Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959Quotes
It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.
—Mark Twain, c. 1900Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897Men are what their mothers made them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.
—Pindar, c. 450 BCIt’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, 1966A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910God is our father, but even more is God our mother.
—Pope John Paul I, 1978