Counting Days For Marriage Quotes

I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response.

And so, as quietly as he had lived, he slipped out of town, leaving only a note behind: Well, that's that. I'm off, and if you don't believe I'm leaving, just count the days I'm gone. When you hear the phone not ringing, it'll be me that's not calling. Goodbye, old girl, and good luck. Yours truly, Earl Adcock P.S. I'm not deaf.

Even if most days can’t be half as good as today, it’s days like this that make it all worth it.

To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, "so that he would see whether I knew myself or not." The next day, she wrote and handed to Gyllenborg an essay titled 'Portrait of a Fifteen-Year-Old Philosopher.' He was impressed and returned it with a dozen pages of comments, mostly favorable. "I read his remarks again and again, many times [Catherine later recalled in her memoirs]. I impressed them on my consciousness and resolved to follow his advice. In addition, there was something else surprising: one day, while conversing with me, he allowed the following sentence to slip out: 'What a pity that you will marry! I wanted to find out what he meant, but he would not tell me.

What made more sense was that the bargain she was bound to was to go on living as she had been doing. The bargain was already in force. Days and years and feelings much the same, except that the children would grow up, and there might be one or two more of them and they too would grow up, and she and Brendan would grow older and then old. It was not until now, not until this moment, that she had seen so clearly that she was counting on something happening, something which would change her life. She had accepted her marriage as one big change, but not as the last one. So, nothing now but what she or anybody else could sensibly foresee. That was to be her happiness, that was what she had bargained for, nothing secret, or strange. Pay attention to this, she thought. She had a dramatic notion of getting down on her knees. This is serious... It was a long time ago that this happened. In North Vancouver, when they lived in the Post and Beam house. When she was twenty-four years old and new to bargaining.

Jase and I made a deliberate decision while we were dating to remain sexually pure until we were married. Keeping that commitment was not easy, but we did it. We decided to trust God, and we were determined to honor His Word no matter how much of a struggle it was. The important thing is we made it! Two years, ten months, and two days, but who was counting? The first sexual experience either one of us ever had took place with each other on our wedding night. Jase often says it was more like an exploratory biological experiment! We have remained faithful to one another and our marriage vows since that day.

I had an additional burden: my higher education. That counts for a great deal. When that higher education was put to the test, it didn’t work. I began to understand the irrelevancy of it, to recoil in disappointment from it. Then one day I saw the comedy of it. Herzog says, ‘what do you propose to do, now that your wife has taken a lover—pull Spinoza from the shelves and look into what he says about adultery, about human bondage?’ You discover, in other words, the inapplicability of your higher learning, the absurdity of the culture it cost you so much to acquire. True devotion to Spinoza et al. would have left you no time for neurotic attachments and bad marriages. That would have been a way out for you.

I'm learning that's marriage. At least it's the kind of marriage I want. And I know I want said that our fairy tale is on hold for a while, but I don't think that's true now. This is the fairy tale. We are living it. Fairy tales were never really about a perfect end to a story. It's the day by day living that counts. I like that scenario better anyway. At least it's real.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family—the monkey. And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, "in our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress," etc., etc. He read another article, too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic quickwittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was embittered by Matrona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind—the joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.

It mattered very much to this young person. I was inclined to tell him that if he was worried, it probably was a sin, or at the very least, would weigh on him as one. For God also tells us that when you perform an action you believe to be a sin, it still counts as a sin even if it is proven to be permissible. Conscience. Conscience is the ultimate measure of man." "All right, it's a sin," moaned Alif. "I don't care. I don't play Battlecraft. It's for teenagers." "I'm not looking for any particular answer. Don't feel you must agree. I want to know what you think." "I'm not looking for any particular answer. Don't feel you must agree. I want to know what you think." "I think people need a break. It's not like they're out there selling bacon and booze. They want to pretend for a few hours a day that we don't live in this awful hole getting squeezed by State on one side and pious airheads on the other, all while smiling our shit-eating grins so that the oil companies keep shoveling money into our pockets. Surely God wouldn't mind people pretending life is better, even if it involves fictional pork." "But isn't that a dangerous precedent? Fictional pork is one thing-one cannot smell it or taste it, and thus the temptation to go out and consume real pork is low. However, if we were to talk about fictional adultery-I know there are many people who do and say all kinds of dirty things online-then it would be another matter. Those are real desires manifesting themselves on the computer screen. Who knows how many adulterous relationships begin on the Internet and end in the bedroom?" Alif blanched. "And even if they don't," the sheikh continued, "who's to say the spiritual damage isn't real nonetheless? When two people form a relationship online, it isn't a fiction based on real life, it's real life based on a fiction. You believe the person you cannot see or touch is perfect, because she chooses to reveal only the things that she knows will please you. Surely that is dangerous indeed." "You could say the same thing about an arranged marriage," said Alif.

I realized that it was not Ko-san, now safely ditched for ever, but Ko-san's mother who stood in need of pity and consideration. She must still live on in this hard unpitying world, but he, once he had jumped [in battle], had jumped beyond such things. The case could well have been different, had he never jumped; but he did jump; and that, as they say, is that. Whether this world's weather turns out fine or cloudy no more worries him; but it matters to his mother. It rains, so she sits alone indoors thinking about Ko-san. And now it's fine, so she potters out and meets a friend of Ko-san's. She hangs out the national flag to welcome the returned soliders, but her joy is made querulous with wishing that Ko-san were alive. At the public bath-house, some young girl of marriageable age helps her to carry a bucket of hot water: but her pleasure from that kindness is soured as she thinks if only I had a daughter-in-law like this girl. To live under such conditions is to live in agonies. Had she lost one out of many children, there would be consolation and comfort in the mere fact of the survivors. But when loss halves a family of just one parent and one child, the damage is as irreparable as when a gourd is broken clean across its middle. There's nothing left to hang on to. Like the sergeant's mother, she too had waited for her son's return, counting on shriveled fingers the passing of the days and nights before that special day when she would be able once more to hang on him. But Ko-san with the flag jumped resolutely down into the ditch and still has not climbed back.

I’d like you to come to Kauai with me,” I say. “And Scottie. I think it would be good to get her away from the hospital for a day. We can leave in the morning, find him, and be home tomorrow night. If it takes us a day longer, that’s fine, but we won’t stay more than two nights. That’s our deadline. If we don’t find him, then at least we know we tried.” “And this will make you feel better somehow?” “It’s for her,” I say. “Not for him or me.” “What if he’s a wreck? What if he loses his shit?” “Then I’ll take care of him.” I imagine Brian Speer wailing on my shoulder. I imagine him and my daughters by Joanie’s bed, her lover and his loud sobs shaming us. “Just so you know, I am angry. I’m not this pure and noble guy. I want to do this for her, but I also want to see who he is. I want to ask him a few things.” “Just call him. Tell his office it’s an emergency. They’ll have him call you.” “I want to tell him in person. I haven’t told anyone over the phone, and I don’t want to start now.” “You told Troy.” “Troy doesn’t count. I just need to do this. On the phone he can escape. If I see him in person, he’ll have nowhere to go.” We both look away when our eyes meet. She hasn’t crossed the border into my room. She never does during her nighttime doorway chats. “Were you guys having trouble?” Alex asks. “Is that why she cheated?” “I didn’t think we were having trouble,” I say. “I mean, it was the same as always.” This was the problem, that our marriage was the same as always. Joanie needed bumps. She needed rough terrain. It’s funny that I can get lost in thoughts about her, but when she was right in front of me, I didn’t think much about her at all. “I wasn’t the best husband,” I say. Alex looks out the window to avoid my confession. “If we go on this trip, what will we tell Scottie?” “She’ll think we’re going on a trip of some sort. I want to get her away from here.

One has to imagine the impact of Paddy on an old count from eastern Europe, barely able to live off his much-diminished lands and keep the roof on a house stocked with paintings and furniture that harked back to better days. His children might take a certain pride in their ancient lineage, but they also made it clear that the world had moved on and they planned to move with it. Then a scruffy young Englishman with a rucksack turns up on the doorstep, recommended by a friend. he is polite, cheerful, and cannot hear enough about the family history. He pores over the books and albums in the library, and asks a thousand questions about the princely rulers, dynastic marriages, wars and revolts and waves of migration that shaped this part of the world. He wants to hear about the family portraits too, and begs the Count to remember the songs the peasants used to sing when he was a child. Instead of feeling like a useless fragment of a broken empire, the Count is transformed. This young Englishman has made him realize that he is part of living history, a link in an unbroken chain going back to Charlemagne and beyond.

COUNT. What’s to stop you taking her with you to London? FIGARO. A man who was married and had to be away so much? I’d never hear the end of it. COUNT. But with your qualities and brains you could climb the ladder and end up with an important government post one of these days. FIGARO. Brains? Climb the ladder? Your Lordship must think I’m stupid. Second-rate and grovelling, that’s the thing to be, and then the world’s your oyster. COUNT. All you’d have to do is take a few lessons in politics from me. FIGARO. I know what politics is. COUNT. Like you know the key to the English language? FIGARO. Not that it’s anything to boast about. It means pretending you don’t know what you do know and knowing what you don’t, listening to what you don’t understand and not hearing what you do, and especially, claiming you can do more than you have the ability to deliver. More often that not, it means making a great secret of the fact that there are no secrets; locking yourself in your inner sanctum where you sharpen pens and give the impression of being profound and wise, whereas you are, as they say, hollow and shallow; playing a role well or badly; sending spies everywhere and rewarding the traitors; tampering with seals, intercepting letters, and trying to dignify your sordid means by stressing your glorious ends. That’s all there is to politics, and you can have me shot if it’s not. COUNT. But what you’ve defined is intrigue. FIGARO. Call it politics, intrigue, whatever you want. But since to me the two things are as alike as peas in a pod, I say good luck to whoever has anything to do with either. ‘Truly, I love my sweetheart more’, as old King Henry’s song goes.

I have fallen in love within the last month with a Romagnuola Countess from Ravenna--the Spouse of a year of Count Guiccioli--who is sixty--the Girl twenty--he has eighty thousand ducats of rent--and has had two wives before--but he is Sixty--he is the first of Ravenna Nobles--but he is sixty--She is fair as Sunrise--and warm as Noon--we had but ten days--to manage all our little matters in beginning middle and end. & we managed them;--and I have done my duty--with the proper consummation.--But She is young--and was not content with what she had done--unless it was to be turned to the advantage of the public--and so She made an eclat which rather astonished even the Venetians--and electrified the Conversazioni of the Benzone--the Albrizzi--& the Michelli--and made her husband look embarrassed.--They have been gone back to Ravenna--some time--but they return in the Winter.--She is the queerest woman I ever met with--for in general they cost one something in one way or other--whereas by an odd combination of circumstances--I have proved an experience to HER--which is not my custom,--but an accident--however it don't mater.--She is a sort of an Italian Caroline Lamb, except that She is much prettier, and not so savage.--But She has the same red-hot head--the same noble disdain of public opinion--with the superstructure of all that Italy can add to such natural dispositions.--To by sure they may go much further here with impunity--as her husband's rank ensured their reception at all societies including the Court--and as it was her first outbreak since Marriage--the Sympathizing world was liberal.--She is also of the Ravenna noblesse--educated in a convent--sacrifice to Wealth--filial duty and all that.--I am damnably in love--but they are gone--gone--for many months--and nothing but Hope--keeps me alive seriously.

If their life together were a recipe, it would be this: tablespoons of late nights talking, a dash of fervent fingers across skin, and too many I love you's to count. Date nights and nights in and days spent in the sunshine or getting caught in the rain or sneaking cigarettes at family functions, and their wedding day. His homemade spaghetti sauce followed by her coffee cake. Their cat, Velcro. Their Greenwood home. Trust, laughter, tears, and pure joy, kneaded into one by years of togetherness.

And then it occurred to me the other day . . . almost like a light bulb going off above my head as I sat and pondered my singleness, and the answer became crystal clear. Why does singleness have this overwhelmingly negative connotation? Because we don’t celebrate our singles. Like, at all. We just don’t. I mean, yeah . . . we have birthdays, of course . . . but who over the age of about twenty-five really makes a big deal out of their birthday? And besides, everybody has a birthday, so that doesn’t count. We simply don’t celebrate our singles. We celebrate our couples for making the decision to get married. We celebrate them again once they actually get married. We celebrate their choice to start a family (and then celebrate them again and again and sometimes again and again and again when they decide to expand that family). We celebrate the anniversaries of their marriages and the christenings and baptisms of their babies and their kids’ birthdays and their buying of a new home or choosing to adopt. Sometimes we even celebrate when they decide to end their marriage. But we simply don’t celebrate our singles.

Of course, even that day may come. The idea of mandatory contraception has been bruited about at the state level for drug-abusing or welfare-abusing mothers; and it is not hard to imagine that with the federal government counting on Obamacare cost savings from contraception that it could become as mandatory as having health insurance. And if gay marriage really is a civil right, how long will the federal government allow churches to opt out from respecting it? Obama’s supposed respect for the integrity of religious “sacraments” isn’t worth taking seriously. Under the nanny state of the left, nothing remains “private” for long. Should Obama win a second term, one can imagine his friends at Planned Parenthood calling for forcible sterilizations to “save costs” and gay groups calling for “hate crime” fines to be levied on Catholic priests who refuse to bless gay unions. Already in Canada and Western Europe, nonconformists can be dragged before judges for harboring the “wrong” thoughts. The French actress Brigitte Bardot has been “tried” several times for criticizing Islam. So was the late author Oriana Fallaci, who stood trial in Italy for “defaming Islam.” Do not kid yourselves: it could happen here. In a second term, the Obama administration will bring that day much closer.

Montreal October 1704 Temperature 55 degrees “Remember how in Deerfield there was nobody to marry? Remember how Eliza married an Indian? Remember how Abigail even had to go and marry a French fur trader without teeth?” Mercy had to laugh again. It was such a treat to laugh with English friends. “Your man doesn’t have teeth?” “Pierre has all his teeth. In fact, he’s handsome, rich and an army officer. But what am I to do about the marriage?” Sarah was not laughing. She was shivering. “I do not want that life or that language, Mercy, and above all, I do not want that man. If I repeat wedding vows, they will count. If I have a wedding night, it will be real. I will have French babies and they will be Catholic and I will live here all my life.” Sarah rearranged her French scarf in a very French way and Mercy thought how much clothing mattered; how changed they were by what they put on their bodies. “The Catholic church won’t make you,” said Mercy. “You can refuse.” “How? Pierre has brought his fellow officers to see me. His family has met me and they like me. They know I have no dowry, but they are being very generous about their son’s choice. If I refuse to marry Pierre, he and the French family with whom I live will be publicly humiliated. I won’t get a second offer of marriage after mistreating this one. The French family will make me a servant. I will spend my life waiting on them, curtseying to them, and saying ‘Oui, madame.’” “But surely ransom will come,” said Mercy. “Maybe it will. But what if it does not?” Mercy stared at her feet. Her leggings. Her moccasins. What if it does not? she thought. What if I spend my life in Kahnawake? “What if I stay in Montreal all my life?” demanded Sarah. “A servant girl to enemies of England.” The world asks too much of us, thought Mercy. But because she was practical and because there seemed no way out, she said, “Would this Frenchman treat you well?” Sarah shrugged as Eben had over the gauntlet, except that when Eben shrugged, he looked Indian, and when Sarah shrugged, she looked French. “He thinks I am beautiful.” “You are beautiful,” said Eben. He drew a deep breath to say something else, but Nistenha and Snow Walker arrived beside them. How reproachfully they looked at the captives. “The language of the people,” said Nistenha in Mohawk, “is sweeter to the ear when it does not mix with the language of the English.” Mercy flushed. This was why she had not been taken to Montreal before. She would flee to the English and be homesick again. And it was so. How she wanted to stay with Eben and Sarah! They were older and would take care of her…but no. None of the captives possessed the freedom to choose anything or take care of anyone. It turned out that Eben Nims believed otherwise. Eben was looking at Sarah in the way every girl prays some boy will one day look at her. “I will marry you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I will be a good husband. A Puritan husband. Who will one day take us both back home.” Wind shifted the lace of Sarah’s gown and the auburn of one loose curl. “I love you, Sarah,” said Eben. “I’ve always loved you.” Tears came to Sarah’s eyes: she who had not wept over her own family. She stood as if it had not occurred to her that she could be loved; that an English boy could adore her. “Oh, Eben!” she whispered. “Oh, yes, oh, thank you, I will marry you. But will they let us, Eben? We will need permission.” “I’ll ask my father,” said Eben. “I’ll ask Father Meriel.” They were not touching. They were yearning to touch, they were leaning forward, but they were holding back. Because it is wrong? wondered Mercy. Or because they know they will never get permission? “My French family will put up a terrible fuss,” said Sarah anxiously. “Pierre might even summon his fellow officers and do something violent.” Eben grinned. “Not if I have Huron warriors behind me.

With a quick glance into the room, noting the inquiring faces, Lydia reached out for Robert's waistcoat and slowly pulled him into the shadows. "There is one matter that counts above all else. Do you love me?" This time, there was no hesitation. "With all my heart, until the day I die, and beyond, if there is an afterlife." A flood of relief washed over Lydia, leaving her speechless... for all of a moment. "Then, I will marry you, if you will ask." Before he had a chance to say anything, Lydia leaned forward. She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted her mouth to his. She could feel his heart pounding out a quick-time rhythm as he slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. When their lips met, she thought her insides would melt into a puddle of ecstasy. Filled with a delicious, undefined longing, Lydia leaned in closer, wishing that she could stay locked in his arms forever. But all too soon, Robert lifted his head, taking a ragged breath. "Lydia, my dove?" "Yes, Robert?" "I have just thoroughly compromised you." "Thoroughly...what ever shall we do?" "We will have to announce our intention this very evening -- before there is any hint of a scandal." "Excellent idea. What are our intentions?" Robert chuckled and leaner over to kiss her forehead, but Lydia lifted herself up on her toes, initiating another session of excellent compromising. "Lydia, my dove?" Robert said again eventually. "Yes, Robert." "Will you grant me the great privilege of your hand in marriage?" Lydia closed her eyes and savored his proposal---the offer of a union for life. Exquisite joy, overwhelming and eternal, filled her to the brim; the sensation was so marvelous that she forgot to breathe for a time. The air around them stilled, as did Robert. He was waiting. How could he not know her answer? She had encouraged the proposal. And still he waited. Lydia opened her eyes and grinned. "I would be honored." The relief on his face nearly brought tears to her eyes. She lifted her hand and cupped his chin. "I would be honored," she repeated. "I love you so very much." As her future husband lowered his head once again, Lydia sighed dreamily. "We should go in," she whispered, tightening her hold, preventing him from going anywhere. "Absolutely," he said, nibbling at her lower lip. All thoughts of ballrooms and inquisitive glances were instantly drowned by the flow of marvelous sensations coursing through her body and a sudden desire to drag Robert deeper into the shadows. They would go back into the ballroom soon...but not yet.

But for real, I want to tell you what you mean to me, but it’s like trying to count the seconds of a day on your fingers and toes.

I think you’ve had enough of that,” I whispered against her lips. “I don’t think I’ll ever have enough of that.” She let me breathe in and out in silence for a moment as I caught my breath. “I’m going to count the days till you can take me, Jack.