“A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.”

“A man's immortality can be found in his children.”

“… I suppose that it is not so easy to go home and it takes a bit of time to make a son out of a stranger.”

“The Lord gives a good many things twice over, but he don't give ye a mother but once.”

“The family is the first essential cell of human society.”

“A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.”

“There’s nothing that makes you more insane than family. Or more happy. Or more exasperated. Or more . . . secure.”

“A man who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.”

“[Families] are made to make you forget yourself occasionally so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed.”

“We are all, I suppose, beholden to our parents - the question is, how much?”

“He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune for they are impediments to great enterprises either o...”

“Who'll hold families together, if everybody has to live? Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing w...”