I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCQuotes
My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.
—Mark Twain, c. 1900Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942Nobody, 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, 1815One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.
—Pindar, c. 450 BCThe thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957God is our father, but even more is God our mother.
—Pope John Paul I, 1978Family! 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, 1886A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968