“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
Book of Genesis, 1611 · Hebrew scripture, King James Version
Chapter 2
On Marriage
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.”
William Shakespeare, 1609 · English poet and playwright, 1564 to 1616
“But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.”
Kahlil Gibran, 1923 · Lebanese American poet and painter, 1883 to 1931
“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, 1923 · Lebanese American poet and painter, 1883 to 1931
“If ever two were one then surely we, if ever man were loved by wife, then thee.”
Anne Bradstreet, 1678 · first published poet of colonial New England, about 1612 to 1672
“What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life, to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow?”
George Eliot, 1859 · English novelist, 1819 to 1880, born Mary Ann Evans
“In married people there must be a complete union of bodies, wealth, friends, and relations.”
Plutarch, 1888 · Greek biographer and priest of Delphi, born about AD 46
Before committing, look carefully at the family you are marrying into. Long-married couples reported that a partner's family becomes your family, and that its habits arrive with the wedding whether invited or not.
Cornell Legacy Project, 2024 · research finding on family compatibility before marriage
It sounds simple, but you have to like each other.
April Stern, 2024 · community leader, age 71, married 47 years, interviewed for the Cornell Legacy Project
“Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings.”
George Eliot, 1872 · English novelist, 1819 to 1880, speaking through Dorothea Brooke
“From love fond yearning springs for union sweet of minds; and that the bond of rare excelling friendship binds.”
Tiruvalluvar, 1886 · Tamil poet and moralist, about the first century BC
“Where true love exists between husbands and wives, they're happily joined to the end of their lives.”
Chinese proverb, 1875 · recorded in a nineteenth-century collection of Chinese proverbs
“Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people.”
Book of Ruth, 1611 · Hebrew scripture, the vow of Ruth to Naomi, King James Version
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