35 Quotes About Wives

In every marriage, the role of a wife is multifaceted, rich with love, support, strength, and sometimes, a bit of humor. It's through the words of poets, authors, and historical figures that we often find the most profound reflections on what it means to be a wife. Whether you're looking for inspiration, reflection, or a way to celebrate the wonderful woman in your life, our curated collection of the top 35 quotes about wives offers something for everyone. These quotes capture the essence of the partnership, love, and shared journeys that define the marital bond. Join us as we explore the wisdom and warmth embedded in these timeless words.

1. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” - Jane Austen

2. “Listen to me, Amin," I said slowly. "Listen to me very carefully. Nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same again. There lives on this earth a woman who can be my friend and my lover. Do you understand that? Do you understand what a marvelous thing that is?""A friend is a friend," Uthman interrupted, "and a woman is a woman. You can't have them in one person. The whole world knows that.""If that's what the whole world knows, ...then the whole world is wrong. I believed the whole world, and I lost her.” - Barbara Cohen

3. “Jane, you are my confidante, my helpmate, my friend. My lover. You are everything the word wife means to me. In my heart, we are wed. In my soul, you are mine.” - Charlotte Featherstone

4. “Ah, Evie,” she heard him say softly, “I must have a heart, after all…because right now it aches like the devil.”“Only your heart?” she asked ingenuously, making him laugh.He lowered her to the bed, his eyes sparkling wickedly. “Also a few other things,” he conceded. “And as my wife, it’s your duty to ease all my aches.” - Lisa Kleypas

5. “A woman has to change her nature if she is to be a wife. She has to learn to curb her tongue, to suppress her desires, to moderate her thoughts and to spend her days putting another first. She has to put him first even when she longs to serve herself or her children. She has to put him first even if she longs to judge for herself. She has to put him first even when she knows best. To be a good wife is to be a woman with a will of iron that you yourself have forged into a bridle to curb your own abilities. To be a good wife is to enslave yourself to a lesser person. To be a good wife is to amputate your own power as surely as the parents of beggars hack off their children's feet for the greater benefit of the family.” - Philippa Gregory

6. “I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest -- blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine.” - Charlotte Brontë

7. “all believers should “submit to each other out of reverence for Christ.” In many ways, wives should submit to their husbands in the same way any believer should submit to other believers, specifically by living according to the lifestyle the apostle Paul lays out earlier in the chapter. This mutual submission is an accountability to be held to God’s standards, an accountability in which both husband and wife are called to participate.” - Janet Boynes

8. “A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it.” - Stephen M. Irwin

9. “Viktor was swinging a leather duffle and wearing a black Adidas tracksuit and his favorite brown UGG slippers with a hole in the toe."Worn and old, just like Viv," he'd say when Frankie made fun of them, and then his wife would swat him on the arm. But Frankie knew he was just joking, because Viveka was the type of woman you wished was in a magazine just so you could stare at her violet-colored eyes and shiny black hair without being called a stalker or a freak.” - Lisi Harrison

10. “He set the suitcases in the back then tossed her the keys. "You drive."She repressed a smile as she climbed behind the wheel. "With each passing day, your reasons for wanting a wife become clearer.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

11. “I define myself by helping others. This is what I do.Those people who want me to abandon my husband are asking me to put myself first and to judge him. The poor man has been judged unfairly by others. Why would I abandon him in his greatest need?” - Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker

12. “It's a terrible thing for a man when his woman gangs up on him wi' a toad” - Terry Pratchett

13. “Sometimes I wait at the bottom of those dark stairs, I sit at the bottom of the stairs, I wait beyond the bottom of the stairs and listen to the sounds my wife and children make as they sleep, the sounds our animals make as they step carefully through our dreams and out the other side to polished floor and cold window. Sometimes I wait so long I become unsure if I am asleep, or awake, or dead.” - Steve Rasnic Tem

14. “These things are lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone taking the time to write it all down. That Litvinoff had a wife who was so devoted is, to be frank, the only reason anyone knows anything about him at all.” - Nicole Krauss

15. “Miss. My. Wife.” - Julia Quinn

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

17. “...when I see you here amidst all this, I realise that I proposed to a very small part of you. I thought I was giving you a home and a position, but here I see that I am taking you away from so much.” - Daisy Goodwin

18. “[I]f the name of wife appears more sacred and more valid, sweeter to me is ever the word friend, or, if thou be not ashamed, concubine ... And thou thyself wert not wholly unmindful of that ... [as in the narrative of thy misfortunes] thou hast not disdained to set forth sundry reasons by which I tried to dissuade thee from our marriage, from an ill-starred bed; but wert silent as to many, in which I preferred love to wedlock, freedom to a bond. I call God to witness, if Augustus, ruling over the whole world, were to deem me worthy of the honour of marriage, and to confirm the whole world to me, to be ruled by me forever, dearer to me and of greater dignity would it seem to be called thy concubine than his empress.” - Héloïse

19. “Commitment is Circumstances” - Leju Thomas

20. “I know you think I should be home taking care of my family. That maybe I’d be distracted or I wouldn’t be as committed as the rest of you, but who’s more committed: the person with something to lose, or the people who’ve got nothing left?” - Bill Blais

21. “Wife, to him, was someone who stood for stability, forcoming home, for dealing with all the shit he wasn’t able to deal with. For providing a real life and not this insanity.” - Aleksandr Voinov

22. “It's risky most of the time, but its better to listen to your heart.” - Jonathan Anthony Burkett

23. “She expressed an opinion that the happiness of a woman in Paradise is beneath the soles of her husband's feet,' he enlightened humorously, seemingly not at all averse to her obvious desire to be comforted.” - Margaret Rome

24. “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.” - Sorcha MacMurrough

25. “With all due respect," Christopher muttered, "this conversation is leading nowhere. At least one of you should point out that Beatrix deserves a better man.""That's what I said about my wife," Leo remarked. "Which is why I married her before she could find one.” - Lisa Kleypas

26. “One wife, you're happy, two and you're tired, three and they'll hate each other, four and they'll hate you.” - Patrick Rothfuss

27. “I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.Visiting Kathy's grave was the less dramatic of the two.” - John Scalzi

28. “I have also fantasised myself to be his female slave, but this does not suffice, for after all every woman can be the slave of her husband.” - Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing

29. “The marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she is a householder.” - Thornton Wilder

30. “And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand.” - Oscar Wilde

31. “there are no houses to wife. only window seats to occupy when the weather needs changing & waters to flow past our ankles on Sundays as we fish.” - Darnell Lamont Walker

32. “If you have the woman you love, what more do you need? Well, besides an alibi for the time of her husband’s murder.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

33. “What kind of husband would I be if I bet against my own marriage?'I smiled. 'The stupid kind. Didn't you listen to your dad when he told you not to bet against me?” - Jamie McGuire

34. “The doctor's wife ate two apples a day, just to be safe. But her husband kept coming home.” - Joseph Gordon-Levitt

35. “I shall expect my husband to have no pleasures but what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the enjoyment of my company - why - it will be the worse for him - that's all.''If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed, be careful whom you marry - or rather, you must avoid it altogether.” - Anne Brontë