Family and Children Quotes
Top 30 Family and Children Quotes
No 1 (Best quote!)
If you bungle raising your children I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.
- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–94), pictured right, wife of the American president,
John F. Kennedy.
The South African leader, Nelson
Mandela (1918-2013), pictured right, also comments on the family's importance:
To be the father of a nation is a great honour, but to be the father of a family is a greater joy. It was a joy
I had far too little of.
No 2
Children love and want to be loved.
- Erik Erikson (1902-94)
German-born American psychologist, pictured right.
Erikson also says:
The most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.
No 3
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
(Launcelot in The Merchant of
Venice)
- William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright, pictured right
No 4
To the child, abandonment by its parents is the equivalent of death.
- M. Scott Peck, pictured right,
The Road Less Travelled (1978)
No 5
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not
something that could better be changed in ourselves.
- Carl Jung (1875–1961),Swiss
psychologist, pictured right.
No 6
The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they maintain
an atmosphere of unreality, and everyone always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling.
- Walter Bagehot (1826–77), English economist, pictured right.
No 7
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
They must, they have no other models
- James Baldwin, pictured right, in Nobody Knows My Name (1961)
No 8
In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely
perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.
(from the 1853 novel Bleak House).
- Charles Dickens (1812-70),
pictured right, English writer.
No 9
There’s no place like home,
- Dorothy (Judy Garland, pictured right) in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
No 10
Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.
- Ludwig van
Beethoven (1770-1827) German composer, pictured right.
No 11
He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home and broods a nest of sorrows.
- Jeremy Taylor (1613-67), pictured right, the English writer
No 12
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,
(King Lear in King Lear)
- William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright, pictured right.
No 13
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home,
(Pip in Great
Expectations)
- Charles Dickens (1812-70),
pictured right, English writer
No 14
The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
- Confucius (551-479 BC) Chinese
philosopher, pictured right.
No 15
How paramount the future to the present when one is surrounded by children.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
English naturalist, pictured right,
No 16
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,
(famous opening line of the novel Anna
Karenina).
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian writer, pictured right
Mr. Micawber in David
Copperfield by Charles
Dickens, pictured right, agrees:
Accidents will occur in the best regulated families
No 17
A child’s spirit is like a child, you cannot catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love,
it will soon itself come back.
(Rebecca Nurse in 1953 play The
Crucible)
- Arthur Miller (1915-2005), pictured right, American writer.
No 18
Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character
lies in their own hands.
- Anne Frank (1929-1945), child victim of
the Holocaust, pictured right.
No 19
No man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.
(Tom Pinch in Martin Chuzzlewit)
- Charles Dickens (1812-70),
English novelist , pictured right
No 20
The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.
(from the 1671 poem Paradise Regained)
- John Milton (1608–74), pictured right, English poet.
No 21
You know that you have brains as well as breasts, and you use them.
- Betty Friedan (1921-2006), American
feminist, pictured right.
Friedan also commented:
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
No 22
Love begins at home,
- Mother Teresa (1910-97),
Albanian nun, pictured right.
This is similar to the proverb:
Charity begins at home
No 23
The desires of mothers echo in the souls of the children.
- Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-97), French nun, pictured right,.
No 24
The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.
- Carl Jung (1875–1961),the Swiss
psychologist, pictured right.
No 25
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for
itself.
They come through you but not from you.
- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931),
Lebanese-born American philosopher, pictured right,
No 26
The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and advise them to do it.
-Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), American
president, pictured right,.
No 27
The only thing I want to leave my children is an honourable name,
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), pictured
right, American president.
No 28
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
(from Northanger Abbey)
-
Jane Austen (1775-1817), English novelist, pictured right.
No 29
A woman’s truest place is in a home, with a husband and with children.
- Lucy Stone (1818-93), American
suffragette, pictured right.
No 30
Wherever you are you should always be contented, but especially at home, because there you must spend the most
of your time
(from Northanger Abbey).
- Jane Austen (1775-1817), English
novelist, pictured right.
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