contemporary readings
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the notebook of nicholas sparks
You are reading: Wedding readings from books
“I am nothing special, just an ordinary man with ordinary thoughts, and have led an ordinary life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as any who I have ever lived: I have loved another with all my heart and soul; and for me, this has always been enough.”
the bridge that crosses forever by richard bach
“a soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys and keys that fit our locks. when we feel safe enough to open the locks, our true selves come out and we can be whole and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not who we are pretending to be. each reveals the best part of the other. no matter what else goes wrong around us, with that person, we are safe in our own paradise. our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest yearnings, our sense of direction. when we are two balloons, and together our direction is upwards, chances are we have found the right person. our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life. .”
paulo coehlo’s alchemist
“When he looked into her eyes, he learned the most important part of the language that everyone spoke, the language that everyone on earth was able to understand in their hearts. it was love. something older than humanity, older than the desert. what the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, without the need for words, she recognized the same. because when you know the language, it is easy to understand that someone in the world is waiting for you, whether in the middle of the desert or in some big city. and when two of those people meet, the past and the future lose importance. there is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by a single hand. it is the hand that evokes love and creates a soul mate for every person in the world. without that love, one’s dreams would be meaningless.”
a nicole krauss love story
“once upon a time there was a boy. he lived in a town that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. a stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time there was a boy who lived in a house on the other side of the field, of a girl who no longer exists. They invented a thousand games. She was a queen and he he was a king. in the autumn light his hair shone like a crown. they gathered the world in little handfuls, and when the sky darkened, and they parted with leaves in their hair. once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl , and her laugh was a question she wanted to answer all her life.”
tuesdays with morrie by mitch albom
“’still,’ morrie said, ‘there are a few rules i know to be true about love and marriage: if you don’t respect the other person, you’re going to have a lot of problems. if you don’t know how to commit, you’re going to have a lot of problems. If you can’t talk openly about what’s going on between you, you’re in for a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re going to have a lot of problems. their values should be similar.
‘and the largest of those values, mitch?’
yes?
‘Your belief in the importance of your marriage.’ he sniffed, then closed his eyes for a moment. “Personally,” he sighed, his eyes still closed, “I think marriage is a very important thing and you’re missing out on a lot if you don’t try.”
he ended the topic by quoting a poem he believed in as a prayer: ‘love one another or perish.’”
the princess bride by william goldman
“I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches… these years I have stayed in my cubbyhole because of you. I myself have learned languages for you” . your. I have strengthened my body because I thought you could please yourself with a strong body. I have lived my life with only a prayer that some sudden sunrise you might look in my direction. I haven’t known a time in years when the sight of you didn’t send my heart racing against my ribcage. I have not known a night in which your face did not accompany me to sleep. There hasn’t been a morning when you haven’t fluttered behind my awake eyelids…
I love you. okay? do you want it stronger? I love you. spell it, should I? i ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. do you want it backwards? you love me.”
captain corelli mandolin by louis de bernières
“love is a temporary madness. it erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. and when it subsides, you have to make a decision. you have to find out if your roots have become so intertwined that it’s inconceivable that they should never part, because this is love, love is not shortness of breath, it is not arousal, it is not the enactment of promises of eternal passion, that is simply being ‘in love’ with what any of us can convince ourselves we are. it’s what’s left when the infatuation has burned away, and this is both an art and a lucky accident your mother and i had it, we had roots growing towards each other underground, and when all the pretty flowers had fallen From our branches we discovered that we were one tree and not two. Love is important and you should love each other more.”
the promise of heather berry
“Within this blessed union of souls, where two hearts intertwine to become one, lies a promise. Perfectly born, divinely created, and intimately shared, it is a place where hope resides and the majesty of beginnings. where All things are made possible by the amazing love shared by two spirits.As you hold hands in this promise and look forward to the future in each other’s eyes, may your unconditional love and devotion take you to places both of you have only dreamed of. .where they will dwell for a lifetime of happiness, sheltered in the warmth of each other’s arms.”
Woke Up Wild by Hilary T. blacksmith
“people are like cities: we all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout from the cracks in the sidewalks, but most of the time all we let ourselves see is a postcard glimpse of a horizon or a polished square. love allows you to find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves.”
classical literature
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les miserables by victor hugo
“the future belongs to hearts even more than to minds. love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. in infinity, the inexhaustible is a requirement.
love partakes of the soul itself. it is of the same nature. like her, it is the divine spark; like him, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. it is a point of fire that exists within us, that is immortal and infinite, that nothing can enclose, and that nothing can extinguish. We feel it burn to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it shine deep in the sky.”
what a great thing it is to be loved! what a much grander thing it is to love! the heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion. it is no longer composed of anything but the pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not lofty and great. an unworthy thought can no more germinate in him than a nettle in a glacier. the serene and elevated soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and shadows of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatred, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of the sky, and no longer feels anything but deep and subterranean blows of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the blows of the earthquake. if there were no one to love, the sun would be extinguished.”
adam bede by george eliot
“what greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are united for life: to strengthen each other in all work, to rest in each other in all pain, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with the other in silent and ineffable memories at the moment of the last farewell?”
jane eyre de charlotte brontë
“I have found for the first time what I can really love: I have found you. You are my sympathy, my best self, my good angel, I am attached to you with a strong attachment. I believe you good, gifted, beautiful: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it inclines towards you, attracts you to my center and source of life, wraps my existence around you, and, igniting in pure and powerful flame, merges you and me. in one. It was because I felt and knew this, that I decided to marry you.”
farewell to arms by ernest hemingway
“that night, we had the feeling that we had come home, not feeling alone anymore, waking up in the night to find each other there, and not having left; all other things were unreal. we slept when we were tired and if we woke up the other one woke up too so one was not alone often a guy wants to be alone and a girl wants to be alone too and if they love each other they feel jealous of each other but i can honestly say we never feel that. we could feel lonely when we were together, alone in front of others… but we never felt lonely or scared when we were together.”
letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke
“for a human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that we have been given, the final task, the final test and test, the work for which all other work is mere preparation. love does not initially mean merging, surrendering and uniting with another person: it is a great incentive for the individual to mature, to become something in himself, to become a world, to become a world in himself for the good of another. person; it is a great demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him from a great distance…
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once the understanding is accepted that even between the closest people there is an infinite distance, a wonderful coexistence can arise for them, if they manage to love the extension between them, which gives them the possibility of seeing each other. another as a whole before an immense sky.”
mark twain letters, arranged with comments by albert bigelow paine
“this will be the most powerful day in the history of our lives, the holiest, & the most generous with the two of us, because he makes two fractional lives a whole; give two purposeless lives a job, & double the strength of each one to carry it out; gives two inquisitive natures a reason to live, & something to live for; it will give a new joy to the sunlight, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, a new mystery to life; & it will give a new revelation to love, a new depth to pain, a new impetus to adoration. on that day, the scales will fall from our eyes & we shall behold a new world.”
anne’s dream house by l.m. montgomery
“but it was a happy and beautiful bride who came down the old and carpeted home stairs that September noon: the first bride with green gables, slender and with bright eyes, in the mist of her maiden’s veil, with her arms full of roses. gilbert, waiting for her in the hall below, gazed at her with adoring eyes. she was his at last, this elusive, long-sought anna, won after years of patient waiting. it was he she turned to. Sweet surrender of the bride. Was he worthy of her? Could he make her as happy as she hoped? If he failed her, if he couldn’t live up to her standard of manhood, then, as she held out her hand, their eyes met. and all doubt vanished into a joyful certainty. they belonged to each other; and, no matter what life might bring them, he could never alter that. their happiness lay in each other’s care and they were both fearless.”
children’s stories
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phillip pullman’s amber spyglass
“I will love you forever; come what may. until I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I will drift forever, all my atoms, until I will find you again… I will be looking for you, every moment, every moment. And when we meet again, we will be united so strong that nothing and no one will ever separate us. Every atom of me and every atom of yours… we will live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light that you see floating in the rays of the sun… and when they use our atoms to make new lives, they can’t just take one, they’ll have to take two, one yours and one mine.”
winnie the pooh by a.a milne
“’If you live to be one hundred, I want to live to be one hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you’
the little pig sneaked up on pooh from behind. ‘pooh?’ the whisper. ‘yes, piggy?’
“nothing”, said piglet, taking pooh’s hand. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”
‘we’ll be friends forever, won’t we, pooh?’ asked little pig.
“even more,” replied pooh. ‘if there is ever a tomorrow when we are not together… there is one thing you must always remember. You are braver than you think, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is that even though we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.'”
a beautiful love story of edward monkton
“The ferocious dinosaur was trapped inside his ice cage. Although it was cold, he was happy there. After all, it was his cage.”
then the other adorable dinosaur appeared. the lovely other dinosaur melted the dinosaur’s cage with kind words and loving thoughts.
‘I like this dinosaur’ thought the charming other dinosaur. ‘although he is fierce he is also cute and funny. he’s also pretty smart, although I won’t tell him this for now.’
‘I like this adorable other dinosaur,’ thought the dinosaur. ‘she is beautiful and she is different and she smells so good. she’s also a free spirit, a quality I greatly admire in a dinosaur.’
‘but sometimes he can be so aloof and so quirky,’ the lovable other dinosaur thought. he also likes things too much. Are all dinosaurs this fond of things?’
‘but his mind jumps from here to there so fast,’ thought the dinosaur. ‘She is also extraordinarily interested in shopping. Are all the other adorable dinosaurs so extraordinarily interested in shopping?’
‘I’ll forgive his quirkiness and preoccupation with things,’ the lovable other dinosaur thought, ‘because they’re part of what makes him an individual rich in character.’
‘I’ll forgive her unstable mind and her fondness for shopping,’ thought the dinosaur, ‘because she fills our lives with beautiful thoughts and wonderful surprises. besides, I’m not averse to shopping either.’
now the dinosaur and the adorable other dinosaur are old. look at these. together they stand on the hill telling each other stories and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs.
And that, my friends, is what happens with love. Let’s all be dinosaurs and other cute dinosaurs together. because the sun is hot. and the world is a beautiful place.”
the velvet rabbit of margery williams
“’what is real?’ the rabbit asked one day, when they were lying next to each other near the fender of the nursery, before nana came to tidy up the room. ‘does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a handle that sticks out?’
‘Real is not how you’re made,’ said the fur horse. ‘it’s a thing that happens to you. when a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but he really loves you, then you become real.’
Does it hurt? the rabbit asked.
‘sometimes,’ said the fur horse, because he always told the truth. ‘when you’re real you don’t mind being hurt’
“Does it all happen all at once, like you’re being wound up,” he asked, “or little by little?”
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the fur horse. ‘you become. Takes a lot of time. that’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or need to be taken care of carefully. usually when you’re real, most of your hair has been lovingly cut, and your eyes droop and loose at the joints and you’re very raggedy. but these things don’t matter at all, because once you’re real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’
I take it you’re real? said the rabbit. and then he wished he hadn’t said it, because he thought the fur horse was just smiling.
‘someone made me real,’ he said. “That was many years ago, but once you’re real, you can’t be unreal again. It lasts forever.”
I like you by sandol stoddard warburg
“I like you and I know why I like you because you’re a good person to please I like you because when I tell you something special, you know it’s special and you remember it for a long, long time you say, remember when you told me something special and the two of you we remember
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When I think something is important, you also think it is important. we have good ideas. when I say something funny, you laugh. I think I’m funny and you think I’m funny too.
I like you because you know where I’m tickled and you don’t tickle me there except a little bit sometimes, but if you do then I know where to tickle you too. why do i like you if i’m getting ready to blow up a paper bag then you’re getting ready to jump yay!
I like you because when I feel sad you don’t always cheer me up right away, sometimes it’s better to be sad, you can’t stand it when others are so jumpy and open-mouthed every minute that you want to think about things. it takes time
I like you because if I’m mad at you then you’re mad at me too. it’s horrible when the other person isn’t. they’re so nice and oooh, you could punch them in the nose.
I can’t remember when I didn’t like you, it must have been lonely, even if it was July 999, even if it was August, even if it was the end of November, I’d still choose. you and you would keep choosing me over and over again and this is how it would happen every time.”
poetry
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“[I carry your heart with me (I carry it inside)” by e.e. cummings
“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it (Wherever I go, you go, my dear; and all that is done by me alone is your doing, my dear) I am not afraid of destiny ( because you are my destiny, my sweet) I do not want any world (because beautiful you are my world, my truth) and you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret that no one knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life, which grows higher than the soul can hope or the mind can hide) and this is the wonder that keeps the stars apart
I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”
one hundred love sonnets: “xvii” by pablo neruda
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you directly without problems or pride: I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love, except this way in which I am neither you, so close that your hand on my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams.”
“love is friendship on fire” by laura hendricks
“love is friendship on fire; it is tranquility, mutual trust, sharing and forgiveness. it is loyalty through the good times and the bad. it settles for less than perfection and takes human frailties into account. love is content with the present, awaits the future and does not meditate on the past. they are the daily chronicles of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories, and working toward common goals. If you have love in your life, it can make up for a lot of things that you lack. if you don’t have it, no matter what there is, it’s not enough.”
“sonnet 116” by william shakespeare
“do not allow the marriage of true minds to admit impediments. love is not love that is altered when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: or not; it is a mark always fixed, that looks to tempests, and never shudders;it is the star of every wandering barque, whose value is unknown, though its height be taken.love is no fool of time, though lips and cheeks rosy within the compass of his bent sickle come; love is not disturbed by its brief hours and weeks, but confirms it even to the brink of perdition. if this be a mistake and it is proved on me, I never wrote, nor did any man ever love.” /p>
“on marriage” by khalil gibran
“you were born together, and together you will be forever. you will be together when the white wings of death spread your days. yes, you will be together even in the silent memory of god. but let there be spaces in your union, and let the winds of heaven dance among you.
love each other, but do not make a bond of love: let it be rather a moving sea between the shores of your souls. fill each other’s cup, but don’t drink from one cup. give each other bread, but do not eat the same bread, sing and dance together and be joyful, but each of you be alone, just as the strings of a lute are alone although they tremble with the same music.
give your hearts, but not to take care of each other. because only the hand of life can contain your hearts. and stand close together, but not too close together: because the columns of the temple are separated, and the oak and the cypress do not grow one in the shadow of the other.”
“soul mates” by lang leav
“I don’t know how you look so familiar to me, or why it feels less like I’m getting to know you and more like I’m remembering who you are. how every smile, every whisper brings me closer to the impossible conclusion that I’ve met you before , I have loved you before, in another time, in a different place, in another existence.”
“union” by robert fulghum
“You know each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of engagement. at some point they decided to get married. in an informal way, all those conversations that took place in a car, or over a meal, or on long walks, all those conversations that started with ‘when we get married’ and continued with ‘I will’ and ‘you’ “we will ” and “we will”, all those late night conversations that included “someday”, “somehow” and “maybe”, and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. all these common things, and more, are the true process of a wedding.
The symbolic vows you’re about to take are a way of saying to each other, “You know all those things we promised, hoped, and dreamed of; well, I meant it, every word of it.”
Look at each other and remember this moment in time. Before this moment they have been many things to each other: acquaintance, friend, partner, lover, dance partner, even teacher, because they have learned a lot from each other in recent years. shortly you will speak a few words that will carry you across the threshold of life, and things between you will never be the same.
after today, you will tell the world: this is my husband. she this is my wife “.
“prayer for a marriage” by steve scafidi
“when we’re old one night and the moon arches over the house like an old china saucer and the teacup sun follows us somewhere far away, I hope the stars get as bright as you can read if you wish and the sadness that we will have known how to disappear for a while, in this hour or two before bed, and that we kiss standing up in the kitchen not fighting gravity so much as embodying its sweet force, and I hope that we let’s kiss as we do today knowing so much good it is said in this primitive language from the first surprising savages to the infinitely slower and dizzying lower ten thousand, and I hope that while we are in the kitchen making tea and kissing, the whistle of the kettle wakes up the neighbors.”
“how falling in love is like having a dog” by taylor mali
“first of all, it’s a big responsibility, especially in a city like new york. so think hard before deciding on love. on the other hand, love gives you a sense of security: when you’re walking down the street street late at night and you’re on a leash on love no one is going to mess with you because thieves and muggers think love is unpredictable who knows what love could do in its own defense?
On cold winter nights, love is warm. it sits among you and lives and breathes and makes funny noises. love wakes you up every hour of the night with its needs. it needs to be fed to grow and stay healthy.
love doesn’t like to be left alone for too long. but come home and love is always glad to see you. he may accidentally break some things in his passion for life, but you can never be mad at love for long.
Is love good all the time? No! No! love can be bad. bad, love, bad! very bad love.
love makes trouble. love leaves you little surprises here and there. love needs a lot of cleaning afterwards. Sometimes you just want love to be fixed. sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper and smash love’s nose, not so much to cause pain, but just to let love know never to do that again.
sometimes love just wants to go out for a nice long walk. because love loves exercise. it will make you run around the block and leave you gasping for breath. pull you in different directions at once, or circle around you until you’re out of breath and can’t move.
but love makes you meet people wherever you go. people who have nothing in common but love stop to talk on the street.
throw things away and love will bring them back, again and again and again. but above all, love needs love, a lot of love. and in return, love loves you and never stops.”
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