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, 1939Quotes
My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810To 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, 1954He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625He 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.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1786The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
—Paul Johnson, 1989It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCIn 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, 1986The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.
—Mario Puzo, 2001If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
—H.L. Mencken, 1919