At the beginning of a marriage ask yourself whether this woman will be interesting to talk to from now until old age. Everything else in marriage is transitory: most of the time is spent in conversation.
If love exists between two persons, it is blessed. If love does not exist between two persons, then all your laws put together cannot bridge them. Then they exist separate, then they exist apart, then they exist in conflict, then they exist always in war. And they create all kinds of trouble for each other. They are nasty to each other, nagging to each other, possessive of each other, violent, oppressive, dominating, dictatorial.
Come, let's be a comfortable couple and take care of each other! How glad we shall be, that we have somebody we are fond of always, to talk to and sit with.
[The Lord] has indicated that the greatest work we parents can do is performed in our homes, and our homes can be heaven, particularly when our marriages are sealed in the house of God.
But even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognized by the police, there must be degrees in the freedom and sympathy realized, and some principle to guide simple folk in their selection.
Your most vital necessity in this life is that you shall love your wife completely and implicitly and in an entire nakedness of body and spirit.... this that I tell you is my message as far as I've got any.
love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.