A good motto for the bride and groom: "We are a work in progress with a lifetime contract." (Phyllis Koss)
"It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
"Marriage isn't supposed to make you happy -- it's supposed to make you married." (Frank Pittman)
"I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them -- it was that promise." (Thornton Wilder, "The Skin of Our Teeth")
"I knew couples who’d been married almost forever – forty, fifty, sixty years. Seventy-two, in one case. They’d be tending each other’s illnesses, filling in each other’s faulty memories, dealing with the money troubles or the daughter’s suicide, or the grandson’s drug addiction. And I was beginning to suspect that it made no difference whether they’d married the right person. Finally, you’re just with who you’re with. You’ve signed on with her, put in a half century with her, grown to know her as well as you know yourself or even better, and she’s become the right person. Or the only person, might be more to the point. I wish someone had told me that earlier. I’d have hung on then; I swear I would.” (Anne Tyler, "A Patchwork Planet")
"Choose your love, then love your choice." (Unknown)
ON KINDNESS AND FORGIVENESS
"Love is seeking to act for the other person's highest good." (Jerry Cook)
"A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers." (Ruth Bell Graham)
"Common courtesy plays a big role in happy marriages. People who are permanently married are polite to one another. They don't want to hurt one another's feelings, and they don't try to make the other one feel humiliated. People who are married for life are extremely kind to one another." (Frank Pittman)
"A good marriage is a contest of generosity." (Diane Sawyer)
"I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail, poisoned in the bushes, blown out on the trail; hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn, 'Come in,' she said, 'I'll give ya shelter from the storm.'" (Bob Dylan)
ON COMMUNICATION
"No road is long with good company." (Turkish proverb)
"To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up." (Ogden Nash)
"No man is truly married until he understands every word his wife is NOT saying." (Unknown)
"Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first." (Billy Sunday)
"Arguments are a natural part of any relationship, but cruelty is not. Above all, happily married partners see each other as allies, not as adversaries... You can't be right and married at the same time. If you're trying to be right and prove your partner wrong, you've stepped outside the marriage." (Frank Pittman)
"Writers say that love is concerned only with young people, and the excitement and glamor of romance end at the altar. How blind they are. The best romance is inside marriage; the finest love stories come after the wedding, not before." (Irving Stone)
"You don't marry one person; you marry three: the person you think they are, the person they are, and the person they are going to become as a result of being married to you." (Richard Needham)
"Marriage must withstand change, aging, loss of youth, loss of beauty, loss of youthful hopes, and an expectable lifetime full of disappointment... There's no point battling age in yourself or in your partner. No one has ever won." (Frank Pittman)
LOVE ISN'T ENOUGH
"William Morris wrote a poem called 'Love is Enough' and someone is said to have reviewed it briefly with the words 'It isn't.' ... To say this is not to belittle the natural loves but to indicate where their real glory lies. It is no disparagement to a garden to say that it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns. A garden is a good thing but that is not the sort of goodness it has. It will remain a garden, as distinct from a wilderness, only if someone does all these things to it." (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves)
"Love is a feeling, Marriage is a contract, and a Relationship is work." (Lori Gordon)
"The grass looks greener on the other side. . . but it's Astroturf." (From the report, "Does Divorce Make People Happy?")
"All those '...and they lived happily ever after' fairy tale endings need to be changed to '...and they began the very hard work of making their marriages happy.'" (Linda Miles, The New Marriage)
For more marriage quotes visit www.smartmarriages.com.
Photo above by Wu Jianxiong on Unsplash.
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