Parents Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

"Reverence for parents" stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.

Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.

When learning is recognized in the fabric of life and encouraged, when families make their decisions based on what leads to more interesting and educational ends, children learn without effort, often without even knowing it, and parents learn along with them.

It cannot be true, therefore, that among animals some of the offspring will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in greater degree, or that animals are indefinitely perfectible.

Thomas Robert Malthus

Insofar as our children resemble us, they are our most precious admirers, and insofar as they differ, they can be our most vehement distractors. From the beginning, we tempt them into imitation of us and long for what may be life's most profound compliment: their choosing to live according to our own system of values. Though many of us take pride in how different we are from our parents, we are endlessly sad at how different our children are from us.

First your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.

Chuck Palahniuk

My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way.

I try to realize all it means. The suffering of millions of the world's best men... and when I say millions of men I must multiply those men by ten to count the wives, children, parents and sweethearts and relatives who are suffering untold mental agony.

Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume. So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each religion, the same arguments would be urged.

Robert G. Ingersoll

I think that people imagine protocol and etiquette as some kind of great dragon that hovers behind the pageantries of the palace to pounce on you and eat you up if you aren't behaving as you should. But in fact etiquette is saying how to do when you meet people, saying good night to your parents before going to bed, opening a door to a woman, getting up if an older person wants to sit down on the bus and it's all full, that is etiquette, or protocol, if you wish. At the everyday level, all the time, all of us. It's a way of knowing what you've got to do so that you have your mind free to do other things and think of other things.

Margrethe II of Denmark

Whatever children are designed for, and whatever prospects the fortune or interest of their parents may give them in their future lives, they are all promiscuously instructed.

Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things—childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves—that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.

The softness, and the glare, and the temptations, and the licence, and the lax examples about us, are more seducing and dangerous than the winter of penal laws. They hardened the manhood of Catholic parents. The summer sun relaxes many.

Henry Edward Manning

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally 'being lived.' They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates, and society.

I watch his hands, they're lumpy but clever. "Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?" Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?

Don't keep telling your parents they don't understand you. Believe me it's much worse when they do. There's just a chance, you know — they really might.

Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

Negotiating the adolescent stage is neither quick nor easy.... I have often said to parents, "If it isn't illegal, immoral, or fattening, give it your blessing." We do much better... if we find and support all the places we can appropriately say yes, and say only the no's that really matter.

Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You'd be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children.

Unlike Western parents, reminding my child of Lord Voldemort didn't bother me.

I want it to be said that the Bush administration was a results-oriented administration, because I believe the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read and having an education system that's responsive to the child and to the parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America what we want it to be - a more literate country and a hopefuller country.

Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God.

Your parents name you, but they haven't a clue who you are. Your friends nickname you because they know exactly who you are.

My parents are great listeners Which is why I never tell them anything

The characters within a book were, from a certain point of view, identical on some fundamental level ‒ there weren't any images of them, no physical tangibility whatsoever. They were pictures in the reader's head, constructs of imagination and ideas, given shape by the writer's work and skill and the reader's imagination. Parents, of a sort.