Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959Quotes
Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.
—Mark Twain, c. 1900He 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, 1786Nobody, 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, 1815The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.
—Mario Puzo, 2001If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1955Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCI cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCAll women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BC