If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910Quotes
Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959It’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.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1966I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCMen are what their mothers made them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1954Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
—Jane Austen, 1815The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1919By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1955