Archive

Quotes

One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.

—Pindar, c. 450 BC

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

—H.L. Mencken, 1919

It’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, 1966

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.

—Robert Frost, 1939

Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.

—Mark Twain, c. 1900

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.  

—Gertrude Stein, 1940

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

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

—V.S. Pritchett, 1968

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1955

A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!

—Philip Roth, 1969