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There are four stages in a marriage.
by Norman Mailer

There are four stages in a marriage.
First there's the affair,
then the marriage,
then children
and finally the fourth stage,
without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.
- Norman Mailer

Related topics: Cynical Funny Marriage

Give me six hours to chop down a tree
and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
- Abraham Lincoln

The Four Agreements
1.Be impeccable with your word.
2.Don't take anything personally.
3.Don't make assumptions.
4.Always do your best.
- don Miguel Ruiz

The secret of making dreams come true
can be summarized in four C's.
They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy;
and the greatest of these is Confidence.
- Walt Disney

Please sign-up for my Free Daily Inspirational Quotes and Insights Email on the form below.

Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I have a dream that my four little children will one day
live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

When a man you like switches from what
he said a year ago, or four years ago,
he is a broad-minded person who has courage enough
to change his mind with changing conditions.
When a man you don't like does it,
he is a liar who has broken his promise.
- Franklin Pierce Adams

A best friend is like a four leaf clover,
hard to find and lucky to have.
- Anonymous

There are only four questions of value in life...
What is sacred?
Of what is the spirit made?
What is worth living for,
and what is worth dying for?
The answer to each is the same: only love.
- Johnny Depp as Don Juan in the movie Don Juan De Marco

Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience,
independent will and creative imagination.
These give us the ultimate human freedom...
The power to choose, to respond, to change.
- Stephen Covey

How many legs does a dog have
if you call the tail a leg? Four.
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
- Abraham Lincoln

There are three hundred and sixty-four days
when you might get un-birthday presents,
and only one for birthday presents, you know.
- Lewis Carroll

Clear? Huh. Why a four-year-old child
could understand this report.
Run out and find me a four-year-old child,
I can't make head or tail of it.
- the Groucho Marx movie Duck Soup

The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley

A honeymoon should be like a table:
four bare legs and no drawers.
- Anonymous

The Master teaches that the way of qigong cannot be hurried.
Wuji refers to the time before the creation -
when everything was formless.
Standing in the wuji position, my feet are parallel
to each other, shoulder-width apart.
My knees are slightly bent,
and the tip of my tongue touches the roof of my mouth.
My arms are held in front of me with my elbows bent
and my palms parallel to each other - about four inches apart.
At first I focus on my breathing, and only my breathing.
Later, I visualize the energy or "Qi" between my palms.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends
is that three out of four murders
are committed by people who know the victim.
- George Carlin

The four most important words in any marriage...
"I'll do the dishes."
- Anonymous

All truth passes through three stages:
First, it is ridiculed;
Second, it is violently opposed;
Third, it is accepted as self-evident.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

Self-pity in its early stages
is as snug as a feather mattress.
Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
- Maya Angelou

This day I will marry my friend,
the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love.
- Anonymous

For a happy marriage,
love and accept your spouse just the way they are.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Marriage, ultimately, is the practice of
becoming passionate friends.
- Harville Hendrix

When you make the sacrifice in marriage,
you're sacrificing not to each other
but to unity in a relationship.
- Joseph Campbell

The fewer secrets you have, the happier you will be.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Our loved ones -
whether by blood, by marriage, or by choice -
are delicate treasures.
If we hold them too close, they break -
as a butterfly would.
By honoring and enjoying
the freedom of our loved ones,
we gain our own freedom.
Have the courage to trust that
the beautiful butterflies of your life
will return - or not - as life intends.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

True love means putting the other person before yourself,
and honoring the relationship above all.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Gift the love of your life with undistracted,
untelevisioned, unhurried attentiveness.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

You are my home - the place to which I always return.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together becomes reality.
- John Lennon

The hardest of all, is learning to be
a well of affection, and not a fountain,
to show them that we love them,
not when we feel like it, but when they do.
- Nan Fairbrother

Every good relationship, especially marriage, is based on respect.
If it's not based on respect,
nothing that appears to be good will last very long.
- Amy Grant

Don't marry the person you think you can live with;
marry only the individual you think you can't live without.
- James C. Dobson

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied
by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
- Iris Murdoch

Love allows your beloved the freedom to be unlike you.
Attachment asks for conformity to your needs and desires.
Love imposes no demands.
Attachment expresses an overwhelming demand - "Make me feel whole."
Love expands beyond the limits of two people.
Attachment tries to exclude everything but two people.
- Deepak Chopra in The Path to Love

A divorce is like an amputation:
you survive it, but there's less of you.
- Margaret Atwood

You can learn how to let go of the past.
Whether you have experienced a break up
with someone you cared for deeply,
whether death has taken a loved one,
whether you have had a feud with a friend or family member,
whether you have lost a job.
Move on and let go.
Life can be joyful and rewarding again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Consider being more acceptive of your partner's behaviors.
It is unlikely that they are intentionally aggravating you.
Almost always, they are just doing what they think they should do.
Try setting aside your own rules for how they should behave,
and adopt a live-and-let-live attitude.
Your relationship will become stronger and happier if you do.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple:
you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities
but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
- Quentin Crisp

I used to tell my husband that,
if he could make me "understand" something,
it would be clear to all the other people in the country.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Make sure you never, never argue at night.
You just lose a good night's sleep,
and you can't settle anything until morning anyway.
- Rose Kennedy

In a relationship, when does the art of compromise become compromising?
- Sarah Jessica Parker

A Great Relationship is the Dance of Two Great Lives.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The one who loves the least, controls the relationship.
- Robert Anthony

Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits
and then complain that he's not the man she married?
- Barbra Streisand

When people get married because they think
it's a long-time love affair,
they'll be divorced very soon,
because all love affairs end in disappointment.
But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.
- Joseph Campbell

My husband melted my heart the day he asked me,
"Can I participate in your wonder?"
In whose wonder do you get to participate today?
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.
Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
- James A. Baldwin

I love being married.
It's so great to find that one special person
you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
- Rita Rudner

Each relationship nurtures a strength or weakness within you.
- Mike Murdock

Love your spouse as they are,
and forgive them everything.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Every relationship is just so tenuous and precarious.
- Larry David

By all means marry.
If you get a good wife, you'll be happy.
If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher
and that is a good thing for any man.
- Socrates

The greatest roadblock to a great relationship
is trying to force a partner to change through bribes or threats.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck.
If you live through it, you start looking
very carefully to the right and to the left.
- Jean Kerr

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times,
always with the same person.
- Germaine Greer

In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue.
If we have enough friends, we may go on for years,
intending to leave, talking about leaving -
instead of actually getting up and leaving.
- Erica Jong

Marriage has no guarantees.
If that's what you're looking for,
go live with a car battery.
- Erma Bombeck

Marriage is a fine institution -
but I'm not ready for an institution yet.
- Mae West

The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
- Henny Youngman

Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken

A man's friendships are, like his will,
invalidated by marriage -
but they are also no less invalidated
by the marriage of his friends.
- Samuel Butler

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man
take which course he will,
he will be sure to repent.
- Socrates

My Loved One
You are my ground and you are my rainbow.
You are my butterfly and you are my ecstasy.
You are the start of my journeys and always my destination.
You are my home - the place to which I always return.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Not everyone is always going to like what you do.
Your job application, your book proposal,
your offer of marriage is going to
get rejected sometimes - perhaps often.
Your boss, your spouse, even the person
behind you in the supermarket checkout line
is occasionally going to think that you are doing it all wrong.
Don't take it personally.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I think men who have a pierced ear
are better prepared for marriage.
They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
- Rita Rudner

Marriage is a sort of friendship recognized by the police.
- Anonymous

If you have been divorced, you know it hurts -
especially if your marriage had lasted many years.
Whatever the circumstances of your relationship,
and whatever the nature of its ending,
there is always grief and regret -
perhaps regret over the ending,
or perhaps regret over not ending the relationship sooner -
or perhaps both.
Nonetheless, move past the grief and regret.
No matter how painful, divorce, like all endings,
opens the door to new beginnings.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years
to have breakfast together,
but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.
- Winston Churchill

I was married by a judge.
I should have asked for a jury.
- Groucho Marx

My advice to you is get married:
if you find a good wife you'll be happy;
if not, you'll become a philosopher.
- Socrates

They have come up with a perfect understanding.
He won't try to run her life,
and he won't try to run his, either.
- Anonymous

Thank you for visiting: There are four stages in a marriage. by Norman Mailer.

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie