Archive

Quotes

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

—Susan Sontag, 1977

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

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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

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

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

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

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

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

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
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