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"Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure."
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"Marriage is a sacred-commitment."

"A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards."

"We are all connected in spirit, in love and in faith."

"Parent greatest gift to their children is their bond of love."

"It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next."

"Those who don't care about the positive side of you, are too dangerous to have on your side."

"They said, "You'll never find someone like me again!" I thanked them for wishing me well."

"In some cases, it is the woman's stomach-not her heart-that has left her man for another."

"Try not to be the kind of friend who only makes friends when in desperate need of financial help."

"The key to every human heart is love."
Explore more quotes by Julian Barnes

"Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance."

"If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details."

"He didn't really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself."

"What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves - the music of our being - which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over the decades, if it is string and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history."

"It had been a slow and painful business, discovering that the theory of love did not match the reality of life. It was like expecting to be able to write a symphony because you had once read a handbook of composition."

"Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical."

"Was it the case that colours dimmed as the eye grew elderly? Or was it rather that in youth your excitement about the world transferred itself onto everything you saw and made it brighter?"

"What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together."
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