Relationships and Family

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

This is the true measure of love: when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us.

Friends are relatives you make for yourself.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.

Yes, there is a nirvana; it is in leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.

We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

For a man to become a poet he must be in love, or miserable.

Our love for our children springs from the soul's greatest yearning for immortality.

Observe that open loves are held to be more honorable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially honorable.

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

It is only just that anything that up on its own should feel it has nothing to repay for an upbringing which it owes no one.

It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke.

If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.

You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken. Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?

Don't force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own.

Don't force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own.

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

He whom love touches not walks in darkness

As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.

Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction.

The Family is a petty despotism.