“As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another.” 
― Leo Tolstoy

“Advising Mrs. Harris was the least I could do," David said smoothly. "After all, she was the one who brought me and my late wife together." That was stretching it a bit, since all Charlotte had done was give Sarah lessons in how to avoid fortune hunters, thus ensuring that the recalcitrant girl went right out and married the first one who approached her.” 
― Sabrina Jeffries

“May your heart be mine, may my heart be yours. May your sorrows be mine, may my joys be yours.” 
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

“Marriage is the union of two 'I's to form a 'V'. Both 'I's have to tilt equally to make a good 'V'. 'I's standing tall can never make a 'V'.” 
― Ashok Kallarakkal

“I don't know," she said. "We used to squabble a lot when we were going together and then engaged and everything, but I thought everything would be so different as soon as you were married. And now I feel so sort of strange and everything. I feel so sort of alone.” 
― Dorothy Parker

“When a marriage fails, the story of the relationship changes. The best parts, the parts that made you think getting married was a good idea, fade from memory.” 
― Tori Spelling

“The emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership.” 
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“...the social mould civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies...” 
― Thomas Hardy