reality invisible and no one around you can understand why you do the things you do, for something that can cause you so much pain. Because you know after all the fighting, tears, and uncertainty, it's all worth it. — Auliq Ice

After all there is something about a wedding-gown prettier than in any other gown in the world. — Douglas William Jerrold

Even before we met and long after we're both gone, my heart lives inside of yours. I'm forever and ever in love with you. — Crystal Woods

Leaning against my car after changing the oil,
I hold my black hands out and stare into them
as if they were the faces of my children looking
at the winter moon and thinking of the snow
that will erase everything before they wake.
In the garage, my wife comes behind me
and slides her hands beneath my soiled shirt.
Pressing her face between my shoulder blades,
she mumbles something, and soon we are laughing,
wrestling like children among piles of old rags,
towels that unravel endlessly, torn sheets,
work shirts from twenty years ago when I stood
in the door of a machine shop, grease blackened,
and Kansas lay before me blazing with new snow,
a future of flat land, white skies, and sunlight.
After making love, we lie on the abandoned
mattress and stare at our pale winter bodies
sprawling in the half-light. She touches her belly,
the scar of our last child, and the black prints
of my hand along her hips and thighs. — B.H. Fairchild

Make it your goal to employ the sweet speech that marks you as a wife after God's own heart. — Elizabeth George

I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seems to be over. Sometimes these desert lines are simply the only way to the next oasis, which is far more lush and beautiful after the desert crossing than it could possibly have been without it. — Madeleine L'Engle

Not long after my mom died, my dad pretty much kicked me out of the house. He never said, "Get out of my house," but instead, I came home one night to find all my clothes scattered all over our front lawn. — Brenda Perlin

Those dreaming of the perfect match are outnumbered by those who don't really want it at all, though perhaps they can't admit it. After all, our culture makes individual freedom, autonomy and fulfillment the very highest values, and thoughtful people know deep down that any love relationship at all means the loss of all three. You can say, 'I want someone who will accept me just as I am,' but in your heart of hearts you know that you are not perfect, that there are plenty of things about you that need to be changed, and that anyone who gets to know you up close and personal will want to change them. — Timothy Keller

She blew a warm breeze on his face and rustled his hair and embraced him in a warm haze and he felt her nonthreatening presence. She looked down and saw his face stained with tears, nobody could reach him in his grief but she could. He saw her and blew her a kiss goodbye. She flew down in a haze in a white dress with wings and whispered into his ear "please don't cry I am in a better place. Marriage was forever. Love and life was forever. My body died but my soul lives on for eternity". (Katie)
"The rain stopped suddenly and the grey sky cleared into a bright blue colour and a glowing warm orange sun appeared to show her appreciation. A perfect blue sky remained on the dark winter's day until after the ceremony and the hailstone and rain commenced again and the dark sky reappeared as the funeral car drove away — Annette J. Dunlea