“
...We must say to ourselves something like this: 'Well, when Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn't think "I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me." No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us - denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him - and in the greatest act of love in history, he STAYED. He said, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing." He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely. That is why I am going to love my spouse.' Speak to your heart like that, and then fulfill the promises you made on your wedding day.
”
”
Timothy J. Keller (The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God)
“
I think what I want is for someone to know me. Really know me. Know me better than anyone else and maybe even me. Isn’t that why we commit to another? It’s not for sex. If it were for sex, we wouldn’t marry one person. We’d just keep finding new partners. We commit for many reasons, I know, but the more I think about it, the more I think long-term relationships are for getting to know someone. I want someone to know me, really know me, almost like that person could get into my head. What would that feel like? To have access, to know what it’s like in someone else’s head. To rely on someone else, have him rely on you. That’s not a biological connection like the one between parents and children. This kind of relationship would be chosen. It would be something cooler, harder to achieve than one built on biology and shared genetics. I think that’s it. Maybe that’s how we know when a relationship is real. When someone else previously unconnected to us knows us in a way we never thought or believed possible.
”
”
Iain Reid (I'm Thinking of Ending Things)
“
Guys care about sports teams. I'm not talking about simply rooting; I'm talking about a relationship that guys develop, a commitment to a sport team that guys take way more seriously than, for example, wedding vows.
”
”
Dave Barry (Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys)
“
True marriage begins well before the wedding day,” And the efforts of marriage continue well beyond the ceremony’s end. A brief moment in time and the stroke of the pen are all that is needed to create the legal bond of marriage, but it takes a lifetime of love, commitment, forgiveness, and compromise to make marriage durable and everlasting.
”
”
Jamie McGuire (A Beautiful Wedding (Beautiful, #2.5))
“
Finding out that you are not your lover’s only lover hurts, but not as much as discovering that you are the side chick … or the side dick.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Some women would not cheat, and some would not have cheated, had they each married a man whom they love … or at least like.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
I want you to take a good look at this ring. This ring has nothing to do with the wedding, nothing to do with our commitments, none of that. This ring means one thing. That I love you. Promise me that no matter what, no matter if we fight, no matter how hopeless things may feel, that you will look at this ring and know that when you love someone, that's all that really matters. That we'll always figure it out together.
”
”
Jillian Dodd
“
I was told
The average girl begins to plan her wedding at the age of 7
She picks the colors and the cake first
By the age of 10
She knows time,
And location
By 17
She’s already chosen a gown
2 bridesmaids
And a maid of honor
By 23
She’s waiting for a man
Who wont break out in hives when he hears the word “commitment”
Someone who doesn’t smell like a Band-Aid drenched in lonely
Someone who isn’t a temporary solution to the empty side of the bed
Someone
Who’ll hold her hand like it’s the only one they’ve ever seen
To be honest
I don’t know what kind of tux I’ll be wearing
I have no clue what want my wedding will look like
But I imagine
The women who pins my last to hers
Will butterfly down the aisle
Like a 5 foot promise
I imagine
Her smile
Will be so large that you’ll see it on google maps
And know exactly where our wedding is being held
The woman that I plan to marry
Will have champagne in her walk
And I will get drunk on her footsteps
When the pastor asks
If I take this woman to be my wife
I will say yes before he finishes the sentence
I’ll apologize later for being impolite
But I will also explain him
That our first kiss happened 6 years ago
And I’ve been practicing my “Yes”
For past 2, 165 days
When people ask me about my wedding
I never really know what to say
But when they ask me about my future wife
I always tell them
Her eyes are the only Christmas lights that deserve to be seen all year long
I say
She thinks too much
Misses her father
Loves to laugh
And she’s terrible at lying
Because her face never figured out how to do it correctl
I tell them
If my alarm clock sounded like her voice
My snooze button would collect dust
I tell them
If she came in a bottle
I would drink her until my vision is blurry and my friends take away my keys
If she was a book
I would memorize her table of contents
I would read her cover-to-cover
Hoping to find typos
Just so we can both have a few things to work on
Because aren’t we all unfinished?
Don’t we all need a little editing?
Aren’t we all waiting to be proofread by someone?
Aren’t we all praying they will tell us that we make sense
She don’t always make sense
But her imperfections are the things I love about her the most
I don’t know when I will be married
I don’t know where I will be married
But I do know this
Whenever I’m asked about my future wife
I always say
…She’s a lot like you
”
”
Rudy Francisco
“
Women never thought beyond the happy ending. We'd been taught to believe that our world revolved around securing a commitment from a man.
”
”
Beth Pattillo (Jane Austen Ruined My Life)
“
The only parts that really matter and take commitment in wedding vows are; worse, sickness and poorer. Better, richer and healthy is pretty easy to deal with.
”
”
Rob Liano
“
The thing is, you can't really rely on love. Which is why I intend to offer you something far more consistent. Commitment, friendship and loyalty. I promise to give you my protection, no matter the price. I will never turn our back on us. We will fall in and out of love many times, but I promise to always find my way back to you. To put us back together even when the temptation to break things off is too much. And when loves feels far away..."
He presses his forehead to mine, his lips moving over mine.
"I will bring it right back to our doorstep.
”
”
L.J. Shen (The Villain (Boston Belles, #2))
“
We think we like or love some people until we see them regularly.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
The inscription in your wedding band says 'forever,' Callie. And it means forever. I'll love you until I close my eyes for the last time. And even afterward, I'll love you.
”
”
Diana Palmer (The Last Mercenary (Soldiers of Fortune, #6))
“
In modern times couples are more concerned about loyalty than love.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
It was the most traditional wedding ring in the world. It reeked of stability and fiftieth wedding anniversaries. It proclaimed itself to the world as the rock upon which vows were never broken. It was a testament of his love. Proof of his commitment.
”
”
Tara Janzen (Crazy Love (Steele Street, #5))
“
Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love. A wedding should not be primarily a celebration of how loving you feel now—that can safely be assumed. Rather, in a wedding you stand up before God, your family, and all the main institutions of society, and you promise to be loving, faithful, and true to the other person in the future, regardless of undulating internal feelings or external circumstances.
”
”
Timothy J. Keller (The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God)
“
One might ask, how could that most basic element of all human freedoms, the freedom to make promises and commitments and thus build relationships, be turned into its very opposite: into peonage, serfdom or permanent slavery? It happens, we’d suggest, precisely when promises become impersonal, transferable – in a nutshell, bureaucratized.
”
”
David Graeber (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity)
“
But gay marriage is coming to America first and foremost because marriage here is a secular concern, not a religious one. The objection to gay marriage is almost invariably biblical, but nobody's legal vows in this country are defined by interpretation of biblical verse - or at least, not since the Supreme Court stood up for Richard and Mildred Loving. A church wedding ceremony is a nice thing, but it is neither required for legal marriage in America nor does it constitute legal marriage in America. What constitutes legal marriage in this country is that critical piece of paper that you and your betrothed must sign and then register with the state. The morality of your marriage may indeed rest between you and God, but it's that civic and secular paperwork which makes your vows official here on earth. Ultimately, then, it is the business of America's courts, not America's churches, to decide the rules of matrimonial law, and it is in those courts that the same-sex marriage debate will finally be settled.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
“
A wedding ring is a symbol of commitment; a promise, a pledge, and a vow. The promise is to forsake all others, to stay devoted and true; the pledge is to honor that promise selflessly, to see the whole thing through; and the vow is to keep that pledge unwaveringly, until the days are few. It is a mutual agreement to become one instead of two.
”
”
John W Lord (Author of Worlds (Spirit of Imagination #3))
“
If you don't feel loved maybe the outward trappings like weddings and wedding rings become important?
”
”
Laurell K. Hamilton (Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #22))
“
If every Christian family in the United States would simply commit to pray and ask God if HE wants to use them to bless a child without a family, well, we'd change the world. If we can get the church to think about adoption not in terms of the desires of adults but in terms of the needs of children, I think we'd see on a much grander scale how God sets the lonely in families.
”
”
Kelly Rosati (Wait No More: One Family's Amazing Adoption Journey (Focus on the Family Books))
“
The great nonprosecutions of Wall Street in the years since 2008, I would learn, were just symbols of this dystopian sorting process to which we’d already begun committing ourselves. The cleaving of the country into two completely different states—one a small archipelago of hyperacquisitive untouchables, the other a vast ghetto of expendables with only theoretical rights—has been in the works a long time. The Divide is a terrible story, and a crazy one. And it goes back a long, long way.
”
”
Matt Taibbi (The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap)
“
Marriage is difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing you can ever do, besides being a parent, but I think these two fine young people are up to the challenge. Here are two steady, responsible people who, I believe, understand the dire commitment they are about to make and will choose to keep that commitment. Because it turns out to be a choice, commitment-not some done deal. When you leave the alter tomorrow, there will still be a lifetime of choice and temptation and doubt and uncertainty in front of you. I didn't know that at my wedding. Getting married doesn't change you. Marriage changes you.
”
”
Maggie Shipstead (Seating Arrangements)
“
It occured to me that adaptability was more than survivability; it was the foundation of love. We were all changing, every day, and those relationships that endured were the ones that rode the waves together, grew and allowed each other to evolve. Encouraged it, even when it was frightening. Adaptability in relationships was the polar opposite of a cage. It was necessary commitment wed to necessary freedom.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (High Voltage (Fever, #10))
“
He is blinded and nothing will open his eyes,nothing can,after having had truths so long before him in vain.--He will marry her and poor and miserable.God grant that her influence do not make him cease to be respectable!"---She looked over the letter again."So very fond of me!tis"nonsense all.She loves nobody but herself and her brother.Her friends leading her astray for years!She is quite as likely to have led them astray. They have all,perhaps, been corrupting one another;but if they are so much fonder of her than she is of them,she is the less likely to have been hurt except by their flattery.The only woman in the world,whom he could ever think of as a wife.....I firmly believe it.It is an attachment to govern his whole life. Accepted or refused,his heart is wedded to her for ever.The loss of Mary,I must consider as comprehending the loss of Crawford and Fanny.Edmund you do not know me.The families would never be connected,if you did not connected them.
Oh!write,write.Finish it at once.Let there be an end of this suspense.Fix, commit,condemn yourself."-Fanny Price
”
”
Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)
“
We'd like to imagine we can make evil disappear in one, decisive victory. But evil won't cooperate, it reappears endlessly. You attain Goodness by transforming it every time it returns. That's what Goodness is: the ceaseless commitment to transform evil.
”
”
Barry Michels (Coming Alive: 4 Tools to Defeat Your Inner Enemy, Ignite Creative Expression, and Unleash Your Soul's Potential)
“
But it’s wonderful,’ said Mr. Giles, when he had explained, ‘what a man will do, when his blood is up. I should have committed murder—I know I should—if we’d caught one of them rascals.
”
”
Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist)
“
Isn’t that why we commit to another? It’s not for sex. If it were for sex, we wouldn’t marry one person. We’d just keep finding new partners. We commit for many reasons, I know, but the more I think about it, the more I think long-term relationships are for getting to know someone.
”
”
Iain Reid (I'm Thinking of Ending Things)
“
I think what I want is for someone to know me. Really know me. Know me better than anyone else and maybe even me. Isn't that why we commit to another? It's not for sex. If it were for sex, we wouldn't marry one person. We'd just keep finding new partners. We commit for many reasons, I know, but the more I think about it, the more I think long-term relationships are for getting to know someone. I want someone to know me, really know me, almost like that person could get into my head. What would that feel like? To rely on someone else, have him rely on you. That's not a biological connection like the one between parents and children. This kind of relationship would be chosen. It would be something cooler, harder to achieve than one built on biology and shared genetics.
”
”
Iain Reid (I'm Thinking of Ending Things)
“
It said if you were nervous about committing yourself to marriage and it was because you doubted yourself and whether you would make a good partner, then that was only natural and you should go ahead. It also said that if you doubted that the other person was right for you, then you should stop it.
”
”
Carole Matthews (For Better, for Worse)
“
I know the formulahe wants her she refuses him he charms her she holds her ground he does something dramatic like saves her from a fire or reinstates her family's lost fortune or dies she realizes she loved him all along wedding bells ring or pirate flags unfurl or she joins a convent happily ever afterbut I don't expect to live that way. I've learned that life is not like novels. Especially not like novels with rippling muscles on paperback covers.
After reading a couple hundred of those booksyou know hypothetically speakingyou start to see that there's not that much difference between a romance and an epic fantasy. You've got your quest sometimes it involves a ring and a hero who will stop at nothing to do what he has to. The difference is usually the girl. And I'm not that girl.
I'm not the girl who inspires men to commit acts of heroism. In real life those girls speak much more quietly and breathe a lot louder than I do. I'm not the girl who strikes men speechless with her beauty. Really really not. I don't even know how to flutter my eyelashes. But that's life. Not romance-novel life just real life.
”
”
Becca Wilhite (My Ridiculous, Romantic Obsessions)
“
It's good luck!" Winter said suddenly, her eyes bright with mischief.
Scarlet paused. "What's good luck?"
"On Luna," said Winter, folding her hands as if she were reciting from a wedding etiquette guide, "it's considered good luck for the bride to don her dress for at least an hour for each of the three days leading up to the wedding. It symbolizes her commitment to the marriage. And as your groom is Lunar, I think we should follow some of his traditions, don't you?"
"An hour? said Scarlet. "That's really pushing it, don't you think?"
Winter shrugged.
With a drawn-out sigh, Scarlet said, "Fine, I'll go put it on. But I'm not going to stay in it for an hour. I still have chores to do." She slipped out of the bedroom carrying the dress, and a moment later they heard the click of the bathroom door in the hall.
"I've never heard of that tradition before," said Cress.
"That's because I made it up," said Winter.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Stars Above (The Lunar Chronicles, #4.5))
“
When the world tells us that it is impossible and when the world is falling from underneath us, and we have no where to turn, I feel the safest. For I know that you are there, and you won't let anything happen to me. When that same world tells us that this isn't meant to be,
and that we aren't ready for a life of commitment and adulthood, I still feel the safest. Because I know that you will always be there with me, for you are committed to me, and I am committed to you. I swear to you, in this moment when all of the world is watching and filled with doubts, when the entire world is slowly dying, that I will never leave your side. I want to live my life with you, and I want to die with you. I vow to you to always be true, be faithful, and be not only a wife, but a friend and comforter. My heart is all I can give you; it is all that I own. Therefore I give you my all. I give you everything that I have."
-Lily Potter
”
”
Mordred (Forever Alive)
“
It was strange to have those papers signed. Like any big project or crisis that takes every waking and non-waking moment in your life, it was odd to have it concluded. A move, a college degree, a wedding--something long-strived-for is completed, whatever the outcome, and there is a huge space where it all once was. All that open time now, and a continuing nagging sense that there's something you need to be doing.
”
”
Deb Caletti (He's Gone)
“
What if one of us dies? What happens then?'
I reached around and turned on the light to see the clock: 3:20 A.M. 'I suppose we'd remarry.'
'Just like that!' Jane exploded. She sat up in bed, facing away from me. 'You can't just pick a wife off a shelf.'
'Of course not. I just meant that if I happened to die young I'd want you to be happy.'
'How could I be happy without you? When you get married, you make the biggest decision of your life; you say you're going to spend eternity with one person. So what do you do if that person leaves? What do you do once you've already committed yourself?'
'What do you want me to do?' I asked.
And Jane looked at me and said, 'I want you to live forever.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Songs of the Humpback Whale)
“
Tate looked relaxed and beautiful, and suddenly the words settled, domestic, and committed no longer sent warning bells off in Logan’s head. No, suddenly they had him thinking of other bells…wedding bells. But no—that would mean a church. And that would mean marriage. What the…? Am I really thinking about— “Logan?
”
”
Ella Frank (Tease (Temptation, #4))
“
he would commit murder, and we didn’t need that kind of bloodshed two days before Bridget’s wedding.
”
”
Ana Huang (Twisted Hate (Twisted, #3))
“
Marriage is a cheerful commitment.
”
”
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
“
Every sacred marriage will survive all times with great love and patient commitment.
”
”
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
“
All our readings of the Bible are deeply wedded to both cultural and theological commitments.
”
”
J.R. Daniel Kirk (Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?: A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity)
“
Some people love but will never marry each other. Some are married to but have never loved and will never love each other.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Most women harbor dreams of a fairytale wedding and marriage. And while some do achieve it all, they are in the minority. For most of us the reality of living out our daily lives with another person by our side demands compromise, cooperation and commitment. Yes, it takes two to make a marriage, but someone has to take the lead. Why not let that person be you?
”
”
Lori Colombo-Dunham
“
When we speak today, then, about “holy wedded matrimony,” or the “sanctity of marriage,” we would do well to remember that, for approximately ten centuries, Christianity itself did not see marriage as being either holy or sanctified. Marriage was certainly not modeled as the ideal state of moral being. On the contrary, the early Christian fathers regarded the habit of marriage as a somewhat repugnant worldly affair that had everything to do with sex and females and taxes and property, and nothing whatsoever to do with higher concerns of divinity.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage)
“
What a pair we were — fatherless, frightened, but fiercely committed, too, to keeping our families alive. Desperate, yet no longer alone after that day, because we’d found each other. I
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
“
In fact, there are all sorts of great institutions and human enterprises that the Bible doesn’t address or regulate. And so we are free to invent them and operate them in line with the general principles for human life that the Bible gives us. But marriage is different. As the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship says, God “established marriage for the welfare and happiness of humankind.” Marriage did not evolve in the late Bronze Age as a way to determine property rights. At the climax of the Genesis account of creation we see God bringing a woman and a man together to unite them in marriage. The Bible begins with a wedding (of Adam and Eve) and ends in the book of Revelation with a wedding (of Christ and the church). Marriage is God’s idea.
”
”
Timothy J. Keller (The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God)
“
The Titans knew the abominations we would become. The horrific deeds we would commit. All the ways we would go on to abuse our creations. They’d tried to end our existence, to stop us, and in return we orchestrated their murder. We’d killed our parents. And then we created a species in our image, acting surprised when they spent every waking moment improving upon their methods of murder and mass destruction. We did that. We made them sadistic and twisted and broken. We were gods. Every bad thing that had ever happened lay at our feet. There was no one else to blame.
”
”
Kaitlin Bevis (The Iron Queen (Daughters of Zeus, #3))
“
Imperceptible, adj.
We stopped counting our relationship in dates (first date, second date, fifth, date, seventh) and started counting it in months. That might have been the first true commitment, this shift in terminology. We never talked about it, but we were at a party and someone asked how long we`d been together, and when you said, "A month and a half,” I knew we had gotten there.
”
”
David Levithan (The Lover's Dictionary)
“
Winning is a habit; unfortunately so is losing.” Some people have the habit of victory and success, and although we’d like to believe that these people have a glamorizing mystical power, the truth is much more basic than that: They commit to whatever it is they want to do. If you ask me, that is the more impressive part—that they can commit and exercise self-discipline in just about anything they do. So, you must crush it where you’re at. You must dominate whatever it is that you are doing. You must do everything in your power to reach the top of whatever game it is you are playing.
”
”
Rory Vaden (Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success)
“
Every week seems to bring another luxuriantly creamy envelope, the thickness of a letter-bomb, containing a complex invitation – a triumph of paper engineering – and a comprehensive dossier of phone numbers, email addresses, websites, how to get there, what to wear, where to buy the gifts. Country house hotels are being block-booked, great schools of salmon are being poached, vast marquees are appearing overnight like Bedouin tent cities. Silky grey morning suits and top hats are being hired and worn with an absolutely straight face, and the times are heady and golden for florists and caterers, string quartets and Ceilidh callers, ice sculptors and the makers of disposable cameras. Decent Motown cover-bands are limp with exhaustion. Churches are back in fashion, and these days the happy couple are travelling the short distance from the place of worship to the reception on open-topped London buses, in hot-air balloons, on the backs of matching white stallions, in micro-lite planes. A wedding requires immense reserves of love and commitment and time off work, not least from the guests. Confetti costs eight pounds a box. A bag of rice from the corner shop just won’t cut it anymore.
”
”
David Nicholls (One Day)
“
Not long ago I had a conversation with a Jewish rabbi who said to me, “You know, one of the greatest differences between our two religions is this idea that you’ve committed a sin just by desiring or thinking it. We believe you have to actually commit the physical act before it’s really sin. Otherwise,” he concluded with an incredulous chuckle, “we’d be sinning all the time!” “We are,” I replied. “That’s the whole point.
”
”
Michael Scott Horton (The Law of Perfect Freedom: Relating to God and Others through the Ten Commandments)
“
We didn’t write it at the time. We took notes, as journalists did in those days, by committing quotes to memory, then making our excuses and heading for the bathroom, where we’d scribble into our notebooks before the booze set in.
”
”
Lesley-Ann Jones (Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury)
“
You're thirty-four or thirty-five, gainfully employed, never been married. You think maybe you'll settle down one day, perhaps when you're forty, but for now, you work hard at your job, so you want to play hard, too. You tend to skew more toward dating women in their mid-twenties, because women in their early twenties seem just a little too young and women in their thirties frustrate you with the way they all want to talk about marriage and kids by the third date. You'll go out with a girl a few times, you'll have a lot of fun together, and when she starts pushing for something more serious, you'll move on to something else, wondering why it is that women can't be content to just 'date' without needing a commitment. And why would you want to commit to one person right now? For men as attractive as you, this city is one big candy store, filled with so many shiny treats, you couldn't possibly choose just one. So instead, you run around with your obviously healthy ego, sampling as many of the goods as you can get your hands on--simply because you can.
”
”
Julie James (It Happened One Wedding (FBI/US Attorney, #5))
“
Beauty exists everywhere in the world. Love resides in all of us. That’s the point. I only…I only want to deepen that. Show that there can be—that there should be—substance in it all. Of course a bride on her wedding day is beautiful, but that radiance doesn’t diminish in old age, when she’s too tired to keep up with whatever ridiculous fashions the shops and salons put out. I know Arina smiles upon an old couple walking down the road together, hand in hand, firm in their commitment to one another. There is love in caring for the sick, the weak, the ugly. A wilting flower holds just as much splendor as one on the cusp of opening. People are so quick to idolize the fresh and the new. They fetishize it.” He rubbed at his forehead, his eyes bright with fervor. “Why should we celebrate one without the other?
”
”
Erin A. Craig (House of Roots and Ruin (Sisters of the Salt, #2))
“
I think what I want is for someone to know me. Really know me. Know me better than anyone else and maybe even me. Isn't that why we commit to another? It's not for sex. if it were for sex, we wouldn't marry one person. We'd just keep finding new partners. We commit for many reasons, I know, but the more I think about it, the more I think long-term relationships are for getting to know someone. I want someone to know me, really know me, almost like that person could get into my head. What would that feel like? To have access, to know what it's like in someone else's head. To rely on someone else, have him rely on you. That's not a biological connection like the one between parents and children. This kind of relationship would be chosen. It would be something cooler, harder to achieve than one built on biology and shared genetics.
”
”
Iain Reid (I'm Thinking of Ending Things)
“
Smith echoes the famous appeal of W.E.B. Du Bois to the human bond in books that ignores the veil of racial prejudice: I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn or condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.64 Committed to a goal (Truth) beyond what mere social life might offer, Du Bois finds in books a human community open to him in a way that his local human communities are not, riven as they are by segregation and hatred. Instead, on the basis of common humanity and common concern for truth, the dead authors welcome Du Bois into their company.
”
”
Zena Hitz (Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life)
“
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.
”
”
Missy Robertson (Blessed, Blessed ... Blessed: The Untold Story of Our Family's Fight to Love Hard, Stay Strong, and Keep the Faith When Life Can't Be Fixed)
“
All I could see were Will’s intense blue eyes, and the joy that flashed across them as they flickered down to the low neckline of my gown. All I could hear was the deep, reverent rumble of his voice as he repeated his vow to honor, and cherish, and love me for the rest of our lives. And all I could feel was the juxtaposition of cool metal and warm skin as he slid the ring on my finger. It was all I could process . . . until he kissed me, that is. Because that kiss erased everything that came before it. You may now kiss your bride. The world fell away. It really did. It was just us in that tiny spot of land, standing in silence and staring at each other, on the verge of sealing this commitment we’d made. I couldn’t stop smiling.
”
”
Christina Lauren (Beautiful Boss (Beautiful Bastard, #4.5))
“
On your wedding day you will participate with your spouse in one of the most solemn pledges ever given to humankind—the vow of marriage. This vow, or covenant, is a lifelong commitment, a promise not just between two people but between a man and a woman and their God. It involves three promises: To stay married throughout your lives To love and care for each other To maintain sexual fidelity
”
”
David Boehi (Preparing for Marriage: Discover God's Plan for a Lifetime of Love)
“
You know it’s true.”
“Even if it is,” I cried, “what does it matter? You could sleep with anybody, Wesley. So what if I walk away? So what if I have feelings for you? I was just a screw to you! You would never actually commit to me. You could never commit to anyone, but especially not to Duffy. You don’t even find me attractive.”
“Bullshit,” he growled, his eyes on my face as he moved closer to me again.
He was so close. My back was pressed to the wall, and Wesley stood only inches away. It had only been a week, but it felt like ages since we’d been in this kind of proximity. A shiver ran up my spine as I remembered the way his hands felt on me. The way he’d always made me feel wanted, even if he had called me the Duff. Did he? Did he find me attractive despite the nickname? How? Why?
“Then why would you call me that?” I whispered. “Do you know how much it hurts? Every time you call me Duffy, do you know how shitty it makes me feel?”
Wesley looked surprised. “What?”
“Every time you call me that,” I said, “you’re telling me how little you think of me. How ugly I am. God, how can you possibly find me attractive when you put me down all the time.” I hissed the last words through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t-” His eyes fell, staring at his shoes for a moment. I could tell he felt guilty. “Bianca, I’m sorry.” He looked into my eyes again. “I didn’t mean-” His hand reached out to touch me.
“Don’t,” I snapped, shrugging away from him. I slid to the side and stepped away from the wall. I wasn’t going to be cornered. I wasn’t going to let him have the power here. “Just stop, Wesley.”
It didn’t matter if some part of him found me attractive. That didn’t change things. I was just another girl he’d slept with. One among many.
“I didn’t mean anything to you,” I told him.
“Then why am I here?” he demanded, turning to face me again. “Why the hell am I here, Bianca?
”
”
Kody Keplinger (The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend (Hamilton High, #1))
“
1) The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk. 2) At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage. 3) He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence. 4) He is verbally abusive. 5) He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse. This includes threats to harm physically, to defame, to embarrass, to restrict freedom, to disclose secrets, to cut off support, to abandon, and to commit suicide. 6) He breaks or strikes things in anger. He uses symbolic violence (tearing a wedding photo, marring a face in a photo, etc.). 7) He has battered in prior relationships. 8) He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse affects (memory loss, hostility, cruelty). 9) He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct (“That was the booze talking, not me; I got so drunk I was crazy”). 10) His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses (threats, stalking, assault, battery). 11) There has been more than one incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things). 12) He uses money to control the activities, purchase, and behavior of his wife/partner. 13) He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship; he keeps her on a “tight leash,” requires her to account for her time. 14) He refuses to accept rejection. 15) He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like “together for life;” “always;” “no matter what.” 16) He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them. 17) He minimizes incidents of abuse. 18) He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc. 19) He tries to enlist his wife’s friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship. 20) He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner. 21) He believes others are out to get him. He believes that those around his wife/partner dislike him and encourage her to leave. 22) He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise. 23) He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fiction, or history. He characterizes the violence of others as justified. 24) He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed. 25) He consistently blames others for problems of his own making; he refuses to take responsibility for the results of his actions. 26) He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge. 27) Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons. 28) He uses “male privilege” as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servant, makes all the big decisions, acts like the “master of the house”). 29) He experienced or witnessed violence as a child. 30) His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has made plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for children).
”
”
Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
“
As we flew down the highway I started to think seriously about what I was doing and what would happen. I felt Beau’s hand slide over mine, holding my hands tighter to his chest. It was then I realized that I didn’t care what was going to happen. I didn’t care that we had just left everything I knew or that we’d committed grand theft auto. It didn’t feel wrong to me. I felt like those moments were what life was all about; seizing the ones that make you feel alive and never letting go.
”
”
Jessica Marie Gilliland (A Collection of Souls)
“
We long ago ceased expecting that a President speak his own words. We no longer expect him actually to know the answers to questions put to him. We have, in effect, come to elect newscasters-and by a similar process: not for their probity or for their intelligence, but for their "believability."
"Hope" is a very different exhortation than, for example, save, work, cooperate, sacrifice, think. It means: "Hope for the best, in a process over which you have no control." For, if one had control, if one could endorse a candidate with actual, rational programs, such a candidate demonstrably possessed of character and ability sufficient to offer reasonable chance of carrying these programs out, we might require patience or understanding, but why would we need hope?
We have seen the triumph of advertising's bluntest and most ancient tool, the unquantifiable assertion: "New" in what way? "Improved" how? "Better" than what? "Change" what in particular? "Hope" for what?
These words, seemingly of broad but actually of no particular meaning, are comforting in a way similar to the self-crafted wedding ceremony.
Whether or not a spouse is "respecting the other's space," is a matter of debate; whether or not he is being unfaithful is a matter of discernible fact. The author of his own marriage vows is like the supporter of the subjective assertion. He is voting for codependence. He neither makes nor requires an actual commitment. He'd simply like to "hope.
”
”
David Mamet (The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture)
“
My parents will celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary this year and seem to have just that kind of symbiosis, a marriage in which the balance of giving and taking is dynamic, the roles of giver and receiver shifting from moment to moment. They are committed to an “us” that emerges from the shared strengths and weaknesses of the partners, an “us” that extends beyond the boundaries of coupledom and into their family and community. Some lichens are like that too; their shared lives benefit the whole ecosystem.
”
”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“
So what do we do? Well, if you’re like I used to be, you avoid using anything at all. You aim to keep your options open as long as possible. You avoid commitment.
But while investing deeply in one person, one place, one job, one activity might deny us the breadth of experience we’d like, pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to experience the rewards of depth of experience. There are some experiences that you can have only when you’ve lived in the same place for five years, when you’ve been with the same person for over a decade, when you’ve been working on the same scale or craft for half your lifetime.
/when you’re pursuing a wide breadth of experience, there are diminishing returns to each new adventure, each new person or thing. When you’ve never left your home country, the first country you visit inspires a massive perspective shift, because you have such a narrow experience space to draw on. But when you’ve been to twenty countries, the twenty-first adds little. And when you’ve been to fifty, the fifty-first adds even less. [the same goes for any other life experience]
”
”
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
“
You need only embrace the best-known secret of all: no mystery is closed to an open mind. What came of that mystical wedding, of the world we know and the world we do not know, by that rose of the spirit, committed thus in so great a hope, so great a faith? The Druid is not here to tell. Faith after Faith has withered like a leaf. But still we stand by ancestral altars, still offer the Rose of Desire to the veiled Mystery, still commit this our symbol to the fathomless, the everlasting, the unanswered Deep. —WILLIAM SHARP, from Where the Forest Murmurs
”
”
Raven Grimassi (Grimoire of the Thorn-Blooded Witch: Mastering the Five Arts of Old World Witchery)
“
But is formalizing a bond really such a significant shift, such an emotional event? This may strike many as a silly question, given that so many couples today live together before marriage. About 41 percent of U.S. couples now cohabit before they wed, compared with only 16 percent in 1980. So how much of a change can there be after an official ceremony? A lot, researchers have found. Living together may fully acquaint you with someone’s everyday habits and likes and dislikes—he drops his dirty laundry on the floor or in the hamper; she wants the right or left side of the bed—but it often stops short of complete emotional linkage. It’s like bouncing on the diving board but not plunging in. Moreover, cohabitation seems to have a hangover effect. Data show that couples that have lived together are more likely to be dissatisfied with marriage and to divorce. Why this is so is unclear, but it may be that couples who live together have more general reservations about marriage, more ambivalence about long-term commitment, and are less religious. Religiosity seems to encourage partners to wed and, when problems occur, to struggle to stay married.
”
”
Sue Johnson (Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships (The Dr. Sue Johnson Collection Book 2))
“
COMMITMENT is like rain in Oregon. You wake up every morning and there it is. It cups your house in its liquid hands and fills your gutters to overflowing. It makes green things grow tall and lush, rivers run deep and invincible. On sunny days it seeps up through petals and pine needles, roots and aqueducts.
Other days, it makes mud too thick for walking, and you cannot leave the house. You pace the house, restless and lonely. Then you smell its perfume in a dry, empty room and part the curtains, watch it finger the window with long, slow rivulets.
From 'A Compendium of Miniatures
”
”
Tiffany Lee Brown
“
When you say those wedding vows at eighteen, you are committing yourselves—with all that you are and all that you have—to only each other because you are young and wreathed in glory and take up all the space there is. When you say them at thirty-five, you are signing on for something wider: a whole garden full of people to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, in wheelchairs and sleepwalking and heart attacks, in arrogance and graciousness, stubbornness and forgiveness, stumbling and wisdom, in meanness and in kindness that falls like snow and shines brighter than the Dog Star.
”
”
Marisa de los Santos (The Precious One)
“
I have never wavered from the belief that public service is a worthy profession, that the reward is worth the risk, that the stakes are too great to turn away from the calling. That fork in the road, a quarter of a century ago, when I left a family wedding to embark on the great unknown, turned into the most unexpected journey, the next step in a path my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had cleared for me. It took me to a place that was worth every ounce of effort, commitment, and sacrifice required to get there.
And if I had to choose to do it all over again, I would.
In a heartbeat.
”
”
Huma Abedin (Both/And: A Memoir)
“
Likewise, we “trusted the process,” but the process didn’t save Toy Story 2 either. “Trust the Process” had morphed into “Assume that the Process Will Fix Things for Us.” It gave us solace, which we felt we needed. But it also coaxed us into letting down our guard and, in the end, made us passive. Even worse, it made us sloppy. Once this became clear to me, I began telling people that the phrase was meaningless. I told our staff that it had become a crutch that was distracting us from engaging, in a meaningful way, with our problems. We should trust in people, I told them, not processes. The error we’d made was forgetting that “the process” has no agenda and doesn’t have taste. It is just a tool—a framework. We needed to take more responsibility and ownership of our own work, our need for self-discipline, and our goals. Imagine an old, heavy suitcase whose well-worn handles are hanging by a few threads. The handle is “Trust the Process” or “Story Is King”—a pithy statement that seems, on the face of it, to stand for so much more. The suitcase represents all that has gone into the formation of the phrase: the experience, the deep wisdom, the truths that emerge from struggle. Too often, we grab the handle and—without realizing it—walk off without the suitcase. What’s more, we don’t even think about what we’ve left behind. After all, the handle is so much easier to carry around than the suitcase. Once you’re aware of the suitcase/handle problem, you’ll see it everywhere. People glom onto words and stories that are often just stand-ins for real action and meaning. Advertisers look for words that imply a product’s value and use that as a substitute for value itself. Companies constantly tell us about their commitment to excellence, implying that this means they will make only top-shelf products. Words like quality and excellence are misapplied so relentlessly that they border on meaningless. Managers scour books and magazines looking for greater understanding but settle instead for adopting a new terminology, thinking that using fresh words will bring them closer to their goals. When someone comes up with a phrase that sticks, it becomes a meme, which migrates around even as it disconnects from its original meaning. To ensure quality, then, excellence must be an earned word, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves. It is the responsibility of good leaders to make sure that words remain attached to the meanings and ideals they represent.
”
”
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
“
OKRs have two variants, and it is important to differentiate between them: Commitments are OKRs that we agree will be achieved, and we will be willing to adjust schedules and resources to ensure that they are delivered. The expected score for a committed OKR is 1.0; a score of less than 1.0 requires explanation for the miss, as it shows errors in planning and/or execution. By contrast, aspirational OKRs express how we’d like the world to look, even though we have no clear idea how to get there and/or the resources necessary to deliver the OKR. Aspirational OKRs have an expected average score of 0.7, with high variance.
”
”
John Doerr (Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs)
“
What about death?” she asked Gérard, who was doing justice to a plate of cheese. “Suppose death is even drearier than life?”
“Who can say,” Gérard retorted, chewing despondently, “whether life is not a punishment we must endure for a crime we committed in another world? Perhaps this is
hell and not what the Church foretells for us after death.”
“It also foretells heaven.”
“Then perhaps we are all fallen angels condemned to a number of years of penance on earth.”
“We can shorten the sentence if we want to.”
“Suicide!” Gérard nodded enthusiastically. “And we shrink from it. Yet it is liberation! If life were fire, we’d know what to do. Jump out of it! The irony—
”
”
Erich Maria Remarque (Heaven Has No Favorites)
“
What about death?” she asked Gérard, who was doing justice to a plate of cheese. “Suppose death is even drearier than life?”
“Who can say,” Gérard retorted, chewing despondently, “whether life is not a punishment we must endure for a crime we committed in another world? Perhaps this is hell and not what the Church foretells for us after death.”
“It also foretells heaven.”
“Then perhaps we are all fallen angels condemned to a number of years of penance on earth.”
“We can shorten the sentence if we want to.”
“Suicide!” Gérard nodded enthusiastically. “And we shrink from it. Yet it is liberation! If life were fire, we’d know what to do. Jump out of it! The irony—
”
”
Erich Maria Remarque (Heaven Has No Favorites)
“
You’ve heard the expression “total war”; it’s pretty common throughout human history. Every generation or so, some gasbag likes to spout about how his people have declared “total war” against an enemy, meaning that every man, woman, and child within his nation was committing every second of their lives to victory. That is bullshit on two basic levels. First of all, no country or group is ever 100 percent committed to war; it’s just not physically possible. You can have a high percentage, so many people working so hard for so long, but all of the people, all of the time? What about the malingerers, or the conscientious objectors? What about the sick, the injured, the very old, the very young? What about when you’re sleeping, eating, taking a shower, or taking a dump? Is that a “dump for victory”? That’s the first reason total war is impossible for humans. The second is that all nations have their limits. There might be individuals within that group who are willing to sacrifice their lives; it might even be a relatively high number for the population, but that population as a whole will eventually reach its maximum emotional and physiological breaking point. The Japanese reached theirs with a couple of American atomic bombs. The Vietnamese might have reached theirs if we’d dropped a couple more, 2 but, thank all holy Christ, our will broke before it came to that. That is the nature of human warfare, two sides trying to push the other past its limit of endurance, and no matter how much we like to talk about total war, that limit is always there…unless you’re the living dead.
For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth. That’s the kind of enemy that was waiting for us beyond the Rockies. That’s the kind of war we had to fight.
”
”
Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
“
As a trumpet joined the organ in Jeremiah Clark's triumphant march, John was glad Pamela had chosen the piece over the more traditional "Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin. Even though he had familiarity with the music because Mrs. Norton had played the piece by Wagner at every wedding he'd attended.
The music sent goosebumps down John's arms, bringing him into stark awareness of the sanctity of this ceremony, the weight of the commitment he was about to make, the new life journey he and Pamela were about to embark upon... together.
Goosebumps shivered over his skin, and his legs trembled. He didn't chide himself for the unmanly reactions, just took some deep breaths to steady himself.
”
”
Debra Holland (Beneath Montana's Sky (Mail-Order Brides of the West, #0.5; Montana Sky, #0.5))
“
1. Choose to love each other even in those moments when you struggle to like each other. Love is a commitment, not a feeling. 2. Always answer the phone when your husband/wife is calling and, when possible, try to keep your phone off when you’re together with your spouse. 3. Make time together a priority. Budget for a consistent date night. Time is the currency of relationships, so consistently invest time in your marriage. 4. Surround yourself with friends who will strengthen your marriage, and remove yourself from people who may tempt you to compromise your character. 5. Make laughter the soundtrack of your marriage. Share moments of joy, and even in the hard times find reasons to laugh. 6. In every argument, remember that there won’t be a winner and a loser. You are partners in everything, so you’ll either win together or lose together. Work together to find a solution. 7. Remember that a strong marriage rarely has two strong people at the same time. It’s usually a husband and wife taking turns being strong for each other in the moments when the other feels weak. 8. Prioritize what happens in the bedroom. It takes more than sex to build a strong marriage, but it’s nearly impossible to build a strong marriage without it. 9. Remember that marriage isn’t 50–50; divorce is 50–50. Marriage has to be 100–100. It’s not splitting everything in half but both partners giving everything they’ve got. 10. Give your best to each other, not your leftovers after you’ve given your best to everyone else. 11. Learn from other people, but don’t feel the need to compare your life or your marriage to anyone else’s. God’s plan for your life is masterfully unique. 12. Don’t put your marriage on hold while you’re raising your kids, or else you’ll end up with an empty nest and an empty marriage. 13. Never keep secrets from each other. Secrecy is the enemy of intimacy. 14. Never lie to each other. Lies break trust, and trust is the foundation of a strong marriage. 15. When you’ve made a mistake, admit it and humbly seek forgiveness. You should be quick to say, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” 16. When your husband/wife breaks your trust, give them your forgiveness instantly, which will promote healing and create the opportunity for trust to be rebuilt. You should be quick to say, “I love you. I forgive you. Let’s move forward.” 17. Be patient with each other. Your spouse is always more important than your schedule. 18. Model the kind of marriage that will make your sons want to grow up to be good husbands and your daughters want to grow up to be good wives. 19. Be your spouse’s biggest encourager, not his/her biggest critic. Be the one who wipes away your spouse’s tears, not the one who causes them. 20. Never talk badly about your spouse to other people or vent about them online. Protect your spouse at all times and in all places. 21. Always wear your wedding ring. It will remind you that you’re always connected to your spouse, and it will remind the rest of the world that you’re off limits. 22. Connect with a community of faith. A good church can make a world of difference in your marriage and family. 23. Pray together. Every marriage is stronger with God in the middle of it. 24. When you have to choose between saying nothing or saying something mean to your spouse, say nothing every time. 25. Never consider divorce as an option. Remember that a perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other. FINAL
”
”
Dave Willis (The Seven Laws of Love: Essential Principles for Building Stronger Relationships)
“
Beauty exists everywhere in the world. Love resides in all of us. That's the point. I only...I only want to deepen that. Show that there can be - that there should be - substance in it all. Of course a bride on her wedding day is beautiful, but that radiance doesn't diminish in old age, when she's too tired to keep up with whatever ridiculous fashions the shops and salons put out. I know Arina smiles upon an old couple walking down the road together, hand in hand, firm in their commitment to one another. A wilting flower holds just as much splendor as one on the cusp of opening. People are so quick to idolize the fresh and the new. They fetishize it." He rubbed at his forehead, his eyes bright with fervor. "Why should we celebrate one without the other?
”
”
Erin A. Craig (House of Roots and Ruin (Sisters of the Salt, #2))
“
The Proposal The diamond industry has pulled a fast one over on us. It has convinced us that there is no way to make public a lifetime commitment to another person without a very large, sparkly rock on a very slim band. This is, of course, nonsense. Often wedding books have engagement chapters that read like diamond-buying guides. But the truth is, the way to get engaged is for the two of you to decide that you want to get married. So the next time someone tries to imply that you are not engaged because you don’t have a dramatic enough engagement story or a ring, firmly say, “You know, I like to think of my partner as my rock,” and slowly raise your eyebrow. The modern wedding industry—along with a fair share of romantic comedies—has set a pretty high bar for proposals. We think they need to be elaborate and surprising. But they don’t. A proposal should be: • A decision to get married • Romantic (because you decide to spend the rest of your lives together, not necessarily because of its elaborate nature) • Possibly mutual • Possibly discussed in advance • Possibly instigated by you • Not used to judge the state of your relationship • An event that may be followed by the not-at-all-romantic kind of sobbing, because you realize your life is changing forever It’s exciting to decide to get married. And scary. But the moment of proposal is just that: a moment. It moves you to the next step of the process; it’s not the be-all, end-all. So maybe you have a fancy candlelight dinner followed by parachutists delivering you a pear-shaped, seven-carat diamond. Or maybe you decide to get married one Sunday morning over the newspaper and a cup of coffee. Either way is fine. The point is that you decided to spend your life with someone you love.
”
”
Meg Keene (A Practical Wedding: Creative Ideas for Planning a Beautiful, Affordable, and Meaningful Celebration)
“
We must begin with the discipline of commitment. I have grown tougher with the years in my demands on couples who want me to perform their wedding ceremonies. I tell them that wedding vows are a volitional commitment to love despite how one feels. I explain that it is rubbish to think one can break one’s vows because one does not “feel” in love. I point out that the Scriptures call us to “put on love” (Colossians 3:14) — and despite the canard about such love being hypocritical, it is never hypocrisy to put on a Christian grace. I tell them that if there is the tiniest thought in the back of their minds that they can get out of the marriage if the other person is not all they expected, I will not perform the ceremony. The truth is, marriages which depend on being “in love” fall apart. Those which look back to the wild promises they vowed in the marriage ceremony are the ones who make it. There is no substitute for covenant plus commitment.
”
”
R. Kent Hughes (Disciplines of a Godly Man)
“
Sometimes we posit a scenario in which we were both young when we met, and we imagine that we would have had kids, if only because I would have wanted them. And we would have raised them with all our best efforts and unflagging commitment. But we also would have become different people, made different choices, and had a different relationship with each other; more distant and harried, more responsible, more grown-up. Instead, we have this life, and we are these people. We get to go to bed every night together, alone, and wake up together, alone. Our shared passions thrill and satisfy us, and our abundant freedoms—to daydream; to cook exactly the food we want when we want it; to drink wine and watch a movie without worrying about who’s not yet asleep upstairs; to pick up and go anywhere we want, anytime; to do our work uninterrupted; to shape our own days to our own liking; and to stay connected to each other without feeling fractured—are not things we’d choose to give up for anyone, ever.
”
”
Kate Christensen (Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids)
“
God, had it really been that long? It had. Nineteen years since Georgie stumbled across Seth in the Spoon offices, seventeen years since she first noticed Neal, fourteen since she married him, standing beside a row of lilac trees in his parents' back yard. Georgie never thought she'd be old enough to talk about life in big, decade-long chunks like this. It's not that she'd thought she was going to die before now, she'd just never imagined it would feel this way, the heaviness of the proportions. Twenty years with the same dream, seventeen with the same man. Pretty soon she'd have been with Neal longer than she'd been without him. She'd know herself as his wife better than she'd ever known herself as anyone else. It felt like too much, not too much have, just too much to contemplate. Commitments like boulders that were too heavy to carry. Fourteen years since their wedding, fifteen years since Neal tried to drive away from her, fifteen since he drove back. Seventeen since she first saw him, saw something in him that she couldn't look away from.
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Landline)
“
Happiness is not a choice, or we’d all be happy. Let’s stop putting unnecessary pressure on ourselves to be happy all the time, and to pretend we can choose to be happy whenever we want. That’s not how life works. Sure, we can make choices that reflect a commitment to our well-being, and the more of these choices we make, the more likely we are to find ourselves feeling good more often. Healthy choices are within our power, and are important. But we can’t choose happiness, and we just set ourselves up for failure by believing we can. Life is more than happiness, anyway. It’s okay to feel all the things we feel. It’s human. There’s no shame in wanting to be happy, of course. We all want to be happy. But rather than try to choose happiness, maybe we can choose to being kinder and more loving. That we can do. We can work hard to take better care of ourselves, and better care of each other.
If we do these things, and we remember that we are all connected, all brothers and sisters, all worthy of love, maybe then happiness will choose us a little more often.
”
”
Scott Stabile
“
We wrote our own vows; I take them to heart even today:
I give you my heart, soul, and everlasting love.
I promise to be there during both laughter and tears and to protect you in the days to come.
I will be faithful and truthful, whether near or far, and will never give you cause for doubt.
I will embrace your happiness and hold you when you are sad.
I will be your biggest supporter and your constant friend.
I will remind you of who you are when you forget.
I will consider your happiness with every action.
I will celebrate your soul and work to enrich your life as you enrich mine.
Most of all, I will love you and show my love all the days of my life.
Instead of traditional wedding music, we chose Enya’s version of “How Can I Keep from Singing.” The words of the song talk of a hymn that can always be heard, no matter how dark the night or how difficult the day. The song speaks of faith and endurance, and through it all, music. It seemed to perfectly capture our love and commitment to each other. The words and tune-hypnotic and soaring-would come to me at various parts of my life. I gave birth to it. I hear it in my head today.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
Ultimately, the United States is prepared to intervene with its own forces to defend the regime against internal attack. This was made abundantly clear in 1981, when President Reagan declared that the United States would not allow an insurgent movement to overthrow the Saudi monarch, as had occurred in Iran two years earlier. “I will not permit [Saudi Arabia] to be an Iran,” he told reporters at the White House.67 Direct American involvement in a civil war is, no doubt, the last thing that Washington would like to see happen. To prevent this, great emphasis is being placed on intelligence activities and the disruption of antigovernment organizations. But President Reagan’s 1981 statement provides an unambiguous indication of America’s determination to protect the Saudi monarchy at all costs. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that this commitment has in any way been diluted since Reagan’s time; if anything, the United States is even more closely wedded to the Saudi regime now than it was in 1981. And while it is impossible to predict the exact nature of the U.S. response to any particular threat to the regime, it is likely to be swift, muscular, and lethal.
”
”
Michael T. Klare (Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict)
“
I jumped then. It seemed I heard a child laugh. My imagination, of course. And then, when I should have known better, I headed for the closet and the high and narrow door at the very back end and the steep and narrow dark stairs. A million times I’d ascended these stairs. A million times in the dark, without a candle, or a flashlight. Up into the dark, eerie, gigantic attic, and only when I was there did I feel around for the place where Chris and I had hidden our candles and matches.
Still there. Time did stand still in this place. We’d had several candle holders, all of pewter with small handles to grasp. Holders we’d found in an old trunk along with boxes and boxes of short, stubby, clumsily made candles. We’d always presumed them to be homemade candles, for they had smelled so rank and old when they burned.
My breath caught! Oh! It was the same! The paper flowers still dangled down, mobiles to sway in the drafts, and the giant flowers were still on the walls. Only all the colors had faded to indistinct gray—ghost flowers. The sparkling gem centers we’d glued on had loosened, and now only a few daisies had sequins, or gleaming stones, for centers. Carrie’s purple worm was there only now he too was a nothing color. Cory’s epileptic snail didn’t appear a bright, lopsided beach ball now, it was more a tepid, half-rotten squashy orange. The BEWARE signs Chris and I had painted in red were still on the walls, and the swings still dangled down from the attic rafters. Over near the record player was the barre Chris had fashioned, then nailed to the wall so I could practice my ballet positions. Even my outgrown costumes hung limply from nails, dozens of them with matching leotards and worn out pointe shoes, all faded and dusty, rotten smelling.
As in an unhappy dream I was committed to, I drifted aimlessly toward the distant schoolroom, with the candelight flickering. Ghosts were unsettled, memories and specters followed me as things began to wake up, yawn and whisper. No, I told myself, it was only the floating panels of my long chiffon wings . . . that was all. The spotted rocking-horse loomed up, scary and threatening, and my hand rose to my throat as I held back a scream. The rusty red wagon seemed to move by unseen hands pushing it, so my eyes took flight to the blackboard where I’d printed my enigmatic farewell message to those who came in the future. How was I to know it would be me?
We lived in the attic,
Christopher, Cory, Carrie and me—
Now there are only three.
Behind the small desk that had been Cory’s I scrunched down, and tried to fit my legs under. I wanted to put myself into a deep reverie that would call up Cory’s spirit that would tell me where he lay.
”
”
V.C. Andrews (Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger, #2))
“
Missy
When I think of generations, I think about the legacy and influence the people in each generation pass to the next one. Jase and I started dating when we were very young and had the opportunity to basically grow into adulthood together. Because of this, we have shared many “firsts” together. When our dating relationship started to become more serious, we made a commitment to stay sexually pure until our wedding night. Each of us had this goal before we started dating, but when we fell in love, that goal became one for each other as well. I knew that God expected this purity from His children, and I trusted God enough, even at my young age, to understand that His way was the best way. Jase and I reached our goal after dating two years, ten months, and two days. But who’s counting? We were! Whew! We made it!
That night was the first sexual experience either of us had ever had, and we have only known each other since then. Being pure and faithful to each other and to God is a top priority for us to this day. Our decision to remain pure is something we have not been silent to our children about. The older we get and the older our children get the more we realize how hard accomplishing that was and still is for kids today. We built our relationship on a spiritual foundation many years ago, and we feel a great responsibility to pass that spiritual foundation on to our children.
”
”
Missy Robertson (The Women of Duck Commander: Surprising Insights from the Women Behind the Beards About What Makes This Family Work)
“
Once the wedding gift was out of the way, Marlboro Man and I had to check one last item off our list before we entered the Wedding Zone: premarital counseling. It was a requirement of the Episcopal church, these one-hour sessions with the semiretired interim priest who led our church at the time. Logically, I understood the reasoning behind the practice of premarital discussions with a man of the cloth. Before a church sanctions a marriage union, it wants to ensure the couple grasps the significance and gravity of the (hopefully) eternal commitment they’re making. It wants to give the couple things to think about, ideas to ponder, matters to get straight. It wants to make sure it’s not sending two young lovers into what could be an avoidable domestic catastrophe. Logically, I grasped the concept.
Practically, however, it was an uncomfortable hour of sitting across from a sweet minister who meant well and asked the right questions, but who had clearly run out of juice in the zest-for-marriage department. It was emotional drudgery for me; not only did I have to rethink obvious things I’d already thought about a thousand times, but I also had to watch Marlboro Man, a quiet, shy country boy, assimilate and answer questions put to him by a minister he’d only recently met on the subject of love, romance, and commitment, no less. Though he was polite and reverent, I felt for him. These were things cowboys rarely talked about with a third party.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
Mom,” Vaughn said. “I’m sure Sidney doesn’t want to be interrogated about her personal life.”
Deep down, Sidney knew that Vaughn—who’d obviously deduced that she’d been burned in the past—was only trying to be polite. But that was the problem, she didn’t want him to be polite, as if she needed to be shielded from such questions. That wasn’t any better than the damn “Poor Sidney” head-tilt.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind answering.” She turned to Kathleen. “I was seeing someone in New York, but that relationship ended shortly before I moved to Chicago.”
“So now that you’re single again, what kind of man are you looking for? Vaughn?” Kathleen pointed. “Could you pass the creamer?”
He did so, then turned to look once again at Sidney. His lips curved at the corners, the barest hint of a smile. He was daring her, she knew, waiting for her to back away from his mother’s questions.
She never had been very good at resisting his dares.
“Actually, I have a list of things I’m looking for.” Sidney took a sip of her coffee.
Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “You have a list?”
“Yep.”
“Of course you do.”
Isabelle looked over, surprised. “You never told me about this.”
“What kind of list?” Kathleen asked interestedly.
“It’s a test, really,” Sidney said. “A list of characteristics that indicate whether a man is ready for a serious relationship. It helps weed out the commitment-phobic guys, the womanizers, and any other bad apples, so a woman can focus on the candidates with more long-term potential.”
Vaughn rolled his eyes. “And now I’ve heard it all.”
“Where did you find this list?” Simon asked. “Is this something all women know about?”
“Why? Worried you won’t pass muster?” Isabelle winked at him.
“I did some research,” Sidney said. “Pulled it together after reading several articles online.”
“Lists, tests, research, online dating, speed dating—I can’t keep up with all these things you kids are doing,” Adam said, from the head of the table. “Whatever happened to the days when you’d see a girl at a restaurant or a coffee shop and just walk over and say hello?”
Vaughn turned to Sidney, his smile devilish. “Yes, whatever happened to those days, Sidney?”
She threw him a look. Don’t be cute. “You know what they say—it’s a jungle out there. Nowadays a woman has to make quick decisions about whether a man is up to par.” She shook her head mock reluctantly. “Sadly, some guys just won’t make the cut.”
“But all it takes is one,” Isabelle said, with a loving smile at her fiancé.
Simon slid his hand across the table, covering hers affectionately. “The right one.”
Until he nails his personal trainer. Sidney took another sip of her coffee, holding back the cynical comment. She didn’t want to spoil Isabelle and Simon’s idyllic all-you-need-is-love glow.
Vaughn cocked his head, looking at the happy couple. “Aw, aren’t you two just so . . . cheesy.”
Kathleen shushed him. “Don’t tease your brother.”
“What? Any moment, I’m expecting birds and little woodland animals to come in here and start singing songs about true love, they’re so adorable.”
Sidney laughed out loud. Quickly, she bit her lip to cover.
”
”
Julie James (It Happened One Wedding (FBI/US Attorney, #5))
“
Why make thy laws against an unhappy corse? CRE. The determination of Eteocles this, not mine. ANT. It is absurd, and thou a fool to enforce it. CRE. How so? Is it not just to execute injunctions? ANT. No, if they are base, at least, and spoken with ill intent. CRE. What! will he not with justice be given to the dogs? ANT. No, for thus do ye not demand of him lawful justice. CRE. We do; since he was the enemy of the state, who least ought to be an enemy. ANT. Hath he not paid then his life to fortune? CRE. And in his burial too let him now satisfy vengeance. ANT. What outrage having committed, if he came after his share of the kingdom? CRE. This man, that you may know once for all, shall be unburied. ANT. I will bury him; even though the city forbid it. CRE. Thyself then wilt thou at the same time bury near the corse. ANT. But that is a glorious thing, for two friends to lie near. CRE. Lay hold of her, and bear her to the house. ANT. By no means—for I will not let go this body. CRE. The God has decreed it, O virgin, not as thou wilt. ANT. And this too is decreed—that the dead be not insulted. CRE. Around him none shall place the moist dust. ANT. Nay, by his mother here Jocasta, I entreat thee, Creon. CRE. Thou laborest in vain, for thou canst not obtain this. ANT. But suffer thou me at any rate to bathe the body. CRE. This would be one of the things forbidden by the state. ANT. But let me put bandages round his cruel wounds. CRE. In no way shalt thou show respect to this corse. ANT. Oh most dear, but I will at least kiss thy lips. CRE. Thou shalt not prepare calamity against thy wedding by thy lamentations.
”
”
Euripides (The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I.)
“
Missy and I were married on August 10, 1990. To say our marriage got off to a rocky start would be an understatement. My brothers and closest friends took me frog-hunting the night before my wedding for my bachelor party. As we were searching for frogs, my oldest brother, Alan, gave me a lot of advice on marriage in general as we motored along the bayou. The main thing he reminded me of is that God is the architect of marriage. Having a great relationship with our Creator is the best thing you can do for your marriage relationship. Alan gave me an illustration of a triangle with the husband and wife on the bottom corners and God at the top corner. His point was that as each person moves closer to God, they also move closer to each other. I never forgot that and he was right. I was mainly the motorman that night and was filled with anxiety and anticipation of the wedding. As we moved along, we saw two big frogs mating on the riverbank.
“Whoa, there you go!” Al shouted.
It kind of broke the ice for a conversation about intimacy and sex. Missy and I had not seen each other much in the previous couple of months because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Many times we had to remind each other of our commitment to stay pure and had had many prayers together. We were not perfect, but one of us would always stop things from getting too heated. Eventually, we decided to have only a long-distance relationship via telephone and our face-to-face encounters became limited to church and public gatherings. As our wedding was approaching, Missy and I were both a little bit nervous about having sex for the first time. I think that’s the way it is when you’re both virgins. We were both excited because we’d decided to save ourselves for marriage and our big night was finally here!
”
”
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl)
“
Are you ready, children?” Father Mikhail walked through the church. “Did I keep you waiting?” He took his place in front of them at the altar. The jeweler and Sofia stood nearby. Tatiana thought they might have already finished that bottle of vodka. Father Mikhail smiled. “Your birthday today,” he said to Tatiana. “Nice birthday present for you, no?” She pressed into Alexander. “Sometimes I feel that my powers are limited by the absence of God in the lives of men during these trying times,” Father Mikhail began. “But God is still present in my church, and I can see He is present in you. I am very glad you came to me, children. Your union is meant by God for your mutual joy, for the help and comfort you give one another in prosperity and adversity and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children. I want to send you righteously on your way through life. Are you ready to commit yourselves to each other?” “We are,” they said. “The bond and the covenant of marriage was established by God in creation. Christ himself adorned this manner of life by his first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. A marriage is a symbol of the mystery of the union between Christ and His Church. Do you understand that those whom God has joined together, no man can put asunder?” “We do,” they said. “Do you have the rings?” “We do.” Father Mikhail continued. “Most gracious God,” he said, holding the cross above their heads, “look with favor upon this man and this woman living in a world for which Your Son gave His life. Make their life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world. Defend this man and this woman from every enemy. Lead them into peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle upon their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their friendship, in their sleeping and in their waking, in their joys and their sorrows, in their life and in their death.” Tears trickled down Tatiana’s face. She hoped Alexander wouldn’t notice. Father Mikhail certainly had. Turning to Tatiana and taking her hands, Alexander smiled, beaming at her unrestrained happiness. Outside, on the steps of the church, he lifted her off the ground and swung her around as they kissed ecstatically. The jeweler and Sofia clapped apathetically, already down the steps and on the street. “Don’t hug her so tight. You’ll squeeze that child right out of her,” said Sofia to Alexander as she turned around and lifted her clunky camera. “Oh, wait. Hold on. Let me take a picture of the newlyweds.” She clicked once. Twice. “Come to me next week. Maybe I’ll have some paper by then to develop them.” She waved. “So you still think the registry office judge should have married us?” Alexander grinned. “He with his ‘of sound mind’ philosophy on marriage?” Tatiana shook her head. “You were so right. This was perfect. How did you know this all along?” “Because you and I were brought together by God,” Alexander replied. “This was our way of thanking Him.” Tatiana chuckled. “Do you know it took us less time to get married than to make love the first time?” “Much less,” Alexander said, swinging her around in the air. “Besides, getting married is the easy part. Just like making love. It was the getting you to make love to me that was hard. It was the getting you to marry me…” “I’m sorry. I was so nervous.” “I know,” he said. He still hadn’t put her down. “I thought the chances were twenty-eighty you were actually going to go through with it.” “Twenty against?” “Twenty for.” “Got to have a little more faith, my husband,” said Tatiana, kissing his lips.
”
”
Paullina Simons (The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman, #1))
“
No one acts in a void. We all take cues from cultural norms, shaped by the law. For the law affects our ideas of what is reasonable and appropriate. It does so by what it prohibits--you might think less of drinking if it were banned, or more of marijuana use if it were allowed--but also by what it approves. . . .
Revisionists agree that it matters what California or the United States calls a marriage, because this affects how Californians or Americans come to think of marriage.
Prominent Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz, no friend of the conjugal view, agrees: "[O]ne thing can be said with certainty [about recent changes in marriage law]. They will not be confined to adding new options to the familiar heterosexual monogamous family. They will change the character of that family. If these changes take root in our culture then the familiar marriage relations will disappear. They will not disappear suddenly. Rather they will be transformed into a somewhat different social form, which responds to the fact that it is one of several forms of bonding, and that bonding itself is much more easily and commonly dissoluble. All these factors are already working their way into the constitutive conventions which determine what is appropriate and expected within a conventional marriage and transforming its significance."
Redefining civil marriage would change its meaning for everyone. Legally wedded opposite-sex unions would increasingly be defined by what they had in common with same-sex relationships.
This wouldn't just shift opinion polls and tax burdens. Marriage, the human good, would be harder to achieve. For you can realize marriage only by choosing it, for which you need at least a rough, intuitive idea of what it really is. By warping people's view of marriage, revisionist policy would make them less able to realize this basic way of thriving--much as a man confused about what friendship requires will have trouble being a friend. . . .
Redefining marriage will also harm the material interests of couples and children. As more people absorb the new law's lesson that marriage is fundamentally about emotions, marriages will increasingly take on emotion's tyrannical inconstancy. Because there is no reason that emotional unions--any more than the emotions that define them, or friendships generally--should be permanent or limited to two, these norms of marriage would make less sense. People would thus feel less bound to live by them whenever they simply preferred to live otherwise. . . .
As we document below, even leading revisionists now argue that if sexual complementarity is optional, so are permanence and exclusivity. This is not because the slope from same-sex unions to expressly temporary and polyamorous ones is slippery, but because most revisionist arguments level the ground between them: If marriage is primarily about emotional union, why privilege two-person unions, or permanently committed ones? What is it about emotional union, valuable as it can be, that requires these limits?
As these norms weaken, so will the emotional and material security that marriage gives spouses. Because children fare best on most indicators of health and well-being when reared by their wedded biological parents, the same erosion of marital norms would adversely affect children's health, education, and general formation. The poorest and most vulnerable among us would likely be hit the hardest. And the state would balloon: to adjudicate breakup and custody issues, to meet the needs of spouses and children affected by divorce, and to contain and feebly correct the challenges these children face.
”
”
Sherif Girgis
“
We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit. And if our bosses proved mean, why then we’d evoke their whole and genuine meanness afterward over vodka cranberries and small batch bourbons. And if our drinking companions proved to be sublime then we would stagger home at dawn over the Old City cobblestones, into hot showers and clean shirts, and press onward until dusk fell again. For the rest of the world, it seemed to us, had somewhat hastily concluded that it was the chief end of man to thank God it was Friday and pray that Netflix would never forsake them.
Still we lived frantically, like hummingbirds; though our HR departments told us that our commitments were valuable and our feedback was appreciated, our raises would be held back another year. Like gnats we pestered Management— who didn’t know how to use the Internet, whose only use for us was to set up Facebook accounts so they could spy on their children, or to sync their iPhones to their Outlooks, or to explain what tweets were and more importantly, why— which even we didn’t know. Retire! we wanted to shout. We ha Get out of the way with your big thumbs and your senior moments and your nostalgia for 1976! We hated them; we wanted them to love us. We wanted to be them; we wanted to never, ever become them.
Complexity, complexity, complexity! We said let our affairs be endless and convoluted; let our bank accounts be overdrawn and our benefits be reduced. Take our Social Security contributions and let it go bankrupt. We’d been bankrupt since we’d left home: we’d secure our own society. Retirement was an afterlife we didn’t believe in and that we expected yesterday. Instead of three meals a day, we’d drink coffee for breakfast and scavenge from empty conference rooms for lunch. We had plans for dinner. We’d go out and buy gummy pad thai and throat-scorching chicken vindaloo and bento boxes in chintzy, dark restaurants that were always about to go out of business. Those who were a little flush would cover those who were a little short, and we would promise them coffees in repayment. We still owed someone for a movie ticket last summer; they hadn’t forgotten. Complexity, complexity.
In holiday seasons we gave each other spider plants in badly decoupaged pots and scarves we’d just learned how to knit and cuff links purchased with employee discounts. We followed the instructions on food and wine Web sites, but our soufflés sank and our baked bries burned and our basil ice creams froze solid. We called our mothers to get recipes for old favorites, but they never came out the same. We missed our families; we were sad to be rid of them.
Why shouldn’t we live with such hurry and waste of life? We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to decrypt our neighbors’ Wi-Fi passwords and to never turn on the air-conditioning. We vowed to fall in love: headboard-clutching, desperate-texting, hearts-in-esophagi love. On the subways and at the park and on our fire escapes and in the break rooms, we turned pages, resolved to get to the ends of whatever we were reading. A couple of minutes were the day’s most valuable commodity. If only we could make more time, more money, more patience; have better sex, better coffee, boots that didn’t leak, umbrellas that didn’t involute at the slightest gust of wind. We were determined to make stupid bets. We were determined to be promoted or else to set the building on fire on our way out. We were determined to be out of our minds.
”
”
Kristopher Jansma (Why We Came to the City)
“
Early on it is clear that Addie has a rebellious streak, joining the library group and running away to Rockport Lodge. Is Addie right to disobey her parents? Where does she get her courage? 2. Addie’s mother refuses to see Celia’s death as anything but an accident, and Addie comments that “whenever I heard my mother’s version of what happened, I felt sick to my stomach.” Did Celia commit suicide? How might the guilt that Addie feels differ from the guilt her mother feels? 3. When Addie tries on pants for the first time, she feels emotionally as well as physically liberated, and confesses that she would like to go to college (page 108). How does the social significance of clothing and hairstyle differ for Addie, Gussie, and Filomena in the book? 4. Diamant fills her narrative with a number of historical events and figures, from the psychological effects of World War I and the pandemic outbreak of influenza in 1918 to child labor laws to the cultural impact of Betty Friedan. How do real-life people and events affect how we read Addie’s fictional story? 5. Gussie is one of the most forward-thinking characters in the novel; however, despite her law degree she has trouble finding a job as an attorney because “no one would hire a lady lawyer.” What other limitations do Addie and her friends face in the workforce? What limitations do women and minorities face today? 6. After distancing herself from Ernie when he suffers a nervous episode brought on by combat stress, Addie sees a community of war veterans come forward to assist him (page 155). What does the remorse that Addie later feels suggest about the challenges American soldiers face as they reintegrate into society? Do you think soldiers today face similar challenges? 7. Addie notices that the Rockport locals seem related to one another, and the cook Mrs. Morse confides in her sister that, although she is usually suspicious of immigrant boarders, “some of them are nicer than Americans.” How does tolerance of the immigrant population vary between city and town in the novel? For whom might Mrs. Morse reserve the term Americans? 8. Addie is initially drawn to Tessa Thorndike because she is a Boston Brahmin who isn’t afraid to poke fun at her own class on the women’s page of the newspaper. What strengths and weaknesses does Tessa’s character represent for educated women of the time? How does Addie’s description of Tessa bring her reliability into question? 9. Addie’s parents frequently admonish her for being ungrateful, but Addie feels she has earned her freedom to move into a boardinghouse when her parents move to Roxbury, in part because she contributed to the family income (page 185). How does the Baum family’s move to Roxbury show the ways Betty and Addie think differently from their parents about household roles? Why does their father take such offense at Herman Levine’s offer to house the family? 10. The last meaningful conversation between Addie and her mother turns out to be an apology her mother meant for Celia, and for a moment during her mother’s funeral Addie thinks, “She won’t be able to make me feel like there’s something wrong with me anymore.” Does Addie find any closure from her mother’s death? 11. Filomena draws a distinction between love and marriage when she spends time catching up with Addie before her wedding, but Addie disagrees with the assertion that “you only get one great love in a lifetime.” In what ways do the different romantic experiences of each woman inform the ideas each has about love? 12. Filomena and Addie share a deep friendship. Addie tells Ada that “sometimes friends grow apart. . . . But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how far apart you live or how little you talk—it’s still there.” What qualities do you think friends must share in order to have that kind of connection? Discuss your relationship with a best friend. Enhance
”
”
Anita Diamant (The Boston Girl)
“
We’d just taken Pixar public, and I was happy being CEO there. I never knew of anyone who served as CEO of two public companies, even temporarily, and I wasn’t even sure it was legal. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was enjoying spending more time with my family. I was torn. I knew Apple was a mess, so I wondered: Do I want to give up this nice lifestyle that I have? What are all the Pixar shareholders going to think? I talked to people I respected. I finally called Andy Grove at about eight one Saturday morning—too early. I gave him the pros and the cons, and in the middle he stopped me and said, “Steve, I don’t give a shit about Apple.” I was stunned. It was then I realized that I do give a shit about Apple—I started it and it is a good thing to have in the world. That was when I decided to go back on a temporary basis to help them hire a CEO. The claim that he was enjoying spending more time with his family was not convincing. He was never destined to win a Father of the Year trophy, even when he had spare time on his hands. He was getting better at paying heed to his children, especially Reed, but his primary focus was on his work. He was frequently aloof from his two younger daughters, estranged again from Lisa, and often prickly as a husband. So what was the real reason for his hesitancy in taking over at Apple? For all of his willfulness and insatiable desire to control things, Jobs was indecisive and reticent when he felt unsure about something. He craved perfection, and he was not always good at figuring out how to settle for something less. He did not like to wrestle with complexity or make accommodations. This was true in products, design, and furnishings for the house. It was also true when it came to personal commitments. If he knew for sure a course of action was right, he was unstoppable. But if he had doubts, he sometimes withdrew, preferring not to think about things that did not perfectly suit him. As happened when Amelio had asked him what role he wanted to play, Jobs would go silent and ignore situations that made him uncomfortable.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
I couldn’t feel guilty any longer for misdeeds committed by another incarnation. I wouldn’t. “I’m sorry for your past, Aric. I wish it had been different. I wish I had been. But I refuse to keep paying for what I did in past games.”“Do you, then?”
“In our first meeting, you skewered me with your sword. In other words: you started it. You didn’t ask me to marry you, just ordered it. I played the hand I was dealt.”
“I take your point.”
“Let’s begin anew, Empress.” (He expects her to ‘forgive/forget’ for him but not Jack?) “The mortal can’t provide for you like I can. I offer you a home. Defensive, I said, “Jack plans to rebuild Haven House for me.”
Anger flashed across Aric’s face. He schooled his reactions as quickly as he did everything else, leaving his emotions to seethe beneath the surface. “If you desire something, all you have to do is tell me. It will shortly be yours. You’ll see soon enough.” (Bribery for her to favor him?)
What if Aric could straight-up end the game? Blow up the machine?
“Deveaux will never understand you as I do. As only another Arcana can.” “Maybe not. But we have other ties.” I thought of the ribbon he’d kept all this time, the one now in my pocket.
“As do we. We are wed.” (after Aric ordered her to do so.) “I think of you as mine.
“When I recognized that you weren’t over your infatuation with the mortal, I might have been . . . testing you.” He’d tested me the other night as well! “What if I’d surrendered?”
“Testing me doesn’t excuse what you did. Coercion is not cool.” “Then teach me what is! “I don’t think something like that can be taught. It’s part of your makeup, part of who you are.”
“Aric, selfless acts might be beyond you. And even sex with you would come with strings. What if I hadn’t realized you were minus one condom?” The memory stoked my fury. “You were about to trick me—to betray me.”
“You had my entire future mapped out—with me knocked up—and you never mentioned it to me.” (keeping secrets). “It’s been this way between husbands and wives for thousands of years. At the time, I thought if we were so blessed, then all the better.”
Because his concepts about marriages and families were from a different epoch.
”
”
Kresley Cole (Dead of Winter (The Arcana Chronicles, #3))
“
How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/ or connection. We’ll explore those final three elements later, but for now, let’s focus on elevation. To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script. (Breaking the script means to violate expectations about an experience—the next chapter is devoted to the concept.) Moments of elevation need not have all three elements but most have at least two. Boosting sensory appeal is about “turning up the volume” on reality. Things look better or taste better or sound better or feel better than they usually do. Weddings have flowers and food and music and dancing. (And they need not be superexpensive—see the footnote for more.IV) The Popsicle Hotline offers sweet treats delivered on silver trays by white-gloved waiters. The Trial of Human Nature is conducted in a real courtroom. It’s amazing how many times people actually wear different clothes to peak events: graduation robes and wedding dresses and home-team colors. At Hillsdale High, the lawyers wore suits and the witnesses came in costume. A peak means something special is happening; it should look different. To raise the stakes is to add an element of productive pressure: a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, a public commitment. Consider the pregame jitters at a basketball game, or the sweaty-hands thrill of taking the stage at Signing Day, or the pressure of the oral defense at Hillsdale High’s Senior Exhibition. Remember how the teacher Susan Bedford said that, in designing the Trial, she and Greg Jouriles were deliberately trying to “up the ante” for their students. They made their students conduct the Trial in front of a jury that included the principal and varsity quarterback. That’s pressure. One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras. If they take pictures, it must be a special occasion. (Not counting the selfie addict, who thinks his face is a special occasion.) Our instinct to capture a moment says: I want to remember this. That’s a moment of elevation.
”
”
Chip Heath (The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact)
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The wedding rehearsal itself was uneventful until Father Johnson decided it was time to show Marlboro Man and me the proper way to walk to the marriage altar. Evidently, all of Father Johnson’s theological studies and work was destined to culminate in whether or not Marlboro Man and I approached the altar in the perfectly correct and proper way, because he was intent on driving the point home.
“At this point,” Father Johnson instructed, “you’ll start to turn and Ree will take your arm.” He lightly pushed Marlboro Man in the proper direction, and the two of us began walking forward.
“Nope, nope, nope,” Father Johnson said authoritatively. “Come back, come back.”
Marlboro Man’s college friends snickered.
“Oh…what did we do wrong?” I asked Father Johnson humbly. Maybe he’d discovered the truth about the collages.
He showed us again. Marlboro Man was to turn and begin walking, then wait for me briefly. Then, as I took his arm, he was to lead me to the altar.
Wait. Wasn’t that what we just did?
We tried again, and Father Johnson corrected us…again. “Nope, nope, nope,” he said, pulling us both by the arm until we were back in our starting position. Marlboro Man’s friends chuckled. My stomach growled. And Marlboro Man kept quietly restrained, despite the fact that he was being repeatedly corrected by his fiancée’s interim minister for something that arguably wasn’t all that relevant to the commitment we were making to spend the rest of our lives together.
We went through no fewer than seven more takes, and with each redo I began to realize that this was Father Johnson’s final test for us. Forget the collage assignment--that was small potatoes. Whether we could keep our cool and take instruction when a nice steak dinner and drinks awaited us at the country club was Father Johnson’s real decider of whether or not Marlboro Man and I were mature, composed, and levelheaded enough to proceed with the wedding. And while I knew Marlboro Man would grit his teeth and bear it, I wasn’t entirely sure I could.
But I didn’t have to. On the beginning of the eighth run, just after Father Johnson gave us another “Nope. You’re not getting it right, kids…” Mike’s loud voice echoed throughout the wood-and-marble sanctuary.
“Oh, c-c-c-c-come on, Father Johnson!”
The chuckles turned into laughter. And out of the corner of my eye I saw Tony giving Mike a subtle high five.
Thank goodness for Mike. He was hungry. He wanted to get on to the party.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
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HE DO THE POLICE IN DIFFERENT VOICES: Part I
THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
First we had a couple of feelers down at Tom's place,
There was old Tom, boiled to the eyes, blind,
(Don't you remember that time after a dance,
Top hats and all, we and Silk Hat Harry,
And old Tom took us behind, brought out a bottle of fizz,
With old Jane, Tom's wife; and we got Joe to sing
'I'm proud of all the Irish blood that's in me,
'There's not a man can say a word agin me').
Then we had dinner in good form, and a couple of Bengal lights.
When we got into the show, up in Row A,
I tried to put my foot in the drum, and didn't the girl squeal,
She never did take to me, a nice guy - but rough;
The next thing we were out in the street, Oh it was cold!
When will you be good? Blew in to the Opera Exchange,
Sopped up some gin, sat in to the cork game,
Mr. Fay was there, singing 'The Maid of the Mill';
Then we thought we'd breeze along and take a walk.
Then we lost Steve.
('I turned up an hour later down at Myrtle's place.
What d'y' mean, she says, at two o'clock in the morning,
I'm not in business here for guys like you;
We've only had a raid last week, I've been warned twice.
Sergeant, I said, I've kept a decent house for twenty years, she says,
There's three gents from the Buckingham Club upstairs now,
I'm going to retire and live on a farm, she says,
There's no money in it now, what with the damage don,
And the reputation the place gets, on account off of a few bar-flies,
I've kept a clean house for twenty years, she says,
And the gents from the Buckingham Club know they're safe here;
You was well introduced, but this is the last of you.
Get me a woman, I said; you're too drunk, she said,
But she gave me a bed, and a bath, and ham and eggs,
And now you go get a shave, she said; I had a good laugh, couple of laughs (?)
Myrtle was always a good sport'). treated me white.
We'd just gone up the alley, a fly cop came along,
Looking for trouble; committing a nuisance, he said,
You come on to the station. I'm sorry, I said,
It's no use being sorry, he said; let me get my hat, I said.
Well by a stroke of luck who came by but Mr. Donovan.
What's this, officer. You're new on this beat, aint you?
I thought so. You know who I am? Yes, I do,
Said the fresh cop, very peevish. Then let it alone,
These gents are particular friends of mine.
- Wasn't it luck? Then we went to the German Club,
Us We and Mr. Donovan and his friend Joe Leahy, Heinie Gus Krutzsch
Found it shut. I want to get home, said the cabman,
We all go the same way home, said Mr. Donovan,
Cheer up, Trixie and Stella; and put his foot through the window.
The next I know the old cab was hauled up on the avenue,
And the cabman and little Ben Levin the tailor,
The one who read George Meredith,
Were running a hundred yards on a bet,
And Mr. Donovan holding the watch.
So I got out to see the sunrise, and walked home.
* * * *
April is the cruellest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land....
”
”
T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land Facsimile)
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We went to dinner that night and ordered steak and talked our usual dreamy talk, intentionally avoiding the larger, looming subject. When he brought me home, it was late, and the air was so perfect that I was unaware of the temperature. We stood outside my parents’ house, the same place we’d stood two weeks earlier, before the Linguine with Clam Sauce and J’s surprise visit; before the overcooked flank steak and my realization that I was hopelessly in love. The same place I’d almost wiped out on the sidewalk; the same place he’d kissed me for the first time and set my heart afire.
Marlboro Man moved in for the kill. We stood there and kissed as if it was our last chance ever. Then we hugged tightly, burying our faces in each other’s necks.
“What are you trying to do to me?” I asked rhetorically.
He chuckled and touched his forehead to mine. “What do you mean?”
Of course, I wasn’t able to answer.
Marlboro Man took my hand.
Then he took the reins. “So, what about Chicago?”
I hugged him tighter. “Ugh,” I groaned. “I don’t know.”
“Well…when are you going?” He hugged me tighter. “Are you going?”
I hugged him even tighter, wondering how long we could keep this up and continue breathing. “I…I…ugh, I don’t know,” I said. Ms. Eloquence again. “I just don’t know.”
He reached behind my head, cradling it in his hands. “Don’t…,” he whispered in my ear. He wasn’t beating around the bush.
Don’t. What did that mean? How did this work? It was too early for plans, too early for promises. Way too early for a lasting commitment from either of us. Too early for anything but a plaintive, emotional appeal: Don’t. Don’t go. Don’t leave. Don’t let it end. Don’t move to Chicago.
I didn’t know what to say. We’d been together every single day for the past two weeks. I’d fallen completely and unexpectedly in love with a cowboy. I’d ended a long-term relationship. I’d eaten beef. And I’d begun rethinking my months-long plans to move to Chicago. I was a little speechless.
We kissed one more time, and when our lips finally parted, he said, softly, “Good night.”
“Good night,” I answered as I opened the door and went inside.
I walked into my bedroom, eyeing the mound of boxes and suitcases that sat by the door, and plopped down on my bed. Sleep eluded me that night. What if I just postponed my move to Chicago by, say, a month or so? Postponed, not canceled. A month surely wouldn’t hurt, would it? By then, I reasoned, I’d surely have him out of my system; I’d surely have gotten my fill. A month would give me all the time I needed to wrap up this whole silly business.
I laughed out loud. Getting my fill of Marlboro Man? I couldn’t go five minutes after he dropped me off at night before smelling my shirt, searching for more of his scent. How much worse would my affliction be a month from now? Shaking my head in frustration, I stood up, walked to my closet, and began removing more clothes from their hangers. I folded sweaters and jackets and pajamas with one thing pulsating through my mind: no man--least of all some country bumpkin--was going to derail my move to the big city. And as I folded and placed each item in the open cardboard boxes by my door, I tried with all my might to beat back destiny with both hands.
I had no idea how futile my efforts would be.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)