Archive

Quotes

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

—Herodotus, 440 BC

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

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

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

—Homer, c. 750 BC

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

—August Strindberg, 1886

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

—Albert Camus, 1942

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

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

—V.S. Pritchett, 1968

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

—Susan Sontag, 1977

Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.

—Mark Twain, c. 1900

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

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580