Motivational Quotes

Family

A farmer who had a quarrelsome family called his sons and told them to lay a bunch of sticks before him. Then, after laying the sticks parallel to one another and binding them, he challenged his sons, one after one, to pick up the bundle and break it. They all tried, but in vain. Then, untying the bundle, he gave them the sticks to break one by one. This they did with the greatest ease. Then said the father, Thus, my sons, as long as you remain united, you are a match for anything, but differ and separate, and you are undone.

- Aesop

Best Quotes about Family

I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.

Anna Quindlen

Our relatives are ours by chance, but we can choose our friends.

Delille, Jacques

I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous.

Burroughs, William S.

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.

Proverb, Jewish

What a man sows, that shall he and his relations reap.

Graves, Clarissa

They say that blood is thicker than water. Maybe that's why we battle our own with more energy and gusto than we would ever expend on strangers.

David Assael

A small family is soon provided for.

Proverb, English

Man is the head of the family, woman the neck that turns the head.

Proverb, Chinese

Look for the good, not the evil, in the conduct of members of the family.

Proverb, Jewish

10.

If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.

Crisp, Quentin

11.

In a broken nest there are few whole eggs.

Proverb, Chinese

12.

Women's liberationists spread the word that the only peaceful family is one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband is androgynous.

Tyell, R. Emmett

13.

My family begins with me, your family ends with you.

Iphicrates

14.

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

Johnson, Paul

15.

All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.

Lincoln, Abraham

16.

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.

Mead, Margaret

17.

It is dismal coming home, when there is nobody to welcome one!

Ann Radcliffe

18.

The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.

Howe, Louise Kapp

19.

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.

Jane Howard

20.

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.

Haley, Alex

21.

The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have.

Lardner, Ring

22.

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.

Benson, Stella

23.

When I do something in my family because I really enjoy it, then my duty has become my pleasure. And it is a pleasure for all the people around me.

Lair, Dr. Jess

24.

The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values.

Colton, Charles Caleb

25.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy

26.

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

27.

Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.

Twain, Mark

28.

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.

Groening, Matt

29.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

30.

One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.

Proverb, Jewish

31.

People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.

Ziglar, Zig

32.

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

Strindberg, J. August

33.

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances... in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.

Dickens, Charles

34.

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.

Confucius

35.

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.

Franklin, Benjamin

36.

Having a baby's sweet face so close to your own, for so long a time as it takes to nurse'em, is a great tonic for a sad soul.

Erica Eisdorfer

37.

The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.

O'connor, Sandra Day

38.

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

The hatred of relatives is the most violent.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

40.

Caregiver: that word should weigh more than others on a page, sag it down a bit and wrinkle it, because the simple-sounding job frazzles as it consumes and depletes. Not that it's only gloomy. Caregiving offers many fringe benefits, including the sheer sensory delight of nourishing and grooming, sharing, and playing. There's something uniquely fulfilling about being a lodestar, feeling so deeply needed, and it's fun finding creative ways to gladden a loved one's life. But caregiving does buttonhole you; you're stitched in one place.

Diane Ackerman

41.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

Mencken, H. L.

42.

Of all my wife's relations I like myself the best.

Cook, Joseph

43.

One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fiber of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardily.

Raban, Jonathan

44.

Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.

Mcginley, Phyllis

45.

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?

Janeway, Elizabeth

46.

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.

Swindoll, Charles

47.

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.

Picabia, Francis

48.

Parents: persons who spend half their time worrying how a child will turn out, and the rest of the time wondering when a child will turn in.

Cook, Ted

49.

Where can a person be better than in the bosom of their family.

Gretry, Marmontel

50.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

Addison, Joseph