Wife

“ Beyond was the good wife, true of touch and tender, happy amid her household cares, clean of heart and conscience, the helpmate and the buckler of her husband. And the children, strong and sturdy, trooping down the lane with the lowing herd, or, weary of simple sport, seeking, as truant birds do, the quiet of the old home nest. ”

“ Your wife, the young lady in whom the first pleasures of life and love supplied the place of grace and wit, so arch, so animated, so vivacious, whose least movements spoke with delicious eloquence, has cast off, slowly, one by one, her natural artifices. ”

“ Marry, sir, I thank thee
That you would bring him unto me.
PRIDE.
Sir, it were expedient that ye had a wife,
To live with her all your life.
RIOT.
A wife? nay, nay, for God avow,
He shall have flesh enou',
For, by God that me dear bought,
Over-much of one thing is nought;
The devil said he had liever burn all his life
Than once for to take a wife;
Therefore I say, so God me save,
He shall no wife have:
Thou hast a sister fair and free,
I know well his leman she will be ”

“ WIFE. Ay, so thou mayest, Much.
MUCH. That she sets new marks of all my old lady's linen (God rest her soul!) , and my young lord never had them since.
WIFE. Out, out! I took him them but for to whiten, as God mend me.
ELY. Leave off this idle talk; get ye both hence.
LIT. JOHN. I thank your honours: we are not in love
With being here.
We must seek service that are masterless. ”

“ The little dark, sallow woman, with the shining teeth and tropical eyes, who was the wife whom fate had sent him, and the pale, slight, graceful girl, who was his first love, his heart’s desire, the wife that he had lost! ”

“ Has she a call to be a wife, who takes a journey [Pg 309] for pleasure, leaving her husband to toil in a close office, and “have an eye, when at home, to the servants and children?”
Has she a call to be a wife, who values an unrumpled collar or crinoline more than a conjugal kiss?
Has she a call to be a wife, to whom a good husband’s society is not the greatest of earthly blessings, and a house full of rosy children its best furnishing, and prettiest adornment? ”

“ Your wife, for instance, or the impenetrable mystery of womanhood that you contemplate making your wife some day—can you, honestly, now, as a self-respecting husband of either de facto or in futuro, quite agree to the spectacle of that adored lady sitting over across the hearth from you in the snug room, evening after evening, with her feet—however small and well-shaped—cocked up on the other end of the mantel and one of your own big colorado maduros between her teeth! ”

“ We hear too much of a wife's duties to a husband and too little of the other side of the question. "The wife," they tell us, "should meet her husband with a smile and a kiss, should tactfully watch his moods and be ever sweetness and sunshine." Why this continual swinging of the censer of devotion to the man of business? Why should a woman have to look up with timid glance at the face of her husband, to "size up his mood"? ”

“ The wife who comes to see the husband who has been taken away from her, the husband who creeps in towards a bed in which, so small and girlish and white, she lies waiting for him? The flowers, the little cheerfulnesses, and, behind it all, the doubt, the wondering, the ache, the sense of injustice. ”

“ And some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms—standing in the sunlight sobbing. ”

“ I know, dear—I know you will be a good, dear wife, and a dearly loved and fondly cherished wife. But begin, dear, by giving me your confidence. There can be no real union without confidence between husband and wife, my Cora. ”

“ Moments when the maid becomes a wife, the wife a widow, the widow a re-married woman, by a simple, swift illumination of the fancy. Moments when, wrought upon by a single word—a look—an emphasis and rising inflection, all logical sequence is cast away, processes are lost—inductions lead nowhere. ”

“ The wife becomes the true sharer of her husband's thoughts; mutual confidence reigns between them; they grow by mutual furtherance; each sees in each the mirror of his nobler self; they are the true complement one to the other. ”

“ Thou weep'st because thy spouse has flown To arms preferred before thine own;— A faithless wife,—I grant the curse,— And yet, my friend, it might be worse! Just hear another's tale of sorrow, And, in comparing, comfort borrow! What! dost thou think thyself undone, Because thy rights are shared with one! O, happy man—be more resigned, My wife belongs to all mankind! My wife—she's found abroad—at home ”

“ In short, he learned by bitter experience the difference between a true, loving, devoted woman, whose sweetest smiles and gentlest words were ever for him, and a mere thing of fashion and convention called a wife, but no more a real wife than the first eye-winking doll in a shop-window. ”

“ Let the husband keep his head, and THE WIFE UTTERLY LOSE HERS, throwing it to the winds, to be wholly swept away by the whirlwind of her passion; feeling free, delighting, to let it go, go, go, no one cares where! ”

“ If a tale reaches her ears of a wife who has failed of her duty, or if the public newspapers record a divorce, then she awakens her husband to a sense of his superior happiness, and her own irreproachable virtue. ”

“ O my Lord, we have only one to depend upon—the husband is the object of the wife's thoughts, of her understanding, her study, her acquisition, her meeting, her society; in short, this jewel—the husband is all to a virtuous woman. O thou letter! ”

“ In my cynical mood this afternoon I cannot but observe that where the wives are in tears the husbands are all smiles and jokes; whilst a blithe face on the part of a wife means a grim and melancholy countenance on the part of her spouse. ”

“ Ah, look at the faithful wife now, as she strikes off her husband's fetters—listen to the glad music, destin ormai felice!—they take each other's hand—they go away proudly into the glad daylight—husband and wife together for evermore. ”

“ Gradually the curious, timid, admiring bride is merged in the wife, with ambition budding in her heart, and exacting pride pleading for recognition and wifely dignities, and in this transformation the power of the woman asserted itself. ”

“ Let men, above all, ask themselves with regard to women—to wives—this question—and answer it in a manly, honest manner, whether it is condemnatory of their own "line of conduct" or the contrary: Should I be willing to endure what I expect my wife to bear, were I a woman and a wife? ”

“ A light word between husbands and wives sometimes goes unexplained, and the rift between them widens through life. I know some houses where the wife enters at one door and the husband at another; where if they meet on the stairs, they do not salute each other. Under the same roof they have lived for years and have not spoken. ”

“ The erring wife returning to find her husband married to another woman, to nurse one of her own children through his last illness without being recognised by him or by her husband, and to die at last in her husband's house with the merest shadow of consolation in the shape of his somewhat grudging forgiveness, presents us with a figure which cannot fail to be extremely pathetic. ”

“ —‘I take her as God made her, and as men Must fail to unmake her, for my honoured wife.’
She never raised her eyes, nor took a step, But stood there in her place, and spoke again. ”

“ By a worldly disposition, by a neglect of the means of religion, or by indifference to the most solemn themes, and an habitual levity of character and speech, the wife has been known to check the best aspirations of her husband, and reduce his spirit to the same low, earthly level with her own. ”

“ A wife who does not commit violence, one who is like a thief, one who makes herself like the master, one like a mother, one like a sister, one like a slave, and the wife like a friend—these are said to be the seven kinds of wives. ”

“ We write these lines with homage and respect for the Wife, and with an undefined emotion in our hearts, which tells us they are correct, and that the value of a Wife is all the imagination can depict and the pen indite. ”

“ "Come, come," said Tom's father, "at your time of life,
"There's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake—
"It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife"—
"Why, so it is, father—whose wife shall I take?" ”

“ Perhaps not with your lips; but a good wife invariably knits socks for her husband, and you, my dear Belle, were foreordained from the beginning of time to be a good wife,--the very best of little wives a man ever had. ”

“ For a most beautiful thing is a thrifty wife, who clothes both herself and her husband with fair array of her own working; [714] in which all are glad—the children on account of their mother, the husband on account of his wife, she on their account, and all in God. ”

“ Yet, though worn out with night watching, your loving wife will continue to regard you with an expression of sympathy, to walk about on tiptoe, and to whisper unaccustomed and obscure orders to the servants. ”

“ The Man is Fire, the Woman tow, the Devil comes the flame to blow.
Choose your Wife on a Saturday, not on a Sunday.
While the tall Maid is stooping the little one hath swept the House.
He who hath a handsome Wife, or a Castle on the Frontier, or a Vineyard near the Highway, never lacks a quarrel.
He who marries a Widow, will have a dead Man’s Head often thrown in his Dish.
There’s not a pin’s point between the yes and no of a woman.
Mother, what kind of thing is this Marrying? Daughter, ’tis to spin, to bear Children, and to cry your eyes out.
The honest woman and the broken leg within doors. ”

“ Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God—she has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind. She is the channel of the eternal purpose of Heaven. ”

“ By this means a wife will gain influence and favour with her husband, with her sisters, and with her heavenly Father. She thus advances herself and puts herself in a position to enjoy all that is for the righteous. ”

“ So shall men love their wives as their own bodies, and be not bitter against them, giving honour unto them as unto the weaker vessel. Let the wife see that she reverence her husband, wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. ”

“ One Wife is too much for most Husbands to hear, But two at a time there's no mortal can bear. ”

“ "My son's my son till he gets him a wife,
My daughter's my daughter all her life." ”

“ Keep some wood for the winter fire, and remember what is expected of a married woman. Her husband must be able to count upon her in his home; it is she to whom he must entrust the key of his heart; his honour, his household, his welfare are in the hands of his wife. ”

“ I am your wife if you will marry me;
If not, I’ll die your maid: to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I’ll be your servant,
Whether you will or no. ”

“ On the other side, a wife, who, as the old proverb has it, hammers on the same anvil day and night, to compel her husband to make his will, and then the husband is equally urgent that his wife shall do the same. ”

“ “But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry.” ”

“ We know her to be—for we have seen her in her own home—a devoted and efficient mother—alas that the two terms should not be synonymous—to her little children. Judging by her husband’s conduct to her, he finds her an eminently satisfactory wife. ”