Marriage Secret Quotes & Sayings

A great poet has seldom sung of lawfully wedded happiness, but of free and secret love; and in this respect, too the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry and another for life. To anyone tender of conscience, the ties formed by a free connection are stronger than the legal ones. — Ellen Key

I don't know! Nobody has ever known. Why would Jesus have remained unmarried if he had known the secret? He knew the secret of the kingdom of God, but he did not know the secret of remaining happy in marriage. He remained unmarried. Mahavira, Lao Tzu Chuang Tzu, they all remained unmarried for the simple reason that there is no secret; otherwise these people would have discovered it. They could discover the ultimate - marriage is not such a big thing, it is very shallow - they even fathomed God, but they could not fathom marriage. — Rajneesh

You want to know the secret to raising good kids?"
"What's that? asked Thomas.
"High expectations."
Thomas laughed. "Alright, well what's the secret to a happy marriage?"
Clyde smiled back, but his face started to fall, and he chose his words carefully. " ... Low expectations. — Chris Nicolaisen

The secret to a happy marriage? Do whatever your wife tells you. 'Yes, dear.' And breathe. — Denzel Washington

Marriage is a public declaration of
a man and a woman that they have
formed a secret alliance, with the
intention to belong to, and share with
each other, a mystical estate; mystical
exactly in the sense that the real
experience cannot be communicated to
others, nor explained even to oneself
on rational grounds. — Katherine Anne Porter

The secret to a long and loving marriage is to choose, everyday, to be married. — Jacqueline Patricks

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

The secret of a happy marriage is to serve God and each other. — Ezra Taft Benson

But perhaps the best words of wisdom come from Anne Gilberto of East Boston, who's been married to Steve for more than 50 years. In that time, they've reached a form of compromise that not only gets things done but also lets them both take satisfaction in having had their own way. The secret to their long marriage, say Anne, is this:
'I always give him the last word. I tell him what to do, and he says, 'Yes, ma'am. — Christine Schultz

So what's the secret to staying together?" I asked her. "Be nice?" she offered. I laughed, but that may be it, the way a secret to losing weight is to eat less. Be nice. Don't leave. That's all. — Ada Calhoun

The great secret of a successful marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters. — Harold Nicolson

Secret to a Perfect marriage- Marrying and loving the most imperfect person who loves your imperfections too with the same degree. — Shikha Kaul

It was too familiar to Cody. He placed his arms around his wife trying somehow to shelter her from the reality she was facing. There was another reason for his closeness; his desperation to show her he was not one of them, that the tribes of cruel men did not recognize him as one of their own, and to show his wife that his promise to create a safe place for her was a promise she need not fear would be broken. In the innermost part of him, from the secret child that lives within all men, was a scared cry, "Please don't think I'm bad too." From the other innermost part of him, the secret animal that prowls in some men was a raging wolf ready to kill. The battle line within the man had been drawn. The boundaries of faith rose up around the rage, warning the soul against righteous anger morphing to blood lust. — Lee Goff

Dear Jack,
I love you, too.
And I think I know the secret to a long and happy marriage - just choose someone you can't live without.
For me, that would be you.
So if you insist on being traditional ...
Yes.
- Ella — Lisa Kleypas

I think I know the secret to a long and happy marriage - just choose someone you can't live without. — Lisa Kleypas

I don't think there's any loneliness greater than the loneliness to be found in a bad marriage. In solitary confinement, everyone knows you're lonely and feels sorry for you. In a bad marriage loneliness is your darkest secret, one you dare not even share with your spouse. — Daniel Quinn

In a marriage, in any long-term relationship, not to bother with lying. There's no time for that. If you have any sort of secret life, it will come back to haunt you. — Andy Garcia

The secret to a long marriage is to stay gone. — Dolly Parton

Ultimately, I believe the only secret to a happy marriage is choosing the right person. Life is a series of choices, right? — Michelle Pfeiffer

I was his "little girl with the William Burroughs mind," his "secret fairy," "female Frank Zappa" and "window onto a magical world." He said I fell to earth, leaving wing-marks on the ceilings of our dreams. — Jalina Mhyana

I've found a letter that was written to me from a girl who was getting married. And she wanted to know the secret of a happy marriage. I said - and I wrote back and said something to the effect that I couldn't - I had no magic formula. And I never sat down and thought about it, but everything just fell into place with Ronnie and me. — Nancy Reagan

I don't want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting, or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Breaking Bad and if either watches it without the other, they're dead meat. I want to see you guys high-five each other like teammates on a recreational softball team you both do for fun. — Mindy Kaling

The fragility of crystal is not a weakness but a fineness. My parents understood that fine crystal glass had to be cared for or may be shattered. But when it came to my brother, they didn't seem to know or care that their course of their secret action brought the kind of devastation that could cut them. Their fraudulent marriage and our father's denial of his other son was for Chris a murder of every day's truth. He felt his whole life turned like a river suddenly reversing the direction of its flow. Suddenly running uphill. These revelations struck at the core of Chris's sense of identity. They made his entire childhood seem like fiction. Chris never told them he knew and made me promise silence as well. — Jon Krakauer

You ask me, 'What is the secret of remaining happy and married?' — Rajneesh

Having it all is just too much hassle. I'm not every-woman. I'm a working woman. And I'm not entirely sure I see the oint of being as dexterous in the kitchen as I am at my desk. If Mr. Y is perfectly satisfied with pre-packaged sushi every night, then far be it from me to raise his hopes with all sorts of homey behavior. The secret, I have discovered, is to manage expectations. If he doesn't expect it, then he's hardly going to be disappointed to discover he may never again eat a home-cooked meal. Or indeed, ever eat again. — Amy Mowafi

She shrugged another plump shoulder. "I never listened to Porter when he got going."
Ah. At last. The secret to a successful marriage. — Josh Lanyon

The secret to a long marriage in the film industry? Marry someone wonderful, as I did. And always have her come along on location. — Christopher Lee

Every gay reader understands the secret self that is full and wonderful and has longing and tenderness and a desire for connection to other people. I think that arguments against gay marriage are just ridiculous! Who cares? People want to get married for the same reason I wanted to get married. They want to do it in front of their friends and family — Lynda Carter

The secret of a happy marriage is simple: Just keep on being as polite to one another as you are to your friends. — Robert Quillen

I do think the secret to a good marriage is separate bathrooms. — Heather Dubrow

People say, 'What's the secret to a marriage?' There's no secret - I think you get lucky. — Steve Carell

Successful couples learn the secret of fighting for their relationship rather than against one another. — Bill Farrel

It is foreign to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he must and shall be that person's lover. There would be a much likelier chance of his doing it if he were told not to love. If the marriage ceremony consisted in an oath and signed contract between the parties to cease loving from that day forward, in consideration of personal possession being given, and to avoid each other's society as much as possible in public, there would be more loving couples than there are now. Fancy the secret meetings between the perjuring husband and wife, the denials of having seen each other, the clambering in at bedroom windows, and the hiding in closets! There'd be little cooling then. — Thomas Hardy

Even now, we have laryngitis from screaming at each other: the dirty little secret of a durable marriage. — Erica Jong

That is how our marriage is working so well. My secret of happiness is keeping my contact to the minimum. — Cyrus Broacha

There's a whole history that never appears in the Bible, Detective. A secret history you can only find in Canaanite or Hebrew legends. They talk about the marriage between Adam and a free-spirited woman, a cunning temptress who refused to obey her husband, or to lie beneath him as a docile wife should. Instead she demanded wild sex in every position and taunted him when he couldn't satisfy her. She was the world's first truly liberated female, and she wasn't afraid to seek the pleasures of the flesh. — Tess Gerritsen

The secret to a happy marriage is patience and honesty. I really mean that. You have to be patient, you have to be open, and you also have to be available for criticism, too. — Cindy McCain

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

The mere idea of marriage, as a strong possibility, if not always nowadays a reasonable likelihood, existing to weaken the will by distracting its straight aim in the life of practically every young girl, is the simple secret of their confessed inferiority in men's pursuits and professions to-day. — William Bolitho

The secret of marriage is thinking that your partner is better than yourself. — Molly Peacock

Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out because a formal place has been set for it. At the moment when things have gotten sufficiently loose, the secret selves that these familiar persons hold inside them shake the room ... An undercurrent of clowning and jostling is part of the process by which we succeed finally in making our necessary noise: despite the difficulty of getting the words right, of getting the singers on the same page, of keeping the ritual from falling apart into the anarchy of separate impulses. From such clatter
extended and punctuated by whatever instrument is handy, a triangle a tambourine, a Chinese gone
beauty is born. — Geoffrey O'Brien

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

A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape. — Catherynne M Valente

Before marriage she had completely mastered my imagination, for she was a secret to me; and I created the unknown thought before which I trembled as if it were hers. — George Eliot

I'm very blessed to have a husband who appreciates me. Women feel sexy from feeling attractive and desired. Men feel sexy from having sex. If you can strike a balance where the man is having sex a lot and the woman is feeling desired enough to have sex, then you've figured out the secret to a marriage that's alive. — Kate Beckinsale

When I get married, it'll be no secret. — Elvis Presley

The secret of domestic happiness is to let God, the party of the third part in the marriage contract, have His rightful place in the home. Make peace with Him and then you can be a real peacemaker in the home. — Billy Graham

The Victorians did not have some secret formula, since lost, about how to expect the best of marriage and still put up with the worst. Rather, they were much more accepting than we are today of a huge gap between rhetoric and reality, expectation and actual experience. In large part, this was because they had no other choice. — Stephanie Coontz

The secret to a long and healthy marriage is to work at it and don't try and change each other. — Jack LaLanne

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

This is one secret in living with the loved one. That is, it doesn't try to change the other party. — Jacques Chardonne

I wasn't about to admit to the lady I was hoping to impress that I wished to be a man of business. I wasn't that drunk."

Anna was certain that, for as long as she lived, she would never understand how it was the inebriated sorted out their priorities. Drunk enough to offer marriage, but still sufficiently sober to keep his secret? It was baffling. — Alissa Johnson

Earlier this year, I'd told a mother at school I'd been married fifteen year. She asked, "What's the secret to a long marriage?" I thought for a second, then answered, "Staying married. — Maria Semple

Because revelations of systemic deception erode our most basic, default expectation of good faith, they play an outsize role in producing a crisis of authority. Each exposure of previously secret misdeeds - steroid use, Ponzi schemes, rigged intelligence - produces an acute and debilitating psychological effect. Vertigo sets in, similar to that experienced by a spouse who, after decades of what he thought was a happy, loyal marriage, discovers his wife has been cheating all along. Suddenly we realize we live in a world entirely more depraved than the one we thought we inhabited. — Christopher L. Hayes

The secret to a happy marriage is a sense of humor, because marriage throws you curveballs. It is not easy. — Ann Romney

Every marriage, every family, has its mysteries. — Liane Moriarty

It might be, too - doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole - it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions
I say the most licentious of human institutions: that is the secret of its popularity.And a woman seeking a husband is the most unscrupulous of all the beasts of prey. The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error. — George Bernard Shaw

And did you know that Valentine's Day originally started when this emperor like a million years ago made marriage illegal because he thought it made soldiers weak? This priest - Valentine - married people in secret anyway, and he ended up having his head cut off because of it. So the first Valentine was some guy's head. There's some history for you.
It's sort of perfect, when you think about it. Isn't falling in love a lot like losing your head? — Michael Thomas Ford

Some years ago, I read an article about two people in the arts (alas, I can't remember who they were) who'd been married for many, many years. Asked for the secret of their long partnership, they said: "We fell straight into conversation when we met, and we haven't come to the end of that conversation yet."
I can't think of a better model for marriage than that. Or of a narrative more romantic ... — Terri Windling

She says food is the secret to a happy marriage." "Food is the secret to a happy life. — Stacey Jay

Any friendship that is worth its weight is like a dark and secret place where you hide bits of yourself. The door can be opened only by the two people who have the key, and you carry it with you wherever you go. Magnify that by a billion, and you begin to get an idea of what marriage is like. — Damien Echols

In all marriages there is the imbalance: one who loves more than the other. One who licks wounds in secret, the rust-taste of blood. — Joyce Carol Oates

People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it is no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman. — Erma Bombeck

Any good marriage is secret territory, a necessary white space on society's map. What others don't know about it is what makes it yours. — Stephen King

And then take my family life, my friend. As you know, I've been married twice before and am now on my third marriage. What is that if it's not the third Reich? Else was the first Reich, Hilda was the second Reich, and now Elli is my third Reich. And now I'll let you into a little secret, friend Fallada', dropping his voice to a hollow whisper, 'whenever I quarrel with Elli I'm convinced that the fourth Reich will be along soon! Mark my words, friend Fallada, we'll both live to see the fourth Reich yet! — Hans Fallada

The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret. — Henny Youngman

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

Moyers: Then what does love have to do with morality?
Campbell: Violates it ... Insofar as love expresses itself, it is not expressing itself in terms of the socially approved manners of life. That's why it is all so secret. Love has nothing to do with social order. It is a higher spiritual experience than that of socially organized marriage ... Love was a divine visitation, and that's why it was superior to marriage. — Joseph Campbell

The secret to a happy marriage is if you can be at peace with someone within four walls, if you are content because the one you love is near to you, either upstairs or downstairs, or in the same room, and you feel that warmth that you don't find very often, then that is what love is all about. — Bruce Forsyth

Marvin thought of his bowel movements as BMs, a phrase he'd heard an army doctor mutter once. His BMs were turning against him, turning violent in a way. He and Eleanor went through the Dolomites and across Austria and nipped into the northwest corner of Hungary and the stuff came crashing out of him, noisy and remarkably dark. But mainly it was the smell that disturbed him. He was afraid Eleanor would notice. He realized this was probably a normal part of every early marriage, smelling the other's smell, getting it over and done with so you can move ahead with your lives, have children, buy a little house, remember everybody's birthday, take a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, get sick and die. But in this case the husband had to take extreme precautions because the odor was shameful, it was intense and deeply personal and seemed to say something awful about the bearer.
His smell was a secret he had to keep from his wife. — Don DeLillo

I couldn't help but think of Al's pre-ordained betrothal to Billo and of how hard the match-makers had worked to find the girl beautiful enough to match this extraordinary man - this extraordinary man of mine. — Ruth Ahmed

The secret of marriage is: separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms. — Bette Davis

Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays. — Henny Youngman

The secret of a long marriage is shaving your legs every day ... because it shows you still care. — Gloria Estefan

Quite suddenly, with blinding insight, the secret of their blissful marriage was revealed to me. She couldn't speak a word of English and he couldn't speak a word of Spanish. — Jennifer Worth

The secret to a great marriage is having a great husband. — Diane Von Furstenberg

Fourth time's the charm, she says to people who ask her what the secret of a happy marriage is, but that's not the way she feels about it. She knows now that when you don't lose yourself in the bargain, you find you have double the love you started with, and that's one recipe that can't be tampered with. — Alice Hoffman

Before we got married we asked our grandfathers, whose own marriages had lasted forty years or more, "What is the secret to a happy marriage? And they paused, looked down at their chicken salad, and said, 'You really have to like each other. After the attraction, you really have to like the person.'" ... our mothers tolds us ... ask him how his day was. Take an interest in his profession. — TaraShea Nesbit

This was one of the secret jokes about marriage. People turned out to be exactly the opposite of how they'd seemed at first; they then went on changing randomly, as though enacting a hypothesis of unceasing chaos. — Anjali Joseph

People talk about love, about marriage, too, like they're magic. There's no magic. Just two people who like each other and decide they're willing to get stuck in together. If you can make your way through the bad patches, it works, and you know each other better afterwards, make a better team. If you can't, it doesn't. No secret. No magic. — Rosalind James

People ask what the secret of a happy marriage is. If there is one, it's 'don't talk about it.' — Jane Asher

The world is crazily in love with you, wildly and innocently in love. Even now, thousands of secret helpers are conspiring to turn you into the beautiful curiosity you were born to be. — Rob Brezsny

The secret of a successful marriage is not to be at home too much. — Colin Chapman

The secret of a good marriage is forgiving your partner for marrying you in the first place. — Sacha Guitry

Two can keep secret if the one is dead. (A Good Marriage by Stephen King) — Deyth Banger

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

Or, for one of our mothers, the secret to a good marriage, she said, was sex. — TaraShea Nesbit

secret of what passed between him and the strange girl who would have sacrificed her marriage to him on so short an acquaintance remains — Henry James

It was one of the secret opinions, such as we all have, of Peter Brench, that his main success in life would have consisted in his never having committed himself about the work, as it was called, of his friend Morgan Mallow.
This was a subject on which it was, to the best of his belief, impossible with veracity to quote him, and it was nowhere on record that he had, in the connexion, on any occasion and in any embarrassment, either lied or spoken the truth. Such a triumph had its honour even for a man of other triumphs
a man who had reached fifty, who had escaped marriage, who had lived within his means, who had been in love with Mrs Mallow for years without breathing it, and who, last but not least, had judged himself once for all. — Henry James

The greatest secret of life is never give up. Don't give up on yourself, your dreams and your family. — Lailah Gifty Akita

What Paul is saying not only answers the objection that marriage is oppressive and restrictive, but it also addresses the sense that the demands of marriage are overwhelming. There is so much to do that we don't know where to start. Start here, Paul says. Do for your spouse what God did for you in Jesus, and the rest will follow. This is the secret - that the gospel of Jesus and marriage explain one another. That when God invented marriage, he already had the saving work of Jesus in mind. — Timothy Keller

A woman's heart is a deep, wild, and wondrous place full of secret desires. I desire for my life to count for something. I desire for my kids to grow and become good people. I desire for my marriage to always be full of love and devotion. I desire to live a life of no regrets. But my greatest secret desire must always be for more of God in my life. This is the only desire that's certain to never disappoint and can never be taken from me. My husband, my kids, and my life as I know it could be stripped away in an instant. But God will be there through it all. I just have to make the choice to make my relationship with Him of utmost importance. — Lysa TerKeurst