Good marriages are built upon a combination of emotional love and a common commitment to a core of beliefs about what is important in life and what we wish to do with our lives. Speaking each other's primary love language creates the emotional climate where these beliefs can be fleshed out in daily life.

We are trained to analyze problems and create solutions. We forget that marriage is a relationship, not a project to be completed or a problem to solve.

Marriages are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find ourselves in winter--discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of summer--comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the seasons repeat themselves in nature.

I think one of the other myths is that your environment determines your happiness. That if you are living with an alcoholic or living with a depressed spouse for a long time, you are just going to be unhappy.

One [reality] is that I am responsible for my attitude. I can be in prison, and I happen to get a chance to go outside. I can look at the mud, or I can look at the stars. I am the one who decides which way to look. That is true for every one of us.

Recent research has indicated that the average individual listens for only seventeen seconds before interrupting and interjecting his own ideas.

I cannot change others, but I can influence others... we can't change people, but we can and we do influence people, and we do it every single day.