The family quotes on this page are all positive, inspirational words of love and wisdom from known sources that celebrate the joys of family life. Words from unknown origins are on the Family Sayings page.

I was brought up with a strong belief in the family being the most important thing in life. I was taught by example, that your family will always love you no matter what, and that a loving, supportive, caring, positive upbringing will produce the same qualities in adults. When I see what a wonderful job my children are doing in bringing up their own children, I can appreciate that I had a part in passing on the ‘family values’ that I was blessed with as a child.

Family quotes are listed alphabetically on authors surname

A Family Quotes

My family consists of everyone I love dearly and not just the people who are related to me.
Steven Aitchison

Those who really know and care about you can hear you even when you haven’t spoken a word.
Steven Aitchison

Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.
Mitch Albom 1958

A house needs a grandma in it.
Louise May Alcott 1832 – 1888

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
Jane Austen 1775 – 1817

One hug always equals two.. One for them and one for you.
Aine Belton

B Family Quotes

Spend some time this weekend on home-improvement.. Improve your attitude toward your family.
Bo Bennett 1972

The daughter never ever gives up on the mother, just as the mother never gives up on the daughter. There is a tie there so strong that nothing can break it.
Rachel Billington 1942

Show me a family of reader…
and I will show you the people who move the world.
Napoleon Bonaparte 1769 – 1821

Other things may change us,
but we start and end with the family.
Anthony Brandt

Family life is a bit like a runny peach pie, not perfect, but who’s complaining?
Robert Brault

The advantage of growing up with siblings is that you become very good at fractions.
Robert Brault

What greater blessing to give thank for at a family gathering, than the family and the gathering.
Robert Brault

When you look at your life, the greatest happiness’s are family happiness’s.
Joyce Brothers 1927 – 2013

An older sister is a friend and defender – a listener, conspirator, a counsellor and a sharer of delights. And sorrows too.
Pam Brown 1948

However time or circumstance may come between mother and her child, their lives are interwoven forever.
Pam Brown 1948

It’s hard to be responsible, adult and sensible all the time. How good it is to have a sister whose heart is as yong as your own.
Pam Brown 1948

Mothers are the pivot on which the family spins.
Mothers are the pivot on which the world spins.
Pam Brown 1948

Sisters share the scent and smells..
The feel of a common childhood.
Pam Brown 1948

We shared: parents-home-pets-celebrations-catastrophes- secrets. And the threads of our experience became so interwoven that we are linked. I can never be utterly lonely, knowing you share the planet.
Pam Brown 1948

When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us?
Pam Brown 1948

Family faces are magic mirrors.. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future.
Gail Lumet Buckley 1937

In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.
Eva Burrows 1929

The bonding with a new baby can help people to release love unconsciously.
Lorna Byrne 1953

The connection between brothers and sisters is completely different to that between friends and it exists throughout our lives, even if we have little contact.
Lorna Byrne 1953

The sadness and pain surrounding the death of a parent, brother or sister can bring with it an unexpected gift, and help families to become closer. It can help bring shared memories to light, and be a reminder of love that was shared in the past.
Lorna Byrne 1953

C Family Quotes

Our children are not going to be just ‘our children’ – they are going to be other people’s husbands and wives and the parents of our grandchildren.
Mary Calderone 1904 – 1998

I am thankful for a lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning and gutters that need fixing because I have a home. I am thankful for the piles of laundry and ironing because it means my loved ones are nearby.
Nancy J. Carmody

The most extraordinary thing in the world is.. An ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.
Gilbert Chesterton 1874 – 1936

Dining with one’s friends and beloved family is certainly one of life’s primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal.
Julia Child 1912 – 2004

Home – that blessed word, which opens to the human heart the most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to carry it thither, as on an Angel’s wings.
Lydia Maria Child 1802 – 1880

Success, wealth, good health and nurturing relationships are by-products of happiness, not the cause.
Deepak Chopra 1946

Sometimes our heart get tangles and our Souls a little off kilter. Friends and family can set us right and help guide us back to the light.
Sera Christann

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.
Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
Confucius 551BC – 479BC

There is a point when you aren’t as much mom and daughter as you are adults and friends.
Jamie Lee Curtis 1958

The only people that you really have, that I learned, are your family, because they love you no matter what.
Miley Cyrus 1992

D Family Quotes

My family provided me with the proper information and inspiration for me to overcome the challenge of blindness.
David DeNotaris

Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.
Sarah Dessen 1970

The more a daughter knows the details of her mother’s life, the stronger the daughter.
Anita Diamant 1951

Family is the most important thing in the world.
Princess Diana 1961 – 1997

A man should never neglect his family for business.
Walt Disney 1901 – 1966

Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring.
Pamela Dugdale

The family is the nucleus of civilization.
Will Durant 1885 – 1981

Without exception, begin every day of your life with gratitude. As you look in the mirror, say, “Thank you, God, for life, for my body, for my family and loved ones, for this day, and for the opportunity to be of service. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Wayne Dyer 1940 – 2015

E Family Quotes

Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.
Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955

What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?
George Eliot 1819 – 1880

There’s no vocabulary for love within a family, love that’s lived in but not looked at, love within the light of which all else is seen, the love within which all other love finds speech. This love is silent.
T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965

F Family Quotes

Family is not an important thing.. It is everything.
Michael J. Fox 1961

G Family Quotes

Mothers are like glue.. Even when you can’t see them, they’re still holding the family together.
Susan Gale

Love is the greatest gift that one generation can leave to another.
Richard Garnett

A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.
Marion C. Garretty 1917

What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance. They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humour, comfort, lessons in life.
Rudolph Giuliani 1944

Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can’t even describe, aren’t even aware of.
Ellen Goodman 1941

What the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we lived. In the end, it’s the family stories that are worth the storage.
Ellen Goodman 1941

You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children.. But they remain your co-authors forever.
Ellen Goodman 1941

H Family Quotes

In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past and a bridge to our future.
Alex Haley 1921 – 1992

My fondest hope is that Roots may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel ninety feet tall.
Alex Haley 1921 – 1992

Roots is not just a saga of my family.
It is the symbolic saga of people.
Alex Haley 1921 – 1992

Tying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.
Alex Haley 1921 – 1992

When an old person dies it’s like a library burning.
Alex Haley 1921 – 1992

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all your generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.
Thich Nhat Hanh 1926

When you plant a lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce.

Yet, if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce.

Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.
Thich Nhat Hanh 1926

It is my belief that grandparenting is the most important family role of the new century.
Roma Hanks

If you want love and acceptance from your family, then you must give love and acceptance to them.
Louise Hay 1926 – 2017

Families are the compass that guide us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter.
Brad Henry 1963

No matter what you have done for yourself, or for humanity, if you can’t look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished.
Elbert Hubbard 1856 – 1915

J Family Quotes

The gesture with which one generation guards the next is the movement, and the only time we see it clearly, of life itself.
Storm Jameson 1891 – 1986

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826

The family is the first essential cell of human society.
Pope John XXIII 1881 – 1963

K Family Quotes

It’s important for all single parents to remember that not everything that goes wrong, from your son’s bad attitude towards school to the six holes in your teenage daughter’s ear, is because you live in a single-parent home. Every family has problems.
Marge Kennedy

Soup is a lot like a family. Each ingredient enhances the others; each batch has its own characteristics; and it needs time to simmer to reach full flavour.
Marge Kennedy

The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us all to become our best while looking our worst.
Marge Kennedy

Yes, single-parent families are different from two-parent families. And urban families are different from rural ones, and families with six kids and a dog are different from one-child, no-pet households. But even if there is only one adult presiding at the dinner table, yours is every bit as much a real family as the Waltons.
Marge Kennedy

While it’s nice to appreciate the fashion world.. What makes you happy are real relationships and the moments you share with loved ones.
Miranda Kerr 1983

Grandmothers are voices of the past and role models of the present. Grandmothers open the doors to the future.
Helen Ketchum

The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.
Charles Kuralt 1934- 1997

L Family Quotes

Cherish every moment with those you love, at every stage of your journey.
Jack Layton

The great thing about getting older is that you get a chance to tell the people in your life who matter, what they mean to you.
Mike Love 1941

We are conjoined by hundreds of thousands of memories that silt down into you and stop being memories and become a part of what you are.
Rosamund Lupton

M Family Quotes

Family is everything. Family comes first. It’s not what I expected it to be, but nothing ever is.
Madonna 1958

God’s extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family.
Neal A. Maxwell 1926 – 2004

Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sister are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.
Margaret Mead 1901 – 1978

A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
George Moore 1852 – 1933

There are all sorts of different families. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. And some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. And some live in separate homes, in separate neighbourhoods, in different areas of the country – and they may not see each other for days, or weeks, months.. Even years at a time. But, if there’s love – those are the ties that bind, and you’ll have a family in your heart, forever.
Movie – Mrs Doubtfire

Love is our only reason for living and the only purpose of life. We live for the sake of love, and we live seeking love.. It is not surprising that we keep looking for love. All of us are nothing but vibrations of love. We are sustained by love, and in the end we merge back into love… This world is nothing but a school of love, our relationships with our husband or wife, with our children and parents, with our friends and relatives are the university in which we are meant to learn what love and devotion truly are. Yet the love we experience through other people is just a shadow of the love of the inner self. There is a sublime place inside us where love dwells. The love that pulses in the cave of the heart does not depend on anything outside. It does not expect anything. It is completely independent.
Swami Muktananda 1908 – 1982

Don’t you think God would smile and feel good, if your spouse, your children, your parents, your teachers, your colleagues, your spiritual guides would smile and feel good, if you said to them these simple words: ‘I am happy. Thank you for giving me happiness.’
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

Each mother and father should devote quite some time to the family’s history. An entire new science and art of family and individual history should be developed and taught: ancestry, genealogy, name etymology, oral history, written history, pictorial history, family heirlooms and souvenirs, scrapbooks, photo collections etc.. What deep joys can be derived from family history! It increases the love and role of the family, the fundamental, basic social unit.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

Every human being has stories to tell. Please tell them. They are part of the bloodstream of our cosmic journey, the transmission of our experience and wisdom to our descendants.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

If we cannot live in peace in our family, how can we expect peace of the human family.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

Love must become the subject of serious scientific study. Loved children are healthier, happier, more peaceful children. Loved husbands have seldom heart attacks. Loved plants grow better. Loved animals are not vicious. Loved nations do not wage war. A humanity of loving people will be a peaceful humanity. To promote love means therefore to promote peace. Yes, let us have a love logy, a science of love, to start with a World University of Love.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

N Family Quotes

We call upon all those who have lived on this earth, our ancestors and our friends, who dreamed the best for our future generations, and upon whose lives our lives our built, and with thanksgiving, we call upon them to… Teach us, and show us the Way.
Native American (Chinook Blessing) (part of poem)

O Family Quotes

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sister. We know each other as we always were. We know each others hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time.
Clara Ortega

I find the family the most mysterious and fascinating institution of the world.
Amos Oz 1939

P Family Quotes

The guys who fear becoming fathers don’t understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child-raising is not the child but the parent.
Frank Pittman 1953 – 2012

If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange; a circle of sections, held together, but separable, each segment distinct.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin 1939

R Family Quotes

Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.
Ruth E. Renkel

When parents say ‘I’m sorry,’ they are saying so much more.
Kate Roberts

For there is no friend like a sister, in calm or stormy weather. To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one, if one goes astray. To life one, if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
Christina Rossetti 1830 – 1894

Always search for your innermost nature in those you are with, as rose oil imbibes from roses.
Jalal Uddin Rumi 1207 – 1273

S Family Quotes

Before becoming a mother I had a hundred theories on how to bring up children. Now I have seven children and only one theory.. Love them, especially when they least deserve to be loved.
Kate Samperi

The family is one of life’s masterpieces.
George Santayana 1863 – 1952

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible.. The kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.
Virginia Satir 1916 – 1988

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
Friedrich Schiller 1759 – 1805

Our fathers had their dreams, we have ours, the generation that follows will have its own.
Olive Schreiner 1855 – 1920

Our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch of our ancestors as we walk over this Earth.
Seattle (Chief) 1780 – 1866

We cannot destroy kindred: our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break.
Marquise de Sevigne 1626 – 1696

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950

If you can’t get rid of the family skeleton..
You may as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950

It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping.
John Sinor

The family.. That dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.
Dodie Smith 1896 – 1990

The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and progress of society better than the most elaborate dissertation.
Robert Southey 1774 – 1843

There is a magic in that little world, home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never know beyond its hallowed limits.
Robert Southey 1774 – 1843

My wife, my family, my friends.. They’ve all taught me things about love and what that emotion really means. In a nutshell.. Loving someone is about giving, not receiving.
Nicholas Sparks 1965

Over the years I learned so much from mom. She taught me about the importance of home and history and family and tradition. She also taught me that aging need not mean narrowing the scope of your activities and interests.
Martha Stewart 1941

You go through life wondering what is it all about but at the end of the day it’s all about family.
Rod Stewart 1945

It’s one of nature’s ways that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.
Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971

My family really does come first.
It always did and always will.
Meryl Streep 1949

There’s no road map on how to raise a family, it’s always an enormous negotiation.
Meryl Streep 1949

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.
Charles R. Swindoll 1934

T Family Quotes

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones..
The ones at home.
Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997

Smile at each other.. Smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other. It doesn’t matter who it is. And that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.
Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997

The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family.
Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997

What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.
Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997

You don’t choose your family, they are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.
Desmond Tutu 1931

V Family Quotes

Love your family.
Work super hard.
Live your passion.
Gary Vaynerchuk 1975

W Family Quotes

For me, family always comes first; I would do anything to protect them.
Mark Wahlberg 1971

I don’t care how poor a man is.. If he has family, he’s rich.
Dan Wilcox

Treat other animals as friends and they become friends. Treat other animals as family and they become family.
Give other animals your love and they will love you in return.
Anthony Douglas Williams

I’m happiest with my family around me.
Amy Winehouse 1983 – 2011

The place to cure most of the ills of society is in the homes of the people.
Joseph B. Wirthlin 1817 – 2008

Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation.
Lois Wyse 1926 – 2007

Secreted in the basements and attics of memory are the hidden treasures of family history that only a grandmother can recall, write and hand down.
Lois Wyse 1926 – 2007

Y Family Quotes

Kindness is the Light that dissolves all walls between Souls, families and nations.
Paramahansa Yogananda 1893 – 1952

Family Sayings
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