Quotes About Family

Her incapacity to recognize change made her children conceal their views from her as Archer concealed his; there had been, from the first, a joint pretense of sameness, a kind of innocent family hypocrisy, in which father and children had unconsciously collaborated. And she died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious households like her own.

The youngest, dumpiest, dullest of the four dull and dumpy daughters whom Mrs. Van Osburgh, with unsurpassed astuteness, had placed one by one in enviable niches of existence!

His daughter, as part of himself, came within the normal range of his solicitude; but she was an outlying region, a subject province; and Mr. Orme's was a highly centralized polity.

The drawing-room door opened, and two high-stocked and ample-coated young men came in—two Jim Ralstons, so to speak. Delia had never before noticed how much her husband and his cousin Joe were alike: it made her feel how justified she was in always thinking of the Ralstons collectively.

For four or five generations it had been the rule of both houses that a young fellow should go to Columbia or Harvard, read law, and then lapse into more or less cultivated inaction.

Andrew Hale was a ruddy man with a big gray moustache and a stubbly double-chin unconstrained by a collar; but his scrupulously clean shirt was always fastened by a small diamond stud. This display of opulence was misleading, for though he did a fairly good business it was known that his easygoing habits and the demands of his large family frequently kept him what Starkfield called behind.

Sir Helmsley lo accusava di sottoporsi al lavoro solo per amore dell'avventura; ma, benché addolorato per la decisione presa dal figlio, lo rispettava per avervi tenuto fede. «Io stesso sono stato tutto un brillante fallimento», aveva borbottato alla fine della loro discussione; e Guy di rimando, ridendo: «Allora cercherò di essere un tetro successo».

Her incapacity to recognise change made her children conceal their views from her as Archer concealed his;

Undine leaned close enough for her lowered voice to reach him. 'Can't you understand that, knowing how they all feel about me and how Ralph feels - I'd give almost anything to get away?' Her father looked at her compassionately. 'I guess most of us feel that way once in a way when we're young, Undine. Later on you'll see going away ain't much use when you've got to turn around and come back.

Don't judge us too harshly—or not, at least, till you have taken the trouble to learn our point of view. You consider the individual—we think only of the family.

he was, indeed, arrived at that pitch of greatness, that the means of his ruin could only be found in his own family.

Three cheers for Mr. and Mrs. Bower and their really satisfactory American family of twelve children!

I was aware of the treacherous air vents above us, conducting the sounds we were making upstairs. Maybe dad was listening. Or maybe, just like Kevin, he was unaware of anything but the pleasure spurting up out of his body and into mine.

I was three people: the boy who smelled bad when I was with my sister; the boy who was wise and kind beyond his years when I was with my mother; but when I was alone not a boy at all but a principle of power, of absolute power.

Andrés was Latin enough to understand the sacred rights of the family and the inconvenience of a same-sex lover.

I never go to weddings. Waste of time. Person can get married a dozen times. Lots of folks do. Family like ours, know everybody in the state of Texas and around outside, why, you could spend your life going to weddings. But a funeral, that's different. You only die once.

I would not leave a mother alone in her plight. They described how she had kept the news of my brother's death from our ailing father and on the evening that he was brought home, chapel bells rang out and kept ringing in honor of him, his valor, and my father kept asking if it was a bishop or something that was visiting the parish, not knowing that it was his own son.

Horses are the ruination of everyone, your father has a craze for them but then we all do crazy things.

I could feel she was angry with me because of my gawkiness, because of my accent and my oilskin bag, bound with twine. She talked to herself, mumbled, as the train rumbled along. Then all of a sudden her mood changed and she kissed me and hugged me and said my mother and her mother were first cousins and that meant that she and I were second cousins and would be buddies.

Chrissie tried all the chairs, the armchairs, the high chairs, the spindle-back chairs, "Is that apple wood, is that tulip wood, is that rosewood, Pascal?" People pitying her with her limp, in a yellow summery dress with a wide green sash as if she was entering a dance competition. Remarking on the holly to be so rich with berries, she said a good crop of berries always meant an addition to the family

four of us slept in the one bed, two at the bottom and two at the top. All of us tossed and turned and raved in our sleep.

Oh Father, oh Mother, forgive us, for we know not what we do.

divide things equally between both children? If anything should happen to her she is appealing to him to honor this final wish. It is the first letter she has written to her husband in over fifty years, an admission that makes her choke back a tear. Fifty years. The golden jubilee that neither remembered. Fields let for grazing. No more the proud neighing thoroughbreds in the fields, the thoroughbreds on which his hopes centered

thanking them for coming, and reminding Con to give the dog a bit of something when he gets home late, she forgets altogether to hand him the letter. Holding it after he has left she thinks of the many crucial things left unsaid.