Quotes About Family

This transaction required Bill's signature, but John's relations with his father were so uneasy that he had to ask brother Frank and Pierson Briggs to act as intermediaries.

Rockefeller's sisters played a limited role in his adult life.

He would compensate for his long absence by extravagant shows of generosity with his children.

Eliza's death, far from putting the whole situation to rest, only inflamed John's feelings anew, complicating his stormy relationship with his father.

What he said, what he thought, and what he felt, came from his mother, but what he did came from his father, with the addition of a great caution generated by early unpleasantness.

If she suspected wrongdoing, she kept it to herself to spare the children.

I did not feel I could afford such luxuries, and am grateful for a son who is able to buy them for me.

In a little more than two years, they had suffered their father's disappearance and their mother's death, reducing them to orphans and throwing them upon the mercy of friends, family, and community.

One possible reason for this contrition was that Frank was chronically in debt to his brother.

Despite the chronic friction between them, Big Bill continued to borrow money from his son and by the end of the century still had a $64,000 loan outstanding—more than $1 million in today's money.

Unable to compromise on business principles, Rockefeller chose to jeopardize family relations instead.

He later exhibited an unacknowledged dread of death, and Eliza was perhaps the first to intuit it.

Hamilton cast himself as "a warm advocate for limited monarchy and an unfeigned well-wisher to the present royal family.

As long as the right conditions were met, this controlling father was always happy to be generous.

Frank incessantly gambled in stocks and commodities, further alienating his more prudent brother.

We were not rich, of course—far from it; but we had enough to eat and use and save—always.

Jack's way of shielding his mother from his father's growing number of affairs

Of all the family medical problems, the most worrisome was that of Bessie.

Adieu best of wives and best of women. Embrace all my darling children for me.

Commodore Vanderbilt's death was a pivotal moment in the shift of business from family to public ownership—a transition rich in possibilities for Pierpont Morgan.

Rockefeller was embraced no less warmly by the New York Central, which was controlled by the Vanderbilt family.

Perhaps out of a self-protective instinct, Bill taught his children to be wary of strangers and even of himself.

Frank wanted to have it both ways: to be heavily indebted to his brothers yet operate free of their control.

Her father was slowly dying of stomach cancer while she was writing her series, and this might have further embittered her toward Rockefeller