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, 1625Quotes
A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.
—Pindar, c. 450 BCThe 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, 1919Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897Men are what their mothers made them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910Family! 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, 1886In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BC