Families Quotes

Getting through life without a lot of money, possessions, and/or friends is admirable, especially if it is by choice.

People build defenses around a weakness, not around strength. Where self-esteem is strong, a defense is unnecessary.

Nearly all problems of human behavior stem from our failure to ensure that people live in environments that nurture their well-being.

When one person attempts to “fix it” for the other person, the connection of acceptance is snapped and the sender and receiver miss an opportunity for understanding.

All families have their secrets, most people would never know them, but they know there are spaces, gaps where the answers should be, where someone should have sat, where someone used to be. A name that is never uttered, or uttered just once and never again. We all have our secrets.

Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.

Being able to say, “No,” is a necessary ingredient in a healthy lifestyle.

We violated each other’s boundaries with verbal missiles of anger disguised in the pretense of “just kidding.

As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.

A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.

...the state of perfection is an elusive goal; demanding something so obscure as almost unattainable and can become a compulsive, crazy making squirrel-on-a-wheel way of living.

The story of my family. . .changes with the teller.

Christmas is a time for families.

For while they'd stayed close during the absurd years of his sharp rise, having children had knocked it all into a different arrangement. The minute you had children you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defensively, and everyone who was outside the walls--even if you'd once been best friends--was now just that, outsiders. Families had their ways. You took note of how other people raised their kids, even other people you loved, and it seemed all wrong. The culture and practices of one's own family were the only way, for better or worse. Who could say why a family decided to have a certain style, to tell the jokes it did, to put up its particular refrigerator magnets?

In united families, they might sleep with half filled stomach but no one sleeps with empty stomach.

Children have empty erasable white boards upon which big people write indelibly imprinted messages into their tender subconscious minds.

Ordinary men earns responsibility towards their family, extraordinary men earns duty towards their nation.

I don’t know why everyoneis still trying to find out whether heaven and hell exist.Why do we need more evidence?They exist here on this very Earth.Heaven is standing atop Mount Qasiounoverlooking the Damascene sightswith the wind carrying Qabbani’sdulcet words all around you.And hell is only four hours away in Aleppo where children’s cries drown out the explosions of mortar bombsuntil they lose their voice,their families, and their limbs.Yes, hell certainly does existright now, at this moment,as I pen this poem. And all we’re doingto extinguish this hellfireis sighing, shrugging, liking, and sharing.Tell me: what exactly does that makeus? Are we any better than the gatekeepers of hell?

I traded in myfreedom fora needy, whinyand defiantfour-year-old,a junky girlfriend,and a relationshipriddled withsomeone else’sproblemsNow, I stareout of openwindows likea wild mustangcraving openfieldsI clench mycrotch, wheremy ballsused to be,and I hum aloathsome tune,like an out-of-work castratowho’s realized his dreams of someday having his own familyare gone

Some people will insult your intelligence by suddenly being nice or nicer to you once you make it … or they think you have.

This is what we desire in intimate relationships but this deep connection is often so frightful that most do not take advantage of the opportunities presented for honesty.

Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite ... Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families ... and you have no idea ... what games goes on!

They both looked at me in a way that was fast becoming familiar: two parts bafflement to one part awe at my talent for making a bad situation worse.

Our parents were our first gods. If parents are loving, nurturing, and kind, this becomes the child’s definition of the creator. If parents were controlling, angry, and manipulative, then this becomes their definition.

....And let me tell you something about families they're overrated. They're a weakness. The leave you or get taken from you or they disappoint you. Families are a liability.

We've all lost something along the way.

...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with only the added difficulty that whereas families are at least well-recognised and sanctioned loci for hysteria reminiscent of scenes from Medea, office life typically proceeds behind a mask of shallow cheerfulness, leaving workers grievously unprepared to handle the fury and sadness continually aroused by their colleagues.

Family' is not just a biological word, it's an an operative one.

In many homes, technology meant to illuminate the mind ends up only illuminating the living room.

Being a bad parent is a sign of not having learned from experience.

People are busy creating families, building businesses, working from morning until night but they don’t know what it is to live a full life

Being divorced does not necessarily make one’s advice on marriage useless … or useful.

Mature adults gravitate toward new values and understandings, not just rehashing and blind acceptance of past patterns and previous learning. This is an ongoing process and maturity demands lifelong learners.

We are all bounded with each other on the basis of our beliefs and values; when we question those values, we are certainly left alone, away from our families, friends and the dear one. And that is a cost benefit analysis we all make and we keep satisfying ourselves with the status quo of situations.

Guilt is a feeble emotion. It surrenders too easily

You did not invent these family habits. Your family is like mine, for thousands and thousands of years our families have embraced a dysfunctional lifestyle, passing these habits as gospel on to subsequent generations. This was not done out of malice, spite, or hate, but what they knew best. As ineffective as these habits are, you never stopped to consider another way of loving.

People pay a dear price when not dealing with the powerful emotions.

Large families are communities unto their own.

We arrived from New York after a daylong slog through airports and planes and traffic. It was 10: 00 p.m. local time, but my body had no idea if it was night or day. Krishna was hungry, so I found some leftover dosa batter in the kitchen and started making one for her. Next thing I knew, my grandmother was by my side, commandeering the griddle. “Let me do it,” she said. “You don’t know where anything is.” I insisted, but she won, even though by then she cooked with only one arm, the other still paralyzed from the stroke. Then my aunt Papu came in and yelped, “You’re making your grandma cook?” She was appalled. “It’s ten at night!” Papu took over, my grandmother wouldn’t leave, and my uncle Ravi entered the fray. “Look at you,” he said. “You’re supposed to be this famous food person and you’re making these women cook at ten o’clock!” I quickly remembered how it felt to live with so many people. Every move you make is scrutinized. You get up and it’s “Where are you going?” You come back and it’s “Why are you wearing that blouse? I like the other one better.” You walk outside and someone calls from the veranda, “Don’t go that way, there’s too much sun!” It was exasperating and suffocating and God, I had missed it.

The key problem I encounter working with wounded, depressed, and unhappy people is a lack of connection…starting from a disconnection from themselves and then with others. This is why love often becomes so distorted and destructive. When people experience a disconnection from themselves, they feel it but do not realize the problem.

To have my life accepted as just another ordinary life, to have it viewed as common and regular, was a singular moment.

How we feel about our families teaches us and helps us know the importance of feeling.

Controlling others is the cornerstone of dysfunctional families.

Secret elisions within families are suddenly revealed by self-execution, and just as quickly sheeted with excuses, blame, and counter-blame. But sense is made of the world only through relationship between action and reaction, symptom and cause. No change is possible without analysis of accountability.

Funny how you can forget that every family isn't like yours.

Value systems of a nation come from families.

The foolish families worry over blood. I care nothing for purity of family or ancestry. That is a vain thing. I care only for strength. What a man can do to other men, women.

In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.

What a happy woman I am, living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find happiness so ea

There are moment of sadness and moment of joy. This is life.

If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Matresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn't need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again. They would never sleep in silver boxes with white velvet sheets, not until they were wrinkled-paper grandmas and ready for the trip.

There would definitely be way fewer instances of cheating, if the average couple did not have sex only when the woman feels like it.

The only way we can revive our memories, if we are willing to ponder about the events that was never discussed for years by looking back at old photos or written texts which gives us a clue about the event we are trying to recall about. If that strategy is accomplished, we will have a clear episodic memory about that particular event that we perceive it as very significant to us.

Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brother's hand.

You don't build a family by tearing down another one.

Mothers got a hard road to travel, believe me.

When someone you love makes compassion, kindness, forgiveness, respect and God an option, you can be sure they have made you an option, as well.

It was hard not to realize what kind of kid his parents wished they'd had, and when he thought about that kind of kid it was tempting for Paul to want to track, hunt, and eat the little thing.

Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist.

The love between friends could create life.