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Parenthood Quotes

Parents are the last people on Earth who ought to have children.

Parents are the last people on Earth who ought to have children.

Parents are the last people on Earth who ought to have children.

Parents are the last people on Earth who ought to have children.

Well, there is a piece of famous advice, grand advice even if it is German, to forget what you can't...

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What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set...

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And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child be...

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Picture of Sydney J. Harris
Sydney J. HarrisThe Best of Sydney J. Harris

I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt...

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The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, wil...

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There's a Drunk Midget in My HouseAh, babies! They're more than just adorable little creatures on wh...

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I inherited curiosity from my Dad.

He should be very proud of Andrew if he got a scholarship, he said. She would be just as proud of hi...

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They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She...

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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of...

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Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of children.

The struggle of today, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

There are only three ways to teach a child. The first is by example, the second is by example, the t...

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Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in...

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When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.

Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.

I swear, if I could eat my children, I would. I'd consume them like some beast in a Hieronymus Bosch...

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When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Y...

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In retrospect, it seems obvious that my research about parenting was also a means to subdue my anxie...

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It is not true that "love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." Love alters all the ti...

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Picture of Andrew Solomon
Andrew SolomonFar from the Tree: Parents

In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped ke...

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Picture of Anne Lamott
Anne LamottPlan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of...

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On first hearing that little voice – as fine and friable, I felt, as cotton thread, the impact on my...

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Antonella Gambotto-BurkeMama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love

Delirious as it can be, sex is only one kind of intimacy, and yet has become the cultural catchment ...

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Antonella Gambotto-BurkeMama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love

We watched each other evolve into parents, with all the fear, rage and confusion evolution can invol...

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Antonella Gambotto-BurkeMama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love

My handsome husband and I didn’t make love for almost six months. I was enraptured, lost to my old l...

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Antonella Gambotto-BurkeMama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love

Throughout history, the most brutal cultures have always been distinguished by maternal-infant separ...

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I don't know why I wanted a girl,' he says, as if to himself. 'I mean, I wouldn't swap Louis, but wh...

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My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as to the tendencies of a child b...

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You right! You one hundred percent right! I done spent the last seventeen years worrying about what ...

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The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerat...

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Picture of Bill Bryson
Bill BrysonAt Home: A Short History of Private Life

It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly los...

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Picture of Bill Bryson
Bill BrysonI'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

A soldier's life revolves around his mail. Like many others, I've been able to follow my kid's progr...

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A mother who is really a mother is never free.

Youth and age touch only the surface of our lives.

It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sens...

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I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind!

Apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition made me tremble. I am confident that it took n...

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In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothin...

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I wished that I had some other guardian of minor abilities.

It is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed at home.

I assumed my first undivided responsibility.

Incidentally, I have also learned a bit about the importance of avoiding feminine embarrassment ('Da...

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- How does it feel to have a daughter?- At times it's like holding a warm egg in my hand.

I have that hypocrisy of a parent in that I'm like,'Come on, you've got to toughen up at the same ti...

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The sound of her breathing reminded me, as it so often did, of how vulnerable she was. And how vulne...

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To receive children’s love and to come home to a child who runs to you with a hug, among the most po...

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The doc swore she came out screamin' in the key of E.

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out o...

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I watched 60 Minutes...and they showed this woman, she's in every kind of..thing like that. 'This wo...

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A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when ...

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But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just l...

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Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason - for insurance against later regret....

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It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to le...

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The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and in a sense tragic. It requires the most intense l...

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All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white...

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Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

He was fortified by a memory which kept only the good things and rejected the ill. Despite his sorro...

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He was not at all what is called ‘a character’. He was an innocent, affable old man who had somehow ...

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My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was an...

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It doesn't follow that the riots mean permanent hostility toward him.

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

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

The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the...

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Parentage is a very important profession but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the inte...

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Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us togeth...

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He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first c...

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Originality must compound with inheritance.

Picture of Harold Bloom
Harold BloomThe Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.

then Siddhartha began to understand that his son had not brought him happiness and peace, but suffer...

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Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from ...

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After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his d...

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I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it...

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Do not expect too much from your child and she will grow in your love... But if you push her too muc...

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The thing about having a baby is that thereafter you have it.

Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would ...

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Picture of Jodi Picoult
Jodi PicoultMy Sister's Keeper

I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy...

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Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal with nothing to do but keep his ...

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I'm shadowboxing in a match the shadow is always going to win. (as a young man battling his deceased...

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When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. ‘’I lost o...

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Picture of John Irving
John IrvingThe World According to Garp

Why do men like me want sons?" he wondered. "It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls...

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As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that t...

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The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through...

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Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That'...

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A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of m...

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How to teach again what has been taught correctly it incorrectly 1000 thousand times, throughout the...

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To bring up a child in the way he should go travel that way yourself once in a while.

Dr. Xia was working as a salaried doctor attached to another man's medicine shop, which did not give...

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Picture of Jung Chang
Jung ChangWild Swans: Three Daughters of China

It’s a . . . transcendental act. Making life. . . . ‘By this act, I bring one death into the world.’...

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Everybody has it wrong way round. Parents don't make children--children make parents. They shape our...

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Picture of Lois McMaster Bujold
Lois McMaster BujoldGentleman Jole and the Red Queen

You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope yo...

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In the midst of the affliction He counsels, strengthens confirms, nourishes, and favors us.... More ...

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Although it is very easy to marry a wife, it is very difficult to support her along with the childre...

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Picture of Martin Luther
Martin LutherThe Sermons of Martin Luther: 7 Volumes

Kids don't always stop to judge or analyze a new experience unless the adults around them react stro...

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Picture of Martin Sheen
Martin SheenAlong the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son

Lee was a born pedagogue, never happier than when his children were learning to do something the rig...

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Picture of Michael Korda
Michael KordaClouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee