Motivational Quotes

Family

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

Best Quotes about Family

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

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

Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love's own product. The child, this in-between to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.

Arendt, Hannah

Losing a baby is not a thing that you could ever get used to.

Erica Eisdorfer

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

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

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

Sontag, Susan

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

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

Proverb, Jewish

10.

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.

11.

A small family is soon provided for.

Proverb, English

12.

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

Pritchett, V. S.

13.

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

John Paul II

14.

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

15.

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

Cook, Joseph

16.

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

17.

Family is the most important thing in the world.

Diana, Princess of Wales

18.

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

19.

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

Confucius

20.

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.

Buddha

21.

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

O'connor, Sandra Day

22.

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

Adler, Felix

23.

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

24.

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.

Niebuhr, Reinhold

25.

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

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

28.

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.

Beecher, Henry Ward

29.

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

Graves, Clarissa

30.

A brother is a friend provided by nature.

Pere, Legouve

31.

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

Haley, Alex

32.

The hatred of relatives is the most violent.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

33.

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

34.

Family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you care about.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone

35.

None but a mule denies his family.

Proverb, Arabian

36.

The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.

Beecher, Henry Ward

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Delille, Jacques

41.

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.

Oakley, Ann

42.

If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you'll be going,'you know, we're alright. We are dang near royalty.'

Jeff Foxworthy

43.

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.

Picabia, Francis

44.

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

45.

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

Brown, Jerry

46.

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

Lardner, Ring

47.

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

48.

A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. [Proverbs 18:19]

Bible

49.

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

Proverb, Chinese

50.

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

Benson, Stella