It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668Quotes
God is our father, but even more is God our mother.
—Pope John Paul I, 1978A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1919I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCIn our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
—V.S. Pritchett, 1968Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
—H.L. Mencken, 1919Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897The 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 BCAgain, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BC