THOUGHT PROVOKERS (Marriage):
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were married in January, 1958, so their marriage has survived more than 50 years –– highly unusual for movie stars, and especially so for couples where both are movie stars. Asked about their marriage, Newman commented:
"I don't think you can get impatient with each other.
We are all flawed,
and you've got to love each other enough
so that those flaws aren't taken out of context."
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In a large-scale study, Nick Stinnett of the University of Nebraska found that strong families tend to have a number of traits in common:
• Communication
• Mutual encouragement
• The expression of appreciation
• Commitment to family
• A religious or spiritual orientation
• Social connectedness
• The ability to adapt
• Clear roles
• Time together
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Marriage is popular
because it combines the maximum of temptation
with the maximum of opportunity.
George Bernard Shaw
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Marriage hath in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life;
it hath more care, but less danger;
it is more merry, and more sad;
it is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys;
it lies under more burdens,
but it is supported by all the strengths of love, and charity,
and those burdens are delightful.
Bishop Jeremy Taylor
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The union of man and wife is from God,
so divorce is from the devil.
St. Augustine
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People wouldn't get divorced for such trivial reasons,
if they didn't get married for such trivial reasons.
Author unknown
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A marriage is like a long trip in a tiny row boat:
if one passenger starts to rock the boat,
the other has to steady it;
otherwise, they will go to the bottom together.
David Reuben
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Anyone can build an altar;
it requires a God to provide the flame.
Anybody can build a house;
we need the Lord for the creation of a home.
John Henry Jowett
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We are all made for marriage,
as our bodies show
and as the Scriptures state.
Martin Luther
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Success in marriage is more than find the right person;
it is a matter of being the right person.
Rabbi B. R. Brickner
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When the late Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, a reporter asked them, "To what do you attribute your 50 years of successful life?"
"The formula," said Ford, "is the same formula I have always used in making cars –– just stick to one model."
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Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox:
affection, friendship, love.
It is not advisable to crash your gears
and go right through to love right away.
You need to ease your way through.
The basis of love is respect,
and that needs to be learnt from affection and friendship.
Peter Ustinov
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Do not choose your wife at a dance,
but in the field among the harvesters.
Czech proverb
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You have to work constantly at rejuvenating a relationship.
You can't just count on its being O.K.;
or it will tend toward a hollow commitment,
devoid of passion and intimacy.
People need to put the kind of energy into it
that they put into their children or career.
Dr. Robert Sternberg, psychologist
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Marriage would war incessantly
with that monster that is the ruin of everything.
This is the monster of habit.
Honore de Balzac
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A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.
Ruth Bell Graham
P.S. Ruth was also asked on one occasion if she had ever considered divorce. She thought for a moment and then replied, "No I have never considered divorce. Homicide maybe, but divorce never!"
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If you want your marriage to sizzle
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it.
Whenever you're right, shut up!
Ogden Nash
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When you require another individual for your survival,
you are a parasite on that individual.
There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship.
It is a matter of necessity rather than love.
Love is the free exercise of choice.
Two people love each other
only when they are quite capable of living without each other
but choose to live with each other.
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
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In Thornton Wilder's play, The Skin of Our Teeth, the character Mrs. Antrobus says to her husband, "I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I married you because you gave me a promise." She takes off her ring and looks at it. "That promise made up for your faults and the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage."
The most important single qualification a man should have to marry one of my daughters is infinite kindness. Infinite kindness will sustain a marriage through all its problems, its uncertainties, its illnesses, its disappointments, its storms, its tensions, its fears, its separations, its sorrows. Out of infinite kindness grow real love and understanding and tolerance and warmth.
Nothing can take the place of such an enduring asset.
Branch Rickey, General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers
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Although today there are many trial marriages,
there is no such thing as a trial child.
Gary Wills, historian and author
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Marriage is not just spiritual communion and passionate embraces;
marriage is also three meals a day,
sharing the workload
and remembering to carry out the trash.
Joyce Brothers, psychologist
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Love, honor and negotiate.
Alan Loy McGinnis, Christian psychotherapist
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In every marriage more than a week old,
there are grounds for divorce.
The trick is to find, and continue to find,
grounds for marriage.
Robert Anderson
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