One of the most helpful things I’ve done as a writer is import quotes I collect through my reading into Roam Research where I can then sort them by topic. I was recently going through quotes on marriage and thought I’d pull together a few that are meant to challenge husbands.

First, De Witt Talmage makes an observation and offers a warning: “The fact is, that many men are more kind to everybody else’s wives than to their own wives. They will let the wife carry a heavy coal scuttle upstairs, and will at one bound clear the width of a parlor to pick up some other lady’s pocket-handkerchief. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men—namely, husbands in flirtation. The attention they ought to put upon their own wives they bestow upon others.”
J.R. Miller then calls men to be worthy of their own wives:
Every true-hearted husband should seek to be worthy of the wife he has already won. For her sake, he should reach out after the noblest achievements and strive to attain the loftiest heights of character. To her he is the ideal of all that is manly, and he should seek to become every day more worthy of the homage she pays to him. Every possibility in his soul, should be developed. Every latent power and energy of his life, should be brought out. His hand should be trained under love’s inspiration to do its most skillful work. Every fault in his character should be eradicated, every evil habit conquered, and every hidden beauty of soul should burst into fragrant bloom—for her sake! She looks to him as her ideal of manhood, and he must see to it that the ideal is not marred—that he never falls by any unworthy act of his own, from the high pedestal in her heart to which she has raised him.
He also calls men to appreciate how their wives are a means of divine kindness to them. “So it is in the dark hours of a man’s life, when burdens press, when sorrows weigh like mountains upon his soul, when adversities have left him crushed and broken, or when he is in the midst of fierce struggles which try the strength of every fiber of his manhood—that all the radiance and glory of a true wife’s strengthful love shine out before his eyes! Only then does he recognize in her God’s angel of mercy!”
Then, finally, Talmage praises men who are love and respected by their wives. “If a man during all his life accomplishes nothing else except to win the love and help and companionship of a good woman, he is the garlanded victor, and ought to have the hand of all people between here and the grave stretched out to him in congratulation.”

We pray. We pray because God tell us to. We pray because we need to. We pray because prayer matters. But do we pray with confidence that God is pleased with our praying? Do we pray with confidence that God is pleased with our praying even when he does not grant our petitions? Charles Spurgeon addresses those questions in this brief excerpt.

We have been pleading with God. Prayer after prayer has knocked at Heaven’s gate, entreating for the conversion of souls, and the upbuilding of the church.  I have no doubt that our prayer has been, in itself, acceptable with God, through Jesus Christ.
It is in itself a form of worship to which our gracious God hath much respect. The golden vials of the elders before the throne are said to be full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. Prayer is typified by sweet incense, because God delights in it. He loves to see our desires for the accomplishment of His purposes.
It is very pleasing to a father, as you who are parents can testify, to see his child in full sympathy with him, and anxious to help him in his work. Though he can do but little, and that little feebly and faultily, yet his eagerness to work with his father, and for his father, gives his father joy. Even thus does our Heavenly Father take pleasure in us, and in our desires for His glory.
“Thou didst well in that it was in thine heart,” said the Lord to David, even when He did not accept what David proposed to do; and I believe there may be glory brought to God, not only by those prayers which are manifestly answered, but by those which for wise reasons the good Lord is pleased to lay on one side. We are nothing better than children even in prayer, and therefore it is not every request that is wise; but yet we are children, and therefore the cries which come from our hearts touch the heart of our great Father in Heaven.
Our desires that souls may be saved, and that the church may prosper, are so much in accordance with the mind of God that they must be a sweet savour unto Him. Therefore, brethren, let us pray on as long as breath remains. If prayer pleaseth God, it should always please us.

Those who have lost a child, or who have lost another loved one, inevitably face the pain of separation and the longing for reunification. In my own sorrows I have often been comforted by some sweet words written by Thomas Smyth, a man who on one day laid two precious children in the very same grave. Though he writes specifically to bereaved parents, his words will resonate with all of those who have loved and lost.

Can we not with David rejoicingly declare, “They cannot come to us, but we can go to them?” Yes, we can go to them. They are not lost, but gone before. There in that world of light, and love, and joy, they await our coming. There do they beckon us to ascend. There do they stand ready to welcome us. There may we meet them, when a few more suns or seasons shall have cast their departing shadows upon our silent grave. Then shall our joy be full and our sorrows ended, and all tears wiped from our eyes.
Death separates, but it can never disunite those who are bound together in Christ Jesus. To them, death in his power of an endless separation, is abolished. It is no more death, but a sweet departure, a journey from earth to heaven. Our children are still ours. We are still their parents. We are yet one family—one in memory, one in hope, one in spirit. Our children are yet with us, and dwell with us in our sweetest, fondest recollections. We too are yet with them in the bright anticipations of our reunion with them, in the glories of the upper sanctuary. We mingle together indeed no more in sorrow and in pain.
Blessed and glorious hope, and blessed and glorious gospel by which it is inspired! I have gloried in thee, but never as I do now. I have found thee precious, but never as precious as now. I have hoped in thy word, and stayed myself on thy promises, and exulted in thy immortal hopes, but never aught as now. When I stood a fond parent, surrounded by my little ones, growing up in their sweet loveliness around me, my future delight, my future helpmates and companions, I rejoiced in the sunshine which this heavenly gospel threw around me.
But when I stood bereft of these loved ones, when I saw them cold in the speechlessness of death—when I put them both together in their clayey bed, there to sleep the sleep that knows no waking—when my heart shuddered to think that there they would lie exposed to winter’s storms and the summer’s torrid heat, then did thy cheerful promise, span as with a bow of hope my dreary darkness, sustain my sinking heart, and enable me, even with death, and its horrid desolations before me, triumphantly to exclaim, “Oh death where is thy sting, oh grave where is thy victory! Thanks be to God who giveth me the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”
And here let me commend, especially to bereaved parents, this “balm for wounded spirits.” Clasp it, sorrowing mourner, to your bosom. Receive it into your inmost heart. Treasure it as your pearl of greatest price. Seek it as your first and greatest object of pursuit. Buy it at whatever cost. Sell it—no, not for worlds. Heaven is not only our home, our rest. It is now the home of our children. It is our common inheritance. Let it then be the prize of our high calling. Towards it let us press. To it let us continually ascend. For it let us diligently prepare, that when our earthly house of this tabernacle is taken down, we may have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens.