#marriage

"And so must learn to love with our mouths and voices, as well as with our eyes, flesh, heart, brains, and with everything we have, right down to our toenails. There is not anything about us that cannot love, and that is not called to love, and that is not destined to be turned, conformed, and reduced to pure love. It ...is the priceless deposit left by the burning away of selfishness."

"Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy"

"I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit."

"Encouragement requires empathy and seeing the world from your spouse's perspective. We must first learn what is important to our spouse. Only then can we give encouragement. With verbal encouragement, we are trying to communicate, "I know. I care. I am with you. How can I help?"We are trying to show that we believe in him and in his abilities. We are giving credit and praise."

"If he can't handle you at your worst then he does not deserve you at your best. Real love means seeing beyond the words spoken out of pain, and instead seeing a person's soul."

"I love you as the mother of my child": the kiss of death.Mother of His Child: demotion. I am beginning to see this truism: Mothers are not always wives. I have been stripped of a piece of self."

"When in a relationship, a real man doesn't make his woman jealous of others, he makes others jealous of his woman."

"Unless I understand the Cross, I cannot understand why my commitment to what is right must be precedence over what I prefer."

"When relationships fail it is usually because someone chooses not to show up for the battle."

"Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection."

"Finding good partners is the key to success in anything: in business, in marriage and, especially, in investing."

"I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart."

"The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they're right if you love to be with them all the time."

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

"To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us."

"Sometimes the best and worst times of your life can coincide. It is a talent of the soul to discover the joy in pain—-thinking of moments you long for, and knowing you’ll never have them again. The beautiful ghosts of our past haunt us, and yet we still can’t decide if the pain they caused us out weighs the tender moments when they touched our soul. This is the irony of love."

"Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change."

"A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up."

"One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry."

"A love story in six words: Hello. Goodbye. In between was marriage."