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Quotes

The 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, 1919

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

—Oscar Wilde, 1895

The 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, 1939

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, 1625

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.

—Paul Johnson, 1989

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

—Herodotus, 440 BC

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.

—Susan Sontag, 1977

To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

—Ernest Hemingway, 1954
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