Quotes about family
84 quotes from 64 people
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
Gertrude Stein1874–1946Paris France (1940), p. 107He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.
Edmund Burke1729–1797On Pitt’s First Speech (26 February 1781), from Wraxall’s Memoirs, First Series, vol. i. p. 342
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834The Friend (1809–1810), No. 6 (September 21, 1809), p. 91It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
Anne Sexton1928–1974“The Poet’s Story,” January 1, 1972 entryMotherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
Rebecca West1892–1983Letter (20 August 1959), as quoted in Victoria Glendinning, Rebecca West: A Life (1987), Part 5, Chapter 8, p. 206So for the mother’s sake the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child.Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834“Sonnet to a Friend Who Asked How I Felt When the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me” (1797)
Sophocles496–406 BCAjax, Lines 550–551 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1896)
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936Mother o’ Mine (1891).
Honoré de Balzac1799–1850Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842), Part I, ch. XLV
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Introduction to The New Generation (1930)
Frank Zappa1940–1993“Ben Watson interviews Frank Zappa”, in MOJO magazine (October 1993).The length of one’s days matters less than the love of one’s family and friends.
Gerald Ford1913–2006Statement just before becoming the longest lived U.S. President as quoted in “Ford eclipses Reagan as oldest ex-president” in USA Today (10 November 2006)
Lucille Ball1911–1989Love, Lucy (1996), p. 235
Samuel Johnson1709–1784The Rambler (1750–1752), No. 148 (17 August 1751)
