Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
—H.L. Mencken, 1919Quotes
It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668God is our father, but even more is God our mother.
—Pope John Paul I, 1978A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986The 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, 1939Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959Nobody, 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, 1815The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
—Paul Johnson, 1989