Quotes

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
Theodore Hesburgh

Research has shown a child who sees his mother mistreated is more damaged than
if the child himself is abused.
Steven Stosny, compassionpower.com

The secret to having a good marriage is to understand that marriage must
be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.
Frank Pittman

Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they
are always watching you.
Robert Fulghum

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring and
integrity, they think of you.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how
compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.
Leo Tolstoy

One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall
out of love with each other, it keeps you together until maybe
you fall in love again.
Judith Viorst

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always
with the same person.
Mignon McLaughlin

I now think of marriage like I think about living in my home state of Minnesota. You move into marriage in the springtime of hope, but eventually arrive at the Minnesota winter, with its cold and darkness. Many of us are tempted to give up and move south at this point, not realizing that maybe we’ve hit a rough spot in a marriage that’s actually above average. The problem with giving up, of course, is that our next marriage will enter its own winter at some point. So do we just keep moving on, or do we make our stand now – with this person, in this season? That’s the moral, existential question we face when our marriage is in trouble.
Bill Doherty, DrBillDoherty.org

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting.
George Elliott (aka Mary Anne Evans), Adam Bede

Marriage, like a submarine, is only safe if you get all the way inside.
Frank Pittman

In the consumer culture of marriage, commitments last as long as the other person is meeting our needs. We still believe in commitment, because we know that committed relationships are good for us, but powerful voices coming from inside and outside tell us that we are suckers if we settle for less than we think we need and deserve in our marriage. Most baby boomers and their offspring carry in our heads the internalized voice of the consumer culture—to encourage us to stop working so hard or to get out of a marriage that is not meeting our current emotional needs.
Bill Doherty, DrBillDoherty.org

Divorce to like an amputation. Sometimes it's necessary but it should be avoided if at all possible because it brings about a permanent disability.
Bill Doherty, DrBillDoherty.org

Divorce is not healthy for children, or other living things.
Diane Solee

Money often costs too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Marriage, ultimately, is the practice of becoming passionate friends.
Harville Hendrix

There is such pleasure in long-term marriage that I really would hate to be my age and not have had a long-term marriage. Remember, sustaining a pleasurable, long-term marriage takes effort, deliberateness and an intention to learn about one another. In other words, marriage is for grown-ups.
Cokie Roberts, From This Day Forward

The grass looks greener...but it's Astroturf.
From the report, "Does Divorce Make People Happy?"

As for his secret to staying married: "My wife tells me that if I ever decide to leave, she is coming with me."
Jon BonJovi

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.
Pat Conroy

Marriage orients men and women toward the future, asking them not just to commit to each other but to plan, to earn, to save, and to devote themselves to advancing their children's prospects.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I am convinced that if we as a society work diligently in every other area of life and neglect the family, it would be analogous to straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.
Stephen Covey

Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.
Joseph Barth

Infidelity flows from a belief that women have the power to make you feel like a man if you only find a woman that thinks you're perfect; if you can only find a woman that you haven't hurt or disappointed yet.
Frank Pittman

. . . in the end, there is nothing a man can do that a woman can’t, except be a father.
Frank Pittman

It is necessary but insufficient to stay married for the children's sake. It is also necessary to stay happily married for the children's sake. I'm so glad someone noticed that marriage doesn't have to make you miserable. It is just so easy to be happy I don't understand why it isn't more popular.
Frank Pittman

People think they have to find their soulmate to have a good marriage. You're not going to "find" your soulmate. Anyone you meet already has soulmates. Dozens of them. Their mother. Their father. Their lifelong friends. You get married, and after 20 years of loving, bearing and raising children, meeting challenges - then you'll have "created" soulmate status.
Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com

The success of marriage comes not in finding the "right" person, but in the ability of both partners to adjust to the real person they ineveitably realize they married.
John Fischer

I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person, but I do know that many people have a lot of wrong ideas about marriage and what it takes to make that marriage happy and successful. I'll be the first to admit that it's possible that you did marry the wrong person. However, if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all. On the other hand, if you marry the right person, and treat that person wrong, you certainly will have ended up marrying the wrong person. I also know that it is far more important to be the right kind of person than it is to marry the right person. In short, whether you married the right or wrong person is primarily up to you.
Zig Ziglar

Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side.
Zig Ziglar

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
Mark Twain

A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers.
Ruth Bell Graham

Let there be spaces in your togetherness
Kahlil Gibran

In marriage, as in all things, the perfect can be the enemy of the good.
unknown

Both men and women live longer, happier, healthier and wealthier lives when they are married. Unmarried co-habitation doesn't cut it. Cohabitation does not bring the benefits - in physical health, wealth, and emotional wellbeing - that marriage does. And, married people have both more and better sex than do their unmarried counterparts.
Linda Waite, The Case for Marriage

Divorce causes a decrease in wealth that is larger than just splitting a couple’s assets in half. By the same token, married people see an increase in wealth that is more than just adding the assets of two single people. On the other hand, divorce can devastate your wealth. Divorce drops a person's wealth by an average of 77%. Contrary to popular belief, the research shows that the wealth of divorced women wasn't significantly worse than that of divorced men, in terms of real money. If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married.
Jay Zagorsky, Ohio State , Journal of Sociology, Jan 2006

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.
Mignon McLauglin

Common courtesy plays a big role in happy marriages. People who are permanently married are polite to one another. They don't want to hurt one another's feelings, and they don't try to make the other one feel humiliated. People who are married for life are extremely kind to one another.

Arguments are a natural part of any relationship, but cruelty is not. Above all, happily married partners see each other as allies, not as adversaries.

You can't be right and married at the same time. If you're trying to be right and prove your partner wrong, you've stepped outside the marriage.

To go without sex is to endanger the relationship. It's very easy to build up an incest taboo in a marriage. If you go without sex, your instincts recognize this person as part of the family but cease to recognize the person as a sex partner. The response can kick in surprisingly quickly - in as little as six weeks. People make a terrible mistake in being angry with their marriage partner and cutting them off sexually as a way of arousing great passion. It used to work in the ninth grade. But it doesn't work in the ninth decade.

Caressing and contact is always a good thing. The great thing about sex at this age is it ceases to be great, and it becomes funny. It feels good, but you never know what's going to work and what's not. Which brings up another trait that long-lasting marriage partners often share: a sense of humor.

Humor is vital, but it is vital to be happy, too. A happy marriage is a marriage between two happy people.

You're not going to be in love all the time, but if you want to recapture that magic from when you were in love, be loving. Being loving to your partner makes you feel so good about yourself, it doesn't matter if you're in love or not. The marriage is making you feel good if you are loving in it.

There's no point battling age in yourself or in your partner. No one has ever won.

Always keep your pants zipped in public.

Frank Pittman, as quoted in the Marin Independent, Sept 23, 2007

A good marriage is a contest of generosity.
Diane Sawyer

Marriage, families, all relationships are more a process of learning the dance rather than finding the right dancer.
Paul Pearsall

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
Kahlil Gibran

A happy marriage is the world's best bargain.
O.A. Battista

The way you make love
is the way God will be with you.
Rumi

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace. Taking as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make things right if I surrender to His will…
Serenity Prayer from Alcoholics Annonymous

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Buddha

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.
George Jean Nathan

Get mad, then get over it.
Colin Powell

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
Maya Angelou

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive.
Henry Ward Beecher

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
Norman Cousins

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mohandas Gandhi

When you forgive, you in no way change the past - but you sure do change the future.
Bernard Meltzer

Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Stephen Covey

Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?
The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Michelangelo

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain

I am imagination. I can see what the eyes cannot see. I can hear what the ears cannot hear. I can feel what the heart cannot feel.
Peter Nivio Zarlenga

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.
Honore de Balzac

The best proof of love is trust.
Joyce Brothers

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.
Henry Van Dyke

The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain; to show them we love them not when we feel like it, but when they do.
Nan Fairbrother

Love is metaphysical gravity.
R. Buckminster Fuller

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
Mother Teresa

Patience is the companion of wisdom.
Saint Augustine

A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
Herb Caen

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius

Wisdom begins in wonder.
Socrates

For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe . 
Author Unknown

Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed so is the body. 
Martin Luther

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. 
Mark Twain

 I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet. 
Ancient Persian Saying

It's so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to. 
Annie Gottlier

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. 
George Santayana

Every thought is a seed.  If you plant crab apples, don't count on harvesting Golden Delicious.
Bill Meyer

I don't like that man.  I must get to know him better. 
Abraham Lincoln

 To everyone is given the key to heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.
Ancient Proverb

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
William James

I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution.
Wernher von Braun

There's a saying among prospectors:  "Go out looking for one thing, and that's all you'll ever find."
Robert Flaherty

We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.
Author Unknown

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
Hugh Downs

Physical strength is measured by what we can carry; spiritual by what we can bear.
Author Unknown

We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.
Kenneth Clark

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
Galileo Galilei

A loving person lives in a loving world.  A hostile person lives in a hostile world; everyone you meet is your mirror.
Ken Keyes, Jr.

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.
Arthur Rubinstein

Only from the heart Can you touch the sky.”
Rumi

The way you make love is the way God will be with you.
Rumi

Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.
Rumi

He is like a man using a candle to look for the sun.
Rumi

Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.
Rumi

The lion is most handsome when looking for food.
Rumi

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more - more unseen forms become manifest to him.
Rumi

Now I am sober and there's only the hangover and the memory of love.
Rumi

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.
Kahlil Gibran

An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.
Kahlil Gibran

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Kahlil Gibran

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
Kahlil Gibran

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
Kahlil Gibran

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.
Kahlil Gibran

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
Kahlil Gibran

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Kahlil Gibran

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
Kahlil Gibran

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.
Kahlil Gibran

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Kahlil Gibran

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Kahlil Gibran

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.
Kahlil Gibran

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Kahlil Gibran

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
Kahlil Gibran

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.
Kahlil Gibran

Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
Kahlil Gibran

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Kahlil Gibran

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.
Kahlil Gibran

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Kahlil Gibran

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.
Rainer Maria Rilke

There may be good, but there are no pleasant marriages.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth.
Jesus -- Matthew 10:34-36

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
William Faulkner

Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Change is the only constant in life. Ones ability to adapt to those changes will determine your success in life.
Benjamin Franklin

One who thinks like others, is not thinking.
Author Unknown

If you think you can or cannot accomplish a task, you will be correct in either case.
Henry Ford

And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliott

Mind is the builder.
Edgar Cayce

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
George Bernard Shaw

We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Martin Luther King

Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
Mahatma Gandhi

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in a manner so that, when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
Native American proverb

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
W.H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

When the cure is worse than the disease we get well.
Neal Winblad

It’s easier to stop a bulldozer from the driver’s seat.
Neal Winblad

We need to start thinking of the ‘placebo effect’ as the ‘intention effect.’
Neal Winblad

The heart can’t tell if it’s coming or going.
Neal Winblad

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.
George Bernard Shaw

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.
23rd Psalm

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