Are Parents The Best Quotes & Sayings

I once won a second prize in a history concert. My parents came to the ceremony. Somebody else had won the prize for best all-around student. Afterwards my father said to me, 'Never, ever disgrace me like that again.' When I tell my Western friends, they are aghast. But I adore my father. It didn't knock my self-esteem at all. — Amy Chua

First things first, I'm going to tell you why I'm fat, because I actually get this question a lot, much in the way people are asked how they got into live-action role playing or funeral home cosmetology. The answer I'd like to give to people who ask me that question is that God made us all different, and she made some people round-shaped, like me, and some people asshole-shaped, like you. Too direct? Fine, here's the deal.

Most kids inherit their best qualities from their parents. I inherited mental illness and fat thighs. Oh, and astigmatism and course body hair. — Brittany Gibbons

One of the great blessings of the plan is that we are organized into families. You have parents whose greater wisdom and experience will help you reach your divine potential. Trust them. They want the best for you. — Mary N. Cook

Most moms and dads think they are either the best or the worst parents in the world. Both are wrong. — Kevin DeYoung

The exposure effect is also good news for those of us who weren't born gorgeous. It means that the people who know us best - our parents and children, our best friends and true loves - ultimately 'forget' what we look like. How symmetrical or clear-skinned we are disappears into the experiences we've shared with someone. — Scott Westerfeld

Like most parents in the US, they are trying, with a little help from UNICEF, to do the best they can to help their children reach their full potential ... — Susan Sarandon

Parents are strange and wonderful creatures. When you're small they seem bright, shiny, and invincible. As you grow, that image starts to fade. It's a sobering moment, but the time will come when you realize they are not the heroes you imagined. They are just people struggling to do the best they can, just the same as you are.You will feel let down, betrayed, even ashamed. This is the time, ... when you need to forgive your parents for being human. — Camron Wright

It doesn't matter who you marry, as long as he thinks like you and is a gentleman and a Southerner and prideful. For a woman, love comes after marriage."
"Oh, Pa, that's such an Old Country notion!"
"And a good notion it is! All this American business of running around marrying for love, like servants, like Yankees! The best marriages are when the parents choose for the girl. For how can a silly piece like yourself tell a good man from a scoundrel? — Margaret Mitchell

Women without children are also the best of mothers,often, with the patience,interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts. Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply into the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortuante who feels witnessed as a peron,outside relationships with parents by another adult. — Louise Erdrich

There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have charge of children, but there can be no doubt that parents are the worst. — George Bernard Shaw

There are seven billion people in the world and you have only experienced twenty thousand at the most. And those twenty thousand were fairly homogenous. Your experiences with people have been largely dictated by your parents' choices. The neighborhood in which they chose to purchase a house. Where they sent you to school. And maybe those choices weren't the best for you. Maybe you don't fit in where you are now ... There are seven billion other people out there. Seven billion. Are you really pessimistic enough to believe that you wouldn't get along with any of them? — Matthew Quick

You see," I proceeded, "by the time he was eleven or twelve, this was all too late. The no-gun rules, the computer codes ... Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive, it's a vanity. We want to be able to tell ourselves what good parents we are, that we're doing our best. If I had it all to do over again, I'd have let Kevin play with whatever he wanted; he liked little enough. And I'd have ditched the TV rules, the G-rated videos. They only made us look foolish. They underscored our powerlessness, and they provoked his contempt. — Lionel Shriver

If responsibility for the upbringing of children is to continue to be vested in the family, then the rights of children will be secured only when parents are able to make a living for their families with so little difficulty that they may give their best thought and energy to the child's development and the problem of helping it adjust itself to the complexities of the modern environment. — Suzanne La Follette

...above all, let your focus be on remaining a full person. Take time for yourself. Nurture your own needs.
Please do not think of it as 'doing it all'.
Our culture celebrates the idea of women who are able to 'do it all' but does not question the premise of that praise. I have no interest in the debate about women doing it all because it is a debate that assumes that caregiving and domestic work are singularly female domains, and idea that I strongly reject. Domestic work and caregiving should be gender-neutral, and we should be asking not whether a woman can 'do it all' but how best to support parents in their dual duties at work and at home. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Most of the time you are growing up, people tell you what's wrong with you. Your coach tells you, your parents tell you, the teachers tell you when they grade you. I think that's very good in the early stages, because it helps you then develop skills. But at some point in your career, generally I think when you are in your teens, you look in a mirror and you have to say, despite all the bumps and warts, "I like that person I'm looking at, and let's just do our best." — Robert Ballard

It was a unique childhood, to say the least. My father was born in Patiala to refugee parents and was a part of the Indian Air Force. The talented few amongst the Air Force pilots are made test pilots. Test pilots are best suited to look at the space programme as they are trained to expect the unexpected. — Kapil Sharma

We've got the best kind of parents for us, in this situation. My parents are super supportive of me and really into our band. They get just as excited as we do, about stuff that we do. So, it's pretty cool. — Mattew Nicholls

A controlling God, who is usually represented by a controlling church leadership, is just not good news. How can church leadership create freedom and not more rules? How can we bring out the best in human beings and keep it at the surface even as we deal with their problems and shortcomings? Can we empower others and release them to live from their best natures and from the truest reasons they are alive? Will we as Christian leaders, parents, and employers take on the responsibility to learn how to draw out the dreams and destiny in the people we lead? — Danny Silk

My parents always told me that you always want to be the worst of the best. If you are the best, you never learn. — Toni Trucks

Max - you have a bigger mission than finding the flock's parents. Focus on helping the whole world,
not just your friends.
I held my wings steady, coasting for a long, long way on a warm updraft. It was like floating on a
cloud, the best feeling you can imagine. I wish you could try it with me. Maybe next time.
You know, Voice, I thought finally, my friends are my world. — James Patterson

The same way all the people I love factor in - my parents, my sister, my girlfriend [Lena Dunham], my best friend, all the people I love are always right there. I don't have a lot of people in my life, but there's a small group of people that I don't like to do things without. — Jack Antonoff

My parents were extraordinarily focused on education. It was the topic of every dinner conversation, is are you number one, are you getting all As, if not, why not. You need to do better. So my entire orientation and focus growing up was around doing your best and making sure that you were going to get the best education possible. — Michelle Rhee

I think when you are the parents of a gifted athlete, the best thing in the world you can do is to encourage them, in my opinion. My dad didn't push me and I didn't push my children in athletics. — Bob Lilly

family structure that produces the best outcomes for children, on average, are two biological parents who remain married. Divorced parents produce the next-best outcomes. Whether the parents remarry or remain single while the children are growing up makes little difference. Never-married women produce the worst outcomes. All of these statements apply after controlling for the family's socioeconomic status.14 I know of no other set of important findings that are as broadly accepted by social scientists who follow the technical literature, liberal as well as conservative, and yet are so resolutely ignored by network news programs, editorial writers for the major newspapers, and politicians of both major political parties. In — Charles Murray

I often find that the best parents are the ones without children. — Lisa Vanderpump

We are born, we grow up, we live our lives as best we can. If we are thoughtful we are good parents and good partners. If we are wise we strive for integrity and intimacy. If we are fortunate we discover love and joy. If we are able, we make the world a little better than we found it. That is all there is for any of us. — Robert B. Reich

Same first name as a president and an obscure comic book character. Half-Jewish. Excellent grammar. Easily nauseated. Likes Reese's and Oreos (i.e. not an idiot). Divorced parents. Big brother to a fetus. Dad lives in Savannah. Dad's an English teacher. Mom's an epidemiologist.
The problem is, I'm beginning to realize I hardly know anything about anyone. I mean I generally know who's a virgin. But I don't have a clue whether most people's parents are divorced, or what their parents do for a living. I mean, Nick's parents are doctors. But I don't know what Leah's mom does, and I don't even know what the deal is with her dad, because Leah never talks about him. I have no idea why Abby's dad and brother still live in DC. And these are my best friends. I've always thought of myself as nosy, but I guess I'm just nosy about stupid stuff.
It's actually really terrible, now that I think about it. — Becky Albertalli

We aren't who we want to be. We are what society demands. We are what our parents choose. We don't want to disappoint anyone; we have a great need to be loved. So we smother the best in us. Gradually, the light of our dreams turns into the monster of our nightmares. They become things not done, possibilities not lived. — Paulo Coelho

You fall so deeply in love with your grandbaby. It's so so so much easier than being a parent, because you really don't have much responsibility. And just when you are at the end of your rope with exhaustion, the parents take the baby away. So it's the best of both worlds. — Anne Lamott

In the course of therapy, we often witness clients' capacities to report abuse stories with intellectualized, detached demeanors. And they are quick to add disclaimers that minimize their experiences such as "It wasn't so bad," "I probably deserved it anyway," "I know my parents did the best they could," "It didn't have any negative effect on me," or "That was a long time ago, and it can't be relevant to my life now." Many clients expend tremendous amounts of energy disavowing traumatic or abusive histories, believing that revisiting old feelings and thoughts will keep them stuck or are irrelevant to who they are today. — Lisa Ferentz

I am not asking anyone to take the fun out of childhood. As we all know, treats are one of the best parts of being a kid. Instead, the goal here is to empower parents instead of undermining them as they try to make healthier choices for their families. — Michelle Obama

And then there's the Face. Who is a nobody, a real person, who comes and takes your place at the table. They get an education, the best health care, a salary, all the nice clothes and all the same toys that you get. They get your parents whenever the Olds' team decides there's a need or an opportunity. If you go online, or turn on the TV, there they are, being you. Being better than you will ever be at being you. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you have to be careful, or you'll start to feel very strange. Is that really you? — Kelly Link

I've got the best parents you could ever ask for. My parents are from New Jersey, and they met in Vermont in college. My Dad grew up listening to heavy, psychedelic music. He's my biggest fan. — King Tuff

In theory, I would like to lead a transparent life. I wold like my life to be as clear as a new pane of glass, without anything shameful and no dark shadows. I would like that. But if I am completely honest, I have to acknowledge secrets too painful to even tell myself. There are things I consider in the deep dark of night, secret terrors. Why are they secrets? I could easily tell either of my parents how I feel, but what would they say? Don't worry, darling, we will do our best never to die? We will never ever leave you, never contract cancer or walk in front of a bus or collapse of old age? We will not leave you alone, not ever, to navigate the world and all of its complexities without us? — Meg Rosoff

I've always had the greatest respect for and listened to both my father and my mother. I've always tried to follow my parents' advice because these are people who want the best for me. — Neymar

I have comic-book loving, pop-culture-obsessed parents. The coolest. I'm sure the two Meadows girls and the seven Cobalt children would protest and say their parents are cool, but there's no comparison.
Hands down, mine are the goddamn best. — Krista Ritchie

Adoptive parents are taking on enormous responsibility, both emotionally and financially. Quite frankly, they need as much disclosure as possible about the child's background and health to assure the best fit and be prepared. — Pat Robertson

Empowered kids are in the best position to deal constructively with disempowering circumstances. And we, as parents, are in the best position to empower them - as long as we're willing to limit our use of power over them. — Alfie Kohn

Little idea about my teacher:
1. First and foremost My Parents (Both are equal).
2. Next to all my respected teachers who taught me subjective as well practical knowledge, and help me to shape up as a responsible person.
3. Next to all my seniors and elder people who guided me in the path of progress time to time throughout my journey.
4. Next to all my beloved family and friends who are always stood along with me, no matter the time what it was?
5. Next to those entire know-unknown persons who has passed through journey and taught few lessons, tips.
6. Next is the nature, just see it, feel it & learn it.
7. Last but not least kids/children's- a lot of things, no worry, smiles, happiness, this is the best part of this journey.
So it's time to Salute the Real Commanders of our Life
HAPPY TEACHERS DAY
Original from: Amit Gupta — Amit Gupta

Religion shows a pattern of heredity which I think is similar to genetic heredity ... There are hundreds of different religious sects, and every religious person is loyal to just one of these ... The overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one their parents belonged to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained-glass, the best music when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing compared to the matter of heredity. — Richard Dawkins

Single parents, I testify that as you do your very best in the most difficult of human challenges, heaven will smile upon you. Truly you are not alone. Let the redemptive, loving power of Jesus Christ brighten your life now and fill you with the hope of eternal promise. Take courage. Have faith and hope. Consider the present with fortitude and look to the future with confidence. — David S. Baxter

Portraits of Integrity is sure to be a favorite with your family! It contains 45 stories of real people from history who, in the course of their lives, have been placed in situations where their character shone through. History is best remembered when learned through the stories of those who lived it! For many years, I have given to parents a list of 45 character qualities with Scripture verses to learn what God's Word says about each one. Principles are best learned from practical examples and that is what has given birth to this book. Through the lives of people, some of whom you have heard of and some you will be meeting for the first time, you will learn how to appreciate character in the lives of others and be inspired to become people of character yourselves. I hope you will be challenged as I have to learn of people who, often at great sacrifice, strove to fulfill their responsibilities in life and as a result left to us a legacy of character! — Marilyn Boyer

You realize how much the relationship when kids are young can suffer. And it's important to make sure that you are able to spend some time with each other. As a father, the best thing you can do for the kid is to love the mom. Even as a parent, I believe that loving the mother is the most important thing. And even parents who maybe aren't together I think that's important for them as well to respect each other and to be kind to each other, because I think it does so much in who they would pick to be around, or how they feel about themselves. — Vince Vaughn

A lot of schools benefit from parents who are first- or second-generation immigrants, who expect the best for their children. — Michael Gove

Often low-income parents give their children every other thing they need for successful participation in school and the world of work except the planning and organizing skills and habit patterns needed to operate in complex settings. Many intelligent and able college students from low-income backgrounds confront these deficits when faced with a heavy assignment load ... These patterns are best acquired at an early age and need to be quite well developed by late elementary school or twelve or thirteen years of age. — James P. Comer

Parents are key when it comes to keeping kids off drugs. Good parenting is the best anti-drug we have. — Mel Carnahan

You don't need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop - the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative - wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don't wear jewelry - stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children's trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance. — John Waters

To the best of my recollection, I became a philosopher because my parents wanted me to become a lawyer. It seems to me, in retrospect, that there was much to be said for their suggestion. On the other hand, many philosophers are quite good company; the arguments they use are generally better than the ones that lawyers use; and we do get to go to as many faculty meetings as we like at no extra charge. — Jerry Fodor

We encounter the grinding wheels that sharpen our mental blades many places in life. Adversity, school, parents, spiritual guides, books, experience are all sharpening teachers. As we grow older, to stay sharp we must find new grindstones to whet and sharpen our potential and keep us at our brightest, most penetrating best. — Rob Kall

Your parents are the parents you know best. Your brother and sister, if you have them, are the brother and sister you know best. They may not be the ones you like the best. They may not be the most interesting, but they are the closest and probably the clearest to you. — James Salter

Often, our misunderstandings about love are born in disruptive family relationships, where someone was either one-up or one-down to an extreme. There is an appropriate and necessary difference in the balance of power between parents and young children, but in the best situations, there should be no power struggles by the time those children have become adults - just deep connection, trust, and respect between people who sincerely care about each other.
In disruptive families, children are taught to remain one-up or one-down into adulthood. And this produces immature adults who either seek to dominate others (one-up) or who allow themselves to be dominated (one-down) in their relationships - one powerful and one needy, one enabling and one addicted, one decisive and one confused.
In relationships with these people, manipulation abounds. Especially when they start to feel out of control. — Tim Clinton

I have three older brothers, and we all have different combinations of parents. My father was the best man at my mom's first wedding! And my brother's mother - my dad's first wife - is the sister to my mom's first husband's second wife. So my brothers are both stepcousins and stepbrothers. It's very '70s rock. — Inara George

Tradionally, parents made decisions for a child, because presumably they are looking out for his or her best interests. But if they are blinded, instead, by the best interests of another one of their children, the system breaks down. — Jodi Picoult

I've covered a lot of ground geographically and emotionally and for years I lost my connection with my family. But the best comfort you can have, whether you are on the phone or sitting there in the living room with them, is with your parents, and to me family has always meant protection. When you smile you get a smile back, unconditionally. — Brigitte Nielsen

My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out humiliating things that can neither be anticipated nor controlled. I sigh and make the best of it. I feel I'm older than they are, much older. I feel ancient. — Margaret Atwood

How do Mercedes Parents think? My research indicates the following:
1. The choice of private schools is both fear-based and aspirational. Mercedes Parents are afraid their children won't "the best education possible," Which has nothing to do with actual education and everything to do with the number of other Mercedes Parents at a school. — Maria Semple

Most of us are quite selfish when it comes to our children, you know. We want things from them: love, the satisfaction of seeing them do well, and so on. Plenty of parents don't think just of their child's best interest. Oh, they may pay lip service to it, but they really think of themselves, of what they get from parenting. — Alexander McCall Smith

Parents are the designated caregivers and are best suited for being able to raise children. — Gordon Neufeld

My parents are amazing, but when I was like, 'Well, I'm going to be an actress,' and they're all doctors, that wasn't the best and easiest thing to do. I'm sure that I probably went through a year period when I wasn't telling them exactly what I was doing. But that's going to evolve. — Reshma Shetty

Parents sometimes object to the amount of humor introduced into stories that are designed to teach moral or spiritual lessons. They seem to think that simple grim lecturing of children is the best way to achieve such goals. — Mike Berenstain

It needs more than ever to be stressed that the best and truest educators are parents under God. The greatest school is the family. In learning, no act of teaching in any school or university compares to the routine task of mothers in teaching a babe who speaks no language the mother tongue in so short a time. No other task in education is equal to this. The moral training of the children, the discipline of good habits, is an inheritance from the parents to the children which surpasses all other. The family is the first and basic school of man. — Rousas John Rushdoony

If children can't handle competition when it's necessary, or take some criticism, or never strive to be better because their parents inadvertently programmed them to believe they are already the best even when they're not, then they are in for some serious shocks and bumps down the road. — LZ Granderson

Mothers and fathers act in mostly similar ways toward their young children. Psychologists are still highlighting small differencesrather than the overwhelming similarities in parents' behaviors. I think this is a hangover from the 1950s re-emergence of father as a parent. He has to be special. The best summary of the evidence on mothers and fathers with their babies is that young children of both sexes, in most circumstances, like both parents equally well. Fathers, like mothers, are good parents first and gender representatives second. — Sandra Scarr

What did your mom say?"
"She said I better not be pregnant."
Janie snorts. "What the hell is wrong with our parents, anyway? Wait
you're not, are you?"
"Of course not! Sheesh, Janers! I may not have gotten the best grades in school, but I'm not stupid. You know I'm on the Pill. And his Jimmy doesn't get near me without a raincoat, yadamean? Ain't nothin' getting through my little fortress! — Lisa McMann

Dad needs to show an incredible amount of respect and humor and friendship toward his mate so the kids understand their parents are sexy, they're fun, they do things together, they're best friends. Kids learn by example. If I respect Mom, they're going to respect Mom. — Tim Allen

Arteriosclerosis, removing people from active life when the period of maximum fertility has passed, is of benefit to the young if it relieves them of the care of parents, or brings them an inheritance as they enter adult life. . . . Any attempts to eradicate such a disease from the urban population will be frustrated by natural selection and the survival of more grandchildren in families with few grandparents. Those best fitted to survive in a world growing more urban are those who cease to require support as soon as their roles as parents have been completed. Atherosclerosis and hypertension are now the chief factors in determining that we do not overstay our allotted span of life too long. — Thomas H. Lee

The very best reason parents are so special ... is because we are the holders of a priceless gift, a gift we received from countless generations we never knew, a gift that only we now possess and only we can give to our children. That unique gift, of course, is the gift of ourselves. Whatever we can do to give that gift, and to help others receive it, is worth the challenge of all our human endeavor. — Fred Rogers

Always obey your parents. When they are present. This is the best policy in the long run. Because if you don't, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on your own better judgment. — Mark Twain

The best way for parents to go about acquiring a mind-set of self-reflective parenting will be different for different individuals. Some people will find that they are already very close to being the parent they are striving to be. Other people will find reading books or blog articles to be very helpful and some other people might benefit most by engaging in discussions on the internet. — Timothy Carey

We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment.
I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives. — Dave Bruno

Your parents are weirdos, in the best possible way. They do not celebrate birthdays; never in your life have you received a present on the tenth of December. Instead, you are given books on the days that their authors were born. — Robin Sloan

That's swell. That's what I call answering like a man. When is your birthday?" "In January." "I'd have sworn to it. So is mine. I believe the highest types are born in January. It's barometric - you can look it up in Ellsworth Huntington. The parents make love in spring when the organism is healthiest and then the best specimens are conceived. If you want children you should plan to knock up your dear one in that season. Ancient wisdom is right. Now science comes lately and finds it out. — Saul Bellow

When rehabilitation works, there is no question that it is the best and most productive use of the correctional system. It stands to reason: if we can take a bad guy and turn him into a good guy and then let him out, then that's one fewer bad guy to harm us. . . .

Where I do not think there is much hope. . .is when we deal with serial killers and sexual predators, the people I have spent most of my career hunting and studying. These people do what they do. . .because it feels good, because they want to, because it gives
them satisfaction. You can certainly make the argument, and I will agree with you, that many of them are compensating for bad jobs, poor self-image, mistreatment by parents, any number of things. But that doesn't mean we're going to be able to rehabilitate them. — John E. Douglas

It's a heck of a responsibility to look after a spirit. So give kids the best of who you are. That's the most you can ever do. — Carew Papritz

I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't entirely approve of people who get advanced degrees and then decide to stay at home. I think if society gives you the gift of one of those educations and you take a spot in a very competitive institution, then you should do something with that education to help others ... But I also don't approve of working parents who look down on stay-at-home mothers and think they smother their children. Working parents are every bit as capable of spoiling children as ones who don't work - maybe even more so when they indulge their kids out of guilt. The best think anyone can teach their children is the obligation we all have toward each other - and no one has a monopoly on teaching that. — Will Schwalbe

Nobody wants to hear that any aspect of my awesome life is bad. I get that. But there are days, maybe two or three times a year, when I get completely overwhelmed by my job and go to my office, lie on the floor, and cry for ten minutes. Then I think: Mindy, you have literally the best life in the world besides that hot lawyer who married George Clooney. This is what you dreamed about when you were a weird, determined little ten-year-old. There are more than a thousand people in one square mile of this studio who would kill to have this job. Get your ass up off the floor and go back into that writers' room, you weakling. Then I get up, pour myself a generous glass of whiskey and club soda, think about the sustained grit of my parents, and go back to work. — Mindy Kaling

I feel completely safe in my house but all my friends are scared for me. And of course I can tell my parents panic a little. The best thing about living alone is being able to have my friends come over whenever. — Vanessa Hudgens

These women lived their lives happily. They had been taught, probably by loving parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness regardless of what they were doing. But therefore they could never know real joy. Which is better? Who can say? Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by 'their happiness' is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That's not a bad thing. Dressed in their aprons, their smiling faces like flowers, leaning to cook, absorbed in their little troubles and perplexities, they fall in love and marry. I think that's great. I wouldn't mind that kind of life. Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life - my birth, my upbringing, everything. I feel only regret for the whole thing. — Banana Yoshimoto

Keep in mind that one aspect of feeling encouraged is feeling good physically. Exuberance and vitality require energy; this means as parents we need to be in the best possible health physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. When we feel encouraged, we are better able to encourage our children. — Gary Chapman

The two sexes are different to the core, and each is necessary - culturally and biologically - for the optimal development of a human being."12 In a summary of the relevant science, University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox finds much the same: Let me now conclude our review of the social scientific literature on sex and parenting by spelling out what should be obvious to all. The best psychological, sociological, and biological research to date now suggests that - on average - men and women bring different gifts to the parenting enterprise, that children benefit from having parents with distinct parenting styles, and that family breakdown poses a serious threat to children and to the societies in which they live.13 — Sherif Girgis

I feel like I'm really blessed and lucky that I have a very good social life outside of the gym, and I have a really amazing family. My parents are so supportive. I have a younger brother and two younger sisters, and they're really awesome. So I feel like I get the best of both worlds. — Aly Raisman

College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night? — David Wood

It is at this moment that I realize the best thing I ever did in my life was to marry this woman.
She is willing to give up her life for her child. I know most parents would do the same. But how many mothers would give up everything that they love, everything that they will ever be able to do in the future for the "possibility and not the guarantee" of getting their child better.
Now reduce the odds of success to less than 1%.
How many mothers are still standing?
She is. — JohnA Passaro

Unpossessive. Before his parents left, Al once again paid him the highest compliment about his relationship with me. "You boys are the best friends I've ever seen," he said. "You're like Damon and Pythias." It's a long way for a man to come who couldn't look me in the face for a year after Roger finally told him he was gay. A century — Paul Monette

Forgiveness is not a matter of feeling superior, of feeling sorry for our parents because they didn't' know any better. It comes when we understand that as humans we all do the very best we can, and we can't ask for more than that. Forgiveness is making the choice to find no more value in anger, and to see that we are all God's light, all joined, and the separations we feel are only part of the illusions of the ego. — Gerald Jampolsky

Here is the beginning of understanding: most parents are doing their best, and most children are doing their best, and they're doing pretty well, all things considered. — Richard Louv

Put Your Spouse First: When the children are grown and move out of the home, who will be left but your spouse? Nurture that relationship first and foremost. It is your role, together, to be the best parents you can be and what better way to do that than by parenting together and teaching your children (by what you say and do) that the bond of marriage is stronger than any other earthly commitment — Miriam

If your parents disapprove of you and are cunning with their disapproval, there will never come a new dawn when you can become convinced of your own value. There is no fixing a damaged childhood. The best you can hope for is to make the sucker float. — Pat Conroy

At some point, you realize your parents are human. They make the best decisions they can with the options available to them. — Cory Monteith

Parents and schoolteachers counsel black children that, if they ever hope to escape this system and avoid prison time, they must be on their best behavior, raise their arms and spread their legs for the police without complaint, stay in failing schools, pull up their pants, and refuse all forms of illegal work and moneymaking activity, even if jobs in the legal economy are impossible to find. Girls are told not to have children until they are married to a "good" black man who can help provide for a family with a legal job. They are told to wait and wait for Mr. Right even if that means, in a jobless ghetto, never having children at all. — Michelle Alexander

I always said that the only team that I would coach would be a team of orphans, and now here we are. The reason for me saying this is that I have found the biggest problem with youth sports has been the parents. I think that it is best to nip this in the bud right off the bat. I think the concept that I am asking all of you to grab is that this experience is ALL about the boys. If there is anything about it that includes you, we need to make a change of plans. My main goals are as follows: (1) to teach these young men how to play the game of baseball the right way, (2) to be a positive impact on them as young men, and (3) do all of this with class. — Rob Rains

Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That's what love is supposed to be like, right? But in fact, if you think about it, that's kind of a strange belief. Given what we know about the way people really are. Selfish and shortsighted and egotistical and needy. Why should being a parent, in and of itself, somehow confer superior-personhood on everybody who tries it? Obviously it doesn't. — Jonathan Franzen

Let's not ask whether the parents are gay or heterosexual. The important thing is who the best parents are in each individual case. — Jens Spahn

The best schools tend to have the best teachers, not to mention parents who supervise homework, so there is less need for self-organised learning. But where a child comes from a less supportive home environment, where there are family tensions perhaps, their schoolwork can suffer. They need to be taught to think and study for themselves. — Sugata Mitra

The best antidote to worry is action. If there is an action that will lessen the likelihood of a dreaded outcome occurring, and if that action doesn't cost too much in terms of effort or freedom, then take it. The worry about whether we remembered to close the baby gate at the top of the stairs can be stopped in an instant by checking. Then it isn't a worry anymore; it's just a brief impulse. Almost all of the worry parents feel about keeping their children safe evolves from the conflict between intuition and inaction.
Your choices when worrying are clear: take action, have faith, pray, seek comfort, or keep worrying. — Gavin De Becker

Animals are a lot like humans for when we are happy our immunity is strong and love and life force races through our veins. When we are depressed our immunity runs low and we can easily get sick. Many pet parents are very careful about feeding the right food, providing plenty of exercise and buying the right toys and treats. Not that those things aren't important too, for they are, but the best thing you can do for us is to make yourself happy because when you are happy then we are happy too. — Kate McGahan

The best and most popular novelists do not, as a rule, have children in their books at all, and this is wise. Parents are about the only people who are interested in children, and they merely in their own ones. — E.M. Delafield

There are certain bad habits we've groomed our whole life
from personality flaws to fashion faux pas. And it has been the role of parents and friends, outside of some minor tweaking, to reinforce the belief that we're okay just as we are. But it's not enough to just be yourself. You have to be your best self. And that's a tall order if you haven't found your best self yet. — Neil Strauss

Above all else, children need to know and feel they are loved, wanted, and appreciated. They need to be assured of that often. Obviously, this is a role parents should fill, and most often the mother can do it best. — Ezra Taft Benson

If you screwed up and said out loud that you thought something scary was happening, grown-ups would say, "Oh, for Pete's sake - what an imagination." This is the best way to gaslight children. It keeps them under control, because if the parent is a mess, the children are doomed. It's best for the child to think he or she is the problem. Then there is toxic hope, which is better than no hope at all, that if the child can do better or need less, the parents will be fine. — Anne Lamott