Quotes About Family

Happy domestic life is like a beautiful summer's evening; the heart is filled with peace; and everything around derives a peculiar glory.

There was once a bundle of matches, and they were frightfully proud because of their high origin. Their family tree, that is to say the great pine tree of which they were each a little splinter, had been the giant of the forest.

Er ist wieder gesund, er spürt Arbeitslust in sich, er glaubt an seine Zukunft. Und man kann nicht an die eigene Zukunft glauben, ohne an die Seinen, den näheren Kreis, das ganze Volk, ohne an die Menschheit zu denken. Er glaubt an das Weiterbestehen, an das Wiederhochkommen Europas, weil er an das eigene Wiederhochkommen glaubt.

Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live.

Frankly I'm fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else.

Losing my parents was the most crushing thing that ever happened to me. I lost my dad when I was 26, and it changed my life entirely.

The state of New Jersey is really two places - terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It's very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work.

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.

What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don't write the book where it's a conspiracy reaching the prime minister I don't write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia, family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes.

If I'm not writing well, I'm not happy. If I'm not spending enough time with my family, I'm not happy. If I'm not connecting to friends or if I don't work out enough... You get the point. Everything has to be balanced. Nothing should be an extreme.

Sure, on a larger scale, it was healthy to have people out there you cared about more than yourself. She knew that. But then there was the abject fear you would lose it. They say possessions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.

They say when you die there's a light at the end of the tunnel. When my father dies, he'll see the light, make his way toward it, and then flip it off to save electricity.

If you're not with family on major holidays, people worry, calling to see if you're being sufficiently festive, yelling at you if you eat Chee-tos for phans by circumstance, geography, or choice, but a cultural conspiracy was afoot to make us feel otherwise. Work, I decided, was the antidote.

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys."

The most important work you and I will ever do will be within the wall of our own homes.

My protagonists are my mother's voice and the mind I had when I was thirteen.

He was a precocious and delicate little boy, quivering with the malaise of being unloved. When we played, his child's heart would come into its own, and the troubled world where his vague hungers went unfed and mothers and fathers were dim and far away--too far away to ever reach in and touch the sore place and make it heal--would disappear, along with the world where I was not sufficiently muscled or sufficiently gallant to earn my own regard.

The discipline that makes an effective leader begins in the home.

We love our dear ones deeply and miss them when they leave us. But we know that the bond of love is greater than death.

Sooner or later, we all learn that our immortality is rooted not in our professional involvements and achievements, but in our families. In time, all of our wins and losses in the workplace will be forgotten. If our memories endure, it will be because of the people we have known and touched.

We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.

By the time the doctor came, we had lifted my father's body to the couch and covered it with a blanket. The doctor was a thin, sturdy man, bald, with thick glasses. He lifted the blanket and looked. He dropped the blanket. "He's dead, all right." I

I heard my aunt and uncle come to the door. I heard her voice through the door. "Morris, I'd better go in and speak to him. Did you see the look on his face? It was as if he was a little boy locked out of his home." "No," my uncle said. "Let him alone. He'll get over it soon. He's a real man." They walked away.

My aunt touched my shoulder, I opened my eyes startled for a moment. She was smiling softly but I could see the tears sparkling in the corner of her eyes. "It's the same God, Frankie." I could feel the tension flow out of me. Suddenly I smiled at her. She was right: the Word meant God in no matter what language you spoke it—English, Latin or… Hebrew.