Quotable Quotes (8 page)

Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.

—
S
YDNEY
J
.
H
ARRIS

 

Marriage has teeth, and him bite very hot.

—
J
AMAICAN PROVERB

 

Getting married is easy. Staying married is more difficult. Staying happily married for a lifetime should rank among the fine arts.

—
R
OBERTA
F
LACK

 

Marriage is like vitamins: we supplement each other's minimum daily requirements.

—
K
ATHY
M
OHNKE

 

Never marry for money. Ye'll borrow it cheaper.

—
S
COTTISH PROVERB

 

A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year.

—
P
AUL
S
WEENEY

 

A good marriage is like an incredible retirement fund. You put everything you have into it during your productive life, and over the years it turns from silver to gold to platinum.

—
W
ILLARD
S
COTT

The Joy of Living

 

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

—
R
OBERT
A
NDERSON

Solitaire & Double Solitaire

 

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

—
M
IGNON
M
C
L
AUGHLIN

 

The concept of two people living together for 25 years without a serious dispute suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.

—
A
.
P
.
H
ERBERT

 

Story writers say that love is concerned only with young people, and the excitement and glamour 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.

—
I
RVING
S
TONE

 

It takes a loose rein to keep a marriage tight.

—
J
OHN
S
TEVENSON

 

The great thing about marriage is that it enables one to be alone without feeling loneliness.

—
G
ERALD
B
RENAN

Thoughts in a Dry Season

 

A happy marriage is the world's best bargain.

—
O
.
A
.
B
ATTISTA

 

Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.

—
J
OSH
B
ILLINGS

 

The particular charm of marriage is the duologue, the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone.

—
C
YRIL
C
ONNOLLY

The Unquiet Grave

 

In marriage, being the right person is as important as finding the right person.

—
W
ILBERT
D
ONALD
G
OUGH

 

In a successful marriage, there is no such thing as one's way. There is only the way of both, only the bumpy, dusty, difficult, but always mutual path.

—
P
HYLLIS
M
C
G
INLEY

The Province of the Heart

 

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

—
S
IMONE
S
IGNORET

 

All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, appreciated a little.

—
O
LIVER
G
OLDSMITH

 

Marriage should, I think, always be a little hard and new and strange. It should be breaking your shell and going into another world, and a bigger one.

—
A
NNE
M
ORROW
L
INDBERGH

 

A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short.

—
A
NDRÉ
M
AUROIS

Memoires

 

The difference between courtship and marriage is the difference between the pictures in a seed catalogue and what comes up.

—
J
AMES
W
HARTON

 

The greatest of all arts is the art of living together.

—
W
ILLIAM
L
YON
P
HELPS

Marriage

 

A sound marriage is not based on complete frankness; it is based on a sensible reticence.

—
M
ORRIS
L
.
E
RNST

 

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

—
M
IGNON
M
C
L
AUGHLIN

in
The Atlantic

 

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 the result of being married to you.

—
R
ICHARD
N
EEDHAM

You and All the Rest

 

Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it.

—
H
ELEN
R
OWLAND

 

The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together.

—
R
OBERT
C
.
D
ODDS

 

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

—
J
EFFERSON
M
ACHAMER

 

The marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes that he or she got the best of it.

—
S
YDNEY
J
.
H
ARRIS

 

Matrimony is the only game of chance the clergy favor.

—
E
MILY
F
ERGUSON
M
URPHY

 

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy.

—
H
ENRY
K
ISSINGER

 

T
HE
GREAT GIFT OF FAMILY LIFE 
. . .

 

The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.

—
K
ENDALL
H
AILEY

The Day I Became an Autodidact

 

A family vacation is one where you arrive with five bags, four kids and seven I-thought-you-packed-its.

—
I
VERN
B
ALL

 

Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.

—
G
AIL
L
UMET
B
UCKLEY

The Hornes: An American Family

 

Parentage is a very important profession; but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

—
B
ERNARD
S
HAW

Everybody's Political What's What?

 

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

—
J
OHN
B
OWRING

 

Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.

—
A
NTHONY
B
RANDT

in
Esquire

 

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

—
M
ARGARET
M
EAD

 

Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.

—
L
AURENCE
J
.
P
ETER

Peter's Quotations

 

Heredity is a splendid phenomenon that relieves us of responsibility for our shortcomings.

—
D
OUG
L
ARSON

 

Adolescence is perhaps nature's way of preparing parents to welcome the empty nest.

—
K
AREN
S
AVAGE AND
P
ATRICIA
A
DAMS

The Good Stepmother

 

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.

—
D
OUG
L
ARSON

 

Even a family tree has to have some sap.

—Los Angeles Times Syndicate

 

Oh, to be only half as wonderful as my child thought I was when he was small, and only half as stupid as my teenager now thinks I am.

—
R
EBECCA
R
ICHARDS

 

We never know the love of the parent until we become parents ourselves.

—
H
ENRY
W
ARD
B
EECHER

 

He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.

—
T
HOMAS
F
ULLER

 

If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion.

—
A
SHLEIGH
B
RILLIANT

 

Before most people start boasting about their family tree, they usually do a good pruning job.

—
O
.
A
.
B
ATTISTA

 

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

—
H
ELEN
K
ELLER

 

The family fireside is the best of schools.

—
A
RNOLD
H
.
G
LASOW

 

Making the decision to have a child—it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

—
E
LIZABETH
S
TONE

 

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

—
S
OPHIA
L
OREN

Women and Beauty

 

Mothers are the most instinctive philosophers.

—
H
ARRIET
B
EECHER
S
TOWE

 

Instant availability without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play.

—
L
OTTE
B
AILYN

The Woman in America

 

The three most beautiful sights: a potato garden in bloom, a ship in sail, a woman after the birth of her child.

—
I
RISH PROVERB

 

Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.

—
J
OHN
C
IARDI

 

You never get over being a child, long as you have a mother to go to.

—
S
ARAH
O
RNE
J
EWETT

 

A good father is a little bit of a mother.

—
L
EE
S
ALK

 

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

—
T
HEODORE
H
ESBURGH

 

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.

—
G
EORGE
H
ERBERT

 

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.

—
C
LARENCE
B
UDINGTON
K
ELLAND

 

You don't raise heroes; you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes.

—
W
ALTER
S
CHIRRA
S
R.

 

The beauty of “spacing” children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones—which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.