Archive

Quotes

To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

—Ernest Hemingway, 1954

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.

—André Gide, 1897

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

Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know. 

—Albert Camus, 1942

Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them. 

—Homer, c. 750 BC

I cannot bear a parent’s tears.

—Virgil, c. 25 BC

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1919

The root of the kingdom is in the State. The root of the State is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its Head.

—Mencius, c. 270 BC

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

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.

—Tecumseh, 1810