Archive

Quotes

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

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

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

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

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

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

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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

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

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

I cannot bear a parent’s tears.

—Virgil, c. 25 BC

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

A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.

—Susan Sontag, 1977

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

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

—André Gide, 1897

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

—Mario Puzo, 2001