Archive

Quotes

Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know. 

—Albert Camus, 1942

It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.

—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668

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

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

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.

—Rebecca West, 1959

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

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

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

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

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them. 

—Homer, c. 750 BC

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

—H.L. Mencken, 1919

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

—Mario Puzo, 2001

If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910