Family quotes
Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and the house they share. Quotes about family from essays, novels, scripture and proverbs, picked to read well on a card, a story or a birthday post.
The library has 1,180 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 family quotes
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Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina · translated by Constance Garnett -
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice -
O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies In the small orb of one particular tear.
William Shakespeare A Lover’s Complaint, Line 288 -
I never tempted her with word too large, But, as a brother to his sister, show’d Bashful sincerity and comely love.
William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing, Act iv. Sc. 1 -
Nothing lovelier can be found In woman than to study household good, And good works in her husband to promote.
John Milton Paradise Lost -
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
Type of the wise who soar but never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home.
William Wordsworth To a Skylark -
What can ennoble sots or slaves or cowards? Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
Alexander Pope Essay on Man. Epistle iv, Line 215 -
Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
Alexander Pope Essay on Man, Epistle II -
Thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother.
William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice, Act iii. Sc. 5 -
He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his own home.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Affliction’s sons are brothers in distress; A brother to relieve,—how exquisite the bliss!
Robert Burns A Winter Night -
Childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.
John Milton Paradise Regained -
Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Book iv. Line 323 -
Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Book iv. Line 750 -
The child is father of the man.
William Wordsworth My heart leaps up when I behold -
Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now.
William Wordsworth To a Butterfly. I’ve watched you now a full half-hour -
Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Children -
Fear not, then, thou child infirm; There’s no god dare wrong a worm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Compensation -
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came.
Alexander Pope Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, Prologue to the Satires. Line 127 -
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
Jonathan Swift Thoughts on Various Subjects -
How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!
William Wordsworth Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg -
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Bible (World English Bible) Proverbs, 22:6 -
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon Of Marriage and Single Life -
Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days Have led their children through the mirthful maze, And the gay grandsire, skill’d in gestic lore, Has frisk’d beneath the burden of threescore.
Oliver Goldsmith The Traveller, Line 251 -
Blest be those feasts, with simple plenty crowned, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale.
Oliver Goldsmith The Traveller -
By sports like these are all their cares beguil’d; The sports of children satisfy the child.
Oliver Goldsmith The Traveller, Line 153 -
Great families of yesterday we show, And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who.
Daniel Defoe The True-Born Englishman, Part i. Line 1 -
A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Three Graves -
Embosom’d in the deep where Holland lies. Methinks her patient sons before me stand, Where the broad ocean leans against the land.
Oliver Goldsmith The Traveller, Line 282 -
Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; Home-keeping hearts are happiest, For those that wander they know not where Are full of trouble and full of care; To stay at home is best.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Song -
While a man’s father is alive, look at the bent of his will; when his father is dead, look at his conduct. If for three years he does not alter from the way of his father, he may be called filial.
Confucius Analects, I.11 · translated by James Legge -
A true Brahmana goes scatheless, though he have killed father and mother, and two valiant kings, though he has destroyed a kingdom with all its subjects.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 294 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Honorable descent is in all nations greatly esteemed; besides, it is to be expected that the children of men of worth will be like their fathers, for nobility is the virtue of a family.
Aristotle -
Pleasant in the world is the state of a mother, pleasant the state of a father, pleasant the state of a Samana, pleasant the state of a Brahmana.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 332 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Credit is the capital of a younger son, and he can live charmingly on it.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Not a mother, not a father will do so much, nor any other relative; a well-directed mind will do us greater service.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 43 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Sons are no help, nor a father, nor relations; there is no help from kinsfolk for one whom death has seized.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 288 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Abraham Lincoln July (motto) -
Domestic happiness, thou only bliss Of Paradise that has survived the fall!
William Cowper The Task, Book iii. The Garden. Line 41 -
I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
Charles Dickens -
To be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
My husband is a sort of promissory note; I am tired of meeting him.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.
Miguel de Cervantes -
While his parents are alive, the son may not go abroad to a distance. If he does go abroad, he must have a fixed place to which he goes.
Confucius Analects, IV.19 · translated by James Legge -
We are not bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to reject all progress, all improvement.
Abraham Lincoln March 30 -
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; a mother’s secret hope outlives them all!
Oliver Wendell Holmes -
The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, ‘les grand pères ont toujours tort.’
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
’Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog’s honest bark Bay deep-mouth’d welcome as we draw near home; ’Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come.
Lord Byron Don Juan, Canto i. Stanza 123 -
The years of parents may by no means not be kept in the memory, as an occasion at once for joy and for fear.
Confucius Analects, IV.21 · translated by James Legge -
The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds.
Abraham Lincoln December 17 -
Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Though they may gang a kennin’ wrang, To step aside is human.
Robert Burns Address to the Unco Guid -
If the son for three years does not alter from the way of his father, he may be called filial.
Confucius Analects, IV.20 · translated by James Legge -
All are of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load.
Abraham Lincoln November (motto) -
The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother.
Napoleon -
We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity. It is only a father that does not grudge talent to his son.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 190 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
The modern sentimental term for the national minimum of celibacy is Purity.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent’s first duty.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
When harmony no longer prevailed throughout the six kinships, filial sons found their manifestation; when the states and clans fell into disorder, loyal ministers appeared.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 18.2 · translated by James Legge -
The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears.
Francis Bacon Essays
Who wrote most about family
- William Shakespeare 47
- Alexander Pope 21
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 21
- Epictetus 19
- John Milton 17
- Jean Paul 17
- George Bernard Shaw 15
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 13
- Robert Burns 12
- The Buddha 12
- Thomas Carlyle 12
- John Ruskin 12