Motivational Quotes

Family

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended -- and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended.

- Frost, Robert

Best Quotes about Family

What a man sows, that shall he and his relations reap.

Graves, Clarissa

Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love's own product. The child, this in-between to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.

Arendt, Hannah

A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.

Lamb, Charles

Our relatives are ours by chance, but we can choose our friends.

Delille, Jacques

Having a baby's sweet face so close to your own, for so long a time as it takes to nurse'em, is a great tonic for a sad soul.

Erica Eisdorfer

The family is the school of duties... founded on love.

Adler, Felix

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.

Benson, Stella

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

A farmer who had a quarrelsome family called his sons and told them to lay a bunch of sticks before him. Then, after laying the sticks parallel to one another and binding them, he challenged his sons, one after one, to pick up the bundle and break it. They all tried, but in vain. Then, untying the bundle, he gave them the sticks to break one by one. This they did with the greatest ease. Then said the father, Thus, my sons, as long as you remain united, you are a match for anything, but differ and separate, and you are undone.

Aesop

10.

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.

Pritchett, V. S.

11.

Man is the head of the family, woman the neck that turns the head.

Proverb, Chinese

12.

One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fiber of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardily.

Raban, Jonathan

13.

I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous.

Burroughs, William S.

14.

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.

Howard, Jane

15.

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.

Stark, Freya

16.

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?

Janeway, Elizabeth

17.

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.

Bombeck, Erma

18.

Govern a family as you would cook a small fish -- very gently.

Proverb, Chinese

19.

A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.

Sontag, Susan

20.

Family... the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.

Strindberg, J. August

21.

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.

Rossetti, Christina

22.

Of all my wife's relations I like myself the best.

Cook, Joseph

23.

I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.

Anna Quindlen

24.

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

Brown, Jerry

25.

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.

Beecher, Henry Ward

26.

The hatred of relatives is the most violent.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

27.

Parents: persons who spend half their time worrying how a child will turn out, and the rest of the time wondering when a child will turn in.

Cook, Ted

28.

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

Confucius

29.

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.

Johnson, Paul

30.

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.

Oakley, Ann

31.

A brother is a friend provided by nature.

Pere, Legouve

32.

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.

Keats, John

33.

Losing a baby is not a thing that you could ever get used to.

Erica Eisdorfer

34.

No matter where you live, brothers are brothers and sisters are sisters. The bonds that keep family close are the same no matter where you are.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

35.

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described --and will be, after our deaths --by each of the family members who believe they know us.

Steinem, Gloria

36.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

Franklin, Benjamin

37.

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.

Groening, Matt

38.

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.

Confucius

39.

The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.

O'connor, Sandra Day

40.

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances... in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.

Dickens, Charles

41.

The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have.

Lardner, Ring

42.

Never did I think that I became family entertainment.

Buffett, Jimmy

43.

All people are your relatives, therefore expect only trouble from them.

Proverb, Chinese

44.

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

45.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

Addison, Joseph

46.

Look for the good, not the evil, in the conduct of members of the family.

Proverb, Jewish

47.

One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.

Proverb, Jewish

48.

Women's liberationists spread the word that the only peaceful family is one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband is androgynous.

Tyell, R. Emmett

49.

Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.

Twain, Mark

50.

The Family is the Country of the heart. There is an angel in the Family who, by the mysterious influence of grace, of sweetness, and of love, renders the fulfillment of duties less wearisome, sorrows less bitter. The only pure joys unmixed with sadness which it is given to man to taste upon earth are, thanks to this angel, the joys of the Family.

Mazzini, Giuseppe