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Quotes

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

—V.S. Pritchett, 1968

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

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

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

—Tecumseh, 1810

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

—Susan Sontag, 1977

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

—Homer, c. 750 BC

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

—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668

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

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

—Paul Johnson, 1989
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