This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt
Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is forever.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.
Marriage |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.
Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton
Remember: Marriage is the number one cause of divorce.
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
If we must lose wife or husband when we live to our highest right, we lose an unhappy marriage as well, and we gain ourselves. But if a marriage is born between two already self-discovered, what a lovely adventure begins, hurricanes and all.
Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
Marriage requires the giving and keeping of confidences, the sharing of thoughts and feelings, respect and understanding always, marriage requires humility - the humility to repent, the humility to forgive. Marriage requires flexibility (to give and take) and firmness: not to compromise principles. And a wise and moderate sense of humor. Both need to be pulling together in the same direction.
Flexibility | Giving | Humility | Marriage | Need | Respect | Sense | Understanding | Wise | Flexibility | Respect |
Perhaps the greatest blessing in marriage is that it lasts so long. The years, like the varying interests of each year, combine to buttress and enrich each other. Out of many shared years, one life. In a series of temporary relationships, one misses the ripening, gathering, harvesting joys, the deep, hard-won truths of marriage.
Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
All things need watching, working at, caring for and marriage is no exception. Marriage is not something to be treated indifferently, or abused or something that simply takes care of itself. Nothing neglected will remain as it was or is, or will fail to deteriorate. All things need attention care and concern and especially so in this most sensitive of all relationships of life.
I am constantly astonished by the people, otherwise intelligent, who think that anything so complex and delicate as a marriage can be left to take care of itself. One sees them fussing about all sorts of lesser concerns, apparently unaware that side by side with them
If people need a book to tell them that in marriage kindness and forbearance are necessary, and that the sexual act is happier when it is undertaken to give pleasure as well as to receive it, these books are what they want. Possibly people so lacking in understanding of themselves and others do not mind being addressed in the coarse, grainy prose of the marriage counselor.
Books | Forbearance | Kindness | Marriage | Mind | Need | People | Pleasure | Receive | Understanding |
I think a great many marriages would be saved if people would behave toward one another with the same courtesy that they would extend to someone whom they really didn't know as well as a marriage necessarily implies. ... It's not very easy to do, but it is surely easier to do than to haggle and nag and fight and bitch and yelp at one another as you hear a lot of married people doing ... They seem to feel that the familiarity of affection permits anything, including insult.
Courtesy | Familiarity | Marriage | People | Think |
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.
Friendship is a union of spirits, a marriage of hearts, and the bond there of virtue.
Marriage |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Like a bridegroom the sun Dons his robe that is spun Of light, Which from Thee emanated Yet in no wise abated Thy light. Taught to go westward round With obeisance profound To his Lord, He by service so loyal To a master so royal Is a lord. While his homage each day Serves to mark and display Thy glory, ’Tis Thy hand that investeth The robe on which resteth His glory.
Day | Friend | Joy | Marriage | Taste | Will | Youth | Youth | Torah |
Henry Taylor, fully Sir Henry Taylor
Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinion of others.
Marriage |