Martin Luther Issue 39 | 1993 Click here to order the downloadable audio version

ARTICLE TOOLS

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• There’s a lot to get used to in the first year of marriage. One wakes up in the morning and finds a pair of pigtails on the pillow that were not there before.

• If I should ever marry again, I would hew myself an obedient wife out of stone.

• I have been very happy in my marriage, thank God. I have a faithful wife, according to Solomon: “The heart of a her husband doth safely trust in here” (Prov. 31:11). She spoils nothing for me.

• When one looks back upon it, marriage isn’t so bad as when one looks forward to it.

• Married folk are not to act as they now usually do. The men are almost lions in their homes, hard toward their wives and servants. The women, too, everywhere want to domineer and have their husbands as servants.

• Of course, the Christian should love his wife. He is supposed to love his neighbor, and since his wife is his nearest neighbor, she should be his deepest love.

• When that wise harlot, natural reason, looks at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Ah, should I rock the baby, wash the diapers, make the bed, smell foul odors, watch through the night, wait upon the bawling youngster and heal its infected sores, then take care of the wife, support her by working, tend to this, tend to that, do this, do that, suffer this, suffer that, and put up with whatever additional displeasure and trouble married life brings? Should I be so imprisoned?”

• The Devil cannot bear to see married people agree well with each other.

• It is impossible to keep peace between man and woman in family life if they do not condone and overlook each other’s faults but watch everything to the smallest point. For who does not at times offend?

• Some marriages were motivated by mere lust, but ...