“We are not the same persons this year as last nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”
Anniversaries mark the passage of shared time — years of choosing the same person, the same commitment, day after day. These quotes celebrate that persistence with warmth, humor, and the occasional hard truth about what it takes to stay together.
“Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?”
“We are not the same persons this year as last nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”
“My mother and stepfather were married 43 years, so I have watched a long marriage. I feel like I had a very good role model for that. And, you know, it's just a number.”
“Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.”
“The heart of marriage is memories and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods.”
“Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.”
“The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds - they mature slowly.”
“You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day that these words constitute the principle of your entire life and that with the help of divine grace you will observe these solemn vows that today, before God, you formulate.”
“One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.”
“Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?”
“I've been in love with the same woman for forty-one years. If my wife finds out, she'll kill me.”
“Marriage is the most natural state of man, and... the state in which you will find solid happiness.”
“Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family - a domestic church.”
“Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.”
“Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship.”
“There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.”