Quotes about Family



Peruse this vast collection of quotes about family to find the sentiment that best expresses your feelings about your family.

Quotes about Family Index

About Families
Blessing of Family
Coping with Family
Family Reunions
Happy Families
Humorous
Insightful
Inspirational
Jaded
Large Family
Nostalgia
Nuclear Family
Proverbs
Quotes by Famous People
Security of Family
Sentimental
Single Parent Family
Strife in Family

About Families

"If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable - each segment distinct."
~ Letty Cottin Pogrebin

"Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back."
~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

"Blood's thicker than water, and when one's in trouble
Best to seek out a relative's open arms."
~ Author Unknown

"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. "
~ Jane Howard

"In a houseful of toddlers and pets, you can start out having a bad day, but you keep getting detoured."
~ Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

"The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness."
~ Nancy Mitford

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"Family is just accident.... They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just are."
~ Marsha Norman

"'Ohana' means family - no one gets left behind, and no one is ever forgotten."
~ Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, Lilo & Stitch

"They... threw themselves into the interests of the rest, but each plowed his or her own furrow. Their thoughts, their little passions and hopes and desires, all ran along separate lines. Family life is like this - animated, but collateral."
~ Rose Macaulay

"The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us to become our best while looking our worst."
~ Marge Kennedy

"Home is the place where boys and girls first learn how to limit their wishes, abide by rules, and consider the rights and needs of others."
~ Sidonie Gruenberg

"In each family a story is playing itself out, and each family's story embodies its hope and despair."
~ Auguste Napier

"In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm."
~ Isaac Rosenfeld

"In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future."
~ Alex Haley

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Blessing of Family

"I don't care how poor a man is; if he has family, he's rich."
~ Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford, "Identity Crisis," M*A*S*H

"The family is a haven in a heartless world."
~ Attributed to Christopher Lasch

"When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses. "
~ Joyce Brothers

"And thank you for a house full of people I love. Amen."
~ Ward Elliot Hour

"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

"What greater blessing to give thanks for at a family gathering than the family and the gathering."
~
~ Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

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Coping with Family

"When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them."
~ George Bernard Shaw

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Family Reunions

"If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion."
~ Ashleigh Brilliant

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Happy Families

"Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family."
~ Virginia Satir

"A happy family is but an earlier heaven."
~ John Bowring

"In a household of toddlers and pets, we discover this rule of thumb about happy families - that they are least two-thirds incontinent."
~ Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

"Your family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly to keep any relationship flourishing and growing."
~ Jim Rohn

"In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony."
~ Eva Burrows

"The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It ... is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be."
~Marianne E. Neifert

"At the end of the day, a loving family should find everything forgivable."
~ Mark V. Olsen and Will Sheffer, Big Love, "Easter"

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Humorous

"Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts."
~ Author Unknown

"Family life is a bit like a runny peach pie - not perfect but who's complaining?"
~ Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

"Family: A social unit where the father is concerned with parking space, the children with outer space, and the mother with closet space. "
~ Evan Esar

"A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold. "
~ Ogden Nash

"In a household of toddlers and pets, we discover this rule of thumb about happy families - that they are least two-thirds incontinent."
~ Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

"I don't have to look up my family tree, because I know that I'm the sap."
~ Fred Allen

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."
~ George Burns

"Remember as far as anyone knows, we’re a nice normal family."
~ Homer Simpson

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Insightful

"The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to."
~ Dodie Smith

"No success in public life can compensate for failure in the home."
~ Benjamin Disraeli

"I know why families were created with all their imperfections. They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed."
~ Anais Nin

"The thing about family disasters is that you never have to wait long before the next one puts the previous one into perspective."
~ Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

"We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies."
~ Shirley Abbott

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

"Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted."
~ Paul Pearshall

"Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future."
~ Gail Lumet Buckley

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"If minutes were kept of a family gathering, they would show that "Members not Present" and "Subjects Discussed" were one and the same."
~ Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

"A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree."
~ Helen Keller

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it."
~ George Moore

"Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground."
~ Francis Bacon

"A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these minds love one another, the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden."
~ Buddha

"The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have."
~Ring Lardner

"He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too."
~Benjamin Franklin

"Of all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the one with which we are most familiar. As we proceed through our lives, our experiences within the family give rise to some of our strongest and most intense feelings. Within the family context lies a paradox, however: although most of us hope for love and support within the family -- a haven in a heartless world, so to speak -- the family can also be a place of violence and abuse."
~Marilyn Poole

"The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It ... is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be."
~Marianne E. Neifert

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"A man should never neglect his family for business."
~ Walt Disney

"Family life is full of major and minor crises -- the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce -- and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul."
~ Thomas Moore

"Your family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly to keep any relationship flourishing and growing."
~ Jim Rohn

"In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony."
~ Eva Burrows

"No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?"
~ Elbert Hubbard

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Inspirational

"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. "
~ Desmond Tutu

"What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories?"
~ George Eliot

"The happiness of the domestic fireside is the first boon of Heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind."
~ Thomas Jefferson, 1813

"The family is one of nature's masterpieces."
~ George Santayana, The Life of Reason

"The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us to become our best while looking our worst."
~ Marge Kennedy

"A happy family is but an earlier heaven."
~ John Bowring

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"Families are the compass that guide us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter."
~ Brad Henry

"Family life is full of major and minor crises -- the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce -- and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul."
~ Thomas Moore

"Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family."
~ Virginia Satir

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Jaded

"When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them."
~ George Bernard Shaw

"Friends are God's apology for relations."
~ Hugh Kingsmill

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Large Family

"He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too."
~Benjamin Franklin

"There is no cure for laziness but a large family helps."
~ Herbert Prochnov

"The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness."
~ Nancy Mitford

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."
~ George Burns

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Nostalgia

"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family."
~ Thomas Jefferson

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Nuclear Family

"Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation. "
~ Margaret Mead

"The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born."
~ Pearl S. Buck

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Proverbs

"Govern a family as you would cook a small fish - very gently."
~Chinese Proverb

"In time of test, family is best."
~ Burmese Proverb

"An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship."
~ Spanish Proverb

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Quotes by Famous People

"Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life!"
~ Albert Einstein

"I know why families were created with all their imperfections. They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed."
~ Anais Nin

"To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there."
~ Barbara Bush

"No success in public life can compensate for failure in the home."
~ Benjamin Disraeli

"He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too."
~Benjamin Franklin

"A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these minds love one another, the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden."
~ Buddha

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"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. "
~ Desmond Tutu

"The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. "
~ Erma Bombeck

“Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go by any rules. They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material."
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground."
~ Francis Bacon

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."
~ George Burns

"When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses. "
~ Joyce Brothers

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"The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works is the family."
~ Lee Iacocca

"Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation. "
~ Margaret Mead

"The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended — and not to take a hint when a hint isn't intended."
~ Robert Frost

"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family."
~ Thomas Jefferson

"Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family."
~ Virginia Satir

"A man should never neglect his family for business."
~ Walt Disney

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Security of Family

"The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works is the family."
~ Lee Iacocca

"At the end of the day, a loving family should find everything forgivable."
~ Mark V. Olsen and Will Sheffer, Big Love, "Easter"

"We cannot destroy kindred: our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break."
~ Marquise de Sévigné

"Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family."
~ Anthony Brandt

"Families are the compass that guide us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter."
~ Brad Henry

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Sentimental

"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family."
~ Thomas Jefferson

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Single Parent Family

"Better a loving single-parent family than a 'conventional' family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue."
~Moby

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Strife in Family

"Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back."
~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

“Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go by any rules. They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material."
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

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