Courtship Quotes

“We have better relationships with those who truly seek us rather than those sitting on the couch watching us move mountains trying to prove ourselves.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“....whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“What I personally knew about courting women could comfortably fit into a thimble without taking it off your finger first.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Jack shook his head. 'Books. What is it with women and books? My sisters were the same. They were always buying books for boys they fancied.'
Ellie bent down and picked up the stone and put it on the table. 'It's like sending a love letter without having to write it yourself,' she said softly.”
― Hazel Osmond, Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe?

“What is wrong with the [tale of] Two Swords?" he asked, even more surprised. "Don't you care for it?"
"There is too bloody much romance in it," she said curtly.
Ah, well, here was the crux of it, apparently. "Don't you like romance?" he ventured.
She looked as though she were trying to decide if she should weep or, as he had earlier predicted, stick him with whatever blade she could lay her, hand on. "I don't know," she said briskly.
"I see," he said, though he didn't. He wished, absently, that he'd had at least one sister. He was very well versed in what constituted courtly behavior and appropriate formal wooing practices, thanks to his father's insistence on many such lectures delivered by a dour man whose only acquaintance with women had likely come from reading about them in a book, but he had absolutely no idea how to proceed with a woman whose first instinct when faced with something that made her uncomfortable was to draw her sword.
...
"I'll stop provoking you, but I will have the answer to a question. Why do you think most men woo?"
"Because they have no sword skill and need something with which to occupy their time?”
― Lynn Kurland, The Mage's Daughter

“A male frigate bird blows up a wild red pouch on his neck. He can keep it puffed up for hours. It is his way of impressing the girls.”
― Julie Murphy, Sea Birds

“I challenge a man to a duel before allowing him near me, and then I take an arrow, dip it in poison, and drive it straight through his heart...But that's on a good day...when I purr and feel delightfully amorous. No need to mention what I'd do on a bad one.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“A woman never thoroughly cares for her
lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have
snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she
begins to smile upon you.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“I have a hundred reasons to dislike this gentleman,” Erica reminded herself aloud. “And a thousand reasons more not to go courting with any man.”
Lavinia laughed at that. “Whenever has a woman’s heart listened to her head?”
― T. Davis Bunn, The Solitary Envoy

“...while Norah described to me her plans for carpets and curtains, or showed me the sample of bedspread material she had hung over a chair to see if she could live with it. When I began to know her, I wondered if their courtship had been, for her, something of the same -- my brother draped over a chair for the statutory length of time, to see if she could live with him. In that case she might have noticed that he did not really go with the surroundings; perhaps she did see this, but knew that he would fade to a better match.”
― Shirley Hazzard, The Bay of Noon

“...I dare say if you'd asked him plumply what he meant in regard to the young lady, he would have told you - if he knew.'
'Why, don't you think he does know, Bromfield?'
'I'm not at all sure he does. You women think that because a young man dangles after a girl, or girls, he's attached to them. It doesn't at all follow. He dangles because he must, and doesn't know what to do with his time, and because they seem to like it. I dare say that Tom has dangled a good deal in this instance because there was nobody else in town.”
― William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham

“Are they trained to treat everyone as a servant?'
'Probably. That doesn't make you into one,”
― Sherwood Smith, Remalna's Children

“Each time a girl approached the table, Mortimer would smile. Like this: And each time the girl would shriek and run away.”
― Kelly DiPucchio, Zombie in Love

“She wanted to be courted with mysterious language.”
― Anaïs Nin

“She'd loved their courtship because it had made her feel like she was someone else, and that'd been all she'd ever wanted. Until she married Byron and had to be someone else full-time.”
― Alissa Nutting, Made for Love

“In her pirate novels the women were kidnapped or met their lovers in exciting ways. To be courted implied a mundane process akin to the cooking of beans or the washing of linen.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

“If this was cynical, then we must allow that all courtship is cynical.”
― Zoë Heller, What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]

“Two practicing Christians can never divorce”
― Fela Bank-Olemoh

“Never marry a person that feels superior to you”
― Fela Bank-Olemoh

“Before his mistress a lover was prostrate, wounded to death by her beauty, killed by her disdain, obliged to an illimitable constancy, marked out for her dangerous service. A smile from her was in theory a gracious reward for twenty years of painful adoration.”
― Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales

“Consumerism turns the tables on ancestral patterns of human courtship. It makes courtship a commodity that can be bought and sold.”
― Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

“There is plenty of evidence from evolutionary psychology that men and women have physical, emotional and mental adaptations for short-term liaisons and adulterous affairs.”
― Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

“The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“Rose-leaves? But, my dear girl, at this season?”
― Georgette Heyer, Venetia

“Rainborough wished that there was some way of becoming intimate with a woman which did not involve these agonizing moments of irrevocable decision. It was like hunting fish with an underwater gun, a sport which he had once been foolish enough to try. At one moment there is the fish—graceful, mysterious, desirable and free—and the next moment there is nothing but struggling and blood and confusion.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Flight from the Enchanter

“Many modern young men approach a girl, and they are quite serious as far as their intentions go, but they are afraid of interfering with her life. (…) But the whole point of courtship is to disrupt a young lady’s plans. A godly young woman is not going to stand around waiting for marriage. Rather, she will be preparing herself for marriage. This means she will be heading in some particular direction, and not just marking time. A young man should not be afraid of disrupting, because marriage is by it’s very nature a disruption of her previous way of life.”
― Douglas Wilson

“How very boring he'd painted his faceless future spouse. No wonder he'd never been inspired to search for her.”
― Roseanna M. White, A Beautiful Disguise

“If the fates brought you here to save my daughter, then you have my gratitude. But careful not to mistake that for entitlement. No man deserves my daughter. She is more precious and unique than any gem she sells in her store. The man who wants her heart must honor her in every way. How he speaks to her, provides for her, cherishes and loves her. He must be willing to give her as much love as I do, and that is a high bar to reach.”
― Dannika Dark, The Alpha

“The death of all relationships reveal a slow decay in mutual courtesy. An erosion of respect.”
― Anje Kruger

“Can we stop this conversation? The man sent me flowers; that’s all.”
Tak chortled. “Nine hundred flowers carries a different meaning from a dozen.”
― Dannika Dark, The Protector