"What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?"

"Build contempt for contempt."

"Sacrifice has taken on such negative connotations that people fear being a'" codependent" more than they fear being perceived as selfish."

"Christian love must be chased after, aspired to, and practiced."

"God planted marriage among humans as yet another signpost pointing to his own eternal, spiritual existence....what makes the marriages of believers different from the marriages of unbelievers..is in the preeminent marital analogy of Christ and his church."

"Any situation that calls me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value, and I slowly began to understand that the real purpose of marriage may not be happiness as much as it is holiness."

-- Gary Thomas Sacred Marriage

"If you treat a man as he is, he will stay as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become the bigger and better man." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe