Quotes for a wedding toast

The first line of Keats's long poem Endymion: beautiful things never lose their power to delight us, and their loveliness grows over time instead of fading.

The urn tells us that beauty and truth are the same thing, and that this is the only wisdom people need. Whether Keats himself believed it, or is letting the urn speak for itself, is still debated.

Family ties are stronger than any other bond, so relatives should stand by each other first.

Said, usually as a joke, when two people have the same idea at the same time. It flatters both of them.

Old age is not a decline to dread but the goal that youth was preparing for. Browning's speaker invites a listener to grow old with him because the later years complete the life.

The poet lists the ways she loves her husband: as deeply as her soul can reach, in everyday needs, freely, purely, with all her life, and, if God allows, even more after death.

Austen's narrator states a “universal truth” that is really a joke: it is the families of single women who want a rich bachelor, not the bachelor who wants a wife.

Shakespeare defines true love as constant: it does not change when circumstances change, and it does not fade with time or age.

Paul describes the kind of love that should hold a community together: patient, kind, humble and enduring. It was written to a quarreling church, not a couple.

Juliet asks why Romeo has to be a Montague, the son of her family's enemy. “Wherefore” means “why,” not “where.”

The poet decides the beloved is better than a summer's day, which is too short and changeable, and promises that the poem itself will keep their beauty alive forever.

Her beauty is like a clear, starry night, a perfect balance of dark and light, and it comes as much from a calm, good mind as from her face.

Burns, having wrecked a mouse's nest with his plough, tells her that the best plans of mice and men often go wrong, and that he is worse off than her because he worries about the past and the future.

Lysander comforts Hermia, whose father forbids their marriage, by saying true love has always faced obstacles. It is a promise that trouble does not mean love is false.

Everyone makes mistakes; forgiving them is what lifts us toward the divine. Pope wrote it to urge critics to be generous to struggling writers.

Life moves through opposite seasons, birth and death, weeping and laughing, and each has its proper time. The passage is both comforting and a reminder that we do not control the timing.

A promise of total loyalty: wherever you go, I go; your people will be my people, and your God my God.