Parents Quotes

They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her.

~ W. Somerset Maugham

They may already know too much about their mother and father--nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I've noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents' faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis?

~ Richard Ford

Scorned and torn, former love mates aim and shoot childish devastating daggers that penetrate beyond target to pierce the heart of their offspring.

~ T.f. Hodge

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.

~ Lois Mcmaster Bujold

If you never learned to hold onto someone, how could it possibly hurt now to let them go?

~ Shannon L. Alder

At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren't listening to his voice speaking through your mouth, you don't see how your gestures already mirror his; you don't see him in the way you hold your body, in the way you sign your name. You don't hear his whisper in your blood.

~ Salman Rushdie

How can it be, after all this concentrated effort and separation, how can it be that I still resemble, so very closely, my own detestable mother?

~ Gabrielle Hamilton

It always gave me a peculiar feeling to catch a glimpse of my parents' lives before I was born.

~ Robert Drewe

My emotional world imploded, and there is nothing that could have been said or done to make it easier. No one was in the wrong, and maybe that is what made it so painful. I wanted someone to blame, but instead got the two people I loved most doing their best to navigate uncharted waters.

~ Sara Bareilles

They (parents) have been doing this (imposing their beliefs about life on you) since you were born. That’s more than enough to establish a habit.

~ Lukasz Laniecki

They (parents) use this guilt-tripping to stop you from fulfilling your plans, but most important, from believing something they don’t (something which contradicts their beliefs)

~ Lukasz Laniecki

They (parents) want life to unfold according to what they believe. Most people want that. The last thing they want and need, is somebody (let alone their own child) telling them that their beliefs about life are bullshit / full of holes/ severely flawed.

~ Lukasz Laniecki

If we are wonderful parents and family members, then there’s really nothing else to prove.

~ Ron Baratono

We are all entitled to our own share of mistakes and learning experiences in life. No one should take them away from us. Not even our parents.

~ Lukasz Laniecki

There is no better way to crush someone’s self-confidence than to tell this person that her / his choice was wrong, and that she / he should have listened to us (parents). Because, obviously, we know how to make the right choices and she / he does not.

~ Lukasz Laniecki

Our parents are not the only people on this planet, and we should not base our life choices on what they want (what will bring them a peace of mind, satisfaction, and give them a reason to brag), but we should make those choices keeping in mind that there are upwards of 7,5 billion people in this world, and that we should use our talents and energy trying to improve the lives of as many of them as possible.

~ Lukasz Laniecki

Who said that parents’ beliefs should be adopted by their children?

~ Lukasz Laniecki

I always envisioned myself as traveling the ocean of life in a rowboat where my mother was one oar and my father, the other. Having two good, solid oars made rowing much easier.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

What tethers me to my parents is the unspoken dialogue we share about how much of my character is built on the connection I feel to the world they were raised in but that I've only experienced through photos, visits, food. It's not mine and yet, I get it. First-generation kids, I've always thought, are the personification of déjà vu.

~ Durga Chew-Bose

Well, it's true for every elder sibling, We have this supremely potent weapon parents on our side in such matters. In fact, such are the times when our maturity works wonders in hitching parents to our side over these younger siblings.

~ Parul Wadhwa

Silence descended on the house. [....] Amma must have sensed that this was the sort of silence that, left unchallenged, could consume the family from within.

~ Vivek Shanbhag

My parents seemed incredibly special and outrageously handsome to me then.

~ Gabrielle Hamilton

They projected an illusion of warmth with their home-cooking and hand-stitched quilts, yet underneath the facade was an institutional rigidity, as if they were running an orphanage where children would be fed and cared for but never loved. Love was such a key ingredient in molding humans, yet it was inaccessible to kids inside of the system.

~ Renee Carlino

A criminal always returns home.

~ Ljupka Cvetanova

But yeah, like everyone else in our family, they could go from zero to murderous in a fucking heartbeat.

~ J.d. Vance

I can be anything I want to be. Just wait and you will see. Only time will tell what I will be.

~ Jason J. Greenaway

When a child reaches adolescence, there is very apt to be a conflict between parents and child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The opinions they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret.

~ Bertrand Russell

It is not difficult for an unwise mother quite unintentionally to centre the heterosexual feelings of a young son upon herself, and it is true that, if this is done, the evil consequences pointed out by Freud will probably ensue. This is, however, much less likely to occur if the mother's sexual life is satisfying to her, for in that case she will not look to her child for a type of emotional satisfaction which ought to be sought only from adults. The parental impulse in its purity is an impulse to care for the young, not to demand affection from them, and if a woman is happy in her sexual life she will abstain spontaneously from all improper demands for emotional response from her child.

~ Bertrand Russell

If a father does not altogether embrace a life of uncompromised sacrifice as the core of all principles by which he nurtures his children, he is a father by birth only and no power on earth can ever or will ever make that sufficient.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Parents are the last people on Earth who ought to have children.

~ Samuel Butler

I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't.But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.

~ Mitch Albom

Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

All our lives my brother and I were caught by the fictions my parents told us—fictions about themselves as well as others. Each wanted us to judge the other in his or her favor. Sometimes I felt cheated, as if they never allowed us to have a story of our own. It is only now that I understand how much their story was also mine.

~ Azar Nafisi

In some ways, forcing me to leave was the best thing that could have happened to me. In other ways, it was a disaster. I'm still glad they did it though, because I think I might have just died if I had stayed at the coast. Although I ended up there a couple years later, when my mother relapsed on a whim, I think I needed that two years away from that horrible little coastal town where time is frozen and ideas creep forward too slow to notice any progress.

~ Ashly Lorenzana

I know that my grandmother certainly did nothing to warrant my mother stealing all of her jewelry that my grandfather had given her as gifts over the years, just so she could peddle it for heroin on the street. Those were precious metals and gems that could never be replaced, and each one had a story behind it. A love story between my grandparents, that my mother flushed down a proverbial toilet so that she could shoot up, throw up and pass out.

~ Ashly Lorenzana

My mother was obviously never there to take the blame she deserved. She left me to absorb it all in her place. She was far too busy in her own world, that incidentally revolved around herself. I'm pretty sure she dated a new guy every few months for most of my childhood. Some would last longer and show up again later after disappearing for a while, like the last day of a cold or flu before you start feeling better.

~ Ashly Lorenzana

We never expressed this to each other in Chinese, because it wasn’t something said in Chinese culture; the emotions were too strong, the words too coarse, and besides, it was assumed that parents and children loved each other.

~ Atom Yang

...parents everywhere desire a better life for their children. It's a near constant: They understand the importance of education and crave it for their children, even as they are well aware of the sacrifice they will have to make.

~ John Wood

They fuck you up, your mum and dad', and if you're planning on writing that's probably a good thing. But if you are planning on writing and they haven't fucked you up, well, you've got nothing to go on, so then they've fucked you up good and proper.

~ Alan Bennett

The biggest mistake that parents make, is believing that their assigned task in life is to teach their children and to guide them in every situation of their children's lives. The truth is that it is the task of parents to both learn from their children and to guide them as well. Parenting is a relationship that goes both ways, from the moment your child is born, you learn from that person, and in fact, your lessons begin long before your child's lessons do. Later on, when you've learned a great deal already, then they begin to learn from you. Throughout our lives, it is a give-and-take relationship, in many ways. Our assigned task is to learn from our children, and to guide and teach them. Their assigned task is to learn from us, and also to teach us.

~ C. Joybell C.