Good Marriage Quotes

Two things are owed to truthfulness: lasting marriages and short friendships. ~ Robert Breault

A good marriage is, at least, one part conspiracy. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

The importance of falling in love lies not in how it feels, but in what it perceives. And as always with our feelings, the key moral issue is how truthful the perception is ... Falling in love is a sign that this might be someone with whom you could make a good marriage. Still, it's not enough, because the feeling is not always as perceptive as it should be ... So falling in love is not the basis for a good marriage. It's not even a requirement. Marriage does not depend on falling in love; it depends on the promises you make to each other in your wedding vows and then spend a lifetime keeping. As many people have pointed out, you can't promise how you'll feel. But you can promise to cultivate a virtue, such as the virtue of love. ~ Phillip Cary

I see a good marriage as being like two tall trees growing beside each other, each nourishing the grace of the other. ~ Lawrence Fagg

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

Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time. ~ Patrick Lencioni

The idea that relationships are not a strategy is potent; and the sad commentary proceeds to say that often relationships are seen as a strategy, a means to accomplish great things - except love and relationship are not what is really wanted. We want to appear relational so people will like what we have to offer. It's the difference between wanting a good marriage and loving the person you married. ~ Scot McKnight

The secret to a happy parternship? Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty. ~ Kevin Bacon

The best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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

They had a good marriage, a solid relationship that had endured its ups and downs because they'd learned from the mistakes they'd made during their tumultuous beginning. What they'd built together was open and honest and there wasn't anything they couldn't talk about with one another. ~ Kimberley Reeves

The basis of a good marriage, a reasonably happy marriage - don't delude yourself, there is no such thing as an entirely happy marriage - is, precisely, inequality. ~ Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

In marriage, the point is not to achieve a rapid union by tearing down and toppling all boundaries. Rather, in a good marriage, each person appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude and thus shows him the greatest faith he can bestow. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The key to a good marriage: laugh together, cry together, strive together: do everything together. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

There's nothing like a good cheating song to make me want to run home to be with my wife. ~ Steven Curtis Chapman

You're either selfish, or you're a servant ... but fundamentally selfish people are terrible friends, terrible lovers, terrible spouses, terrible Christians, terrible parents. They leave a terrible legacy. Will you be selfish? Will you be a servant? ... A good marriage is a servant and a servant. ~ Mark Driscoll

Y'know, every relationship is different. There are good marriages, bad marriages, connected partners, unconnected partners. ~ Sandra Bullock

A good marriage shuts out a very great deal. ~ May Sarton

Every good marriage must be a friendship between two people who are willing to sacrifice for the other person. ~ Jim George

...a good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our bosom friendships. You could almost flush with appreciation. What a great scam, to have gotten people of such extreme quality and loyalty to think you are stuck with them. Oh my God. Thank you ~ Anne Lamott

It was the only ambition I ever had - not to be a dancer or Hollywood movie star, but to be a housewife in a good marriage. ~ Doris Day

The divorce rate would be lower if instead of marrying for better or worse
people would marry for good. ~ Ruby Dee

A good marriage is one of the most precious gifts from God, ~ Diana Gabaldon

It's not easy having a good marriage
but I don't want easy. Easy doesn't make you grow. Easy doesn't make you think. I thank God everyday that I am married to a man who makes me think. That's my definition of true love. ~ Madonna

The reason for this behavior did not appear to be a strong desire to remain free and avoid commitments in that 89 percent of undergraduates say having a good marriage or committed relationship is an essential life goal. Rather it seemed more a fear of rejection from a generation that had avoided skinning their knees. It is a risk to express feelings. There is a chance of getting hurt. Dancing alone together is safer. ~ Arthur Levine

It is important to create a family and bring up a child: these things are good and even necessary ~ Sunday Adelaja

I have learnt that a good marriage is healing for the soul, something to relish. But a bad marriage is long-suffering, a thing to be endured. The only good thing about marriage is that it's perishable like human life. ~ Meghna Pant

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

You're not just going out there, maybe sacrificing your own life. There's also sacrifices still going on at home. You can serve in the military and have a good marriage, but you just need to be aware of it so you can take those steps to take care of it. ~ Chris Kyle

A good marriage isn't something you find; it's something you make. ~ Gary L. Thomas

The aim of marriage, as I feel it, is not by means of demolition and overthrowing of all boundaries to create a hasty communion, the good marriage is rather one in which each appoints the other as guardian of his solitude and shews him this greatest trust that he has to confer. A togetherness of two human beings is an impossibility and, where it does seem to exist, a limitation, a mutual compromise which robs one side or both sides of their fullest freedom and development. But granted the consciousness that even between the closest people there persist infinite distances, a wonderful living side by side can arise for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of seeing one another in whole shape and before a great sky! ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

It's true what they say - all the good men are married. But it's marriage that makes them good. ~ Gay Talese

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband. ~ Michel De Montaigne

The key to a good marriage is to do all you can to uplift your wife and treasure her - even in her worst moments. ~ Jody Hedlund

The most important thing for a good marriage is to learn how to argue peaceably. ~ Anita Ekberg

No one would wish a bad marriage on anyone. But where do we think good marriages come from? They don't spring full blown from the head of Zeus any more than does a good education ... Why should a marriage require fewer tears and less toil and shabbier commitment than your job or your clothes or your car? ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

Married people should be best friends; no relationship on earth needs friendship as much as marriage ... Friendship in a marriage is so important. It blows away the chaff and takes the kernel, rejoices in the uniqueness of the other, listens patiently, gives generously, forgives freely. Friendship will motivate one to cross the room one day and say 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.' it will not pretend perfection nor demand it. It will not insist that both respond exactly the same in every thought and feeling, but it will bring to the union honesty, integrity. There will be repentance and forgiveness in every marriage
every good marriage
and respect and trust. ~ Marion D. Hanks

Any good marriage involves a certain amount of play-acting. ~ Margaret Millar

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

I am not married yet, but I think ultimately in a good marriage it is the relationship which is the most important thing. It is not a matter of who is right and who is wrong; it is a one plus one equals more than two. ~ Lawrence Bender

A good marriage can be ruined by poor communications - and by forgetting to put the lid back down. ~ Gene Simmons

Young girls today were more sensible, more sophisticated. Nowadays they worried more about their exam results and did their best to ensure they would have a decent career. For them, going out with boys was simply a game, a distraction based as much as on narcissism as on sexual pleasure. Later, they would try to make a good marriage, basing their decision on a range of social and professional criteria as well as shared interests and tastes. Of course, in doing this, they cut themselves from any possibility of happiness - a condition indissociable from traditional and transient emotions which are incompatible with the practice of reason - but in doing so they hoped to escape the moral and emotional suffering which had so tortured their forebears. ~ Michel Houellebecq

We've managed to make a good marriage. This I say with all humility. It's a marriage in which there is nothing that can be hurt by the roughest usage. It's a marriage that you can let yourself go in, a marriage in which you can put your feet up and relax. ~ Louise Dickinson Rich

A good marriage is not "made in heaven," but on earth. Love is a fragile commodity which needs to be cultivated and nourished constantly. ~ Billy Graham

Most inexperienced cooks believe, mistakenly, that a fine cake is less challenging to produce than a fine souffle or mousse. I know, however, that a good cake is like a good marriage: from the outside, it looks ordinary, sometimes unremarkable, yet cut into it, taste it, and you know that it is nothing of the sort. It is the sublime result oflong and patient experience, a confection whose success relies on a profound understanding of compatibilities and tastes; on a respect for measurement, balance, chemistry and heat; on a history of countless errors overcome. ~ Julia Glass

A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations. ~ Michel De Montaigne

She'd often thought that was what a good marriage would mean. Sometimes she would take on all the burdens, and sometimes her husband would. Most of the time they would share them. ~ Susan Mallery

You do not buy into a good marriage or LTR, you create one, you build one. ~ Rollo Tomassi

Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Thing in good marriage is not happiness but stabilty . ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Marriage isn't a love affair. It isn't even a honeymoon. It's a job. A long hard job, at which both partners have to work, harder than they've worked at anything in their lives before. If it's a good marriage, it changes, it evolves, but it does on getting better. I've seen it with my own mother and father. But a bad marriage can dissolve in a welter of resentment and acrimony. I've seen that, too, in my own miserable and disastrous attempt at making another person happy. And it's never one person's fault. It's the sum total of a thousand little irritations, disagreements, idiotic details that in a sound alliance would simply be disregarded, or forgotten in the healing act of making love. Divorce isn't a cure, it's a surgical operation, even if there are no children to consider. ~ Rosamunde Pilcher

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

A good marriage, like any partnership, meant subordinating one's own needs to that of the other's, in the expectation that the other will do the same. ~ Nicholas Sparks

The mark of a good marriage is partnership and continuing to feel inspired by your spouse. I had that with Tao. But the end is not necessarily the tragedy. Staying in a relationship that is no longer working is the tragedy. Living unhappily - that's the tragedy. ~ Olivia Wilde

I hope you fall in love with someone nice and have a good marriage. I might end up dying without knowing what it's like to be in love. ~ Koushun Takami

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

I think people who try to run their marriages according to other people's expectations are insane. It is quite hard enough to keep a marriage together till death do you part- which I think should be the aim, even if it can't always succeed- without trying to do it to please other people. A good marriage is whatever suits the participants, and our marriage suited us fine. ~ Lynn Barber

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love. ~ Pearl S. Buck

We've come a long way from the time when the crowning achievement in a woman's life was her youthful marriage. And many would agree that this represents progress for women. But when did the search for someone to marry become self-absorbed and pathetic? This absence of social sympathy for women's ambitions to marry is all the more striking because the social world has cared so deeply about virtually every other aspect of these privileged young women's inner and outer lives. ( ... ) The achievement of a good marriage is the one area of life where the most privileged, accomplished, and high achieving young women in society face a loss of support and sympathy for their ambitions and where the social expectations are for disappointment and failure, not success. ~ Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

I think even in a good marriage, especially if you stay together long enough, there are going to be events that happen. ~ Tori Amos

A person does not leave a good marriage for someone else. ~ Doris Day

Remember, a good marriage is like a campfire. Both grow cold if left unattended. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

The mark of a good marriage is when only one of you goes crazy at a time! ~ Heinz Kohut

A good marriage can usher you into paradise, a bad one into hell ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

At least tell me the truth about Blakeborough," he said hoarsely. "Do you love him?"
"Why does it matter?"
His eyes ate her up. "If you do, I'll keep my distance. I'll stay out of your life from now on."
"You've been doing that easily enough for the past twelve years," she snapped. "I don't see why my feelings for Edwin should change anything."
"Easily? It was never easy, I assure you." His expression was stony. "And you're avoiding the question. Are you in love with Blakeborough?"
How she wished she could lie about it. Dom would take himself off, and she wouldn't be tempted by him anymore. Unfortunately, he could always tell when she was lying. "And if I say I'm not?"
"Then I won't rest until you're mine again."
The determination in his voice shocked her. Unsettled her.
Thrilled her.
No! "I don't want that."
His fingers dug into her arm. "Because you love Blakeborough?"
"Because love is a lie designed to make a woman desire what is only a figure of smoke in the wind. Love is too dangerous."
He released a heavy breath. "So you don't love him."
His persistence sparked her temper, and she pushed free of him. "Oh, for pity's sake, if you must know, I don't." She faced him down. "Not that it matters one whit. I don't need love to have a good marriage, an amiable marriage. I don't even want love."
It hurt too much when her heart was trampled upon. Dom had done that once before. How could she be sure he wouldn't ~ Sabrina Jeffries

But as my dear friend and relationship sponsor Louis CK has noted, divorce is always good news because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. ~ Amy Poehler

Don't get me wrong. A good marriage, adequate financial resources, even a clean home and well-behaved children do bring some measure of happiness. However, temporal blessings, as wonderful as they may be, are only a taste of the real thing. They cannot sustain inner happiness any more than eating a scrumptious meal keeps tomorrow's hunger at bay. ~ Leslie Vernick

There are some good marriages, but practically no delightful ones. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A good marriage is good because one or both of them have learned to overlook the other's faults, to love the other as they are and to not attempt to change them or bring them to repentance. ~ Debi Pearl

The spiritual journey is one that we must take "alone together," in the same way that a good marriage involves a dance between solitude and communion. The life of the spirit entails a continuous alternation between retreating into oneself and going out into the world: it's an inward-outward journey. There is a solitary part to it, but that solitude helps us to develop richer and more in-depth relationships with our friends, our children, our community, and the political world. ~ Sam Keen

Some days, the music is not in tune, but it's always a song worth singing.
That's the best description of a good marriage I've ever heard ... ~ Nora Roberts

When the Basque whalers applied to cod the salting techniques they were using on whale, they discovered a particularly good marriage because the cod is virtually without fat, and so if salted and dried well, would rarely spoil. It would outlast whale, which is red meat, and it would outlast herring, a fatty fish that became a popular salted item of the northern countries in the Middle Ages. ~ Mark Kurlansky

A good marriage is not one where perfection reigns: it is a relationship where a healthy perspective overlooks a multitude of "unresolvables." ~ James Dobson

The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a "good" marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off. ~ M. Scott Peck

She knew him in a way that you can only know someone you love totally. Daily, she forgave his flaws, just as she knew he forgave hers. Maybe that alone was the foundation of a good marriage, an endless willingness to forgive and to love in spite of ourselves, an ability to ride the highs and endure the lows, the decision to always go home. She ~ Lisa Unger

A good marriage is really good after serving together in Washington, D.C. ~ George W. Bush

Nobody, man or woman, has ever wrecked a good marriage. ~ Jimmy Dean

A good marriage drags a long tail of memory behind it. A single word or gesture, a tone of voice can conjure up so many remembrances. ~ William Landay

Men, however, were encouraged to sow their wild oats, but a woman who did so became a social outcast and ruined her chances of making a good marriage. ~ Alison Weir

If you're in a good marriage, you have the sense that it won't be forever. ~ Jenny Slate

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

A good marriage (if any there be) refuses the conditions of love and endeavors to present those of amity. ~ Michel De Montaigne

My wife often said that a good marriage consists of two good forgivers. ~ Billy Graham

A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal. ~ Anne Lamott

As for Diana . . . sometimes I think the kindest thing I could do for my sister is ruin her chances of making a 'good' marriage. Then she might make a loving one. ~ Tessa Dare

To keep the fire burning brightly there's one easy rule: Keep the two logs together, near enough to keep each other warm and far enough apart - about a finger's breadth - for breathing room. Good fire, good marriage, same rule. ~ Marnie Reed Crowell

I don't think it's more difficult for actors to have a good marriage than anyone. I think, in the end, a really important component of any relationship is honesty, and it also comes down to luck. ~ Cate Blanchett

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage. ~ Martin Luther

Have you ever heard of a good marriage growing in front of the cameras? ~ Brigitte Bardot

A good marriage is loving someone in a lot of different circumstances. Respect for them and their views and ideas and the life that they're leading with you. Shared values and interests. A good sense of humour. And a little volatility along the way. ~ Edward Kennedy

You see, Ross, in every right marriage, in every good marriage a woman has to be three things, don't she? She's got to be a wife and look after a man's comforts in the way a man should be looked after. Then she's got to bear his children and get all swelled up like a summer pumpkin and then often-times feed them after and smell of babies and have them crawling all about her...But then, third, she has also to try and be his mistress at the same time; someone he is still interested in; someone he wants, not just the person who happens to be there and convenient; someone a bit mysterious...someone whose knee or -- or shoulder he wouldn't instantly recognize if he saw it beside him in bed. It's -- it's impossible. ~ Winston Graham

Someday, one of your friends is gonna get divorced, it's gonna happen, and they're gonna tell you. Don't go, 'ohhhh I'm sorry.' That's a stupid thing to say. First of all you're making 'em feel bad for being really happy, which isn't fair. And second of all: divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it's true, because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. It's really that simple. ~ Louis C.K.

Nothing brings more joy than a good marriage, and nothing brings more misery than a bad marriage. ~ Billy Graham

Call it a good marriage -
For no one ever questioned
Her warmth, his masculinity,
Their interlocking views;
Except one stray graphologist
Who frowned in speculation
At her h's and her s's,
His p's and w's.

Though few would still subscribe
To the monogamic axiom
That strife below the hip-bones
Need not estrange the heart,
Call it a good marriage:
More drew those two together,
Despite a lack of children,
Than pulled them apart.

Call it a good marriage:
They never fought in public,
They acted circumspectly
And faced the world with pride;
Thus the hazards of their love-bed
Were none of our damned business -
Till as jurymen we sat on
Two deaths by suicide. ~ Robert Graves

Honor, obey?" Gisbourne shouted, grappling with John. "This is what you call being a good wife?"
I stopped. "I never said I'd be a good wife, Guy. Just that I'd marry you. ~ A.C. Gaughen

The noise of the town some floors below was greatly muted. In a state of complete mental detachment, he went over the events, the circumstances and the stages of destruction in their lives. Seen in the frozen light of a restrictive past, everything seemed clear, conclusive and indisputable. Now it seemed unthinkable that a girl of seventeen shoudl be so naive; it was particularly unbelieveable that a girl of seventeen should set so much store by love. If the surveys in the magazines were to be believed, things had changed a great deal in the twenty-five years since Annabelle was a teenager. Young girls today were more sensible, more sophisticated. Nowadays they worried more about their exam results and did their best to ensure they would have a decent career. For them, going out with boys was simply a game, a distraction motivated as much by narcissism as by sexual pleasure. They later would try to make a good marriage, basing their decision on a range of social and professional criteria, as well as on shared interests and tastes. Of course, in doing this they cut themselves off from any possibility of happiness--a condition indissociable from the outdated, intensely close bonds so incompatible with the exercise of reason--but this was their attempt to escape the moral and emotional suffering which had so tortured their forebears. This hope was, unfortunately, rapidly disappointed; the passing of love's torments simply left the field clear for boredom, emptiness and an anguis ~ Michel Houellebecq

We had a good marriage," he said. "I just thought it would be so much longer." Then he shrugged, and coughed away a sob, this thin man in his sixties with the soft androgynous face that aging seemed to bring, as though all the hormones were finally mixed up in a big coed pot because it just didn't matter anymore. ~ Meg Wolitzer

I used to have a theory actually that, if you've had a good childhood, a good marriage and a little bit of money in the bank, you're going to make a lousy comedian. ~ David Steinberg

Trying to describe a good marriage is like trying to describe your adrenal glands. You know they're in there functioning but you don't really understand how they work. ~ Helen Gurley Brown

A witty vicar once said that a good marriage is like a pair of scissors with the couple inseparable joined, often moving in opposite directions, yet always destroying anyone who comes between them. The trick is for the blades to learn to work smoothly together, so as not to cut each other. ~ Mary Jo Putney