Wifely Duty Quotes

“Honor, obey?" Gisbourne shouted, grappling with John. "This is what you call being a good wife?"
I stopped. "I never said I'd be a good wife, Guy. Just that I'd marry you.”
― A.C. Gaughen, Scarlet

“My noble father,
I do perceive here a divided duty.
To you I am bound for life and education.
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you. You are the lord of my duty,
I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband,
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.”
― Shakespeare William , Othello

“Always being there was the essential secret for a wife.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April

“Perhaps if I had made his life more difficult, he would have written less, or less freely. I cannot claim to be the midwife to genius, but if I have not facilitated,I have at least not, as many women might have done, prevented. This is a very small virtue to claim, a very negative achievement to hang my whole life on.”
― Byatt A. S., Possession

“A wife is like a children's movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete”
― John Steinbeck

“It occurred to me that both Maria and I were on the run in the twenty-first century, just like George Sand whose name was also Amantine was on the run in the nineteenth century, and Maria whose name was also Zama was looking for somewhere to recover and rest in the twentieth. We were on the run from the lies concealed in the language of politics from myths about our character and our purpose in life. We were on the run from our own desires too probably, whatever they were.”
― Deborah Levy, Things I Don't Want to Know

“What made their marriage more than a run-of-the-mill case of domestic estrangement was her refusal to accept her lot. She stayed furious all the days of her life - so sure of her ground, so successfully spoiled, that she was impervious to the social pressures and propaganda that made most women settle down to play the part of wife.”
― Lorna Sage

“If the husband is not in a peaceful state of mind and is deprived of conjugal happiness, it would eventually percolate down to everyone else in the family. Hence, if the husband is without bliss, the fate of the wife also remains sunk in gloom.”
― Nihar Satpathy, Monologues of Mahalakshmi

“Mrs Carey sighted as a woman but obey as a wife.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“A wife's power is not to prove her husband but rather to improve him.”
― Johnnie Dent Jr.

“When your husband's eyes light up as he comes in at night, you're in sad shape if it's only because he smells dinner cooking.”
― Anne Fogarty, Wife Dressing: The Fine Art of Being a Well-Dressed Wife