Quotes to inspire and reflect

The truly free man is he who knows how to decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse.

Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow.

Manners are the happy way of doing things.

What a father says to his children is not heard by the world; but it will be heard by posterity.

I have found that the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want, and then advise them to do it.

Kids are always the only future the human race has.

When everything is astonishing, nothing is astonishing; this is how the world is to children.

Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.

And that’s what parents were created for.

A child is the root of the heart.

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.

When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments: tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

I don’t know who my grandfather was. I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children—and what an inhuman world, without the aged.

The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned, pricks most deeply and draws more blood.

It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.

Mothers are the most instinctive philosophers.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.

Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

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.

Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it.

All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, appreciated a little.

It isn’t tying himself to one woman that a man dreads when he thinks of marrying; it’s separating himself from all the others.

Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.

When one loves somebody, everything is clear—where to go, what to do—it all takes care of itself and one doesn’t have to ask anybody about anything.

Seek not every quality in one individual.

Never close your lips to those to whom you have opened your heart.

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.

The worst prison would be a closed heart.

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.

Him that I love, I wish to be free—even from me.

The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: “What are you going through?”

No disguise can long conceal love where it is, nor feign it where it is not.

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

Let there be spaces in your togetherness / And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable.

Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open, and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.