It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession.
-Thomas Hardy
"Far from the Madding Crowd"
Quotations
Marriage
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
-Michel De Montaigne
Oh, Lizzy! Do anything rather than marry without affection.
-Jane Austen
"Pride and Prejudice"
The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.
-Nora Ephron
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
-Henry David Thoreau
A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.
-Honoré De Balzac
In the true married relationship, the independence of husband and wife will be equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal.
-Lucretia Mott
There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.
-Henry James
"The Portrait of a Lady"
You'll be happy if you'll remember that men don't change much. Women do. Women adapt themselves, and if you think that means they lose their individuality, you're wrong. Show me a happy marriage and I'll show you a clever woman.
-Elizabeth Cadell
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
"True Believer"
