Two cats and one mouse,
Two wives in one house,
Two dogs at one bone,
Can never agree in one. [ Proverb ]

Mills and wives ever want. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Blind men's wives need no paint. [ Proverb ]

As the market goes, wives must sell. [ Proverb ]

Husbands are in heaven whose wives chide not. [ Proverb ]

May widows wed as often as they can,
And ever for the better change their man;
And some devouring plague pursue their lives,
Who will not well be governed by their wives. [ Dryden ]

We'll leave a proof, by that which we will do,
Wives may be merry, and yet honest too. [ William Shakespeare ]

Few take wives for God's sake, or for fair looks. [ Proverb ]

In love the heavens themselves do guide the state;
Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate. [ William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V. Sc. 5 ]

A virtuous name is the only prize
Which queens and peasants' wives contest together. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

All are good maids, but whence come the bad wives? [ Proverb ]

Discreet wives have sometimes neither eyes nor ears. [ Proverb ]

Husbands can earn money, but only wives can save it. [ Proverb ]

Bachelor's wives, and maid's children are well taught. [ Proverb ]

Since all the maids are good and lovable, from whence come the evil wives? [ Lamb ]

Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. [ William Shakespeare ]

We meet in society many attractive women whom we would fear to make our wives. [ D'Harleville ]

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses. [ Bacon ]

Wives must have their wills, while they live; because they make none, when they die. [ Proverb ]

Should all despair that have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind would hang themselves. [ William Shakespeare ]

Husbands and wives talk of the cares of matrimony, and bachelors and spinsters bear them. [ Wilkie Collins ]

He sleeps as dogs do when wives bake, (i.e. is wide awake, though pretending not to see). [ Scotch Proverb ]

It is not enough plagues, wars, and famine rise to lash our crimes, but must our wives be wise? [ Young ]

Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler. [ Byron ]

We tell the ladies that good wives make good husbands; I believe it is a more certain position that good brothers make good sisters. [ Johnson ]

Men who marry wives very much superior to themselves are not so truly husbands to their wives as they are unawares made slaves to their position. [ Plutarch ]

Mothers! endeavor to educate your daughters; tram them up to be faithful, grateful, dutiful daughters, and they will not fail to be excellent wives and mothers. [ Mrs. A. G. Whittelsey ]

The prodigality of women has reached such proportions that one must be wealthy to have one for himself: we have no other resource than to love the wives of others. [ A. Karr ]

It is a curious thing about the game of marriage - a game, by the way, that is going out of fashion - the wives hold all the honors and invariably lose the odd trick. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

Secrets from other people's wives are a necessary luxury in modern life, but no man should have a secret from his own wife. She invariably finds out. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]

Ask men of genius how much they owe to their mothers, and you will find that they attribute almost all to them and their influence; and if we could only guage the mental capacity of the wives of great men, we might perhaps learn why genius is so seldom hereditary. [ Lord Kames ]

The love of a mother is never exhausted; it never changes, it never tires. A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands; but a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; she still remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of Iris childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy. [ W. Irving ]