The family quotes on this page are all positive, inspirational words of love and wisdom from known sources that celebrate the joys of family life. Words from unknown origins are on the Family Sayings page.
The other pages relevant to family are: Baby Quotes & Sayings – Children Quotes & Sayings – Father Quotes & Sayings – Grandmother Quotes & Sayings – Mother Quotes & Sayings – Parent Quotes & Sayings.
I was brought up with a strong belief in the family being the most important thing in life. I was taught by example, that your family will always love you no matter what, and that a loving, supportive, caring, positive upbringing will produce the same qualities in adults. When I see what a wonderful job my children are doing in bringing up their own children, I can appreciate that I had a part in passing on the ‘family values’ that I was blessed with as a child.
Family quotes are listed alphabetically on surnames.
Family Quotes: A
Mitch Albom 1958
Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.
Louise May Alcott 1832 – 1888
A house needs a Grandma in it.
Jane Austen 1775 – 1817
There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
Family Quotes: B
Aine Belton
One hug always equals two… One for them and one for you.
Bo Bennett 1972
Spend some time this weekend on home-improvement… Improve your attitude toward your family.
Rachel Billington 1942
The daughter never ever gives up on the mother, just as the mother never gives up on the daughter. There is a tie there so strong that nothing can break it.
Napoleon Bonaparte 1769 – 1821
Show me a family of readers… and I will show you the people who move the world.
Anthony Brandt
Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.
Robert Brault
Family life’s a bit like a runny peach pie – not perfect, but who’s complaining?
The advantage of growing up with siblings is that you become very good at fractions.
What greater blessing to give thanks for at a family gathering, than the family and the gathering.
Joyce Brothers 1927 – 2013
When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses.
Family fun in the snow
Pam Brown 1948
An older sister is a friend and defender – a listener, conspirator, a counsellor and sharer of delights, and sorrows too.
However time or circumstances may come between mother and her child, their lives are interwoven forever.
It’s hard to be responsible, adult and sensible all the time. How good it is to have a sister whose heart is as young as your own.
Mothers are the pivot on which the family spins.
Mothers are the pivot on which the world spins.
Sisters share the scent and smells.. the feel of a common childhood.
We shared: parents, home, pets, celebrations, catastrophes, secrets. And the threads of our experience became so interwoven that we are linked. I can never be utterly lonely, knowing you share the planet.
When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us?
Gail Lumet Buckley 1937
Family faces are magic mirrors… looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future.
Eva Burrows 1929
In family life, love is… the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.
Lorna Byrne 1953
The bonding with a new baby can help people to release love unconsciously.
The connection between brothers and sisters is completely different to that between friends and it exists throughout our lives, even if we have little contact.
The sadness and pain surrounding the death of a parent, brother or sister can bring with it an unexpected gift, and help families to become closer. It can help bring shared memories to light, and be a reminder of love that was shared in the past.
Family Quotes: C
Mary Calderone 1904 – 1998
Our children are not going to be just ‘our children’ – they are going to be other people’s husbands and wives and the parents of our grandchildren.
Nancy J. Carmody
I am thankful for a lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning and gutters that need fixing because I have a home. I am thankful for the piles of laundry and ironing because it means my loved ones are nearby.
Gilbert Chesterton 1874 – 1936
The most extraordinary thing in the world is… an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.
Julia Child 1912 – 2004
Dining with one’s friends and beloved family is certainly one of life’s primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal.
Lydia Maria Child 1802 – 1880
Home – that blessed word, which opens to the human heart the most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to carry it thither, as on an Angel’s wings.
Deepak Chopra 1946
Success, wealth, good health and nurturing relationships are by-products of happiness, not the cause.
Sera Christann
Sometimes our hearts get tangled and our Souls a little off kilter. Friends and family can set us right and help guide us back to the light.
Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965
There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.
Confucius 551BC – 479BC
The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
Jamie Lee Curtis 1958
There is a point when you aren’t as much mom and daughter as you are adults and friends.
Miley Cyrus 1992
The only people that you really have, that I learned, are your family, because they love you no matter what.
Family Quotes: D
David DeNotaris
My family provided me with the proper information and inspiration for me to overcome the challenge of blindness.
Sarah Dessen 1970
Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.
Anita Diamant 1951
The more a daughter knows the details of her mother’s life, the stronger the daughter.
Princess Diana 1961 – 1997
Family is the most important thing in the world.
Harvey Family (oldest girl is my maternal grandmother) – London early 1920’s
Walt Disney 1901 – 1966
A man should never neglect his family for business.
Pamela Dugdale
Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring.
Will Durant 1885 – 1981
The family is the nucleus of civilization.
Wayne Dyer 1940 – 2015
Without exception, begin every day of your life with gratitude. As you look in the mirror, say, “Thank you, God, for life, for my body, for my family and loved ones, for this day, and for the opportunity to be of service. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Family Quotes: E
Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955
Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.
George Eliot 1819 – 1880
What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?
T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965
There’s no vocabulary for love within a family, love that’s lived in but not looked at, love within he light of which all else is seen, the love within which all other love finds speech. This love is silent.
Family Quotes: F
Michael J. Fox 1961
Family is not an important thing… it is everything.
Family Quotes: G
Susan Gale
Mothers are like glue… even when you can’t see them, they’re still holding the family together.
Richard Garnett
Love is the greatest gift that one generation can leave to another.
Marion C. Garretty 1917
A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.
Ruldolph Giuliani 1944
What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance. They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humour, comfort, lessons in life.
Family Quotes: H
Alex Haley 1921 – 1992
In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past and a bridge to our future.
My parents with their descendants in 2008 at their Golden Wedding party.Alex Haley 1921 – 1992
My fondest hope is that Roots may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall.
Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.
Tying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.
When an old person dies it’s like a library burning.
Thich Nhat Hanh 1926
If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all your generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.
Roma Hanks
It is my belief that grand-parenting is the most important family role of the new century.
Louise Hay 1926 – 2017
If you want love and acceptance from your family, then you must give love and acceptance to them.
Brad Henry 1963
Families are the compass that guide us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter.
Elbert Hubbard 1856 – 1915
No matter what you have done for yourself, or for humanity, if you can’t look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished.
Family Quotes: J
Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Family Quotes: K
Marge Kennedy
It’s important for all single parents to remember that not everything that goes wrong, from your son’s bad attitude towards school to the six holes in your teenage daughter’s ear, is because you live in a single-parent home. Every family has its problems.
Soup is a lot like a family. Each ingredient enhances the others; each batch has its own characteristics; and it needs time to simmer to reach full flavour.
The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us all to become our best while looking our worst.
Yes, single-parent families are different from two-parent families. And urban families are different from rural ones, and families with six kids and a dog are different from one-child, no-pet households. But even if there is only one adult presiding at the dinner table, yours is every bit as much a real family as the Waltons.
Miranda Kerr 1983
While it’s nice to appreciate the fashion world… what makes you happy are real relationships and the moments you share with loved ones.
Helen Ketchum
Grandmothers are voices of the past and role models of the present. Grandmothers open the doors to the future.
My children with their paternal grandmother & great-grandmothers in 1989
Charles Kuralt 1934 – 1997
The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important then wealth and privilege.
Family Quotes: L
Jack Layton
Cherish every moment with those you love, at every stage of your journey.
Family camping holiday – Cornwall 1973
Mike Love 1941
The great thing about getting older is that you get a chance to tell the people in your life who matter, what they mean to you.
Rosamund Lupton
We are conjoined by hundreds of thousands of memories that silt down into you and stop being memories and become a part of what you are.
Family Quotes: M
Madonna 1958
Family is everything. Family comes first. It’s not what I expected it to be, but nothing ever is.
Neal A. Maxwell 1926 – 2004
God’s extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family.
Margaret Mead 1901 – 1978
Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.
George Moore 1852 – 1933
A man travels the world in search of what he needs.. and returns home to find it.
Movie – Mrs Doubtfire
There are all sorts of different families. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. And some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. And some live in separate homes, in separate neighbourhoods, in different areas of the country – and they may not see each other for days, or weeks, months.. even years at a time. But, if there’s love – those are the ties that bind, and you’ll have a family in your heart, forever.
Swami Muktananda 1908 – 1982
Love is our only reason for living and the only purpose of life. We live for the sake of love, and we live seeking love… it is not surprising that we keep looking for love. All of us are nothing but vibrations of love. We are sustained by love, and in the end we merge back into love…
This world is nothing but a school of love, our relationships with our husband or wife, with our children and parents, with our friends and relatives are the university in which we are meant to learn what love an devotion truly are.
Yet the love we experience through other people is just a shadow of the love of the inner self. There is a sublime place inside us where love dwells. The love that pulses in the cave of the heart does not depend on anything outside. It does not expect anything. It is completely independent.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010
Don’t you think God would smile and feel good, if your spouse, your children, your parents, your teachers, your colleagues, your spiritual guides would smile and feel good, if you said to them these simple words: ‘I am happy. Thank you for giving me happiness.’
Each mother and father should devote quite some time to the family’s history. An entire new science and art of family and individual history should be developed and taught: ancestry, genealogy, name etymology, oral history, written history, pictorial history, family heirlooms and souvenirs, scrapbooks, photo collections etc.. What deep joys can be derived from family history! It increases the love and role of the family, the fundamental, basic social unit.
Every human being has stories to tell. Please tell them. They are part of the bloodstream of our cosmic journey, the transmission of our experience and wisdom to our descendants.
If we cannot live in peace in our family, how can we expect peace of the human family.
Love must become the subject of serious scientific study. Loved children are healthier, happier, more peaceful children. Loved husbands have seldom heart attacks. Loved plants grow better. Loved animals are not vicious. Loved nations do not wage war. A humanity of loving people will be a peaceful humanity. To promote love means therefore to promote peace. Yes, let us have a loveology, a science of love, to start with a World University of Love.
Family Quotes: N
Native American – Chinook
We call upon all those who have lived on this earth, our ancestors and our friends, who dreamed the best for our future generations, and upon whose lives our lives our built, and with thanksgiving, we call upon them to… Teach us, and show us the Way.
This is part of a longer Blessing on the Native American Tribes page.
Family Quotes: O
Clara Ortega
To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each others hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time.
Amos Oz 1939
I find the family the most mysterious and fascinating institution of the world.
Family Quotes: P
Frank Pittman 1953 – 2012
The guys who fear becoming fathers don’t understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects men. The end product of child-raising is not the child but the parent.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin 1939
If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together – but separable, each segment distinct.
Family Quotes: R
Ruth E. Renkel
Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.
Kate Roberts
When parents say ‘I’m sorry,’ they are saying so much more.
Christina Rossetti 1830 – 1894
For there is no friend like a sister, in calm or stormy weather. To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one, if one goes astray. To lift one, if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
Jalal Uddin Rumi 1207 – 1273
Always search for your innermost nature in those you are with, as rose oil imbibes from roses.
Family Quotes: S
Kate Samperi
Before becoming a mother I had a hundred theories on how to bring up children. Now I have seven children and only one theory.. Love them, especially when they least deserve to be loved.
George Santayana 1863 – 1952
The family is one of life’s masterpieces.
My parents & mum’s family at Stonehenge in 1950’s
Virginia Satir 1916 – 1988
Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible – the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.
Friedrich Schiller 1759 – 1805
It is not flesh and blood, but the heart that makes us fathers and sons.
Olive Schreiner 1855 – 1920
Our fathers had their dreams, we have ours, the generation that follows will have its own.
Chief Seattle 1780 – 1866
Our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch of our ancestors as we walk over this Earth.
Marquise de Sevigne 1626 – 1696
We cannot destroy kindred: our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break.
George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950
A happy family is but an earlier Heaven.
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
John Sinor
It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in Heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping.
Dodie Smith 1896 – 1990
The family… that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.
Nicholas Sparks 1965
My wife, my family, my friends.. they’ve all taught me things about love and what that emotion really means. In a nutshell, loving someone is about giving, not receiving.
Martha Stewart 1941
Over the years I learned so much from mom. She taught me about the importance of home and history and family and tradition. She also taught me that aging need not mean narrowing the scope of your activities and interests.
Rod Stewart 1945
You go through life wondering what is it all about, but at the end of the day, it’s all about family.
Igor Stravinsky 1882 – 1971
It’s one of nature’s ways that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.
Meryl Streep 1949
My family really does come first. It always did and always will.
There’s no road map on how to raise a family, it’s always an enormous negotiation.
Charles R. Swindoll 1934
A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.
Family Quotes: T
Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones… the ones at home.
Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
Smile at each other – smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other – it doesn’t matter who it is – and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.
Mother Teresa 1910 – 1997
The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family.
What can you do to promote world peace?… Go home and love your family.
family quote – With my parents & brothers in late 1980’sDesmond Tutu 1931
You don’t choose your family, they are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.
Family Quotes: V
Gary Vaynerchuk 1975
Love your family. Work super hard. Love your passion.
Family Quotes: W
Mark Wahlberg 1971
For me, family always comes first; I would do anything to protect them.
Dan Wilcox
I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family, he’s rich.
Anthony Douglas Williams
Treat other animals as friends and they become friends. Treat other animals as family and they become family. Give other animals your love and they will love you in return.
Amy Winehouse 1983 – 2011
I’m happiest with my family around me.
Joseph B. Wirthlin 1817 – 2008
The place to cure most of the ills of society is in the homes of the people.
Lois Wyse 1926 – 2007
Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation.
Secreted in the basements and attics of memory are the hidden treasures of family history that only a grandmother can recall, write and hand down.
Family Quotes: Y
Paramahansa Yogananda 1893 – 1952
Kindness is the Light that dissolves all walls between Souls, families and nations.
family quote