In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCQuotes
The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1919Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCThe 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 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, 1969Family! 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, 1886If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.
—Homer, c. 750 BC