Archive

Quotes

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.

—Robert Frost, 1939

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

Family! 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, 1886

It’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, 1966

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

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

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

—Albert Camus, 1942

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.

—V.S. Pritchett, 1968

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.

—Paul Johnson, 1989

A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.

—Susan Sontag, 1977

One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.

—Pindar, c. 450 BC
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