Archive

Quotes

The root of the kingdom is in the State. The root of the State is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its Head.

—Mencius, c. 270 BC

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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

He 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, 1786

If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910

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

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.

—Mark Twain, c. 1900

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

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, 1939

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.

—Mario Puzo, 2001

I cannot bear a parent’s tears.

—Virgil, c. 25 BC

One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.

—Pindar, c. 450 BC