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

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

If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.

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.

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. 

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

Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.

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

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

I cannot bear a parent’s tears.

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

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.