I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCQuotes
My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969The 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, 1939Men are what their mothers made them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.
—Pindar, c. 450 BCNobody, 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, 1815Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BC