Motivational Quotes

Family

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

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Family

A small family is soon provided for.

Proverb, English

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

Pritchett, V. S.

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

Cook, Joseph

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

Proverb, Chinese

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals --or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?

Macaulay, Rose

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

Anna Quindlen

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Women know what men have long forgotten. The ultimate economic and spiritual unit of any civilization is still the family.

Luce, Clare Boothe

10.

He didn't dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.

Shaw, George Bernard

11.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

12.

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

Gretry, Marmontel

13.

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.

Bombeck, Erma

14.

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.

Picabia, Francis

15.

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.

Groening, Matt

16.

I think people that have a brother or sister don't realize how lucky they are. Sure, they fight a lot, but to know that there's always somebody there, somebody that's family.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone

17.

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

Proverb, Jewish

18.

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described --and will be, after our deaths --by each of the family members who believe they know us.

Steinem, Gloria

19.

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

20.

With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping homeliness entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all sentiment is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called the Public, the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state.

Lewis, Wyndham

21.

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

Brown, Jerry

22.

The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmother. A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt and Helpists know it. They have jumped into the void left by the disappearance of morbid old ladies from the bosom of the American family.

King, Florence

23.

The family is the school of duties... founded on love.

Adler, Felix

24.

Govern a family as you would cook a small fish -- very gently.

Proverb, Chinese

25.

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

Ann Radcliffe

26.

All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

27.

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

28.

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

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.

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

John Paul II

31.

A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian... and most of all, his family ought to know.

Moody, Dwight L.

32.

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.

Stark, Freya

33.

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

Delille, Jacques

34.

Nor need we power or splendor, wide hall or lordly dome; the good, the true, the tender- these form the wealth of home.

Hale, Sarah J.

35.

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

Confucius

36.

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

37.

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.

Rossetti, Christina

38.

All people are your relatives, therefore expect only trouble from them.

Proverb, Chinese

39.

Cruel is the strife of brothers.

Aristotle

40.

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

41.

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

Twain, Mark

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.

Johnson, Samuel

45.

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.

Oakley, Ann

46.

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.

Howard, Jane

47.

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

Benson, Stella

48.

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