My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.

Men are what their mothers made them.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.

It’s frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself… it seems unfair. You can’t assume the responsibility for everything you do—or don’t do.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.

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.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

Family! Thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.