Archive

Quotes

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, 1919

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

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

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

It’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

Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.

—Mark Twain, c. 1900

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.

—André Gide, 1897

To 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, 1954

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.  

—Gertrude Stein, 1940

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

Nobody, 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, 1815

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781