In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCQuotes
A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977Men are what their mothers made them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.
—Mario Puzo, 2001Family! 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, 1886He 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, 1786To 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, 1954I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCGod is our father, but even more is God our mother.
—Pope John Paul I, 1978All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
—V.S. Pritchett, 1968