Husband And Wife Relationship Quotes

He owe his wife a debt he couldn't hope to pay with any coin save one: open the cage and let the bird fly. ~ Colleen McCullough

You don't appreciate a faithful husband when you've got one,' said Tommy.
'All my friends tell me you never know with husbands,' said Tuppance.
'You have the wrong kind of friends,' said Tommy. ~ Agatha Christie

No. You said I looked "okay," which is petty much the same thing as saying, "Well, at least your nipples are covered. ~ Jenny Lawson

If he had but a little more brains, she thought to herself, I might make something of him; but she never let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes...When he came home, she was alert and happy; when he went out she pressed him to go; when he stayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in comfort. The best of women {I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smile which they wear so easily are traps to cajole or elude or disarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models and paragons of female virute. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of - - , was, I believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether 'twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule for many years of his life, - on the first Sunday-night of every month throughout the whole year, - as certain as ever the Sunday-night came, - to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands: - And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of, - he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up, - but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head. ~ Laurence Sterne

My Wife, I get to keep you forever. ~Lucian Bane~ ~ Lucian Bane

Should I rejoice in the inferiority of my fate?" - John Lockwood ~ Noorilhuda

I work a lot of hours, and in this business you really try to keep as busy as you possibly can. Sometimes when you really focus on kids in your free time you lose the husband and wife relationship to some degree. It's been a real focus for us to make sure we stay focused on us two. ~ Cameron Mathison

The relationship between husband and wife should be one of closest friends. ~ B.R. Ambedkar

Julie's cookery is actually improving," Paul wrote Charlie [his twin]. "I didn't quite believe it would, just between us, but it really is. It's simpler, more classical ... I envy her this chance. It would be such fun to be doing it at the same time with her. ~ Julia Child

If we women were particular about men's characters, we should never get married at all. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I 'm your husband ... "
"No. You are not my husband," she interrupted in a voice thickened with hatred and tears. "You have never been my husband. A husband loves, honours and cherishes! A husband is a lover and a champion ... Look into the next room if you want to see what a real husband is, because you are no such thing! ~ Natasha Anders

The last person Jemma expected to welcome into her bedchamber that night was her husband. Though of course she would have to invite him in at some point if they were to embark on their heir-making activities. ~ Eloisa James

They know what the "perfumes" are going to say because they
always say the same thing, but they pretend to believe them anyway.
(a)"I could change your life."
(b)"A lot of women would like to be in your shoes."
(c)"You're young now, but what will become of you in a few
years' time? You need to think about making a longer-term
investment."
(d)"I'm married, but my wife ... " (This opening line can have
various endings: " ... is ill," " ... has threatened to commit
suicide if I leave her," etc.)
(e)"You're a princess and deserve to be treated like one. I didn't
know it until now, but I've been waiting for you. I don't believe
in coincidences and I really think we ought to give this relationship a chance. ~ Paulo Coelho

Was it wife soup and husband soup on the Other Side? Or was it simply soup? ~ Tom Robbins

The lover thinks oftener of reaching his mistress than the husband thinks of guarding his wife; the prisoner thinks more often of escape than the jailer thinks of locking the doors. Therefore, in spite of every obstacle, the lover and the prisoner are certain to succeed. ~ Stendhal

I do feel free, I have patched things up with my ex-husband to the degree of this real friendship. We spend a lot of time together as a family with our son, no way will we be man and wife again. ~ Beccy Cole

It is too much for a husband to have a wife who is a coquette and sanctimonious as well; she should select only one of those qualities. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

Consider these traditional theories of domestic abuse:
-Learned helplessness suggest that abused women learn to become helpless under abusive conditions; they are powerless to extricate themselves from such relationships and/or unable to make adaptive choices
-The cycle of violence describes a pattern that includes a contrition or honeymoon phase. The abusive husband becomes contrite and apologetic after a violent episode, making concerted efforts to get back in his wife's good graces.
-Traumatic bonding attempts to explain the inexplicable bond that is formed between a woman and her abusive partner
-The theory of past reenactments posits that women in abusive relationships are reliving unconscious feelings from early childhood scenarios.
My research results and experience with patients do not conform to these concepts. I have found that the upscale abused wife is not a victim of learned helplessness. Rather, she makes specific decisions along the path to be involved in the abusive marriage, including silent strategizing as she chooses to stay or leave the marriage. Nor does the upscale abused wife experience the classic cycle of violence, replete with the honeymoon stage, in which the husband courts his wife to seek her forgiveness. As in the case of Sally and Ray, the man of means actually does little to seek his wife's forgiveness after a violent episode.
Further, the upscale abused wife voices more attachment to her lifestyle than the trauma ~ Susan Weitzman

Surely, the span of time between the placing of an order and the arrival of appetizers is one of the most perilous in all human interaction. What young lovers have not found themselves at this juncture in a silence so sudden, so seemingly insurmountable that it threatens to cast doubt upon their chemistry as a couple? What husband and wife have not found themselves suddenly unnerved by the fear that they might not ever have something urgent, impassioned, or surprising to say to each other again? ~ Amor Towles

I think poetry without metaphor is like husband and wife living in separate bedrooms. ~ Munia Khan

If I had a husband I should want a good one, a man with a head on his shoulders, and a heart. Even if I were young and good-looking, I doubt whether I could please myself. As it is I am likely to be taken bodily to heaven, as to become any man's wife. ~ Anthony Trollope

I love you Rush Finlay. You are going to be the best husband and father the world has ever known. One day our son's wife will be thankful that her husband will have had you for a role model. She'll be lucky because of you. Because you will have raised our son to be the man that you are. He'll love her completely because he'll know how. ~ Abbi Glines

On Christmas. "Santa Claus represents God on assistance," said Clyde.
"Santa Claus is a negative-idealed god, the pagan god of material worship," Leon stated. "Christmas means the rebirth, regeneration. Some people have Christmas every day. The Christmas tree stands up and either the wife trims it or they trim it together with righteous-idealed sexual intercourse. Or the husband prays to God through his Christmas tree and trims his bodily Christmas tree. Christ-mast; the mast of Christ, the upstanding penis - that's what it means to me."
"Santa Claus is a good symbolization for Christmas," said Joseph. "Department stores, shopping, the coming of the New Year. Christmas means better business in the stores. ~ Milton Rokeach

My advice to a new husband is nothing more than 'husbands, love your wives.' And 'love your wife as Christ has loved the church.' Never forget that you are Christ's representative in serving your wife. ~ J.I. Packer

Your assignment from God is not to change your husband, but to love, follow, assist, and minister to him. ~ Elizabeth George

Dear newlywed wife, somebody out there is determined to shape your view of intimacy and marriage. You get to choose who will shape your opinion; the Author of marriage or offended humans? ~ Ngina Otiende

Silent as a flower, her face fell in dismay, aware that the ghost of lust ate and left, sensing that there was a different scent of perfume consuming the room, and that she had numbered and counted the he loves me, he loves me not of each petal, where the lifeless dust had settle. ~ Anthony Liccione

In a society which really supported marriage the wife would be encouraged to go to the office and make love to her husband on the company's time and with its blessing. ~ Brendan Behan

I love being a wife and homemaker - because it's my choice. My husband doesn't expect me to do it. I don't mind doing things for him because he does so much for me; we both feel that way so there is no power struggle. ~ Salma Hayek

His hands tightened around mine. "I love you," he said. "I love you more than any other creature, because you are cruel, and kind, and alive. Nyx Triskelion, will you be my wife?"
I knew it was insane to be happy, to feel this desperate exultation at his words. But I felt like I had been waiting all my life to hear them. I had been waiting, all my life, for someone undeceived to love me. And now he did, and it felt like walking into the dazzling sunlight of the Heart of Earth.
Except that the sunlight was false, and his love was real.
It was real.
Very deliberately, I pulled my hands out of his. "You're a demon," I said, staring at the ground.
"Most likely."
"I know what you've done."
"The exciting parts, anyway."
"And I still don't know your name." My hands trembled as I undid my belt, then started to unclasp the brooches. It seemed forever since that first day when I had ripped my bodice open so
easily. "But I know you're my husband."
The dress slid down to land on the ground about my feet. Ignifex touched my cheek very gently, as if I was a bird that might be startled into flight. Finally I met his eyes.
"And," I said. "I suppose I do love you."
Then he pulled me into his arms. ~ Rosamund Hodge

I acknowledge that a wife does (and should) exercise a degree of control in the family and home; but what I present is not a constructive form aimed at supporting a healthy relationship, but a destructive form that - whether intended or not - destroys a relationship through the invocation of fear and flight rather than love and commitment. I also propose that this method or "device" (as I have called it) was learned in part from a very young age from her parents. ~ H. Kirk Rainer

The husband and wife? Like that couple that had ~ James Patterson

The fear of making permanent commitments can change the mutual love of husband and wife into two loves of self-two loves existing side by side, until they end in separation. ~ Pope John Paul II

Housekeeping is not beautiful; it cheers and raises neither the husband, the wife, nor the child; neither the host nor the guest;it oppresses women. A house kept to the end of prudence is laborious without joy; a house kept to the end of display is impossible to all but a few women, and their success is dearly bought. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

My wife is alone in our full bed too. Her husband, the father of her children, never came back from Iraq. When I deployed the first time she asked her grandmother for advice. Her grandfather served in Africa and Europe in World War II. Her grandmother would know what to do.
"How do I live with him being gone? How do I help him when he comes home?" my wife asked.
"He won't come home," her grandmother answered. "The war will kill him one way or the other. I hope for you that he dies while he is there. Otherwise the war will kill him at home. With you."
My wife's grandfather died of a heart attack on the living-room floor, long before she was born. It took a decade or two for World War II to kill him. When would my war kill me? ~ Brian Castner

The millions of vacationers who came here every year before Katrina were mostly unaware of this poverty. French Quarter tourists were rarely exposed to the reality beneath the Disneyland Gomorrah that is projected as 'N'Awlins,' a phrasing I have never heard a local use and a place, as far as I can tell, that I have never encountered despite my years in the city. The seemingly average, white, middle-class Americans whooped it up on Bourbon Street without any thought of the third-world lives of so many of the city's citizens that existed under their noses. The husband and wife, clad in khaki shorts, feather boa, and Mardi Gras beads well out of season, beheld a child tap-dancing on the street for money and clapped along to his beat without considering the obvious fact that this was an early school-day afternoon and that the child should be learning to read, not dancing for money. Somehow they did not see their own child beneath the dancer's black visage. Nor, perhaps, did they see the crumbling buildings where the city's poor live as they traveled by cab from the French Quarter to Commander's Palace. They were on vacation and this was not their problem. ~ Billy Sothern

I want a marriage of companions - one of shared lives and shared poems,' he murmured. 'If we were husband and wife, we would collect books, read, and drink tea together. As I told you before, I'd want you for what's in here.'
Again he pointed to my heart, but I felt it in a place far lower in my body. ~ Lisa See

Why always repeat the same stories - husband with lover, husband with wife and sick child, husband with wife, lover, and sick child? There were more important things in the world to talk about. ~ Paulo Coelho

I need to ask, are you afraid of spiders?"
Nicholas blinked, suddenly caught off guard, "Yes, I'm afraid of spiders."
"Were you always?"
"What are you, a psychiatrist?"
Pritam took a breath. He could feel Laine's eyes on him, appraising his line of questioning.
"Is it possible that the trauma of losing your best friend as a child and the trauma of losing your wife as an adult and the trauma of seeing Laine's husband take his life in front of you just recently..." Pritam shrugged and raised his palms, "You see where I'm going?"
Nicholas looked at Laine. She watched back. Her gray eyes missed nothing.
"Sure," agreed Nicholas, standing. "And my sister's nuts, too, and we both like imagining that little white dogs are big nasty spiders because our daddy died and we never got enough cuddles."
"Your father died?" asked Laine. "When?"
"Who cares?"
Pritam sighed. "You must see this from our point of - "
"I'd love to!" snapped Nicholas. "I'd love to see it from your point of view, because mine is not that much fun! It's insane! It's insane that I see dead people, Pritam! It's insane that this," he flicked out the sardonyx necklace,"stopped me from kidnapping a little girl!"
"That's what you believe," Pritam said carefully.
"That's what I fucking believe!" Nicholas stabbed his finger through the air at the dead bird talisman lying slack on the coffee table. ~ Stephen M. Irwin

For most people, having company for more than three of four days is a serious mistake, the equivalent to sawing a large hole in the roof and leaving all the doors and windows open in the middle of winter. Out of a desire to be helpful or the need to be kind, they let themselves in for prolonged spells of entertaining, forfeit their privacy and their easy understanding, knowing that the result will be an estrangement―however temporary―between husband and wife, and that nothing proportionate to this is to be gained by the giving up of beds, the endless succession of heavy meals, the afternoon drives. Either the human race is incurably hospitable or else people forget from one time to the next, as women forget the pains of labor, how weeks and months are lost that can never be recovered.
The guest also loses―even the so-called easy guest who makes her own bed, helps with the dishes and doesn't require entertaining. She sees things no outsider should see, overhears whispered conversations about herself from two rooms away, finds old letters in books, and is sooner or later the cause of and witness to scenes that because of her presence do not clear the air. When she has left, she expects to go on being a part of the family she has stayed with so happily and for so long; she expects to be remembered; instead of which, her letters, full of intimate references and family jokes, go unanswered. She sends beautiful presents to the children at a time when she really cannot afford a ~ William Maxwell

If every man would make his prime concern the comfort and well-being of his wife and every wife make her chief concern the comfort and well-being of her husband, we would have very little divorce in the land. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

In the agricultural age, women conceived younger and had many more children because children were economic assets as workers on the farm. In the postindustrial age, children are emotional assets but economic liabilities, costing both a middle-class husband and wife or a single parent over $10,000 a year. ~ Rachel Lehmann-Haupt

Do you ever wonder why a battered wife stays with her husband? Why people continue to spend money they don't have even though they know they are deeply in debt? Why some keep jamming food in their mouths when they're already overweight? Why do people stay in bad relationships? Why are some people still racist? Why do people still drink and drive? You'd think the response to all these things would be obvious and cause them to scream, "Duh, of course I need to change this." Why do we keep doing church the same way even when we know it's in critical decline? Why do paid church leaders spend so much time preparing for a 90-minute service for Christians who have heard it all before? Why do we still call our message the good news when it clearly seems to be bad news or no news to Sojourners? Why do we think Pharisees are only found in the Bible? Why is returning to a simpler form of ancient church so hard to grasp? ~ Hugh Halter

I myself stand on one side and the rest of the world on the other. There is an abyss between, that no power can cross, a strange barrier more insuperable than a mountain of fire. Husband and wife know nothing of one another. However ardent their passion, however intimate their union, they are never one; they are scarcely more to one another than strangers. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

A woman may be called a wife and mother for most of her life, while a man is called a husband and father only at his funeral. ~ Barbara Holland

On the Brevity of Our Ties
Ties in this world last only for a time. We are husband and wife, parent and child, for a short period only. Once this reality sinks in, we cannot help treasuring each moment of our brief association. ~ Kentetsu Takamori

What was the difference between a husband and a lover?
If she took Po as her husband, she would be making promises about a future she couldn't yet see. For once she became his wife, she would be his wife forever. And, no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know that it was a gift. Her freedom would not be her own; it would be Po's to give or to withhold. That he never would withhold it made no difference. If it did not come from her, it was not really hers.
If Po were her lover, would she feel captured, cornered into a sense of forever? Or would she still have the freedom that sprang from herself? ~ Kristin Cashore

The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought was had enjoyed a direct relation with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, brothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A husband should tell his wife everything that he is sure she will find out, and before anyone else does. ~ Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar

Resting beside her, he seemed to Ildiko a living statue, carved from dark granite into a form of supple elegance and power. He was beautiful, and the tremor change in her perception of him robbed her lungs of air.
He opened both eyes suddenly, making her jump. Two shimmering gold coins stared at her unblinking. "Good evening, wife," he said in a voice raspy with the remnants of sleep. A closed-lip smile curved his mouth upward and deepened the tiny lines that fanned from the corners of his eyes. "You're staring. Do I have a fly on my nose?"
Fighting down a blush at being caught gawking at her own husband, Ildiko lightly tapped the tip of his nose with one finger. "I was trying to find a way to kill it without punching you in the face. Lucky for you, it flew away. ~ Grace Draven

After a long while, Rick cleared his throat and pulled over to the side of the road. He then turned to her and said, "Amelia sweetie, a lot of problems are caused because of a lack of communication. When you try to guess what the other is thinking, then that's when you get into trouble. If we communicate, find time for one another, don't take each other for granted, and even share responsibilities, it will bring us closer."
"Share responsibilities?"
He nodded. "Sure. A man who thinks he's too good to share with the chores needs to reevaluate his relationship with his wife. ~ Linda Weaver Clarke

It is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel - they get to know each other better. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I define myself by helping others. This is what I do.
Those people who want me to abandon my husband are asking me to put myself first and to judge him. The poor man has been judged unfairly by others. Why would I abandon him in his greatest need? ~ Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker