It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781Quotes
I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCMother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942The 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, 1919Nobody, 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, 1815To 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, 1954As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897The 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 BCThe 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, 1939My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BC