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Quotes

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

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

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

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957

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

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

—Herodotus, 440 BC

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

—H.L. Mencken, 1919

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

—Homer, c. 750 BC

If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910

I cannot bear a parent’s tears.

—Virgil, c. 25 BC

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

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

—André Gide, 1897
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