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.

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

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

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. 

If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

Men are what their mothers made them.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.  

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

Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them. 

Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.