Quotes & Sayings About Family Relationships

Once you have a diagnosis, you must make several important decisions - not just regarding your treatment, although those choices are most important, but about your work, your finances, your family responsibilities, and the way in which a brain tumor will affect your perception of yourself and your relationships. — Peter Black

Women are, in my view, natural peacemakers. As givers and nurturers of life, through their focus on human relationships and their engagement with the demanding work of raising children and protecting family life, they develop a deep sense of empathy that cuts through to underlying human realities. — Daisaku Ikeda

The baby boomers are getting older, and will stay older for longer. And they will run right into the dementia firing range. How will a society cope? Especially a society that can't so readily rely on those stable family relationships that traditionally provided the backbone of care? — Terry Pratchett

Always remember when it comes to family arguments and disputes. Blood is thicker than anger. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

He doesn't have to love your CD collection. He doesn't have to love your shoes. But any good, mature guy better make an attempt to love your friends and family - especially when they're great. — Greg Behrendt

I'm not the boss of my house. I don't know how I lost it, I don't know when I lost it, I don't really think I ever had it. But I've seen the boss's job ... and I don't want it! — Bill Cosby

Central to knowing the Father is understanding the revealed pattern of family. The family is the most important unit in time and in eternity and is ordained of God. Living in loving family relationships not only brings us great happiness, but it also helps us learn correct principles and prepares us for eternal life. In addition, family relationships help us know, love, and understand the Father. This is one reason Latter-day Saints have always emphasized the importance of marriage and family both in the Church and in society. God's plan provides a way for family relationships to extend beyond the grave. We can return to the presence of God, eternally united with our families. — Quentin L. Cook

I have excellent relationships with Jewish organizations and participate every year in a Hanukkah celebration with my family. There haven't been any anti-Semitic tendencies in my team for a long time. — Viktor Yushchenko

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today's shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift. — Gabor Mate

I write a lot about other people, like family and friends. I look at their lives and relationships and think, 'Well, if I was in your position, this is how I would see it.' — Dionne Bromfield

We want to know. We want to know who we are and what we are capable of.

I want to know.

And yet we were dragged into another war. Another seemingly inevitable and gruesome legacy passed down, along with soma. — Jeno Marz

Homeschooling is more than Latin and Logic. It is a way of life. And that way of life includes having disciplined children, and encouraging loving relationships within the family. We want peace in our homes. — Laurie Bluedorn

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

The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. — Christopher Lasch

I told them that when I heard Billy was bright, an artist and musician, and when I heard that he loved his family and loved people through difficulty in relationships, and when I heard that he struggled with heroin and booze addictions and an unhelpful brain chemistry, and when I heard that he was beautifully queer and passionate and sometimes played piano in his sister's dresses, I knew. I knew that Billy was pretty much exactly the kind of person Jesus would hang out with. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

I'm really connected to people, and my relationships with people are paramount, so I write about relationships, particularly strong female ones. In my family, there were six girls born in five years. We were best friends. And my parents raised all of us as first-class citizens. — Alane Ferguson

Though I may accumulate a great deal of riches in this world, it is only my wealth of knowledge, talents, and emotional bonds that I keep when I leave. — Richelle E. Goodrich

She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent. — Anthony Marra

It wasn't until the 1920s that a bare majority of children grew up in families where the father's labor purchased the family's provisions, while their mother did unpaid child care, elder care, and housework.

The Great Depression and World War II disrupted this family form, but it roared back in the 1950s, when the percentage of wives and mothers who were supported entirely by their husbands' wages reached a high that has never been equaled, before or since. — Stephanie Coontz

If we want to improve, first we have to recognize our own maladaptive coping skills, called codependency, then change. — David W. Earle

Exemplar, n.
It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done.
You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath. — David Levithan

To get here had been painful, but for once in my life I felt free. — Sarah Swainson

Your relationship with your brother will be, in many ways, the most complex and bewildering of all the interpersonal connections you will form. An older brother is both authority and peer, friend and bitter enemy, partner and rival, and will play these contradictory roles to varying degrees throughout your life. At this point the rivalry is most prominent, owing to the difference in age and the resentment your brother feels toward you monopolizing your mother's attention. Try to remember, in the face of the poor treatment you receive at his hands, that more than a pure desire to cause you harm or pain, this is an effort on his part to win back some of that attention, even if it's only through being scolded and punished. — Ron Currie Jr.

This is for the kids who know that the worst kind of fear isn't the thing that makes you scream, but the one that steals your voice and keeps you silent. — Abby Norman

When a woman understands the uniqueness of the female brain - how to care for it, how to make the most of its strengths, how to overcome its challenges, how to fall in love with it, and ultimately, how to unleash its full power - there is no stopping her. In her personal development, at work, and in her relationships, she can bring the best of herself to her family, her community, and her planet. By contrast, a woman who is not caring optimally for her brain, who is not giving it the full range of nutrients, exercise, sleep, and emotional support that it needs, is squandering her most valuable resource. If you are not taking good care of your brain, you are at a significantly higher risk of brain fog, memory problems, low energy, distractibility, poor decisions, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. — Daniel G. Amen

This is how it essentially is for Bunny Junior. He loves his dad. He thinks there is no dad better, cleverer, or more capable, and he stands there beside him with a sense of pride - he's my dad - and he also, of course, stands beside him because he has nowhere else to go. — Nick Cave

LORD, show me those in my neighborhood, my circle of friends, and my family that you want me to pray for and build relationships with. They may be the very people you have appointed to eternal life. Equip me to be a light to those who don't know you — Cheri Fuller

I have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children. — Edwin A. Abbott

The more you love,the more love you have to give.It's the only feeling we have which is infinite ... — Christina Westover

Maybe, if you can't get someone out of your head they were never meant to leave. Perhaps, they were meant to help change you into the person you have been waiting to become. — Shannon L. Alder

Harry's status as orphan gives him a freedom other children can only dream about (guiltily, of course). No child wants to lose their parents, yet the idea of being removed from the expectations of parents is alluring. The orphan in literature is freed from the obligation to satisfy his/her parents, and from the inevitable realization that his/her parents are flawed human beings. There is something liberating, too, about being transported into the kind of surrogate family which boarding school represents, where the relationships are less intense and the boundaries perhaps more clearly defined. — J.K. Rowling

I cannot live without you. For to attempt to do so would be to rob both of us of each other, and that is thievery of the greatest sort. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Relationships formed through Jiu Jitsu are deeply rooted in respect for one another, and this is often not the case in matters of modern society. — Chris Matakas

And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent. — Sydney J. Harris

This is a part of post-college life that nobody ever warns you about. Your social life is no longer dropped into your lap by virtue of shared classes and extracurricular activities. Relationships, whether with friends, family, or romantic partners - from here on out, they're going to take a lot more work. No more built-in friends at the sorority, or hollering down the stairs when I need my mom. It's certainly not going to be as easy to meet guys now that I'm done with school. It's not like I can just chat up the cute guy in econ class anymore. — Lauren Layne

By viewing our relationships with friends, family, and co-workers as mirrors, as teachers - we see that they are reflecting back to us exactly what we most need to learn. — Shakti Gawain

Truth means facing denial and saying I know who I am, I know who I need to be and I'm not afraid to become that person no matter what...Never be without fear; but Letti, never be without fight. — S.R. Crawford

Hope is putting Faith "on the line" and expecting results!
(from Mission Possible - Spiritual Covering) — Deborah L. McCarragher

From Genesis to Revelation, holy text is all about relationships and the limitless flavors of those relationships. It is the duty of mankind to tap into our women's unique talents
their genius for 'relationships.'
pg vii — Michael Ben Zehabe

At the end of the day, your relationships with the people in your life will be greater assets than any material things. Take time. Be present. You'll thank yourself for it later. — Vironika Tugaleva

She will always be etched in my being, like thread sewn through the fibers of my very soul. — Trish Kaye Lleone

But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete. — Sarah Dessen

Often the right path is the one that may be hardest for you to follow. But the hard path is also the one that will make you grow as a human being. — Karen Mueller Coombs

I work more now because at this time of my life I am not disturbed from my aim by outside pressures such as family, passionate relationships, dealing with 'who am I?' - those complications when one is searching for one's self. — Jeanne Moreau

Judging Natalie as my mother had judged me was, I felt like telling her son, just my ass-backward way of showing love. I'd spent my life trying to translate that language, and now I realized I had come to speak it fluently. When was it that you realized the thread woven through your DNA carried the relationship deformities of your blood relatives as much as it did their diabetes and bone density? — Alice Sebold

The way you remember or dream about your loved ones - the ones who are gone - you can't stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don't get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind - in your dreams, in your memories - sometimes the story begins with the epilogue. — John Irving

Love is at the heart of the world, just as it is at the heart of your life. Your relationships with your lover, your family, your friends, and the world around you define the quality of your emotional wholeness and reflect your relationship with yourself. — Sebastian Pole

For a second, I see into the future: she's old and grey, she has senile dementia and can't remember my name. The thought pretty much breaks my heart in two. — Liz Kessler

Eyuran," I addressed his Node. "What was in this one?"

He came closer and studied the huge case, which was easily twice the height of an adult Danna and had body slots for some kind of gear.

"I don't know for sure. I haven't seen this before. It resembles a gearbot sarx, but those are usually larger. Must be a new, compact model." Observing the empty sarx, a wave of bad feelings came over me.

"I also saw some of the weapon crates with broken locks."

"If someone is operating a gearbot, a bunch of guns will be the least of our worries. A hull repairer can't even begin to compete with the power of an assault exomachine." He looked around and frowned. "By the way, the whole hull repairer rack is empty. Counting the one you took out, we should have seven more roaming somewhere on the ship. — Jeno Marz

When we sit thoughtfully pondering in a quiet place and the Spirit speaks to us, there will come into our hearts and souls the things that are truly our greatest desires, those things that are more important in the long run than anything else. Away from the appeal of the world, that greatest desire usually relates to relationships with family and with the Lord. And when that priority is in place, then we begin to plan our lives with purpose. We begin to have goals that cause us to live with anticipation. — Ardeth Kapp

Maturity is a needed component of faithful, loving relationships. And if not directed into the healthy channel of permitted adult behaviour, romantic and sexual jealousies can literally tear families and communities apart.
A permanent solution like marriage makes this much less a problem and also ensures that when couples have children, those children have a mother and father to care for them. — Linda Harvey

A dam doesn't try to reason with the water. Its main purpose is to hold it still for a while. When I lecture my kids I'm doing much the same thing. I'm not trying to necessarily reason with them, just hold them still for a short while. — Spuds Crawford

The child is right," she announced firmly.
Arrietty's eyes grew big. "Oh, no-" she began. It shocked her to be right. Parents were right, not children. Children could say anything, Arrietty knew, and enjoy saying it-knowing always they were safe and wrong. — Mary Norton

I hate when I'm not done with my cup but my mom decides to put it in the dishwasher anyway and the cup isn't dishwasher safe. I keep telling my mom that my origami coffee mugs are hand wash ONLY. Handshakes are also hand wash only.
-Karen Quan and Jarod Kintz — Karen Quan

She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice -
cinnamon - burned into the crust.
But she's wearing these dark glasses
in the kitchen at ten o'clock
in the morning - everything nice -
as she watches me break off
a piece, bring it to my mouth,
and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen,
in winter. I fork the pie in
and tell myself to stay out of it.
She says she loves him. No way
could it be worse. — Raymond Carver

If you remember yourself, you will remember me. I am always a part of you. I am your mother. — Emma Michaels

When we mother well, we teach our children to embrace the moral obligations that build solid relationships, healthy marriages, and secure families. — Jani Ortlund

Glory had rehearsed angry outbursts in anticipation of his arrival. She began to hope he would come so she could tell him exactly what she thought. — Marilynne Robinson

...our family became a place where you screamed for help but no one heard, not ever. — Marceline Loridan-Ivens

Submitting self to God is the only real freedom - because the deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When you live your life believing that everything (family, finances, relationships, career) depends primarily on you, you're enslaved to your strengths and weaknesses. You're trying to be your own savior. Freedom comes when we start trusting in God's abilities and wisdom instead of our own. Real life begins when we transfer our trust from our own efforts to the efforts of Christ. — Tullian Tchividjian

The healing process kicks into gear with with the words "This is what you did to me." That statement is not gentle or polite; it's absolutely direct. In fact, I know that seeing it might feel like a punch in the stomach. I deliberately removed the distancing veil of "objectivity" from the words "This is what you did" by adding 'to me'. — Susan Forward

The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful — Monica Ali

Good friends will allow you to be as innocent and free as a child when in private, and as wise and mature as an adult when in public. — Criss Jami

At the end of the day, it's hard to keep relationships with people. I've got my family, my best friends and if a girl's gonna be a part of that then it's got to be good. If not, I'm out. — Miles Teller

But in a home where grief is fresh and patience has long worn thin, making it through another day is often heroic in itself. — Melanie Bennett

You develop relationships with people, and suddenly a family of actors and crew that you became so close to are now not around anymore. I'm not too sad about it because I got to move on to something else, but it's sad the way these things turn out. — Mark Pellegrino

If our family was an airline, Mom was the hub and we were the spokes. You rarely went anywhere nonstop; you went via Mom, who directed the traffic flow and determined the priorities: which family member was cleared for takeoff or landing. Even my father was not immune to Mom's scheduling, though he was given more leeway than the rest of us. — Will Schwalbe

Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you're an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health. — Andrea Lavinthal

My attention since 'Clueless' has been on family, relationships, activism, the planet, and my career. — Alicia Silverstone

He is the Truth, and He wants us to deal in truth with ourselves and our loved ones. We want the truth about you and your family to flood into and overrun the secrets that keep you in bondage to dysfunctional behavior and relationships — Henry Cloud

You don't turn your back on family, even when they do. — Aboubakar Msangi

I am thinking of our family's women
as faraway bulbs, their history
with crippling loss, and
how I am pieced together, shell and sand,
from the spine of their collective strength. — Jerrold Yam

Many daughters may never have given themselves permission to even 'consider' changing the relationship with their mothers, because they didn't think they had the right to do it. — Susan Forward

Obsession with conventional ideas of 'success' can be harmful enough, but compound that stress with relationships, family, financial woes and health concerns, and you find yourself in a constant state of fight or flight. This causes people to be more reactionary, which further perpetuates the cycle of stress. — Ariel Garten

Many parents have experienced the fact that kids don't seem to honor their parents the way that previous generations of children did. The question we need to ask is, how did we get to this position? How did this lack of respect infiltrate even the closest family relationships? Most importantly, how can we make sure that it doesn't ruin our bond with our own teens? — Fiona Dimas-Herd

Salsa is a way of life. Tener salsa en la vida is to fully enjoy life, by treasuring family, relationships, work, and community. — Juana Bordas

Dad has shamelessly played the Mom card. Against which there is no defense. — Denis Markell

The family is the basis of society. As the family is, so is the society, and it is human beings who make a family-not the quantity of them, but the quality of them. — Ashley Montagu

And you, Mom. I loved you. You've asked if i felt and understood that you loved me. of course I did. And you know this. I loved your love because it kept me safe and happy and wanted, and it existed beyond words and hugs and eyes. — Lisa Genova

Cherish your human connections - your relationships with friends and family. — Barbara Bush

Hi, I have just added my new novel, "Incessant Expectations" for your reading enjoyment. It is about commercial salmon fishing on the Oregon coast circa 1976. It is fiction. The industry doesn't exist anymore. A young farmer from the dry country in Southwestern Colorado visits the wet Northwestern Oregon coast, seeking a summer job after his dad's farm is sold in the spring. He has spent his first 22 years in isolation, doing hard labor on the family farm. He knows hard work but has little social experience. During his summer of 1976 he learns about the ocean, fishing, and women. — Kenneth Fenter

I looked at my little family all smiling and quite happy at the thought that Charlie had tried to maim or kill Mr. Lomax - or at least blow up his van - and I realized then that I was the only normal one. — Nina Stibbe

I thought carefully as I watched Eyuran treat Uncle Orewen's wounds. There is no one in their right mind who would assault a Danna, simply because the enemy of an individual becomes the enemy of the whole kennar. Kennar are usually related to each other, which would probably make the unlucky person the enemy of the entire Tue Dannan.

And Danna settle things the old way. — Jeno Marz

Live today. You never know when tomorrow will be a day too late. — Rochelle Carlton

She must ask; she must heal, and if she couldn't heal, she must suffer, but if there was a chance, she must take it. — Kellyn Roth

[To the masculine lover] Without a deep sense of purpose to direct your daily life, you will be directed by externals-financial need, your children's needs, your lover's needs-and you will begin to blame them for your lack of fulfillment. You will feel trapped in obligations, and your resentments will show. You will hold back in your relationships with your lover and family, not really wanting to be there, unsure what else to do, mired in ambiguity, guilt, and anger. Your actions will lack integrity and follow-through. Your feminine lover won't be able to trust you in everyday life or open to you sexually. [Pg 121] — David Deida

The world doesn't owe you anything because you're in it, but you owe yourself the world because it is in you. — Kat Kaelin

I don't care how happily married you are or how deeply enmeshed you are with your children and family and career
every woman needs a couple of chicks who'll break out the sangria just because you need to vent. — Jen Lancaster

Informal relationships are not mere minor interstitial supplements to the major institutions of society. These informal relationships not only include important decision-making processes, such as the family, but also produce much of the background social capital without which the other major institutions of society could not function nearly as effectively as they do. — Thomas Sowell

You must be committed to your children first. Otherwise, they will receive the leftovers. — Lorilyn Roberts

Oh, how terribly backwards, and yet sadly common, it is to sit scowling at family all the day long and then quickly put on a smile for strangers who drop by. — Richelle E. Goodrich

When we're dealing with money in relationships, when we're dealing with money in our personal lives, when we're dealing with money in our families, the flow of money in a family represents the value system under which that family operates. — Dave Ramsey

A single voice cannot make a choir. A single tree cannot make a forest. — Ron Lizzi

I was such a smart kid, I should have figured out that the only way to really get my parents' attention was to disappoint them or fail. But by the time I finally realized that, succeeding was already a habit too ingrained to break. — Sarah Dessen

Emma stared at the ceiling of the hotel room. Her thoughts went over every memorial, each picture, the families and children left behind. At this point it was a nightly routine. Some people counted sheep. Emma counted her father's victims. One by one. — Anais Torres

Honestly, you needn't think it's easy to be the "badly brought up" central figure of a hypocritical family in hiding. — Anne Frank

Family relationships have made me so ill! — Sophia Tolstaya

Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument. — Orson Scott Card

When you're sorting yourself out, family are not often the ones you can turn to. They represent the place of departure and not the place of arrival. — Witi Ihimaera

Life was good. Everything was going right. It was almost scaring him because usually when things were going this well it was the calm before the storm hit. — Michelle Sutton