Pundits and Poets on the Rewards of Long-term Marriage

The following is a collection of quotes on long-term marriage from experts and laypeople, famous and not-so-famous, from ages past and not long ago. If you're in a mid-term marriage and wondering at times if it's really been worth it, then read on. These nuggets of wisdom may serve as easy-to-swallow reminders of why you've stuck it out this far.

"It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love." Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing to a young bride and groom from his prison cell in Nazi Germany, 1943

"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 again." Judith Viorst

Ann Meara of the comedy team Stiller and Meara was once asked if it was "love at first sight" with her comedian husband of 30 years. Without missing a beat she replied, "It wasn't then, but it sure is now."

"Commitment has kind eyes. He wears sturdy shoes. Everything is vivid when he is around. It is wonderful to sit and have lunch in his gardens around harvest time. You can taste in the vegetables that the soil has been cared for." J. Ruth Gendler

"I think a man and a woman should choose each other for life, for the simple reason that a long life with all its accidents is barely enough time for a man and a woman to understand each other . . . To understand is to love." John Butler Yeats

"Marriage is one long conversation, checkered with disputes." Robert Louis Stevenson

"Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years." Simone Signoret

"Any fool can have a trophy wife. It takes a real man to have a trophy marriage." Diane Sollee

"Marriage isn't supposed to make you happy it's supposed to make you married." Frank Pittman, M.D.

"Why would a couple that lives and sleeps together every night need dates and rituals? Precisely because they live and sleep together." Bill Doherty

"Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out the trash." Dr. Joyce Brothers

"All those 'and they lived happily ever after' fairy tale endings need to be changed to 'and they began the very hard work of making their marriages happy.'" Linda Miles

Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. 1 Corinthians 13:7

The question is asked, "Is there anything more beautiful in life than a young couple clasping hands and pure hearts in the path of marriage? Can there be anything more beautiful than young love?" And the answer is given. "Yes, there is a more beautiful thing. It is the spectacle of an old man and an old woman finishing their journey together on that path. Their hands are gnarled, but still clasped; their faces are seamed, but still radiant; their hearts are physically bowed and tired, but still strong with love and devotion for one another. Yes, there is a more beautiful thing than young love. Old love." Author unknown

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