Quotations About Family
Related: Parents, Grandparents, Brothers, Sisters, Children
Sons are for fathers the twice-told tale.
Victoria Secunda
Women and Their Fathers, 1992
Women and Their Fathers, 1992
When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.
Sophia Loren
Women and Beauty
Women and Beauty
You will always be your child's favorite toy.
Vicki Lansky
Trouble-Free Travel with Children, 1991
Trouble-Free Travel with Children, 1991
What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
P.D. James
Time to Be in Earnest
Time to Be in Earnest
Children have more need of models than of critics.
Carolyn Coats
Things Your Dad Always Told You But You Didn't Want to Hear
Things Your Dad Always Told You But You Didn't Want to Hear
Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.
Charles R. Swindoll
The Strong Family
The Strong Family
Your children tell you casually years later what it would have killed you with worry to know at the time.
Mignon McLaughlin
The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.
Mignon McLaughlin
The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
There's an awful lot of blood around that water is thicker than.
Mignon McLaughlin
The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
Quentin Crisp
The Naked Civil Servant, 1968
The Naked Civil Servant, 1968
The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
George Santayana
The Life of Reason
The Life of Reason
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
Adolescence is perhaps nature's way of preparing parents to welcome the empty nest.
Karen Savage and Patricia Adams
The Good Stepmother
The Good Stepmother
The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.
Kendall Hailey
The Day I Became an Autodidact
The Day I Became an Autodidact
Setting a good example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age.
William Feather
The Business of Life, 1949
The Business of Life, 1949
Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.
Fran Lebowitz
Social Studies
Social Studies
The precursor of the mirror is the mother's face.
D.W. Winnicott
Playing and Reality, 1971
Playing and Reality, 1971
Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!
Lydia M. Child
Philothea: A Romance, 1836
Philothea: A Romance, 1836
One father is more than a hundred Schoolmasters.
George Herbert
Outlandish Proverbs, 1640
Outlandish Proverbs, 1640
Fathers represent another way of looking at life - the possibility of an alternative dialogue.
Louise J. Kaplan
Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to Individual, 1978
Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to Individual, 1978
Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.
Gloria Steinem
New York Times, 26 August 1971
New York Times, 26 August 1971
It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
Colette
My Mother's House, 1922
My Mother's House, 1922
A mother, who is really a mother, is never free.
Honoré De Balzac
Mémoires de Deux Jeunes Mariées
Mémoires de Deux Jeunes Mariées
The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
Edward, Duke of Windsor
Look, 5 March 1957
Look, 5 March 1957
It is much easier to become a father than to be one.
Kent Nerburn
Letters to My Son: Reflections on Becoming a Man, 1994
Letters to My Son: Reflections on Becoming a Man, 1994
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
C.G. Jung
Integration of the Personality, 1939
Integration of the Personality, 1939
One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Flight to Arras
Flight to Arras
No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids.
Bill Cosby
Fatherhood, 1986
Fatherhood, 1986
Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.
Bill Cosby
Fatherhood, 1986
Fatherhood, 1986
Come little babe, come silly soul, Thy father's shame, thy mother's grief,
Nicholas Breton
Come, little babe, come, silly soul
Come, little babe, come, silly soul
Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.
Toni Morrison
Beloved, 1987
Beloved, 1987
It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.
Barbara Kingsolver
Animal Dreams
Animal Dreams
Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible.
Marion C. Garretty
A Little Spoonful of Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul
A Little Spoonful of Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul
Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.
Robert Burton
"Anatomy of Melancholy," Democritus to the Reader, 1621
"Anatomy of Melancholy," Democritus to the Reader, 1621
Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild.
Welsh Proverb
Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet.
Vietnamese Proverb
When a child is born, so are grandmothers.
Judith Levy
Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero.
Marc Brown
Clever father, clever daughter; clever mother, clever son.
Russian Proverb
If you want to recapture your youth, just cut off his allowance.
Al Bernstein
Tiger father begets tiger son.
Chinese Proverb
It sometimes happens, even in the best of families, that a baby is born. This is not necessarily cause for alarm. The important thing is to keep your wits about you and borrow some money.
Elinor Goulding Smith
Between sisters, often, the child's cry never dies down. "Never leave me," it says; "do not abandon me."
Louise Bernikow
If nothing is going well, call your grandmother.
Italian Proverb
Help your brother's boat across, and your own will reach the shore.
Hindu Proverb
Never have children, only grandchildren.
Gore Vidal
It takes two men to make one brother.
Israel Zangwill
A busy mother makes slothful daughters.
Portuguese Proverb
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
Erma Bombeck
Giving your son a skill is better than giving him one thousand pieces of gold.
Chinese Proverb
Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other.
Ed Howe
Sisterhood is powerful.
Robin Morgan
The reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
Sam Levenson
When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life.
Antisthenes
Becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you're just a mother. The next you are all-wise and prehistoric.
Pam Brown
A friend is a brother who was once a bother.
Unknown
Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.
Gloria Naylor
My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-three today and we don't know where the hell she is.
Ellen DeGeneres
It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.
Friedrich von Schiller
Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.
Joseph Joubert
One of the best things about being an adult is the realization that you can share with your sister and still have plenty for yourself.
Betsy Cohen
Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting.
Unknown
The mildest, drowsiest sister has been known to turn tiger if her sibling is in trouble.
Clara Ortega
Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother.
Moorish Proverb
Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from the responsibilities so that we can be friends.
Allan Frome
A brother shares childhood memories and grown-up dreams.
Unknown
To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.
Euripides
A wise child makes a glad father, but a foolish child is a mother's grief.
Proverbs 10:1
You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes.
Walter M. Schirra, Sr.
Parents who are afraid to put their foot down usually have children who step on their toes.
Chinese Proverb
An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship.
Spanish Proverb
We acquire friends and we make enemies, but our sisters come with the territory.
Evelyn Loeb
Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer.
Louise Glück
What a bargain grandchildren are! I give them my loose change, and they give me a million dollars' worth of pleasure.
Gene Perret
After a girl is grown, her little brothers — now her protectors — seem like big brothers.
Terri Guillemets
God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.
Jewish Proverb
A daughter is a gift of love.
Unknown
One father is enough to govern one hundred sons, but not a hundred sons one father.
George Herbert
In time of test, family is best.
Burmese Proverb
A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.
Marion C. Garretty
Grandmothers are just antique little girls.
Unknown
The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out his nose.
Garrison Keillor
A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.
Irish Proverb
But wishing our Kansas soldiers 'God speed' is not enough. We need to comfort, care for, and protect their families. And we should ease the financial burdens that these families often face.
Kathleen Sebelius
Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.
Jim Bishop
Counsel men to discipline their children, but not to divorce their wives.
Chinese Proverb
Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.
David Ogilvy
What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of a sister?
Alice Walker
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.
Spanish Proverb
Grandfathers are just antique little boys.
Unknown
A son is a son till he takes him a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life.
Irish Saying
A daughter may outgrow your lap, but she will never outgrow your heart.
Unknown
There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.
Chinese Proverb
Don't tell my mother I work in an advertising agency - she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.
Jacques Seguela
A boy is a magical creature - you can lock him out of your workshop, but you can't lock him out of your heart.
Allan Beck
Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.
Charles M. Schulz
A house needs a grandma in it.
Louisa May Alcott
I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.
James Boswell
He that would the daughter win, must with the mother first begin.
English Proverb
Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.
Laurence J. Peter
If you would have a good wife, marry one who has been a good daughter.
Thomas Fuller
In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry.
Margaret Laurence
Sisters share the scent and smells - the feel of a common childhood.
Pam Brown
You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.
Polish Proverb