Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Wife

My dear, my better half.

How much the wife is dearer than the bride!

The light wife doth make a heavy husband.

Lord of yourself, uncumbered with a wife.

Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.

Should all despair that have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind would hang themselves.

Thy wife is a constitution of virtues: she’s the moon, and thou art the man in the moon.

He who would have fine guests, let him have a fine wife.

He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows.

All other goods by fortune’s hand are given; a wife is the peculiar gift of heaven.

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown.

She is not made to be the admiration of everybody, but the happiness of one.

A happy union with wife and child is like the music of lutes and harps.

A wise man in his house should find a wife gentle and courteous, or no wife at all.

She commandeth her husband, in any equal matter, by constant obeying him.

One can with dignity be wife and widow but once.

Of earth’s goods, the best is a good wife; a bad, the bitterest curse of human life.

He knew whose gentle hand was on the latch, before the door had given her to his eyes.

Wives are young men’s mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men’s nurses.

I have known men of valor cowards to their wives.

Her pleasures are in the happiness of her family.

First get an absolute conquest over thyself, and then thou wilt easily govern thy wife.

Nothing flatters a man so much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

To be man’s tender mate was woman born, and in obeying nature she best serves the purpose of heaven.

An intelligent wife can make her home, in spite of exigencies, pretty much what she pleases.

Her gentle spirit commits itself to yours to be directed, as from her lord, her governor, her king.

A woman in a single state may be happy and may be miserable; but most happy, most miserable,—these are epithets belonging to a wife.

Being asked why in some kingdoms the king is of age at fourteen, but cannot marry until eighteen, Molière replied: “Because it is more difficult to rule a wife than a kingdom.”

You are my true and honorable wife, as dear to me as the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart.

Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mastered by a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marle?

This specter of the female politician, who abandons her family to neglect for the sake of passing bills in parliament, is just as complete an illusion of the masculine brain, as the other specter whom Sydney Smith laid by a joke,—the woman who would forsake an infant for a quadratic equation.

The good wife is none of our dainty dames, who love to appear in a variety of suits every day new; as if a good gown, like a stratagem in war, were to be used but once. But our good wife sets up a sail according to the keel of her husband’s estate; and if of high parentage, she doth not so remember what she was by birth, that she forgets what she is by match.

Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising by mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blast of adversity.

A good wife is heaven’s last, best gift to man,—his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his care.

O woman! thou knowest the hour when the good man of the house will return, when the heat and burden of the day are past; do not let him at such time, when he is weary with toil and jaded with discouragement, find upon his coming to his habitation that the foot which should hasten to meet him is wandering at a distance, that the soft hand which should wipe the sweat from his brow is knocking at the door of other houses.

The death of a man’s wife is like cutting down an ancient oak that has long shaded the family mansion. Henceforth the glare of the world, with its cares and vicissitudes, falls upon the old widower’s heart, and there is nothing to break their force, or shield him from the full weight of misfortune. It is as if his right hand were withered; as if one wing of his angel was broken, and every movement that he made brought him to the ground.