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Quotes

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. 

—Benjamin Franklin, 1786

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

—André Gide, 1897

To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

—Ernest Hemingway, 1954

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

The root of the kingdom is in the State. The root of the State is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its Head.

—Mencius, c. 270 BC

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

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!

—Philip Roth, 1969

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

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

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

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

—Susan Sontag, 1977

Nobody, 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, 1815
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