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Quotes

God is our father, but even more is God our mother.

—Pope John Paul I, 1978

It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.

—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.

—Rebecca West, 1959

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.

—V.S. Pritchett, 1968

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

—Homer, c. 750 BC

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

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

—André Gide, 1897

Family! Thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.

—August Strindberg, 1886

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

—Herodotus, 440 BC

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

My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.

—Tecumseh, 1810
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