Young love is wild and outrageous, laughing at moderation and blinding us to common sense.

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

I never promise anything. I don’t promise anything to my mum. I don’t promise anything to the supporters.

For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it’s time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

My wife doesn’t even want to spend 2 hours with me.

Some people love so hard that they can’t control those emotions when they’re at their deepest point.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.

If I love you, I show you I love you every day. Little things, big things.

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

It was weird to be married; you kind of lose your identity. You’re suddenly somebody’s wife. And you’re like, ‚Oh, I’m half of a couple now. I’ve lost me.‘

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability.

My biggest skill is common sense. I understand life.

We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.

My father wasn’t a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher – one of those Victorians, hard as iron – but my dad was tough enough.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

I think we all change each other’s paths. I don’t know which law idea that is in physics, but I don’t think any of us can live without affecting one another.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort.

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

What good am I? I can’t have kids. I can’t cook. I’ve been divorced three times. Who would want me?

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.

Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

I am completely fascinated by the differences and comparisons between real life and fairy tales because we’re raised as little girls to think that we’re a princess and that Prince Charming is going to sweep us off our feet.

It is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death.

Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I’ve had a lot of experience with that.

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

I think any man who lets a woman pick what he should wear… I mean, you gotta draw the line somewhere as a man. I see these guys, ‚My wife told me to wear this!‘ And I just shake my head.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

I have fun out there on the court, smiling, laughing, trying to have good demeanor.

Love is an interesting thing.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.

Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship.