Family

The man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to he a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times.

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.

The family is the country of the heart.

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

Where we love is home—home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus.

 

The kids, like all kids, loved the dog [Checkers], and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.

No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,—parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.

When one has not had a good father one must create one.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

When she introduces me to her parents back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie, should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa and not ask Where’s the bathroom?

Dieu créa l’homme, et ne le trouvant pas assez seul, il lui donne une compagne pour lui faire mieux sentir sa solitude .

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.

 

To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.

The difference between outlaws and in-laws is that outlaws don't promise to pay it back.

The Family is a petty despotism; . . . a school in which men learn to despise women and women to mistrust men (much more than is necessary); a slaughterhouse for children (the firstborn succumbing to unskilled treatment, the lastborn to neglect). . . . Unfortunately, we cannot as yet do without it; and therefore we put a good face on the matter by conferring upon it the conventional attribute of sacredness, and impudently proclaiming it the source of all the virtues it has well-nigh killed in us.

[Tolerance] is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.

Oh, my friends, that your self be in your deed as the mother is in her child - let that be your word concerning virtue!

Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,

 

The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent.

 

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.