Merle Shain
Merle Shain
Merle Shain was a Canadian author and journalist...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionAuthor
CountryCanada
Merle Shain quotes about
learning years agony
One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.
friends running strong
The job of a friend is not to decide what should be done, not to run interference or pick up the slack. The job of a friend is to understand, and to supply energy and hope, and in doing so to keep those they value on their feet a little longer, so that they can fight another round and grow strong in themselves.
divorce work-out persons
No marriage is one person's failure any more than it's one person's success, so it works best to see a marriage that has ended simply as something that didn't work out.
land lost beginnings-and-endings
If there are no endings, there are no beginnings and you see no new lands, so for everything that's lost, there is usually something gained.
spring promise silent
Each of us is a seed, a silent promise, and it is always Spring.
healing past never-change
One can never change the past, only the hold it has on you.
generosity accepting
It takes great generosity to accept generosity.
waiting live-in-the-moment despair
The day you spend hoping, the day you spend waiting, the day you spend in despair, is a day in your life as much as the tomorrow you hope for, but which may never come, so betting today on tomorrow is always a bad bet.
marriage commitment soul
I'm not sure there can be loving without commitment, although commitment takes all kinds of forms, and there can be commitment for the moment as well as commitment for all time. The kind that is essential for loving marriages - and love affairs, as well - is a commitment to preserving the essential quality of your partner's soul, adding to them as a person rather than taking away.
humility men play
Our times are obsessed with finding fulfillment, so there are times when some people try too hard, and there are people who want to have the newest feelings just as there are those who want to have the latest model car. You can't play at love any more than you can be proud of your humility, or add water to your perfume and have it smell the same, but men and women both have been known to try.
marriage growing-up night
We marry to grow up, to escape our parents and to inherit our share of the world, not knowing who we are and who we will become, so it is left to marriage to make it clear which ones of us are growing in the same directions and which are ships meant to have passed in the night.
marriage loneliness giving
Marriage is supposed to do everything, like Duz, which is more than half its problem. It is said to save us, define us, give us purpose, keep us from loneliness, and incidentally balance our diet and wash our socks, and when it doesn't, we get divorced.
thanksgiving blessing giving
The act is unjustifiable that either begs for a blessing, or, having succeeded gives no thanksgiving.
compassion
Compassion is the thing that leads you gently back to yourself.