Newly Married Quotes

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Sometimes I'm sad about everything; the way my grilled cheese sandwich tastes, how nice my socks feel, a song John is playing in the kitchen. One time he puts on this goofy Loudon Wainwright song that was on a mix tape I used to listen to during my commute from the boys' school in Bethesda back into the District when we were newly married and everything was about to begin and it makes me burst into tears about the shortness of everything.
Nina Riggs (The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying)
The problem in today’s economy is that people are typically starting a family at the very time they are also supposed to be doing their best work. They are trying to be productive at some of the most stressful times of their lives. What if companies took this unhappy collision of life events seriously? They could offer Gottman’s intervention as a benefit for every newly married, or newly pregnant, employee.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Book & DVD))
Penelope had read several novels about such governesses in preparation for her interview and found them chock-full of useful information, although she had no intention of developing romantic feelings for the charming, penniless tutor at a neighboring estate. Or - heaven forbid! - for the darkly handsome, brooding, and extravagantly wealthy master of her own household. Lord Frederick Ashton was newly married in any case, and she had no inkling what his complexion might be
Maryrose Wood (The Mysterious Howling (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, #1))
So you intend to spend the remainder of your life whoring, drinking, wagering, and being as outrageous as you can manage?" Bram shook himself. He made it a point to be serious as little as possible, and neither did he want to argue with two newly married men about the meruts of being leg-shackled."Please Phin," he said aloud. "I would never think so small. You know my ultimate goal is to lower the standards of morality enough that everything I do becomes acceptable.
Suzanne Enoch (Always a Scoundrel (Notorious Gentlemen, #3))
In later life, wherever I went, I always looked for the women of Troy who'd been scattered all over the Greek world. That skinny old woman with brown-spotted hands shuffling to answer her master's door, can that really be Queen Hecuba, who, as a young and beautiful girl, newly married, had led the dancing in King Priam's hall? Or that girl in the torn and shabby dress, hurrying to fetch water from the well, can that be one of Priam's daughters? Or the ageing concubine, face paint flaking over the wrinkles in her skin, can that really be Andromache, who once, as Hector's wife, stood proudly on the battlements of Troy with her baby son in her arms?
Pat Barker (The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy, #1))
I am newly married to my husband when he remarks casually, “There are so many beautiful women in the world.” I freeze when he says this. I know it is a perfectly acceptable and truthful thing to remark on, and yet I feel a familiar twist in my gut. “What?” he asks. He can feel the switch; he can sense the instant tension in my body. “I don’t know,” I reply. I press my face into his chest, ashamed of my reaction. “I don’t know why it hurts to hear you say that.
Emily Ratajkowski (My Body)
She'd been told time and again that it was rude stare, but she didn't obey her mother's rule now. The giant mesmerized her and she wanted to remember everything she could about him. He must have felt her staring at him, though because he suddenly turned and looked directly her. Brenna decided to make her papa proud of her and behave like a proper young lady. She grabbed a fistful of her skirt, hiked it up to her knees, and bent down to curtsy. She promptly lost her balance and almost hit her head against the floor, but she was quick enough to lean back so she could land on her bottom. She stood back up, remembered to let go of her skirts, and peeked up at the stranger to see what he thought about her newly acquired skill. The giant smiled at her. As soon as he looked away, she squeezed herself up against Rachel's backside again. "I'm going to marry him," she whispered.
Julie Garwood (The Wedding (Lairds' Fiancées, #2))
In ancient times, when the world was cold, prosperous, and flourishing, it was a birthing place for our people. Newly married couples traveled to the cove, spending their first days as husband and wife. It is where love began.
Lily H. Tuzroyluke (Sivulliq: Ancestor)
And woo her with some spirit when she comes. Say that she rail; why, then, I'll tell her plain, she sings as sweetly as a nightingail: Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear As morning roses newly washt with dew: Say she be mute and will not speak a word; Then I'll commend her volubility, And say she uttereth piercing eloquence: If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks, As though she bid me stay by her a week: If she deny to be wed, I'll crave the day When I shall ask the banns, and when be married.
William Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew)
When they arrived at Parva Magna, everyone agreed that it was quite a good thing that the newly married couple had managed to find shelter in the storm, although there was some confusion as to why it had taken them a full three days to make their way fifteen miles.
Lauren Willig (Away in a Manger: A Very Turnip Wedding Night (Pink Carnation, #7.1))
The cards of the newly married couple are sent to those only whose acquaintance they wish to continue. No offense should be taken by those whom they may choose to exclude.
Samuel Roberts Wells (How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits Embracing An Exposition Of The Principles Of Good Manners; ... Traveling, Etc., With Illustrative An...)
Being newly married myself, I can’t profess to have the knowledge that you all do. But my mama always said there’s one important adage to live by in marriage: to err is human—and to forgive, divine.
Grace Callaway (The Lady Who Came in from the Cold (Heart of Enquiry, #3))
My parents had lived in California, long ago, when they were twenty and twenty-two, also newly married. This distant knowledge romanced me like a whiff of honey, the sweet and mythic prehistory of my existence.
Aspen Matis (Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir)
In short they felt that they should like to have the pleasure of looking at Lady Pole again, and so they told Sir Walter - rather than asked him - that he missed his wife. He replied that he did not. But this was not allowed to be possible; it was well known that newly married gentlemen were never happy apart from their wives; the briefest of absences could depress a new husband's spirits and interfere with his digestion.
Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell)
Newly married, Justin and I evacuated the woods where we had once lived as nomads. We would no longer pass sweet breezy days in our sleek tent, in mossy hills and sun, showering in waterfalls. That era was now our memory, a shared dream.
Aspen Matis (Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir)
And suddenly it seemed utterly right to me that resistance had been his wish, his intention. It made a kind of emotional sense that caused me to feel, instantly, how little sense my earlier more or less unframed assumptions had made. Of course! I thought. And with that thought it was as though my father stepped forward to meet me as he had been in 1940: twenty-five years old, newly married, teaching literature and history and religion as his first real job, as an assistant professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. That stage of his life – and he in it – had always been indistinct to me, as the lives of parents before their children exist always are to those children; but now, holding this letter in my hands, I remembered anew and vividly the numerous photographs in our family albums of him then – a slender young man, intense-looking and handsome, with a shock of dark hair swept back from his high forehead. A radical young man, it would seem. More radical in many ways than my own son was now. A young man, ready, perhaps even eager to embrace the fate his powerful beliefs were calling him to. Sitting there, I felt a rush of love and pity for him in his youth, in his passionate convictions – really, the same feelings I often had for my son when he argued his heartfelt positions. Abruptly, they seemed alike to me and equally dear: my father, my son. I felt as though my father had been waiting for this moment to be born to me as the young man he’d been, so touchingly willing to bear witness to his conscience; and the surprise of this new sense of him, this birth, was a gift to me, a sudden balm in those days of my most intense grief.
Sue Miller (The Story of My Father)
The electric saw worked like a charm and, a few non-Bananagrammatical but highly Rabbinical words and a miniature parasol later, I was a newly-married man.
Robert Wringham (Stern Plastic Owl)
Wyatt’s two sisters I knew very well, and most amiable and clever girls they were. His wife he had newly married, and I had never yet seen her. He had often talked about her in my presence, however, and in his usual style of enthusiasm. He described her as of surpassing beauty, wit, and accomplishment. I was, therefore, quite anxious to make her acquaintance.
Edgar Allan Poe (Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe)
And suddenly...it made a kind of emotional sense that caused me to feel, instantly, how little sense my earlier...assumptions had made...And with that thought it was as though my father stepped forward to meet me as he had been in 1940: twenty-five years old, newly married, teaching literature and history and religion as his first real job, as an assistant professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. That stage of his life – and he in it – had always been indistinct to me, as the lives of parents before their children exist always are to those children; but now, holding this letter in my hands, I remembered anew and vividly the numerous photographs in our family albums of him then – a slender young man, intense-looking and handsome, with a shock of dark hair swept back from his high forehead. A radical young man, it would seem. More radical in many ways than my own son was now. A young man, ready, perhaps even eager to embrace the fate his powerful beliefs were calling him to. Sitting there, I felt a rush of love and pity for him in his youth, in his passionate convictions...
Sue Miller (The Story of My Father)
Gray Horse, in the western part of the territory, consisted of little more than a cluster of newly built lodges, and it was here where Lizzie and Ne-kah-e-se-y, who married in 1874, settled.
David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI)
They had no relish for gossiping about their acquaintance and even politics seemed a little dull. In short they felt that they should like to have the pleasure of looking at Lady Pole again, and so they told Sir Walter – rather than asked him – that he missed his wife. He replied that he did not. But this was not allowed to be possible; it was well known that newly married gentlemen were never happy apart from their wives; the briefest of absences could depress a new husband's spirits and interfere with his digestion. Sir Walter's guests asked each other if they thought he looked bilious and they agreed that he did. He denied it. Ah, he was putting a brave face on it, was he? Very good. But clearly it was a desperate case. They would have mercy on him and go and join the ladies.
Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell)
The idea that everyone should have a house of his own is based on an ancient custom of the Japanese race, Shinto superstition ordaining that every dwelling should be evacuated on the death of its chief occupant. Perhaps there may have been some unrealized sanitary reason for this practice. Another early custom was that a newly built house should be provided for each couple that married. It is on account of such customs that we find the Imperial capitals so frequently removed from one site to another in ancient days.
Kakuzō Okakura (The Book of Tea)
what encourages me when I’m faced with the call of the cross in a newly exposed area of my life is when I look around at the beloved people in my church and see that the cross is just as relentless in their lives. They are living, breathing movie trailers displaying the future redemption story. My single friends who want to be married could be traipsing around the city dating and sleeping with anyone and everyone. They could be taking their future into their own hands rather than waiting on the Lord and entrusting themselves to him. My married friends who have experienced difficulties in their marriages could be taking their spouses to divorce court. My same-sex attracted friends could be succumbing to their desires. All these hold steady in truth and grace for the sake of the gospel, and their stories not only compel me to do the same but also solidify our bonds of unity and friendship and show me anew the surpassing worth of the gospel.
Christine Hoover (Searching for Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time)
For a long while after her own divorce, Estelle had strongly urged Dorothy to follow suit. She had been particularly persistent, Dorothy thought, because she wanted the companionship of a similar destiny, as newly-married women want all their friends to be married, too. Or women newly become mothers, Dorothy remembered, who urge motherhood on others.
Rachel Ingalls (Mrs. Caliban)
Yer in a fou’ mood for someone newly married to the sweet young lass ye’ve just brought home.” The words startled a wry laugh from Ross. “Sweet young lass? I thought her being English convinced ye she was Devil’s spawn,” he pointed out dryly and reminded him, “Ye were the one saying I should no’ marry her because she was the second daughter.” “Aye, well I did no’ ken her then, did I?” Gilly said with a faint smile. “But by the second day o’ the journey home I kenned I was wrong about all that. She’s a good lass. Smart, and curious and . . .” “Sweet?” Ross suggested dryly. “Aye.” He nodded. Ross sighed. It had not gone without his notice that his wee bride had quickly wrapped his tough-as-rocks, battle-hardened warriors around her little finger during the journey home.
Lynsay Sands
The presence of the migrants “in such large numbers crushed and stagnated the progress of Negro life,” the economist Sadie Mossell wrote early in the migration to Philadelphia. Newly available census records suggest the opposite to be true. According to a growing body of research, the migrants were, it turns out, better educated than those they left behind in the South and, on the whole, had nearly as many years of schooling as those they encountered in the North. Compared to the northern blacks already there, the migrants were more likely to be married and remain married, more likely to raise their children in two-parent households, and more likely to be employed. The migrants, as a group, managed to earn higher incomes than northern-born blacks even though they were relegated to the lowest-paying positions. They were less likely to be on welfare than the blacks they encountered in the North, partly because they had come so far, had experienced such hard times, and were willing to work longer hours or second jobs in positions that few northern blacks, or hardly anyone else for that matter, wanted, as was the case with Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, Robert Foster, and millions of others like them.
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration)
The idea that everyone should have a house of his own is based on an ancient custom of the Japanese race, Shinto superstition ordaining that every dwelling should be evacuated on the death of its chief occupant. Perhaps there may have been some unrealized sanitary reason for this practice. Another early custom was that a newly built house should be provided for each couple that married. It is on account of such customs that we find the Imperial capitals so frequently removed from one site to another in ancient days. The rebuilding, every twenty years, of Ise Temple, the supreme shrine of the Sun-Goddess, is an example of one of these ancient rites which still obtain at the present day. The observance of these customs was only possible with some form of construction as that furnished by our system of wooden architecture, easily pulled down, easily built up. A more lasting style, employing brick and stone, would have rendered migrations impracticable, as indeed they became when the more stable and massive wooden construction of China was adopted by us after the Nara period.
Kakuzō Okakura (The Book of Tea)
When a Southerner took the trouble to pack a trunk and travel twenty miles for a visit, the visit was seldom of shorter duration than a month, usually much longer. Southerners were as enthusiastic visitors as they were hosts, and there was nothing unusual in relatives coming to spend the Christmas holidays and remaining until July. Often when newly married couples went on the usual round of honeymoon visits, they lingered in some pleasant home until the birth of their second child. Frequently elderly aunts and uncles came to Sunday dinner and remained until they were buried years later. Visitors presented no problem, for houses were large, servants numerous and the feeding of several extra mouths a minor matter in that land of plenty. All ages and sexes went visiting, honeymooners, young mothers showing of new babies, convalescents, the bereaved, girls whose parents were anxious to remove them from the dangers of unwise matches, girls who had reached the danger age without becoming engaged and who, it was hoped, would make suitable matches under the guidance of relatives in other places. Visitors added excitement and variety to the slow-moving Southern life and they were always welcome.
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
Ironically, even as Khomeini empowered some women, he also found ways of oppressing their entire gender. The regime replaced the shah’s secular law with an Islamic law, which allowed men to marry up to four wives, to divorce them whenever the husbands wished, and to retain custody of children. The law put the value of a woman’s life at half of that of a man’s life, and the value of her testimony at half that of a man’s testimony. Thus women in Iran became watchdogs and scapegoats, both the foot soldiers of the new regime and its victims. Newly empowered, they were also newly oppressed. Theirs was a paradoxical plight—and at the time, no one could have foreseen how it would one day make women a force of enormous change in Iran.
Nazila Fathi (The Lonely War)
Leaving off her rock kicking, Daisy regarded Lillian with a frown. “I’ve been wondering…why are we so determined to marry into the peerage, and live in a huge crumbly old house and eat slimy English food, and try to give instructions to a bunch of servants who have absolutely no respect for us?” “Because it’s what Mother wants,” Lillian replied dryly. “And because no one in New York will have either of us.” It was an unfortunate fact that in the highly striated New York society, men with newly earned fortunes found it quite easy to marry well. But heiresses with common bloodlines were desired neither by the established blue bloods nor by the nouveau riche men who wanted to better themselves socially. Therefore, husband hunting in Europe, where upper-class men needed rich wives, was the only solution. Daisy’s frown twisted into an ironic grin. “What if no one will have us here either?” “Then we’ll become a pair of wicked old spinsters, romping back and forth across Europe.
Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
But Violet Antrim, who had also been staying with the Peacocks, had arrived home full of importance. She walked in on Stephen one afternoon to announce her engagement to young Alec Peacock. She was so much engaged and so haughty about it that Stephen, whose nerves were already on edge, was very soon literally itching to slap her. Violet was now able to look down on Stephen from the height of her newly gained knowledge of men—knowing Alec she felt that she knew the whole species. 'It's a terrible pity you dress as you do, my dear,' she remarked, with the manner of sixty, 'a young girl's so much more attractive when she's soft—don't you think you could soften your clothes just a little? I mean you do want to get married, don't you! No woman's complete until she is married. After all, no woman can really stand alone, she always needs a man to protect her.' Stephen said: 'I'm all right—getting on nicely, thank you!' 'Oh, no, but you can't be!' Violet insisted. 'I was talking to Alec and Roger about you, and Roger was saying it's an awful mistake for women to get false ideas into their heads. He thinks you've got rather a bee in your bonnet; he told Alec that you'd be quite a womanly woman if you'd only stop trying to ape what you're not.
Radclyffe Hall (The Well of Loneliness)
Of course, no china--however intricate and inviting--was as seductive as my fiancé, my future husband, who continued to eat me alive with one glance from his icy-blue eyes. Who greeted me not at the door of his house when I arrived almost every night of the week, but at my car. Who welcomed me not with a pat on the arm or even a hug but with an all-enveloping, all-encompassing embrace. Whose good-night kisses began the moment I arrived, not hours later when it was time to go home. We were already playing house, what with my almost daily trips to the ranch and our five o’clock suppers and our lazy movie nights on his thirty-year-old leather couch, the same one his parents had bought when they were a newly married couple. We’d already watched enough movies together to last a lifetime. Giant with James Dean, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Reservoir Dogs, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, All Quiet on the Western Front, and, more than a handful of times, Gone With the Wind. I was continually surprised by the assortment of movies Marlboro Man loved to watch--his taste was surprisingly eclectic--and I loved discovering more and more about him through the VHS collection in his living room. He actually owned The Philadelphia Story. With Marlboro Man, surprises lurked around every corner. We were already a married couple--well, except for the whole “sleepover thing” and the fact that we hadn’t actually gotten hitched yet. We stayed in, like any married couple over the age of sixty, and continued to get to know everything about each other completely outside the realm of parties, dates, and gatherings. All of that was way too far away, anyway--a minimum hour-and-a-half drive to the nearest big city--and besides that, Marlboro Man was a fish out of water in a busy, crowded bar. As for me, I’d been there, done that--a thousand and one times. Going out and panting the town red was unnecessary and completely out of context for the kind of life we’d be building together. This was what we brought each other, I realized. He showed me a slower pace, and permission to be comfortable in the absence of exciting plans on the horizon. I gave him, I realized, something different. Different from the girls he’d dated before--girls who actually knew a thing or two about country life. Different from his mom, who’d also grown up on a ranch. Different from all of his female cousins, who knew how to saddle and ride and who were born with their boots on. As the youngest son in a family of three boys, maybe he looked forward to experiencing life with someone who’d see the country with fresh eyes. Someone who’d appreciate how miraculously countercultural, how strange and set apart it all really is. Someone who couldn’t ride to save her life. Who didn’t know north from south, or east from west. If that defined his criteria for a life partner, I was definitely the woman for the job.
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
I was a country kid who went to a public school, and she was more of a middle-class girl who attended a private school. I was into hunting and fishing, and she liked drama and singing in the choir at school and church. Our lives up until that point were totally different. But Missy and I had a very deep spiritual connection, and I thought our mutual love for the Lord might be our biggest strength in sustaining our relationship. Even though Missy was so different from me, I found her world to be very interesting. Looking back, perhaps another reason I decided to give our relationship a chance was because of my aunt Jan’s bizarre premonition about Missy years earlier. My dad’s sister Jan had helped bring him to the Lord, and she taught the fourth grade at OCS. One of her students was Missy, and they went to church together at White’s Ferry Road Church. When I was a kid we attended a small church in the country, but occasionally we visited White’s Ferry with my aunt Jan and her husband. One Sunday, Missy walked by us as we were waiting in the pew. “Let me tell you something,” Jan told me as she pointed at me and then Missy. “That’s the girl you’re going to marry.” Missy was nine years old. To say that was one of the dumbest things I’d ever heard would be an understatement. I love my aunt Jan, but she has a lot in common with her brother Si. They talk a lot, are very animated, and even seem crazy at times. However, they love the Lord and have great hearts. I actually never thought about it again until she reminded me of that day once Missy and I started getting serious. Freaky? A bit. Bizarre? Definitely! Was she right? Absolutely, good call! Missy still isn’t sure what my aunt Jan saw in her. Missy: What did Jan see in me at nine years old? Well, you’ll have to ask her about that. She was the only teacher in my academic history from whom I ever received a smack. She announced a rule to the class one day that no one could touch anyone else’s possessions at any time (due to a recent rash of kids messing with other people’s stuff). The next day, I moved some papers around on one of my classmates’ desks before school, and he tattled on me. Because of her newly pronounced rule, she took me to the girls’ bathroom and gave me a whack on the rear. At the time, I certainly would have never thought she had picked me out to marry her nephew!
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl)
On these lands, in both the occupied places and those left to grow wild, alongside the community and the dwindling wildlife, there lived another creature. At night, he roamed the roads that connected Arcand to the larger town across the Bay where Native people were still unwelcome two centuries on. His name was spoken in the low tones saved for swear words and prayer. He was the threat from a hundred stories told by those old enough to remember the tales. Broke Lent? The rogarou will come for you. Slept with a married woman? Rogarou will find you. Talked back to your mom in the heat of the moment? Don't walk home. Rogarou will snatch you up. Hit a woman under any circumstance? Rogarou will call you family, soon. Shot too many deer, so your freezer is overflowing but the herd thin? If I were you, I'd stay indoors at night. Rogarou knows by now. He was a dog, a man, a wolf. He was clothed, he was naked in his fur, he wore moccasins to jig. He was whatever made you shiver but he was always there, standing by the road, whistling to the stars so that they pulsed bright in the navy sky, as close and as distant as ancestors. For girls, he was the creature who kept you off the road or made you walk in packs. The old women never said, "Don't go into town, it is not safe for us there. We go missing. We are hurt." Instead, they leaned in and whispered a warning: "I wouldn't go out on the road tonight. Someone saw the rogarou just this Wednesday, leaning against the stop sign, sharpening his claws with the jawbone of a child." For boys, he was the worst thing you could ever be. "You remember to ask first and follow her lead. You don't want to turn into Rogarou. You'll wake up with blood in your teeth, not knowing and no way to know what you've done." Long after that bone salt, carried all the way from the Red River, was ground to dust, after the words it was laid down with were not even a whisper and the dialect they were spoken in was rubbed from the original language into common French, the stories of the rogarou kept the community in its circle, behind the line. When the people forgot what they had asked for in the beginning - a place to live, and for the community to grow in a good way - he remembered, and he returned on padded feet, light as stardust on the newly paved road. And that rogarou, heart full of his own stories but his belly empty, he came home not just to haunt. He also came to hunt.
Cherie Dimaline (Empire of Wild)
Father will bury us with both hands. He boasts of me to his so-called friends, telling them I’m the next queen of this kingdom. I don’t think he’s ever paid so much attention to me before, and even now, it is minuscule, not for my own benefit. He pretends to love me now because of another, because of Tibe. Only when someone else sees worth in me does he condescend to do the same. Because of her father, she dreamed of a Queenstrial she did not win, of being cast aside and returned to the old estate. Once there, she was made to sleep in the family tomb, beside the still, bare body of her uncle. When the corpse twitched, hands reaching for her throat, she would wake, drenched in sweat, unable to sleep for the rest of the night. Julian and Sara think me weak, fragile, a porcelain doll who will shatter if touched, she wrote. Worst of all, I’m beginning to believe them. Am I really so frail? So useless? Surely I can be of some help somehow, if Julian would only ask? Are Jessamine’s lessons the best I can do? What am I becoming in this place? I doubt I even remember how to replace a lightbulb. I am not someone I recognize. Is this what growing up means? Because of Julian, she dreamed of being in a beautiful room. But every door was locked, every window shut, with nothing and no one to keep her company. Not even books. Nothing to upset her. And always, the room would become a birdcage with gilded bars. It would shrink and shrink until it cut her skin, waking her up. I am not the monster the gossips think me to be. I’ve done nothing, manipulated no one. I haven’t even attempted to use my ability in months, since Julian has no more time to teach me. But they don’t believe that. I see how they look at me, even the whispers of House Merandus. Even Elara. I have not heard her in my head since the banquet, when her sneers drove me to Tibe. Perhaps that taught her better than to meddle. Or maybe she is afraid of looking into my eyes and hearing my voice, as if I’m some kind of match for her razored whispers. I am not, of course. I am hopelessly undefended against people like her. Perhaps I should thank whoever started the rumor. It keeps predators like her from making me prey. Because of Elara, she dreamed of ice-blue eyes following her every move, watching as she donned a crown. People bowed under her gaze and sneered when she turned away, plotting against their newly made queen. They feared her and hated her in equal measure, each one a wolf waiting for her to be revealed as a lamb. She sang in the dream, a wordless song that did nothing but double their bloodlust. Sometimes they killed her, sometimes they ignored her, sometimes they put her in a cell. All three wrenched her from sleep. Today Tibe said he loves me, that he wants to marry me. I do not believe him. Why would he want such a thing? I am no one of consequence. No great beauty or intellect, no strength or power to aid his reign. I bring nothing to him but worry and weight. He needs someone strong at his side, a person who laughs at the gossips and overcomes her own doubts. Tibe is as weak as I am, a lonely boy without a path of his own. I will only make things worse. I will only bring him pain. How can I do that? Because of Tibe, she dreamed of leaving court for good. Like Julian wanted to do, to keep Sara from staying behind. The locations varied with the changing nights. She ran to Delphie or Harbor Bay or Piedmont or even the Lakelands, each one painted in shades of black and gray. Shadow cities to swallow her up and hide her from the prince and the crown he offered. But they frightened her too. And they were always empty, even of ghosts. In these dreams, she ended up alone. From these dreams, she woke quietly, in the morning, with dried tears and an aching heart.
Victoria Aveyard (Queen Song (Red Queen, #0.1))
As a young adult I became disenchanted with Valentine’s Day. I’d tell anyone who’d listen that Valentine’s Day was for rotten lovers to make up for their shortcomings and failures throughout the rest of the year. I firmly believed if a man was doing his job and caring for his companion then Valentine’s Day was just another day. It was easy to take such a stance because as a newly married couple we of course had it all figured out. We had plenty of time and energy to heap affection on one another every day and had vowed never to become disconnected like those old fogies no matter what circumstances life had in store for us. Adding to my distaste for Valentine’s Day was the fact that the same dozen roses I’d bought for her the previous week cost $20-$30 dollars more on this love sanctioned day. Overcrowded restaurants offered just one or two Valentine’s meals for a king’s ransom. And last but not least cards failed to provide an adequate expression of my love for her. Valentine’s Day was a needless day for a loving couple who felt no compulsion to share their affections with the masses.
Aaron Blaylock (It's Called Helping...You're Welcome)
There is a story currently making the rounds about a newly married young woman who complained to her mother that she couldn’t stay with her husband because of the four-letter words that he used. She cried that she had never heard such language in her parents’ house and just couldn’t be expected to put up with it. After much gentle coaxing from her mother she repeated the offensive four-letter words that so shocked her: cook, bake, wash, iron, dust!
Mildred Armstrong Kalish (Little Heathens)
Accordingly they went to a man's house, who was newly married but by the influence of sorcerers could not enjoy his wife. 3 But they lodging at his house that night, the man was freed of his disorder.
John Volz (Buried Books of the Bible)
One day when I went up there to work, sleepiness overcame me and I lay down on the floor behind the back pew to take a nap. Waking or sleeping (I couldn’t tell which), I saw all the people gathered there who had ever been there. I saw them as I had seen them from the back pew, where I sat with Uncle Othy (who would not come in any farther) while Aunt Cordie sang in the choir, and I saw them as I had seen them (from the back pew) on the Sunday before. I saw them in all the times past and to come, all somehow there in their own time and in all time and in no time: the cheerfully working and singing women, the men quiet or reluctant or shy, the weary, the troubled in spirit, the sick, the lame, the desperate, the dying, the little children tucked into the pews beside their elders, the young married couples full of visions, the old men with their dreams, the parents proud of their children, the grandparents with tears in their eyes, the pairs of young lovers attentive only to each other on the edge of the world, the grieving widows and widowers, the mothers and fathers of children newly dead, the proud, the humble, the attentive, the distracted—I saw them all. I saw the creases crisscrossed on the backs of the men’s necks, their work-thickened hands, the Sunday dresses faded with washing. They were just there. They said nothing, and I said nothing. I seemed to love them all with a love that was mine merely because it included me. When I came to myself again, my face was wet with tears.
Wendell Berry (Jayber Crow)
The end result would be an artificial creation, a woman whose dress appeared more individual than her face. Newly married Florentine women looked out of their frames in severe profile without smiling; that was the convention. After all, the wooden panels would be shown to others and would say something about the fortune of the husband and his family and the chastity of the lady of the house. No unauthorized person was allowed to look into the lady’s eyes or into her heart; the modest side view of the face was intended to prevent this.
Kia Vahland (The Da Vinci Women: The Untold Feminist Power of Leonardo's Art)
She spread her arms wide, past the width of the blanket, and buried her hands in the long grass, stretching her fingertips to the cool dirt. Lying like this, she fancied she could hear the orchard talking to her, telling her about the apples, and what trees should be grafted next. She drifted and envisioned the orchard from above. She could see the scraggly trees where she lay now, and the tiny twigs of the newly grafted Honeycrisp trees on the other side of the orchard, and the precise rows of the eating-apple trees- well groomed and trimmed for easy picking in the fall. With her eyes closed, a new color spread across the back of her eyelids- a creamy white with a gentle red undertone. Her tongue started to wrap itself around the flavors as she smiled to herself. It would be dry, almost champagne-like, but with a late, sweet lilt of red apple, like a kiss on the nose. It would pair exceptionally with Parmesan, pasta, and a simple salad and it would be the perfect wedding cider, if she knew anyone getting married.
Amy E. Reichert (The Simplicity of Cider)
Though the uprising had freed the vassals from any obligations they might have had to their former masters, it had yet to profit them. In fact, as the villagers had to man their new borders, build their own prisons, police their markets, and look after the judges they appointed, the amount of money that went to communal use steadily increased. Many ended up paying out more this way than they ever had under the deposed system. But the uprising was never undertaken for riches; it was about basic human dignity. Nor was it for revenge, but self-determination; not for shedding blood, but ending bloodshed. Above all, it was about realizing fair access to natural resources. Two years after discarding the old shackles, they kissed their wives and children good-bye and headed for the trenches, many of the village men would look back at the distances they had traveled and shake their heads in disbelief. Indeed, what an exhilarating feeling it must have been for someone who had never made a decision for himself to have, finally, his destiny firmly in his grasp: to grow the crop of his choice, to paint his home the color he fancied, to marry his daughter to the man he favored, and to be able to send his children to school, all without fear of repercussions from a feudal master. What is more, the peasant no longer needed to submit himself to the humility of waiting on his master’s guests while his wife and daughter labored in the kitchen, preparing food they were not allowed to sample. The peasant might die fighting to hold on to his newly gained freedom; in the past he had always been dying fighting for someone else’s cause. This was a feeling many outsiders, Duke Ashenafi and Reverend Yimam, above all, would never understand.
Nega Mezlekia (The God Who Begat a Jackal: A Novel)
St. Lawrence River May 1705 Temperature 48 degrees During the march, when Mercy was finding the Mohawk language such a challenge and a pleasure to learn, Ruth had said to Eben, “I know why the powwow’s magic is successful. The children arrive ready.” The ceremony took place at the edge of the St. Francis river, smaller than the St. Lawrence but still impressive. The spray of river against rock, of ice met smashing into shore, leaped up to meet the rain. Sacraments must occur in the presence of water, under the sky and in the arms of the wind. There was no Catholic priest. There were no French. Only the language of the people was spoken, and the powwow and the chief preceded each prayer and cry with the rocking refrain Listen, listen, listen. Joanna tugged at Mercy’s clothes. “Can you see yet?” she whispered. “Who is it? Is he from Deerfield?” They were leading the boy forward. Mercy blinked away her tears and looked hard. “I don’t recognize him,” she said finally. “He looks about fourteen. Light red hair. Freckles. He’s tall, but thin.” “Hungry thin?” worried Joanna. “No. I think he hasn’t got his growth yet. He looks to be in good health. He’s handsomely made. He is not looking in our direction. He’s holding himself very still. It isn’t natural for him, the way it is for the Indians. He has to work at it.” “He’s scared then, isn’t he?” said Joanna. “I will pray for him.” In Mercy’s mind, the Lord’s Prayer formed, and she had the odd experience of feeling the words doubly: “Our Father” in English, “Pater Noster” in Latin. But Joanna prayed in Mohawk. Mercy climbed up out of the prayers, saying only to the Lord that she trusted Him; that He must be present for John. Then she listened. This tribe spoke Abenaki, not Mohawk, and she could follow little of it. But often at Mass, when Father Meriel spoke Latin, she could follow none of it. It was no less meaningful for that. The magic of the powwow’s chants seeped through Mercy’s soul. When the prayers ended, the women of John’s family scrubbed him in sand so clean and pale that they must have put it through sieves to remove mud and shells and impurities. They scoured him until his skin was raw, pushing him under the rough water to rinse off his whiteness. He tried to grab a lungful of air before they dunked him, but more than once he rose sputtering and gasping. The watchers were smiling tenderly, as one smiles at a new baby or a newly married couple. At last his mother and aunts and sisters hauled him to shore, where they painted his face and put new clothing, embroidered and heavily fringed, on his body. As every piece touched his new Indian skin, the people cheered. They have forgiven him for being white, thought Mercy. But has he forgiven them for being red? The rain came down harder. Most people lowered their faces or pulled up their blankets and cloaks for protection, but Mercy lifted her face into the rain, so it pounded on her closed eyes and matched the pounding of her heart. O Ruth! she thought. O Mother. Father. God. I have forgiven.
Caroline B. Cooney (The Ransom of Mercy Carter)
Two homes on either side of the road saw Two women waving a good bye to their men One was a newly married husband Other was a proud son of a widow
Bhavik Sarkhedi (The Weak Point Dealer)
While marriage rates for middle-class white women soared through the 1940s and 1950s, for black women, mid-twentieth century conditions were very different. Since emancipation, black women had married earlier and more often than their white counterparts. In the years directly after World War II, thanks to the return of soldiers, black marriage rates briefly increased further.66 However, as white women kept marrying in bigger numbers and at younger ages throughout the 1950s, black marriage rates began to decrease, and the age of first marriage to climb.67 By 1970, there had been a sharp reversal: Black women were not marrying nearly as often or as early as their white counterparts. It was nothing as benign as coincidence. While one of the bedrocks of the expansion of the middle class was the aggressive reassignment of white women to domestic roles within the idealized nuclear family, another was the exclusion of African-Americans from the opportunities and communities that permitted those nuclear families to flourish. Put more plainly, the economic benefits extended to the white middle class, both during the New Deal and in the post-World War II years, did not extend to African-Americans. Social Security, created in 1935, did not apply to either domestic laborers or agricultural workers, who tended to be African-Americans, or Asian or Mexican immigrants. Discriminatory hiring practices, the low percentages of black workers in the country’s newly strengthened labor unions, and the persistent (if slightly narrowed68) racial wage gap, along with questionable practices by the Veterans Administration, and the reality that many colleges barred the admission of black students, also meant that returning black servicemen had a far harder time taking advantage of the GI Bill’s promise of college education.69 Then there was housing. The suburbs that bloomed around American cities after the war, images of which are still summoned as symbols of midcentury familial prosperity, were built for white families. In William Levitt’s four enormous “Levittowns,” suburban developments which, thanks to government guarantees from the VA and the Federal Housing Association, provided low-cost housing to qualified veterans, there was not one black resident.70 Between 1934 and 1962, the government subsidized $120 billion in new housing; 98 percent of it for white families.
Rebecca Traister (All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation)
Evening, Kesmore. What has lured you from the wilds of Kent so early in the year?” Kesmore’s dark brows twitched down. “Raising hogs is vulgarly profitable. I say this to you in strictest confidence as your neighbor and friend, and as a man who has seen you so drunk you sing odes to the barmaid’s feminine attributes. There is, however, a certain hardship upon the man—particularly a man newly married—who undertakes such a commercial endeavor when the weather moderates and the hog pens must be cleaned of several months’ worth of pig shit.” Despite the cloying heat of the ballroom, despite the gauntlet forming for him as the orchestra warmed up, Deene’s lips quirked up. “You came to Town to avoid the smell of pig shit?” “Pig shit wafting in my bedroom window at night, pig shit scenting my linen, pig shit… but I am whining, and thank all the gods it’s not me the mamas are trolling for this year.” Deene
Grace Burrowes (Lady Eve's Indiscretion (The Duke's Daughters, #4; Windham, #7))
I am enamored of my new wife.” “I am in transports to hear it. Likely she is as well.” Deene turned and hooked his elbows over the mare’s half door. “I wasn’t aware a man bruited such sentiments about, or is this another aspect of domestic life about which I am too newly married to be knowledgeable?” Kesmore looked like he might be considering parting with a smile in a few weeks time, provided the weather held fair. “You’ll learn. They teach us, no matter we’re slow to absorb the lesson. Make the first time count, though.” “The first time?” “For God’s sake, man, the first time you tell her you love her. Make it count. Even His Grace knew that much.” “Of course I love her.” Who could not love such a courageous, generous, fierce, passionate… The words trailed off in Deene’s mind, disappearing into a mist of surprise, wonder, and joy. He was at risk for babbling and laughing out loud, for doing something outrageous, like kissing Kesmore on the cheeks. “Of course I love my wife.” The feeling settled around Deene’s heart, warm, substantial, and right. He loved his Evie; he would always love her. The certainty was his both to keep and his to share with her when the moment was right. “Of
Grace Burrowes (Lady Eve's Indiscretion (The Duke's Daughters, #4; Windham, #7))
An old framed photo on my mother’s bureau pops into my mind: My parents standing on a tour boat against white rails, close but not touching. The Statue of Liberty in the background. My mother is graceful and thin with a sari draped over one shoulder and pulled modestly like a shawl around her back. My father, bushy haired and smiling, squints in the sun. The hopes and ambitions they must’ve had, newly married and in love. How impossible it would’ve been for those two young people to envision where their lives would lead them. I want to walk into the picture, take their hands, and say that there will be incredible and heartbreaking changes ahead, but that their lives here will be good.
Samira Ahmed (Love, Hate and Other Filters)
By 1920, he was living back home with his parents while pursuing a degree at Michigan State Agricultural College.5 Specializing in chicken breeding, he proved to be so proficient that, immediately after his graduation, he received a summer school appointment as “instructor in poultry husbandry for federal students”—young veterans attending college with governmental aid.6 In addition to his academic work, the religiously committed Huyck was active in the Student Volunteer Movement, a campaign begun in 1886 to enlist college students for missionary work abroad with the ultimate goal of bringing about (as its watchword put it) “the evangelization of the world in this generation.”7 In April 1922, just prior to his graduation from Michigan State Agricultural College and three months shy of his twenty-eighth birthday, Emory accepted the position of superintendent of the Bath Consolidated School at an annual salary of $2,300. Eight months later, two days after Christmas, Emory married Ethel Newcomb of Pierson, Michigan, six years his senior; she would also join the faculty at the newly built school, teaching “vocal music” and second grade.8
Harold Schechter (Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer)
To me, this suggests that our thinking around 'invasive species' needs to be fine-tuned. Instead of a paradigm where we see all 'foreign' species as malevolent invaders that should be considered threats to ecological integrity unless proven otherwise, maybe we should instead see islands species as particularly vulnerable to newly arriving species. Indeed, the over concept of the 'native' has some fundamental problems. It derives from precisely that frozen-in-time idea of 'ecosystem integrity' that, as we've seen, is riddled with conceptual shortcomings. Ecologists have spent decades assigning 'native ranges' to species, usually based on where they were when the first white scientist showed up to take notes. These ranges are pegged to an arbitrary point in time, a moment in the long evolutionary and geographical journey of a particular lineage.
Emma Marris
Her companion then came up and said, “I should like to know, Head, whether my husband loves me or not;” the answer given to her was, “Think how he uses thee, and thou mayest guess;” and the married lady went off saying, “That answer did not need a question; for of course the treatment one receives shows the disposition of him from whom it is received.
Book House (100 Books You Must Read Before You Die - volume 1 [newly updated] [Pride and Prejudice; Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; Tarzan of the Apes; The Count of ... (The Greatest Writers of All Time))
A friend from college lived in a posh condo on newly developed land in Tokyo. It had a glitzy entrance and stylish Scandinavian furniture and tableware in the dining room. When I visited, I found myself calculating his rent in my head as he graciously invited me in. He worked for a big company, earned a good salary, married his gorgeous girlfriend, and they’d had a beautiful baby, all dressed up in fashionable baby wear. We’d been kind of alike back in college. What had happened? How did our lives drift so far apart?
Fumio Sasaki (Goodbye, Things: On Minimalist Living)
A honeymoon doesn’t need to be an exotic, luxurious trip to some far-flung paradise island, though. It just needs to be a chance for the newly wedded couple to enjoy some quality time together at the start of their married life.
George Mahood (How Not to Get Married: A no-nonsense guide to weddings... from a photographer who has seen it ALL)
And lastly, one from the Tallahassee Announcer says: ‘While it is the right of every citizen to do what he wants to do with his money, the white people of the United States cannot remain indifferent to this discovery and its horrible potentialities. Hundreds of Negroes with newly-acquired white skins have already entered white society and thousands will follow them. The black race from one end of the country to the other has in two short weeks gone completely crazy over the prospect of getting white. Day by day we see the color line which we have so laboriously established being rapidly destroyed. There would not be so much cause for alarm in this, were it not for the fact that this vitiligo is not hereditary. In other words, THE OFFSPRING OF THESE WHITENED NEGROES WILL BE NEGROES! This means that your daughter, having married a supposed white man, may find herself with a black baby! Will the proud white men of the Southland so far forget their traditions as to remain idle while this devilish work is going on?
George S. Schuyler (Black No More)
The great force! Few of us relate it with the dark, Many with the world unknown, A realm that erases every mark, Of every seed that in the farm of life was sown, Life fears it and hides at a place called nowhere, Yet it chases it and seeks it, Because its domain is everywhere, And life ultimately before it does submit, It rules over priests, emperors and paupers alike, A force that expects complete submission, It is not a feeling visceral that you may like, Because it enters every domain without any permission, Some say it even rules over time and its every moment, And it is not vindictive at all, Because even without the Sun its shadow is permanent, It has existed since the world witnessed the great fall, Its appearance is not due to serendipity, Because it is the final destiny of everything, It is an experience, felt just for a brevity, It appears from nothing and disappears into nothing, A force before which all kneel, Many incriminate it because it robs them entirely, Throughout one's life it seems unreal and in a moment becomes real, It leaves all sentimental and teary, It is death, the force all living shall experience one day, I wonder why flowers and butterflies do not dread it, I saw it capture and wilt a beautiful flower today, Yet the drooping and dead flower smiled as the hope of next Summer in its fading petals lit, Because death can wilt a summer flower, but it can't keep the Summer from returning again, It can kill a man and a woman, but it can never kill life’s spirit, Without life what shall it kill again and again, So you may despise it, but without it who shall renew life, if not it? There maybe no foreboding feeling about its arrival, But then it is the same about Summer’s advent too, Maybe life and death travel together for life’s continuous revival, And whose act is it who knows, because when a newly married couple says “We do!” We shower them with dead flowers, beautiful flowers, Who killed them, who hurled them, who ended their lives? Just for the sake of prolonging the romance of two lovers, I guess that is how death in mysterious ways strives, Killing all eventually but never taking the blame, So let me too pluck a beautiful rose and gift it to my beautiful lady, All for the sake of love and in the love’s name, Let me love her today and love her everyday, Because who knows when the dark force might strike, A rose too feels happier in her hands, Because it knows it makes her smile and in this act they are alike, Spreading happiness even in death forsaken lands, That is where all beautiful flowers go when they wilt here, To the land where there is everlasting Summer, And every form of beauty always looks the same everywhere, They go there to impart it colours and shades warmer, So when the flower fades and falls, Let us not blame death and curse it, Because it is the only way to climb and cross few walls, For it too ultimately before the mighty will of the Universe does submit!
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
After years of yearning to see beyond the borders of her provincial little town, the thought of journeying someplace new, even if it was only to show her father's invention at a neighboring village's fair, made her heart race. Maybe she would encounter a merry theater troupe on their way to perform the latest play. Or maybe merchants traveling with their wares to trade on the Silk Road. Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful to meet a newly married couple heading to Paris or Verona to celebrate their honeymoon? Who knew what types of adventures awaited her!
Elizabeth Lim (A Twisted Tale Anthology)
In Victorian England, having all your teeth removed was considered the perfect gift for a 21st birthday or a newly married bride.
Nayden Kostov (323 Disturbing Facts about Our World)
People around treat you better when you’re travelling with your wife. Maybe it’s easier for them to trust newly married people.
Sarvesh Jain
The federal government had taken over the affairs of the South, during a period known as Reconstruction, and the newly freed men were able to exercise rights previously denied them. They could vote, marry, or go to school if there were one nearby, and the more ambitious among them could enroll in black colleges set up by northern philanthropists, open businesses, and run for office under the protection of northern troops.
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration)
The glint of her ring catches my eyes as she flattens her palms against the table, reacting to my thrusts with fresh sparkles like it’s alive. And suddenly, I feel it. I feel my newly married status. I feel the heady euphoria of ownership, of possession, of responsibility. The weight of what I’ve picked up. She’s wearing my ring. She’s carrying my child. She’s fucking mine.
Nicole Fox (Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1))
I am newly married to my husband when he remarks casually, 'There are so many beautiful women in the world.' I freeze when he says this. I know it is a perfectly acceptable and truthful thing to remark on, and yet I feel a familiar twist in my gut. 'What?' he asks. He can feel the switch; he can sense the instant tension in my body. 'I don’t know,' I reply. I press my face into his chest, ashamed of my reaction. 'I don’t know why it hurts to hear you say that.' In the small, windowless room that is my therapist's office, I tell her about my reaction to my husband's remark. I explain the gut pain. The assessing. The other women. 'Apples and oranges,' my therapist tells me. 'What if you're not the same as other women, what if you're an entirely different fruit?' she asks gently. 'But everyone has a favorite fruit,' I tell her. I feel a tear run down my cheek. 'Everyone prefers one over the other. That is how the world works; everything is ranked. One is always better than the other.
Emily Ratajkowski (My Body)
The lonely evenings in the life of a newly married girl may be really agonizing.
Girdhar Joshi
On the bus we got to know a newly married American couple – the groom was about to head off to Vietnam, which meant little to us in 1966; the full significance only hit me later on, and I still occasionally wonder if he survived.
Nick Mason (Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd)
Creating a culture of discipleship is not first about creating programs, classes, groups, or other kinds of structural fixes within the church’s life. Certainly, mentoring programs may connect older and wiser Christians with younger and less mature ones. Small groups may build more intimate relationships with other believers. Age-graded Sunday school classes may offer specific instruction for various life situations. Support groups may care for members in certain life stages (newly married, new parents) or struggles (divorce, depression). All of these can be helpful structures. But a culture of discipleship can thrive without them.
Jeremy Pierre (The Pastor and Counseling: The Basics of Shepherding Members in Need (9Marks))
It is so nice to go to church,” said Lizzie. Since her widowhood had commenced, she had compromised matters with the world. One Sunday she would go to church, and the next she would have a headache and a French novel and stay in bed. But she was prepared for stricter conduct during at least the first months of her newly-married life.
Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
That summer, the month he turned twenty-nine, my brother had proposed to his girlfriend, the one he’d met four years earlier, just before coming to stay with me in Brooklyn. Nearly everyone from high school and most of my friends from college were married, or soon to be, and as for ex-boyfriends: W married in 2005; R met his soon-to-be wife in 2006 (today both couples have two children). Even the close friends I’d made in New York were “joining the vast majority,” as Neith had put it. All of us wanted to believe this wouldn’t change anything. But it did, invariably, in ways small and large. It’s a rare friendship that transcends the circumstances that forged it, and being single together in the city, no matter how powerful a bond when it’s happening, can prove pretty weak glue. Alliances had been redrawn, resources shifted and reconsolidated; new envies replaced the old. Whereas before we were all broke together, now they had husbands splitting the rent and bills, and I couldn’t shake my awareness of this difference. A treacherous, unspoken sense of inequality set in, which only six months into my new magazine job had radically reversed: I’d become the one who could afford nice restaurants while they had to channel their disposable incomes toward a shared household, and I felt their unspoken judgment just as before they’d felt mine. One newly married friend lashed out at me for never inviting her to parties. I tried to explain: Didn’t she see I was going because someone else had invited me? And that if I didn’t go, I’d be home alone, whereas she had someone to keep her company? When a dear friend said, “You know, I may be married now, but I’m still just like you! I can still do whatever I want!” I blanched. She’d been on her own so recently herself. Didn’t she remember that being single is more than just following your whims—that it also means having nobody to help you make difficult decisions, or comfort you at the end of a bad week?
Kate Bolick (Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own)
Ted rose early the next morning and took a taxi to the Museo Nazionale, cool, echoey, empty of tourists despite the fact that it was spring. He drifted among dusty busts of Hadrian and the various Caesars, experiencing a physical quickening in the presence of so much marble that verged on the erotic. He sensed the proximity of Orpheus and Eurydice before he saw it, felt its cool weight across the room but prolonged the time before he faced it, reminding himself of the events leading up to the moment it described: Orpheus and Eurydice in love and newly married; Eurydice dying of a snakebite while fleeing the advances of a shepherd; Orpheus descending to the underworld, filling its dank corridors with music from his lyre as he sang of his longing for his wife; Pluto granting Eurydice's release from death on the sole condition that Orpheus not look back at her during their ascent. And then the hapless instant when, out of fear for his bride as she stumbled in the passage, Orpheus forgot himself and turned. Ted stepped toward the relief. He felt as if he's walked inside it, so completely did it enclose and affect him. It was the moment before Eurydice must descend to the underworld a second time, when she and Orpheus are saying goodbye. What moved Ted, mashed some delicate glassware in his chest, was the quiet of their interaction, the absence of drama or tears as they gazed at each other, touching gently. He sensed between them an understanding too deep to articulate: the unspeakable knowledge that everything is lost. (p. 211)
Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad)
Black men had fewer opportunities to become wealthy and were specifically encourages, often by the US government, to look to marriage, rather than wealth, as a source of social status. The government hoped that by linking social status to black men's role as husbands and providers it could minimize its own economic responsibility for the newly free African Americans - especially for black women and children.
Marcia A. Zug (You'll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other Than Love)
her American son became the forefather of many Icelanders. Their American adventure did not change the world – the colonists were too few and the European prizes were too rich. Yet, as a newly discovered Milanese document reveals, knowledge of the continent’s existence was passed down by Nordic sailors.[*16] A Danish king Harthacnut still ruled England, recognizing as his heir the Aethling Edward, son of Aethelred, later celebrated for saintly piety as the Confessor. But on 8 June 1042 Harthacnut, attending a wedding in London, raised a toast to the bride and ‘suddenly fell to the earth with an awful convulsion’. The saintly Edward probably poisoned him. Edward was supported by the prince blinder, mass-scalper and kingmaker Godwin of Wessex, who, married to Canute’s sister-in-law, had helped destroy his father and killed at least one brother. But now they soothed these crimes with marriage: Edward married Godwin’s daughter Edith and raised his son Harold to earl. When Godwin died, Harold, half Anglo-Saxon, half Dane, succeeded as the first potentate of the kingdom, earl of Wessex. Since Edward had no children, who would inherit England? The island was on the edge of Europe, but Canute’s Roman trip showed how this Scando-Britannic empire was now linked by Mediterranean trade routes to Asia. Two coins from a resurgent China have been found in Edward’s England, while in Egypt the Mad Caliph, al-Hakim, had gone much further, contacting the new Chinese emperor.
Simon Sebag Montefiore (The World: A Family History of Humanity)