Wives Quotes

“Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“Why does a woman work ten years to change a man, then complain he's not the man she married?”
― Barbra Streisand

“To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.”
― Simone de Beauvoir , The Second Sex

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“The moment you have to recruit people to put another person down, in order to convince someone of your value is the day you dishonor your children, your parents and your God. If someone doesn't see your worth the problem is them, not people outside your relationship.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“It was all Mrs. Bumble. She would do it," urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round, to ascertain that his partner had left the room.

That is no excuse," returned Mr. Brownlow. "You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction."

If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“A relationship is likely to last way longer, if each partner convinces or has convinced themselves that they do not deserve their partner, even if that is not true.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“the great lack of parity between husbands and wives has always been spawned by the disproportionate degree of self-sacrifice that women are willing to make on behalf of those they love.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“Some of us were brought into this troubled world primarily or only to increase our fathers’ chances of not being left by our mothers, or vice versa.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Why?” she whispered. “Why should I dance with you?”

“Because I love you. Because I love you so much I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make it go differently this time.”... "Because we should be a married couple, because I never wanted to not be married to you. Because all these men out here dancing with their wives can’t possibly love them as much as I love you. Because for me, there is only one woman, and I’m sorry to break it to you, but you’re it.”
― Erin McCarthy, Hot Finish

“[I]t is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better; one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue. Nor should she deem herself other than venal who weds a rich man rather than a poor, and desires more things in her husband than himself. Assuredly, whomsoever this concupiscence leads into marriage deserves payment rather than affection.”
― Héloïse, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“God bids you not to commit lechery, that is, not to have sex with any woman except your wife. You ask of her that she should not have sex with anyone except you -- yet you are not willing to observe the same restraint in return. Where you ought to be ahead of your wife in virtue, you collapse under the onset of lechery. ... Complaints are always being made about men's lechery, yet wives do not dare to find fault with their husbands for it. Male lechery is so brazen and so habitual that it is now sanctioned [= permitted], to the extent that men tell their wives that lechery and adultery are legitimate for men but not for women.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Sermons 1-19 (Vol. III/1)

“How many women are there ... who because of their husbands' harshness spend their weary lives in the bond of marriage in greater suffering than if they were slaves among the Saracens?”
― Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies

“Some people will hate you for not loving them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“May a man live well-enough and long-enough, to leave many joyful widows behind him.”
― Roman Payne, Cities & Countries

“[I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

“A wife! No one else could love a man who had been trampled on by iron feet. She would wash his feet after he had been spat on; she would comb his tangled hair; she would look into his embittered eyes. The more lacerated his soul, the more revolting and contemptible he became to the world, the more she would love him. She would run after a truck; she would wait in queues on Kuznetsky Most, or even by the camp boundary fence, desperate to hand over a few sweets or an onion; she would bake shortbread for him on an oil stove; she would give years of her life just to be able to see him for half an hour...

Not every woman you sleep with can be called a wife.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“I had made her so unhappy that she had developed a sense of humor. [-Rabo Karabekian]”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

“Marriage is not kick-boxing, it's salsa dancing.”
― Amit Kalantri

“I never think of policemen's wives; their beauty maddens me like wine.”
― Kyril Bonfiglioli

“Men are highly attracted to smiles. That includes your husband.”
― Debi Pearl

“On page 607, alluding to the end of my first marriage (and carefully remembering to state that that's none of his business), he very sweetly says that I 'might leave a wife, but not a friend.' Nice try. Neat smear. But he shouldn't be so sure....”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Is there a more pitiable spectacle than that of a wife contending with others for that charm in her husband's sight which no philters and no prayers can renew when once it has fled forever?
Women are so unwise. Love is like a bird's song beautiful and eloquent when heard in forest freedom, harsh and worthless in repetition when sung from behind prison bars.
You cannot secure love by vigilance, by environment, by captivity. What use is it to keep the person of a man beside you if his soul be truant from you?”
― Ouida, Wanda, Countess von Szalras.

“We treat our stone wives with much more care than they treat their warm ones, anyway. I personally dust mine once a week, and I know Khaamil gives them presents when I am not looking. These are yours - they are in your care, and you must be faithful.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, In the Cities of Coin and Spice

“Until that moment I'd thought I could have it both ways; to be one of them, and also my husband's wife. What conceit! I was his instrument, his animal. Nothing more. How we wives and mothers do perish at the hands of our own righteousness. I was just one more of those women who clamp their mouths shut and wave the flag as their nation rolls off to conquer another in war. Guilty or innocent, they have everything to lose. They are what there is to lose. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“[Charlotte Bronte] had thought of every maneuver for circumventing those stony obstructions of wives who would not remove themselves.”
― Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature

“Hey!” The male voice sliced through the noise. Terri ignored him, determined to get back to the bar for her next order. A harsh hand gripped her arm, jerking her back into a firm chest. “I asked your name.” Hot breath reeking of stale beer permeated her sinuses, making her stomach turn, as the tenor of his voice burrowed into her ear.
Fear gripped her. Memories of the way Randy would grab her, and where it always ended, slammed into her, making her head spin. Shaking it off, Terri narrowed her eyes and whirled around, jabbing a red lacquered nail into his powder blue polo. “Back off,” she warned, snatching her arm back.
He advanced on her, his large frame towering over her. “Just wanna know your name, sweetheart,” he said with a sleazy smile. “No need to get testy.”
“You haven’t seen me testy.”
As she turned her back on him and continued on her way, he called out to her.
“Yet.”

Terri--from Spring Cleaning--Coming Summer 2012”
― Brandi Salazar, Spring Cleaning

“Я заметил уже, что это был простой, добродушный малый; больше того, он был хороший сосед и покорный, забитый супруг. Последнему обстоятельству он и был обязан, по-видимому, той кроткостью духа, которая снискала ему всеобщую любовь и широкую популярность, ибо наиболее услужливыми и покладистыми вне своего дома оказываются мужчины, привыкшие повиноваться сварливым и вечно бранящимся женам. Их нрав, пройдя через огненное горнило домашних невзгод, становится, вне всякого сомнения, гибким и податливым, ибо супружеские нахлобучки лучше всех проповедей на свете научают человека добродетели терпения и послушания. Вот почему сварливую жену в некоторых отношениях можно считать благословением неба, а раз так, Рип ван Винкль был благословен трижды.”
― Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle