Marriage Within Quotes & Sayings

For marriage the best man is the man within oneself. Most women need to develop their own 'masculine' qualities of independence, pride, courage and open sexuality. — Glenda Jackson

Brutus: Kneel not, gentle Portia.
Portia: I should need not, if you were gentle Brutus.
Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,
Is it excepted I should know no secrets
That appertain to you? Am I yourself
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife. — William Shakespeare

It is the popular misconception of marriage as a mere social convention or quaint tradition invented by the brain of man which has led to the denigrating of this holy relation, the multiplication of unspeakable immorality, the common unrest between husbands and wives, and the gradual disintegration of society and civilization. For if marriage exists merely by human authority then men and women may do with it or conduct themselves in it as they please. They may redefine it, or they may abandon it altogether. But if marriage is a divine institution, then it is governed by a higher authority. It becomes, then, a matter of obedience, and the conduct of husbands and wives within marriage is a conduct for which they must give their account to God. The original institution of marriage is therefore basic to our understanding of marriage, our estimation of marriage, and our right behavior in marriage. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Alma had grown as tall as a man by now, with broad shoulders ... This need not have necessarily precluded her from marriage. Some men liked a larger woman, who promised a stronger disposition, and Alma, it could be argued, had a handsome profile
at least from her left side. She certainly had a fine, friendly nature. Yet she was missing some invisible, essential ingredient, and so, despite all the frank eroticism that lay hidden within her body, her presence in a room did not kindle ideas of ardor in any man.
It did not help that Alma herself believed she was unlovely. She believed this only because she had been told it so many times, and in so many different ways. Most recently, the news of her homeliness had come straight from her father ... — Elizabeth Gilbert

It takes a long time to really be married. One marries many times at many levels within that marriage. If you have more marriages than you have divorces within the marriage, you're lucky and you stick it out. — Ruby Dee

Then as now much time was spent arguing about the rights of women, husband-and-wife relationships and freedom and rights within marriage, but Natasha had no interest in any such questions.
Questions like these, then as now, existed exclusively for people who see marriage only in terms of satisfaction given and received by the married couple, though this is only one principle of married life rather than its overall meaning, which lies in the family. — Leo Tolstoy

The most welcome and painful moments of the life is within marriage. — Jahangir

The marriage partner is not really the problem. No other person can ultimately make you happy. You must learn how to be happy within yourself. — Joel Osteen

According to the Bible, sex isn't something sinful, but rather a wonderful gift from God to be thoroughly enjoyed within the boundaries of marriage. — Ray Comfort

Through no-fault divorce, one parent can now declare unilaterally that the marriage has "broken down" and invite the state in to take control and remove the other parent without the parent having committed any legal transgression. What the government then offers to the parent who invites it in is the promise that her invitation will be rewarded; the state will establish her as a puppet government, a satrap of the state within the family. This requires that not the faithless but the faithful parent be punished. — Stephen Baskerville

Protecting people from their bad habits - in fact, defining which habits should be considered "bad" in the first place - is a prerogative lawmakers have eagerly seized. Prostitution, gambling, liquor sales on the Sabbath, pornography, usurious loans, sexual relations outside of marriage (or, if your tastes are unusual, within marriage), are all habits that various legislatures have regulated, outlawed, or tried to discourage with strict (and often ineffective) laws. When — Charles Duhigg

form of the indissoluble, strictly monogamous marriage with an acceptance. in practice, of the freedom of the partners) or in the acceptance of new forms which contain however all the elements of the moral code of bourgeois marriage (the "free" union where the compulsive possessiveness of the partners is greater than within legal marriage). On the other hand we see the slow but steady appearance of new forms of relationships between the sexes that differ from the old norms in outward form and in spirit. Mankind is not groping its way toward these new ideas with much confidence. But we need to look at its attempt, however vague it is at the moment, since it is an attempt closely linked with the tasks — Anarcho-communist Institute

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea. That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife. — Audre Lorde

Within this Christian vision of marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of what God is creating, and to say, I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, 'I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you! — Timothy Keller

If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: 'The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,' I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie. — Antonin Scalia

The only initiation which I advocate and which I look for with all the ardor of my Soul, is that by which we are able to enter into the Heart of God within us, and there make an Indissoluble Marriage, which makes us the Friend and Spouse of the Repairer ... there is no other way to arrive at this Holy Initiation than for us to delve more and more into the depth of our Soul and to not let go of the prize until we have succeeded in liberating its lively and vivifying origin. — Louis Claude De Saint-Martin

Within a month he knew that his marriage was a failure; within a year he stopped hoping that it would improve. — John Edward Williams

Homosexuality is against nature. Sexual expression is permitted only within marriage, between man and woman, male and female. Anything else is an abnormality and is against nature. — Pope Shenouda III

I took a small flat for myself and the children ... My husband took a room in a clean rooming house within easy walking distance of his office ... It is wonderful sometimes to be alone in the night and just know that someone loves you. In other moods you must have that lover in your arms. Marriage under two roofs makes room for moods. — Crystal Eastman

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

Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes' walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York, thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do, and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of Broadway. — Henry James

Do not live life without a spark of love. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape. — Michel De Montaigne

Multiple wives are required for a godly man to get into heaven, and the prophet regularly performs spiritual marriages, deciding who should be wed to whom, placing girls to be exalted in a plural marriage based on a revelation from God. Most families wait to marry their daughters until the girl begins menstruation, as childbearing is expected within the first year of matrimony. Raising up a righteous seed unto the Lord is a woman's highest calling and it is only though a husband's guidance that a woman can attain entry into the celestial kingdom. — Michele Dominguez Greene

There's not a lot of room anymore for what I call 'made-up' drama. The drama comes from real places now - marriage takes work and focus, the kid stuff takes patience and commitment. And if you don't grow as people and as a couple, within all of that, then you've got some real drama. — Jeremy Sisto

It is within the bonds of marriage that I, for one, found a greater freedom to be and to become and to share myself thatn I can imaine ever having found in any other kind of relationship. — Frederick Buechner

You have got to compete with them ... you have to be working toward a future of your own. A picture of the future of your own that is contradictory to theirs, in which the things that they want to do have no place because you have been so successful at promoting the idea of sex within marriage ... focus on transforming the society to be reinforcing of all these ideas ... everywhere ... When you do that then you create a climate in which these things really cannot get very far. — Scott Lively

Marriage ... has historically been a battlefield, the site of collisions within and between governments and religions over who should regulate it. But marriage has weathered centuries of skirmishes and change. It has evolved from an institution that was imposed on some people and denied to others, to the loving union of companionship, commitment, and caring between equal partners that we think of today. — Evan Wolfson

Within there is regard for the law of marriage; without there isn't any. Within, Sita is Rama's wife. Outside, she is a woman for the taking. Ravana knows that if he enters Rama's hut and forces himself on Sita he will be judged by the rules of society. But when he forces himself on Sita outside the Lakshmana-rekha, he will be judged by the laws of the jungle. Within, he will be the villain who disregarded the laws of marriage. Outside, he will be hero, the great trickster. — Devdutt Pattanaik

Safe from the Neighbors is a novel of unusual richness and depth, one that's as wise about the small shocks within a marriage as it is about the troubled history of Mississippi. Steve Yarbrough is a formidably talented novelist, shuttling between the past and present with a grace that feels effortless. — Tom Perrotta

Love is giving up control. It's surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two - love and controlling power over the other person - are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship. — Rob Bell

Within the magical community, most brides are virgins. Do you have any idea how many curses and other horrible things are associated with virginity and virgin bloodshed? For witches, having sex before marriage invites all sorts of evil magic in. — Elizabeth A. Reeves

It does seem to me, though, that there is a difference between the Mormon Church saying, "We don't accept gay people within the Church; we don't accept gay marriage within the Church; we don't accept people who act on their homosexual desires within the Church;" and trying to interfere with what happens outside of the Church. That seemed to me to be an abomination. — Andrew Solomon

The grass is often no greener on the other side, so stick it out and see if you can grow up within the relationship. Find happiness and emotional independence within yourself before placing unreasonable and often unexpressed expectations on your spouse. — Malti Bhojwani

And so dear church, will you trust God with your whole heart? Will you stop leaning into your own understanding? We cannot comprehend His ways for they really are much higher than our own, and His thoughts are not yet within our grasp. He will return for us, but not before every saint predestined to partake is the marriage supper has been saved. How He makes this happen is still a mystery. If it requires the death of some of His most precious and innocent of lambs, the Bride must trust His love for her and keep the oil in her lamp in a constant state of readiness. — Cheryl Zelenka

Women have married because it was necessary, in order to survive economically, in order to have children who would not suffer economic deprivation or social ostracism, in order to remain respectable, in order to do what was expected of women because coming out of "abnormal" childhoods they wanted to feel "normal," and because heterosexual romance has been represented as the great female adventure, duty, and fulfillment. We may faithfully or ambivalently have obeyed the institution, but our feelings - and our sensuality - have not been tamed
or contained within it. — Adrienne Rich

Puritans called marriage "the little church within the Church," a place to test and also develop spiritual character. Every day marriage calls both partners to love and forgive and stay faithful - hard work that only makes sense if we are convinced somehow that we are participating in a kind of alternate history, one set in eternity. I persevere in the difficult times in my marriage for the same reason I persevere in the difficult times in my faith: because I believe that both touch something of eternal significance. — Philip Yancey

Rebellion, waywardness, lack of discipline, confusion, and conflict prevent happy relationships within the home. But God is interested in your family, your marriage, your children. He shows us the ideals and the goals for the family. — Billy Graham

You have worked to build me what I asked for all the days of our lives. Even when the task seemed impossible, even when it would have been easier to give it up, you did not, but kept on going. You have kept me warm in winter, and cool in summer. You have laughed with me, and you have cried. You have given me children who are almost, but not quite, my greatest joy.
For the greatest joy of all is the way you held my wish in the center of your heart thorough all the days of our lives. That is where the room that you have built for me lies. Just as the room I built for you lies within mine. And in this way have all our wishes been granted. Together, we have made ourselves a home. — Cameron Dokey

But most of all, remember that marriage is about much more than mere carnal desire. It's about being good to each other. It's about being kind. It's about seeking the very best within your own soul and sharing that very best, that goodness, with your partner. Only then will you truly start your new life together. Only then will you truly be married. — Jane Lotter

Love is a feeling that must be felt from the heart and seen through inner beauty. Only if this was known to the youth, many a marriages would have blossomed with age and cherished through decades. Just like a plant that needs the sun, water and more time to grow into a beautiful tree with lovely leaves and flowers, love needs time to be nurtured over time, built on a strong foundation of friendship, trust and honesty. When this foundation is built and combined with the feeling that tickles you from within, that is when love actually happens, the rest is all infatuation, attraction or even lust. — Jagdish Joghee

Society may no longer define marriage in the only way marriage has ever been defined in the annals of recorded history. Many societies allowed polygamy, many allowed child marriages, some allowed marriage within families; but none, in thousands of years, defined marriage as the union of people of the same sex. — Dennis Prager

No human being can destroy the structure of a marriage except the two who made it. It is the one human edifice that is impregnable except from within. — Gwen Bristow

A happy marriage is still the greatest treasure within the gift of fortune. — Eden Phillpotts

But marrying within one's own family can get monotonous. One has heard all the same family stories, knows all the jokes and all the same recipes. No novelty. — Margaret George

The marriage of a Jewish son is a bittersweet prospect. There is relief, always, that he has navigated the tantalizing and plentiful assemblies of non-Jewish women to whom the children of the Diaspora are inevitably exposed: from the moment he enters secondary school there is the constant anxiety that a blue-eyed Christina or Mary will lure him away from the tribe. Jewish men are widely known to be uxorious in all the most advantageous ways. And so each mother fears that, whether he be short and myopic, boorish or stupid or prone to discuss his lactose intolerance with strangers, whether he be blessed with a beard rising almost to meet his hairline, he is still within the danger zone. Somewhere out there is a shiksa with designs on her son. Jewish men make good husbands. It is the Jewish woman's blessing as a wife, and her curse as a mother. — Francesca Segal

My marriage to Jamie had been for me like the turning of a great key, each small turn setting in the intricate fall of tumblers within me. Bree had been able to turn that key as well, edging closer to the unlocking of the door of myself. But the final turn of the lock was frozen
until I had walked into the print shop in Edinburgh, and the mechanism had sprung free with a final, decisive click. — Diana Gabaldon

I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year. — Bette Davis

Daughter! Get you an honest Man for a Husband, and keep him honest. No matter whether he is rich, provided he be independent. Regard the Honour and moral Character of the Man more than all other Circumstances. Think of no other Greatness but that of the soul, no other Riches but those of the Heart. An honest, Sensible humane Man, above all the Littlenesses of Vanity, and Extravagances of Imagination, labouring to do good rather than be rich, to be usefull rather than make a show, living in a modest Simplicity clearly within his Means and free from Debts or Obligations, is really the most respectable Man in Society, makes himself and all about him the most happy. — John Adams

As president, he immediately invited the gay activists who helped elect him to "LGBT" receptions at the White House, where he assured them that crusty Americans could one day be cajoled out of their "worn arguments and old attitudes." "Welcome to your White House," he burbled, promising to support every item on the LGBT agenda: "We've been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration." They do. Should Obama win a second term, the justices he appoints will almost certainly unveil a bogus new constitutional right to gay marriage, discovered within the "penumbras" of Lawrence v. Texas. At which point Obama, drawing upon the faux-pained honesty he has perfected, can regurgitate what he wrote in his memoirs: that he was once on "the wrong side of history" but has now happily come into the light. — Phyllis Schlafly

What we cannot have, as I've said, is half a jungle. We can't have the world in which men and women love one another and raise healthy families, with almost all children born within wedlock and almost all children living with both parents, and their children in turn visiting their still-married grandparents, if at the same time we welcome the rest of the chaos. You can't have a child-friendly and marriage-friendly street with a porn shop and a strip club on it. The principle that the sexual "fulfillment" of adults is trumps must bear fruit accordingly. It is too wild a thing to nip here and there. It has to be uprooted. It is unworthy of a civilized and self-governing people. — Anthony Esolen

We see a promise as a personal law, and we see the people who break them as private-life criminals. We think it automatically, one of those truths that just is to us: breaking a promise is a bad, bad thing. A promise can be as buoyant as whispered words or solemn as a marriage vow, but we view it as something pure and untouchable when it should never be either of those things. If a promise is a personal law, a contract, then it ought to be layered with fine print, rules and conditions, promises within those promises, and whether we like it or not, it ought to be something we can snatch back, that we should snatch back, if those rules are violated. — Deb Caletti

It's not marriage that I crave. Many of my friends who have married are pretty miserable. Within a year and a half, most of them are either unhappy or divorced. — Ben Elliot

Gay marriage within mainline denominations is gaining traction. Skewed pastors and even the government can't trump the Bible on this issue. Pastors: stand! — Steve Camp

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

No other human relationship can approach the potential for intimacy and oneness than can be found within the context of a marriage commitment. And yet no other relationship can bring with it as many adjustments, difficulties and even hurts. There's no way you can avoid these difficulties; each couple's journey is unique. But there is much you can do to prepare for that journey. An engagement is not just a time of preparation for a wedding, but also preparation for a marriage. — Dennis Rainey

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

There are no guarantees with finally being honest and coming clean with people. Sometimes you don't win love back. Sometimes you lose the love you had. Sometimes you crush people that cared. Sometimes you break apart families. Sometimes you lose your career. Sometimes you lose your way of life. Sometimes you end up worse off than you were before. However, you walk away with a heart free from lies, regret and you have closure. Within time, you find yourself in a life that is far from the prison you once lived in. This type of freedom is the scariest road you will ever travel. However, it is the road God will never let you travel alone. — Shannon L. Alder

The storm and stress period of women and the new social and psychological formations thereby entailed must indeed extend far into the twentieth century. This period of conflict will cease only when woman within and out of marriage shall have received legal equality with man. — Ellen Key

If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny, then one begins to understand why men and women don't get on very well within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as many babies as possible with as many different women as he can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off from her busy schedule as astronaut or role model to lay an egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of us serial killers, killers of our own true nature. — Gore Vidal

The voice within is what I'm married to. All marriage is a metaphor for that marriage. My lover is the place inside me where an honest yes and no come from. That's my true partner. It's always there.
And to tell you yes when my integrity says no is to divorce that partner. — Byron Katie

Defining marriage is a power that should be left to the states. Moreover, no state should be forced to recognize a marriage that is not within its own laws, Constitution, and legal precedents. — John Sununu

Did she not have it all, the beauty, the brains, the breeding, the brilliant marriage? Yet I felt a tangible sadness lurking within ... — Tatiana De Rosnay

When we are at peace within our marriage, the effects can be astounding! We will raise happier children, become better employees, and overall find the joy in life. — Lindsey Rietzsch

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework? — Henry Louis Gates

Sex discrimination and hate crimes against women don't come from the leather community or its pornography. They occur within contexts like industrial capitalism and marriage that most people take for granted as if they had always existed, like gravity or continental drift. If feminism is going to change the world, it has to focus its critical lens on what most people think is normal, not on what most people think is abnormal. — Patrick Califia-Rice

Four Horsemen: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. Even within the Four Horsemen, in fact, there is one emotion that he considers the most important of all: contempt. If Gottman observes one or both partners in a marriage showing contempt toward the other, he considers it the single most important sign that the marriage is in trouble. — Malcolm Gladwell

Within this Christian vision for marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, "I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, 'I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!'" Each spouse should see the great thing that Jesus is doing in the life of their mate through the Word, the gospel. Each spouse then should give him- or herself to be a vehicle for that work and envision the day that you will stand together before God, seeing each other presented in spotless beauty and glory. — Timothy Keller

I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears. — C. G. Jung

Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn't come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion," and "rapture" - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books. — Gustave Flaubert

The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it's privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of it's humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage? — Frederick Douglass

Do you know what gives a woman most pleasure within marriage? 'Sex'? ..No, making food. Watching her man eat — Paulo Coelho

The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations. — Margaret Mead

I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight - that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin. — George Eliot

The actual person with whom you live is bound to be, in a curiuos way, invisible, in just the same way as yourself, are invisible; all you can do is sense their presence, feel them within you, and in turn expand in them. The word love, comapred to that has little meaning. — Jakob Wasser Mann

Adventure, my dear, is as much a state of mind as anything else. One can travel the world and never find the excitement to be found within arm's reach.
Remain true to yourself, but understand happiness may not always be found in the plans we have laid out for ourselves, but rather in the unforeseen turns life takes us. Do not close your mind, or your heart, to the unexpected twists of life. It is those unexpected paths that could well lead to the greatest adventures of all. — Victoria Alexander

Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. — Seamus Heaney

A good marriage is like Dr Who's Tardis: small and banal from the outside but spacious and interesting from within. — Katharine Whitehorn

I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society - because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not. — Bell Hooks

Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics. — Samuel Butler

I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it's going to work. It's astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-delusion and false hope when in fact they had their answer in those first two weeks. — Khaled Hosseini

And within the house
ashes are being stuffed into my marriage,
fury is lapping the walls,
dishes crack on the shelves,
a strangler needs my throat,
the daughter has ceased to eat anything ... — Anne Sexton

An emptiness rules at its core, a rottenness, a silence when one of you retires to bed without saying good night, when you eat together without conversation, when the phone's passed wordlessly to the other. An emptiness when every night you lie in the double bed, restlessly awake, astounded at how closely hate can nudge against love, can wind around it sinuously like a cat. An emptiness when you realize that the loneliest you've ever been is within a marriage, as a wife. — Nikki Gemmell

I have loved flowers that fade,Within whose magic tentsRich hues have marriage madeWith sweet unmemoried scents:A honeymoon delight,A joy of love at sight,That ages in an hourMy song be like a flower! — Robert Bridges

The problem is not with marriage itself. According to Genesis 1 and 2, we were made for marriage, and marriage was made for us. Genesis 3 tells us that marriage, along with every other aspect of human life, has been broken because of sin. If our views of marriage are too romantic and idealistic, we underestimate the influence of sin on human life. If they are too pessimistic and cynical, we misunderstand marriage's divine origin. If we somehow manage, as our modern culture has, to do both at once, we are doubly burdened by a distorted vision. Yet the trouble is not within the institution of marriage but within ourselves. — Timothy Keller

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

Outlawing the sale or barter of women marked Genghis Khan's first important departure from tribal practices regarding marriage, and gradually through a series of such changes he transformed the social position of his daughters, and thereby of all women, within his burgeoning empire. — Jack Weatherford

The worst problems for children stem from parental conflict, before, during, and after divorce or within marriage. — Stephanie Coontz

Each marriage is a living thing, just as complex as the two individuals within it. — Penny Reid

Within 18 months of my parents' marriage in 1900, my mother fell in love with an Englishman who would have described himself as a gentleman but who was, in fact, nothing more than a devious adventurer. — Paul Mellon

A therapist friend of mine has worked with a number of different women who were at one point in their lives centerfolds for popular men's magazines. These women often had difficulty achieving sexual satisfaction. Though they seemed experienced in sexuality per se, they had almost no understanding of God-ordained sexual intimacy within marriage. As a result, there was a lot of spiritual and psychological healing that had to be accomplished in order for them to enter into a mutually satisfying relationship. — Gary L. Thomas

War and marriage and childbirth had passed over her without touching any deep chord within her and she was unchanged. — Margaret Mitchell

We all have had a crush at one time or another in our lives. Sometimes, a crush is something that lives only within our hearts, bound never to see the light of day. Other times, having a crush on someone leads eventually to asking them out, dating, and even marriage. — Simeon S. Willis

Owing to the lack of serious and informed popular interest in real issues, we have the current Republican menu of pseudo-issues: abortion, gay marriage, flag burning, prayer in schools, sharia law, and so on. They are simple to grasp and well within the ambit of the average person who does not follow politics. — Mike Lofgren

All my life, in nameless, indeterminate ways, I'd tried to complete my life with someone else
first my father, then Hugh, even Whit, and I didn't want that anymore. I wanted to belong to myself. — Sue Monk Kidd

There's still another problem which puzzles a lot of people - whether or not a baby will come within the budget. Our sentimental advice is to have one anyway, if you want one and have been through the marriage ceremony. The people who wait till they can afford a baby seldom have one at all except by surprise. — Marjorie Hillis

There might have been prettier women in the room but, when she turned those babies on, fluttered her eyelashes, I was hers. It had taken me nearly fifteen years to extinguish their light. Now, when she looks at me, it's a vacuum. I had drained so much from her over the course of our marriage that every glance rips a little bit of my soul away to fill the void I had whittled within her. — Thomm Quackenbush

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

Antoine and Marie-Anne de Lavoisier held out for Lamanon the prospect of something he had not even known he was missing till that day in May - not so much marriage between equals, although that did seem true of them, or even marriage based on love, although that was obviously the case as well, but the happy union of science and humanity within an individual, and the joy that was possible when one person, so self-integrated, encountered another such person. — Naomi J. Williams

I hope one day, darling, that you will know the touch of a man who loves you. I pray you will know how wonderful that is. How rare and beautiful. How godly. Even if it isn't within the union of marriage. It isn't wrong. Nothing is more right. — Jessica Gadziala