“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”
Song of Solomon, 1611 · Hebrew love poetry, King James Version
Chapter 3
On Staying
“Now we maun totter down, John, but hand in hand we'll go; and sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo.”
Robert Burns, 1790 · Scottish poet, 1759 to 1796
“Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
William Shakespeare, 1609 · English poet and playwright, 1564 to 1616
“I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1850 · English poet, 1806 to 1861
The people most satisfied with their relationships at age fifty turned out to be the healthiest at eighty. Warm relationships predicted late-life health better than cholesterol did.
Harvard Study of Adult Development, 2017 · research finding from a cohort followed for more than eighty years
The same study found that people in securely attached partnerships, who felt they could count on the other in hard times, kept sharper memories for longer. Good relationships do not only protect the body.
Harvard Study of Adult Development, 2017 · research finding on relationship security and memory
“The small and continual and daily matters of offence between husband and wife, that the world knows nothing about, set the household most at variance.”
Plutarch, 1888 · Greek biographer and priest of Delphi, born about AD 46
“To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.”
Charlotte Bronte, 1847 · English novelist, 1816 to 1855, speaking through Jane Eyre
“Love's plant must be watered with tears, and tended with care.”
Danish proverb, 1857 · recorded in a nineteenth-century collection of European proverbs
“Forced love does not last.”
Dutch proverb, 1857 · recorded in a nineteenth-century collection of European proverbs
“True love never grows old.”
Italian proverb, 1857 · recorded in a nineteenth-century collection of European proverbs
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