—OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Marriage should, I think, always be a little hard and new and strange. It should be breaking your shell and going into another world, and a bigger one.
—ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short.
—ANDRÉ MAUROIS
Memoires
The difference between courtship and marriage is the difference between the pictures in a seed catalogue and what comes up.
—JAMES WHARTON
The greatest of all arts is the art of living together.
—WILLIAM LYON PHELPS
Marriage
A sound marriage is not based on complete frankness; it is based on a sensible reticence.
—MORRIS L. ERNST
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
—MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
in The Atlantic
You don’t marry one person; you marry three: the person you think they are, the person they are, and the person they are going to become as the result of being married to you.
—RICHARD NEEDHAM
You and All the Rest
Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it.
—HELEN ROWLAND
The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together.
—ROBERT C. DODDS
Married life teaches one invaluable lesson: to think of things far enough ahead not to say them.
—JEFFERSON MACHAMER
The marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes that he or she got the best of it.
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
Matrimony is the only game of chance the clergy favor.
—EMILY FERGUSON MURPHY
Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.
—HENRY KISSINGER
THE GREAT GIFT OF FAMILY LIFE . . .
The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.
—KENDALL HAILEY
The Day I Became an Autodidact
A family vacation is one where you arrive with five bags, four kids and seven I-thought-you-packed-its.
—IVERN BALL
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.
—GAIL LUMET BUCKLEY
The Hornes: An American Family
Parentage is a very important profession; but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
—BERNARD SHAW
Everybody’s Political What’s What?
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
—JOHN BOWRING
Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.
—ANTHONY BRANDT
in Esquire
No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
—MARGARET MEAD
Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.
—LAURENCE J. PETER
Peter’s Quotations
Heredity is a splendid phenomenon that relieves us of responsibility for our shortcomings.
—DOUG LARSON
Adolescence is perhaps nature’s way of preparing parents to welcome the empty nest.
—KAREN SAVAGE AND PATRICIA ADAMS
The Good Stepmother
Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.
—DOUG LARSON
Even a family tree has to have some sap.
—Los Angeles Times Syndicate
Oh, to be only half as wonderful as my child thought I was when he was small, and only half as stupid as my teenager now thinks I am.
—REBECCA RICHARDS
We never know the love of the parent until we become parents ourselves.
—HENRY WARD BEECHER
He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.
—THOMAS FULLER
If you don’t believe in ghosts, you’ve never been to a family reunion.
—ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT
Before most people start boasting about their family tree, they usually do a good pruning job.
—O. A. BATTISTA
There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
—HELEN KELLER
The family fireside is the best of schools.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
Making the decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
—ELIZABETH STONE
When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.
—SOPHIA LOREN
Women and Beauty
Mothers are the most instinctive philosophers.
—HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Instant availability without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play.
—LOTTE BAILYN
The Woman in America
The three most beautiful sights: a potato garden in bloom, a ship in sail, a woman after the birth of her child.
—IRISH PROVERB
Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
—JOHN CIARDI
You never get over being a child, long as you have a mother to go to.
—SARAH ORNE JEWETT
A good father is a little bit of a mother.
—LEE SALK
The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
—THEODORE HESBURGH
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
—GEORGE HERBERT
My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
—CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND
You don’t raise heroes; you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes.
—WALTER SCHIRRA SR.
The beauty of “spacing” children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones—which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned, pricks most deeply and draws more blood.
—MAYA ANGELOU
All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
—ANNE SEXTON
Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.
—ALVIN TOFFLER
Future Shock
The word no carries a lot more meaning when spoken by a parent who also knows how to say yes.
—JOYCE MAYNARD
in Parenting
Lucky parents who have fine children usually have lucky children who have fine parents.
—JAMES A. BREWER
Grandchildren are God’s way of compensating us for growing old.
—MARY H. WALDRIP
Few things are more delightful than
grandchildren fighting over your lap.
—DOUG LARSON
A grandmother is a person with too much wisdom to let that stop her from making a fool of herself over her grandchildren.
—PHIL MOSS
in National Enquirer
I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children—and what an inhuman world, without the aged.
—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
There’s nothing like having grandchildren to restore your faith in heredity.
—DOUG LARSON
The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent.
—SAM LEVENSON
You Don’t Have to Be in “Who’s Who” to Know What’s What
Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
—ALEX HALEY
in The Maroon
I don’t know who my grandfather was. I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
CHILDREN ARE THE LIVING MESSAGES . . .
Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.
—JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
The Stealing of America
My best creation is my children.
—DIANE VON FURSTENBERG
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
—RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.
—SOPHOCLES
It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six.
—JOHN W. GARDNER AND FRANCESCA GARDNER REESE
in Know or Listen to Those Who Know
Perhaps parents would enjoy their children more if they stopped to realize that the film of childhood can never be run through for a second showing.
—EVELYN NOWN
Cherishing children is the mark of a civilized society.
—JOAN GANZ COONEY
Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.
—BILL COSBY
Fatherhood
Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation.
—C. EVERETT KOOP, MD
Children have more need of models than of critics.
—CAROLYN COATS
Things Your Dad Always Told You But You Didn’t Want to Hear
The greatest natural resource that any country can have is its children.
—DANNY KAYE
Although today there are many trial marriages, there is no such thing as a trial child.
—GARY WILLS
Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.
—LARRY WILDE
The Merry Book of Christmas
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.
—CHARLES DICKENS
Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
—MAYA ANGELOU
When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish: something you swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life.
—P. L. TRAVERS
I still live in and on the sunshine of my childhood.
—CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.
—WALT STREIGHTIFF
The penalty for censoring what your children may be taught is children who are brighter than you.
—FRANK A. CLARK
If there is anything 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 G. JUNG
The Development of Personality
Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.
—DENNIS FAKES
Points with Punch
When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments: tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become.
—LOUIS PASTEUR
We worry about what a child will be tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.
—STACIA TAUSCHER
If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
A child is the root of the heart.
—CAROLINA MARÍA DE JESÚS
There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.
—FRAN LEBOWITZ
Social Studies
Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
—JAMES BALDWIN
Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.
—OGDEN NASH
Babies are always more trouble than you thought—and more wonderful.
—CHARLES OSGOOD
“CBS Morning News”
The one thing children wear out faster than shoes is parents.
—JOHN J. PLOMP
Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore,
And that’s what parents were created for.
—OGDEN NASH
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
—PETER USTINOV
in National Enquirer
Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.
—FRED ROGERS
Having a young child explain something exciting he has seen is the finest example of communication you will ever hear or see.
—BOB TALBERT
There’s nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.
—FRANK A. CLARK
The greatest aid to adult education is children.
—CHARLIE T. JONES AND BOB PHILLIPS
Wit & Wisdom
Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.
—HAIM GINOTT
Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded.
—JESS LAIR
When everything is astonishing, nothing is astonishing; this is how the world is to children.
—ANTOINE RIVAROLI
You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around—and why his parents will always wave back.
—WILLIAM D. TAMMEUS
A child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit.
—RABELAIS
Kids are always the only future the human race has.
—WILLIAM SAROYAN
The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.
—FRANK A. CLARK
We set standards for drugs, because bad drugs cross state lines. Well, badly educated children cross state lines, too.
—ADM. HYMAN G. RICKOVER
If you want your children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.
—ABIGAIL VAN BUREN
Loving a child doesn’t mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.
—NADIA BOULANGER
The best things you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
A child, like your stomach, doesn’t need all you can afford to give it.
—FRANK A. CLARK
The best security blanket a child can have is parents who respect each other.
—JAN BLAUSTONE
The Joy of Parenthood
The best inheritance a parent can give his children is a few minutes of his time each day.
—O. A. BATTISTA