Quotes About Family

A healthy family builds up the weakest members while not tearing down the strong.

Sometimes God seemed as close as his wife or children. Sometimes he had no sense of God's presence, no faith to lean on. God is wild, you know, he wrote. We're not in charge.

Charles Williams loved his son with reservations, complaining that a child is a guest of a somewhat inconsistent temperament, rather difficult to get rid of, almost pushing; a poor relation rather than a pleasant kind.

The sons of York will destroy each other, one brother destroying another, uncles devouring nephews, fathers beheading sons. They are a house which has to have blood, and they will shed their own if they have no other enemy.

We might, either of us, be Queen of England and yet we'll always be nothing to our family.

To save my son, I would plot with the devil himself.

She was like a mother to me...and I betrayed as a daughter will betray her mother and yet, never stop loving her.

They say that at the mountain pass he looked back at his kingdom, his beautiful kingdom, and wept, and his mother told him to weep like a woman for what he could not hold as a man.

And I am much attached to my cock, brother. Make sure your sister can put another prince in the cradle, he says baldly. Save my balls for her, Anthony!

I am sorry for you. And I am sorry for me. When you are sent back to me, perhaps a month from now, perhaps a year, I will try to remember this day, and you looking like a child, a little lost among all these clothes. I will try to remember that you were innocent of any plotting; that today at least, you were more a girl than a Boleyn.

My mother? My own mother told my lady governess that if the baby and I were in danger then they should save the baby.

Poor little girl. Poor little girl, Nan says, and at first I think she is speaking of the baby, perhaps it is a girl after all. But then I realize she is speaking of me, a girl of thirteen years, whose own mother has said that they can let her die as long as a son and heir is born.

Like almost all girls I don't know the date of my birth: my parents did not trouble to record the day and the time. I only know the year and the season, and I only know the season because my mother had a great desire for asparagus when she was carrying me and swears that she ate it too green and her bellyache brought on my birth.

I have the Sight, I should have seen it all, but some things are too dark to forsee. These are hard times, and England is a country of sorrows. No mother can be sure that she will not bury her sons. When a country is at war, cousin against cousin, brother against brother, no boy is safe.

Life is a risk, who knows this better than me? Who knows more surely that babies die easily, that children fall ill from the least cause, that royal blood is fatally weak, that death walks behind my family like a faithful black hound?

We may be of the same family, but that is the very reason why we are not friends, for we are rivals for the throne. What quarrels are worse than family quarrels?

This is George, my beloved George. D'you think I want to go to my grave knowing that at the moment of his trial he looked around and saw no one lift a finger for him? If it is the death of me, I shall go to him. Go then, he said. Kiss our baby good-bye before you go, and Henry. I shall tell Catherine that you left your blessing for her. And kiss me farewell. For if you go into that courtroom you will never come out alive.

She smiles. "You know you can do nothing. What will be, will be. If there is a battle"—I gasp but her smile is steady—"if there is a battle, then either your husband will win, and your son will take the throne; or your brother will win and you will be sister to the king.

One little boy, and he a bastard,' Anne said thoughtfully. 'One little girl of six, one elderly Queen and a King in the prime of his life.' She looked up at the two of us, dragging her gaze away from her own pale face in the water. 'What's going to happen?' She asked. 'Something has to happen. What's it going to be?

But you will break Anne's heart.' 'Her heart has to break and her spirit has to break if she is to be any use to her family.' My mother said coldly

Your son is heir to an enormous fortune and name. Someone would be bound to bid for you him and take him as his ward.

Go with the knowledge that I will think of you every time I lift your boy from his bed, every time I kneel for my prayers, every time I order my horse, every hour of every day.

I am going to be Queen of England,' I protest. 'You make it sound like a battle to the death.' 'It is a battle to the death,' she says simply. 'That is what it means to be Queen of England. You are not Melusina, rising from a fountain to easy happiness. You will not be a beautiful woman at court with nothing to do but make magic. The road you have chosen will mean that you have to spend your life scheming and fighting. Our task, as your family, is to make sure you win.

I cannot be your mistress," I say simply. "I would rather die than dishonor my name. I cannot bring that shame on my family." I pause. I am anxious not to be too discouraging. "Whatever I might wish in my heart," I say very softly.