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, 1966Quotes
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895He 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, 1786God is our father, but even more is God our mother.
—Pope John Paul I, 1978It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCMother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCBy 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, 1955Men are what their mothers made them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860