Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
—H.L. Mencken, 1919Quotes
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
—V.S. Pritchett, 1968A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969It’s frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself… it seems unfair. You can’t assume the responsibility for everything you do—or don’t do.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1966In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCAs the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942