#age

He prizes me as a soldier would a good weapon, and that is all. [...] Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love [...] and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I will never undergo it. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#love

I fell in love the moment I saw her in her grandfather's kitchen, her dark curls crashing over her Portuguese shoulders. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she smiled. 'I'm really not that thirsty.' 'What? What you say?' Her English wasn't too good. Now I'm seventy-three and she's just turned seventy. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she asked me today, smiling. 'I'm really not that thirsty.' 'What? What you say?' Neither of us has the gift of language acquisition. After fifty years of marriage we have never really spoken, but we love each other more than words can say. ↗

— Dan Rhodes

#love #marriage #love

Très, très, triste... ↗

— Suzanne Finnamore

#cheating #deception #divorce #infidelity #marriage

In your attempts to heal this beloved one, the Holy Spirit finds opportunity to keep the promise of Jesus - and indeed, to heal. ↗

— Walter Wangerin Jr.

#marriage

That would be Axelroot all over, to turn up with an extra wife or two claiming that's how they do it here. Maybe he's been in Africa so long he's forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it's called Monotony. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#marriage #monogamy #marriage

But as his wife - at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked - forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital - this would be unendurable. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#marriage

... she isn't mine ... . She is ultimately God's, and I'm simply a steward of her heart for a season. ↗

— Denise Hildreth Jones

#marriage #relationships #marriage

We could make a treaty without a marriage." "No," he said. "You are sure?" "Yes," he said. ↗

— Megan Whalen Turner

#eugenides #marriage

So Jane was getting married. Well, more power to her. In fact, let me tighten those straps. Any word from the governor on the pardon? No? All right, then, more power to her. ↗

— James Lileks

#pardon #marriage

You can die trying to get along with a disagreeable man,” she said, and I put a star beside it when I wrote it down and then taped it to the rear-view mirror for the rest of the drive. She hadn’t said “abusive,” I noticed; she had said that just disagreeable could kill you. ↗

— Debby Bull

#killing #marriage #love