It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668Quotes
In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCMy mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968He 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, 1786Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
—Jane Austen, 1815It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.
—Pindar, c. 450 BCA Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCIt’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