There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.
-Henry James
"The Portrait of a Lady"
Quotations
Marriage
Catholics don't believe in divorce. We do believe in murder. There's always Confession, after all.
-Diana Gabaldon
"An Echo in the Bone"
A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her.
-George Bernard Shaw
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
My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
-Rodney Dangerfield
Find a woman who makes you feel more alive. She won't make life perfect but she'll make it infinitely more interesting. And then love her with all that's in you.
-Gayle G. Roper
"Shadows on the Sand: A Seaside Mystery"
The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you begin.
-Jeffrey Eugenides
"Middlesex"
If you both care for each other more than you care for yourself, your marriage will endure all.
-Lisa Tawn Bergren
From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven, and when two souls that are destined to be together find each other, the streams of light flow together and a single brighter light goes forth from that united being.
-Baal Shem Tov
Why does a woman work ten years to change a man’s habit and then complain that he's not the man she married?
-Barbra Streisand
