Quotes & Sayings About Parental Love

All of us wish we'd had perfect childhoods, with a mother and father who modeled ideal parental attitudes and taught us to internalize the tenets of self-love. Many of us, however, did not. — Marianne Williamson

There is no love.
There's only love of men and women, love
Of children, love of friends, of men, of God:
Divine love, human love, parental love,
Roughly discriminated for the rough. — Robert Frost

The brown bag, of course, had its imperfections. While some kids carried roast beef sandwiches, others had peanut butter. I have no way of knowing if all of those brown bags contained 'nutritionally adequate diets.' But I do know that those brown bags and those lunch pails symbolized parental love and responsibility. — Charles Mathias

I believe that parents who love their children do everything for them with love, even discipline. — Ellen J. Barrier

The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. — Andrew Solomon

The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass ...
... and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night.
My God ... what have we done? — Neal Shusterman

I need everyone to love me. My feelings of inadequacy and lack of parental attachment have made me one of those sick bitches who can't tolerate being ignored. My parents say all the right things when they are pretending to listen to me. But the truth is, they are more like cats. They accidentally had a litter of kittens, and then emotionally moved on to whatever ball of yarn rolled past their line of sight. When self-obsessed people breed, they make empty people like me who spend the rest of their time on earth trying to gain the love and approval they didn't get as children. This doesn't excuse my behavior. It's just to say, if my parents had actually noticed me, I probably wouldn't care so much about whether everyone else on the planet adored me. Unfortunately, I'm a bottomless pit of need. — Jenny Mollen

Things had improved after he was born. We both loved him with such fervor that it was impossible that some wouldn't splash back on us. — Thomm Quackenbush

There is no death in remembrance. Remember me, Sarah. Remember me, and a part of me will always be with you. - Martha Carrier to her daughter, Sarah Carrier — Kathleen Kent

Thus bound together, they sheltered the child from the cold, dark night, enveloping him in warmth. — Seth Adam Smith

Everyone says that love requires the utmost honesty, but that's not entirely true. Once I knew that my father was suffering for my sake - really suffering - I learned that love, especially the parental kind, requires the heartwarming sacrifice that can only accompany fake enthusiasm. — Sarah Vowell

When a child is loved as a child, it does not matter if they are boy or girl, abled-body or disabled, elven or human, true parental love is not skin deep but it penetrates deep down right into the soul. — Maxwell Grantly

Children naturally believe without question and absorb knowledge at an incredible rate; since there is no other frame of reference; they believe their parental reality, true or false. — David W. Earle

The birth of a child is a joy to the parent and the world. — Lailah Gifty Akita

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. — Cormac McCarthy

Jeremy takes the money and heads toward the back bedroom to get dressed.
"Chinese? I'll come with," Henry calls, but then pauses to look at us, one eyebrow raised.
Harlin laughs and puts his arm around me. "Don't even say it," he warns. "You'll embarrass her." But he always says it.
"Charlotte," Henry begins in a mock parental tone, "when two people love each other, they may have certain urges. Protection is an important - "
"Oh my God!" I cover my ears and laugh. I wait until his lips have stopped moving before I drop my arms. — Suzanne Young

Love for family and friends, great as it may be, is much more profound when anchored in the love of Jesus Christ. Parental love for children has more meaning here and hereafter because of Him. All loving relationships are elevated in Him. Love of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ provides the illumination, inspiration, and motivation to love others in a loftier way. — Russell M. Nelson

So it is with the drug of praise upon which these children are trained to depend: the praise that is the sign of parental love, for the achievement that is the condition of that love. Every A is a fix that temporarily quells the anxiety of failure, the terror of falling short. — William Deresiewicz

I loved that bridge he built over the creek in the back of the house. [ ... ] Or that baby bed he built for Ricky. I told him he didn't have to spend so much time on it, but he said it had to last, and the thing ended up weighing two hundred pounds and I couldn't move it. I said, 'How long does a baby bed have to last, anyway?' But maybe he thought if it was strong enough, it might keep Ricky a baby. — Marsha Norman

The last step in parental love involves the release of the beloved; the willing cutting of the cord that would otherwise keep the child in a state of emotional dependence. — Lewis Mumford

Well, sir, do you mean to remain there, commending my father's taste in wine, or do you mean to accompany me to Ashtead?"
"Set off for Ashtead at this hour, when I have been traveling for two days?" said Sir Horace. "Now, do, my boy, have a little common sense! Why should I?"
"I imagine that your parental feeling, sir, must provide you with the answer! If it does not, so be it! I am leaving immediately!"
"What do you mean to do when you reach Lacy Manor?" asked Sir Horace, regarding him in some amusement.
"Wring Sophy's neck!" said Mr. Rivenhall savagely.
"Well, you don't need my help for that, my dear boy!" said Sir Horace, settling himself more comfortably in his chair. — Georgette Heyer

Without warning he had become witness to something that stretched back through the eons, ties both elastic and enduring, surpassing death, surpassing life. She was his child. It was as simple as that and that complex. — Kim Harrison

A well-loved child is set a challenging precedent. In its very nature, parental love works to conceal the effort which went into generating it. It shields the recipient from the donor's complexity and sadness - and from an awareness of how many other interests, friends and concerns the parent has sacrificed in the name of love. — Alain De Botton

Sisters define their rivalry in terms of competition for the gold cup of parental love. It is never perceived as a cup which runneth over, rather a finite vessel from which the more one sister drinks, the less is left over for the others. — Elizabeth Fishel

To look deep into your child's eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood's self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality had been realized - how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn't care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think. — Andrew Solomon

That's all kids want to know - that you love them. — Kim Harrison

Family is your most reliable source of support in any situation because love from your family is unconditional. — Auliq Ice

Unconditional parental love is the indespensible nutrient for the child's healthy emotional growth. The first task is to create space in the child's heart for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parents want and love. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love - in fact, she cannot do anything, since that love cannot be won or lost ... The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative, and plain rude, and the parent still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to convey the unacceptability of certain behaviors without making the child herself feel unaccepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likable characteristics to the parent and still receive the parent's absolutely satisfying, security-inducing unconditional love. — Gordon Neufeld

In the quiet of the graveyard, the couple knelt together in soul-stretching silence - wishing, waiting, hoping, praying. — Seth Adam Smith

Am I worthy of Juliet, I wondered, worthy as my father was of my mother? — Robin Maxwell

I really feel that most things are difficult at the beginning and they become fun, something you love, only after you've worked at them. Making children do something hard can, in the long run, be a great parental service. — Amy Chua

Our children want more than presents, that want our PRESENCE. — Heather Schuck

I'll be your friend until you find a better one. — Carla H. Krueger

Y'all know how much I love you? "Infinity and back again," I say the way I've said it a million times. And then, daddy says to me, "go on and add a little bit more to that. — Jacqueline Woodson

I have known friendship love, parental love, romantic love, family love and unrequited love in my life time, but the only love that made a difference was self love. You don't need confirmation from the world or another person that you matter. You simply do matter. When you finally believe that truth and live it then you can do amazing things with your life! — Shannon L. Alder

Miss Blanche, having given through her tears a complete account of this event, assured me that, to maintain our own parental love and enjoy our beautiful family life, we, the cat-race, must engage in total war upon all humans. We have no choice but to exterminate them. I think it is a very reasonable proposition. — Soseki Natsume

Your love, not your worry, is the most valuable thing any of us can give our children. — Jason E. Royle

The Truth that is to be Realized may be summarized simply as the Realization that no matter what is arising, no matter how many others are present, there is only One Being. This is precisely different from the childish but common religious notion that even when you are alone there is always Someone Else present, Who will look out for you if you do the right thing. True freedom is not a matter of striking a deal with an All-Powerful Parental Deity; no such God exists. True freedom is in the Realization that there is only God and You are That One. — Adi Da

Slowly, even though I thought it would never happen, New York lost its charm for me. I remember arriving in the city for the first time, passing with my parents through the First World's Club bouncers at Immigration, getting into a massive cab that didn't have a moment to waste, and falling in love as soon as we shot onto the bridge and I saw Manhattan rise up through the looks of parental terror reflected in the window. I lost my virginity in New York, twice (the second one wanted to believe he was the first so badly). I had my mind blown open by the combination of a liberal arts education and a drug-popping international crowd. I became tough. I had fun. I learned so much.
But now New York was starting to feel empty, a great party that had gone on too long and was showing no sign of ending soon. I had a headache, and I was tired. I'd danced enough. I wanted a quiet conversation with someone who knew what load-shedding was. — Mohsin Hamid

Because of all the kinds of love there are out there - romantic, passionate, parental, spousal, brotherly - the love that is touted as most unassailable, complicit, and colluding is the love between sisters. — Alexandra Fuller

It is the responsibility of parent to love and care for their children. — Lailah Gifty Akita

She will not plant the seed in their mind, that a parent is capable of abandoning her children, of saying to them You are not enough. For Pari, the children and Eric have always been enough. They always will be. — Khaled Hosseini

The cruelty of Plato's thinking, the Rebbe emphasized that day, was not just in breaking up the family unit. It was in depriving children of parental love. For it is the parents, not the state and its functionaries, who have a genuine love for their children. And depriving children of this love, which is their due, was perhaps Plato's greatest cruelty. — Joseph Telushkin

Children see beauty in everything. — Lailah Gifty Akita

People need a parental divine love which will attend to them above all else, no matter what happens — Masahisa Goi

Today's family is built like a pyramid; with all the intrafamilial rivalries, tensions, jealousies, angers, hatreds, loves and needs focused on the untrained, vulnerable, insecure, young, inexperienced and incompetent parental apex ... about whose incompetence our vaunted educational system does nothing. — Lawrence S. Kubie

As a parent who raised his children in dysfunction, I know the parental wounds my children received were not intentional; often they were my best expression of love, sometimes coming out sideways, not as I intended. — David W. Earle

You don't understand,' she said, and there was a puzzling trace of resentment in her voice. 'Children never do. The love a parent has for a child, there's nothing else like it. No other love so consuming. — Cassandra Clare

I mean, when the world comes for your children, with the knives out, it's your job to stand in the way. — Joe Hill

When you touch a man's body, he will enjoy the moment, when you touch a man's heart he will remember it forever. — Dixie Waters

God notices the most trivial act, accepts the poorest, most threadbare little service, listens to the coldest, feeblest petition, and gathers up with parental fondness all our fragmentary desires and attempts at good works. Oh, if we could only begin to conceive how He loves us, what different creatures we should be! — Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Unconditional love is what a child should expect from a parent even though it rarely works out that way. — Jeanette Winterson

This was the elasticity and permanence of parental love; everything vile about your children was to some degree something vile about yourself, and disowning your child for their failings could only compound your own. — Jennifer DuBois

A woman who could always love would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife would often give or preserve many charms if it were not too often combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the face of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom. — Jean Paul

In medieval India, the Hindu Vaishnava system of bhakti-yoga (devotional yoga) developed highly sophisticated categories of relation (rasa) to God, including santa (awe and reverence), vatsalya (parental attitude toward God), dasya (servant of God), sakhya (being friends and playmates with God), and madburya (passionate, romantic love). — Siobhan Houston

The horror of incest is not in the sexual act. but in the exploitation of children and the corruption of parental love. p4 — Judith Lewis Herman

Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends. — George Santayana

Most couples get married because it's time, not because they're in love. They might have money issues, parental pressure, or they're simply tired of being alone - so they pick Mr. Good Enough and tie the knot. — H.M. Ward

From his own experience, Alex knew that parental love is an ideal, not a guarantee. — Lisa Kleypas

If you want to know what your child is doing, look at their friends, they wouldn't be friends with them if they weren't doing the same things. — Catie Hartsfield

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong. — Richard Dawkins

Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our best loves and affections. Mr. Dombey's young child was, from the beginning, so distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which is the same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is no doubt his parental affection might have been easily traced, like many a goodly superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation. — Charles Dickens

Ah, you pitiful, pitiful creatures! Beautiful family! Nobler far than stupid men ... " he cried softly to himself. What was he doing here with his arrow? Cornering these creatures? Armor
an armor to brag about! Save his dignity before that armor-maker because of a promise? Foolish ... foolish! If the old man jeered at him, why should it matter anymore; a common suit of armor would do as well! Armor did not make a man, nor did it signify valor.
"Dumb creatures that you are, how magnificent! Sorrow, love
parental love incarnate! Were I that fox
what if Tokiko and Shigemori were trapped like this? Even the beast can rise above itself
could I as much? — Eiji Yoshikawa

Confidence doesn't come from the inside out. It moves from the outside in. People feel less anxious
and more confident
on the inside when they can point to things they have done well on the outside. Fake confidence comes from stuffing our self-doubt. Empty confidence comes from parental platitudes on our lunch hour. Real confidence comes from mastery experiences, which are actual, lived moments of success, especially when things seem difficult. Whether we are talking about love or work, the confidence that overrides insecurity comes from experience. There is no other way. — Meg Jay

Most people live their lives as if the end were always years away. They measure their days in love, laughter, accomplishment, and loss. There are moments of sunshine and storm. There are schedules, phone calls, careers, anxieties, joys, exotic trips, favorite foods, romance, shame, and hunger. A person can be defined by clothing, the smell of his breath, the way she combs her hair, the shape of his torso, or even the company she keeps.
All over the world, children love their parents and yearn for love in return. They revel in the touch of parental hands on their faces. And even on the worst of days, each person has dreams about the future-dreams that sometimes come true.
Such is life.
Yet life can end in less time than it takes to draw one breath. — Bill O'Reilly

Prayer is never just an emergency flare or desperate anxious gamble. God's attention is not based on our performance but parental love. — Timothy Keller

The norm of unconditional parental love, I think, depends on the fact that we don't pick and choose the traits of our children in the way that we pick and choose the features of a car we might order, or a consumer good. — Michael Sandel

I knew nothing but love and devotion when I was growing up. Trust me, it makes everything easier. — Julia Quinn

Beware of the manipulativeness of rich students who were neglected by their parents. They love to turn the campus into hysterical psychodramas of sexual transgression, followed by assertions of parental authority and concern. And don't look for sexual enlightenment from academe, which spews out mountains of books but never looks at life directly. — Camille Paglia

He had to think he was Michael Wayland's son, or the Lightwoods would not have protected him as they did. It was Michael they owed a debt to, not me. It was on Michael's account that they loved him, not mine."
"Maybe they loved him on his own account," said Clary. — Cassandra Clare

That's how they say it: He loves you in his own way. Well, what about my way? What if I need for him to love me in my way? — Tammara Webber

Vanished children, I can't think where I lost them ... — Robert Charles Wilson

I didn't just see a child in my dreams - I felt it in my heart. — Seth Adam Smith

Even the humblest mammal's strong sexual, parental, and social instincts give rise to 'do unto others as yourself' and 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. — Charles Darwin

Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other sumptuous love which made one drunk, which one longed for, envied, believed in, that was not life. It was what life was seeking; it was a suspension of life. But to be close to a child, for whom one spent everything, whose life was protected and nourished by one's own, to have that child beside one, at peace, was the real, the deepest, the only joy. — James Salter

The day of birth is day of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Parental love is not contingent on the talents and attributes the child happens to have. We choose our friends and spouses at least partly on the basis of qualities we find attractive. But we do not choose our children. Their qualities are unpredictable, and even the most conscientious parents cannot be held wholly responsible for the kind of child they have. That is why parenthood, more than other human relationships, teaches what the theologian William F. May calls an openness to the unbidden. — Michael J. Sandel

Children are lovable and adorable. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I lay awake long into the night, obsessing over Lucy's failings. Never mind the drugs and adultery; she seemed to lack the most basic parental instincts for keeping the children out of harm's way. The drip, drip, drip of her poor judgment and neglect was pushing me over the edge. — James Whitfield Thomson

Parental love is unconditional, and so is God's love. No matter what a child of God has done against Him, or feels he or she has done that cannot be forgiven, God still loves that wondering soul. — David Jeremiah

Dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove. It has its genesis in a parental failure to love and it perpetuates the failure. It seeks to receive rather than to give. It nourishes infantilism rather than growth. It works to trap and constrict rather than to liberate. Ultimately it destroys rather than builds relationships, and it destroys rather than builds people. — M. Scott Peck

When it comes to the crunch, coming out is the greatest of all confessions. Nothing is more difficult to acknowledge. When we become ourselves we reach right back to the time when we were conceived out of our parents' passion.
We murder their lives. There can never be any forgiveness. — Witi Ihimaera

I never imagined a love so pure, nor a hate that could be so cruel. — Donna Lynn Hope

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

I'll never forget the stillness, the hesitation, and a trace of something I'd never before seen on Ghosh's face: cunning. Then it gave in to resignation and a faraway look. For a moment I saw the world through his eyes, his intellect, his sweeping vision ... a vision that recapitulated our birth and looked to the future, looked past his life to the end of mine and beyond. And then and only then did it settle, gather, and focus, on the now, on a moment when the love was so palpable between father and son that the thought that it might end, and this memory be its only legacy, was unacceptable. — Abraham Verghese

It was always about love. Always, always about love. Lost love, love denied, the obsessive hunger for love. Parental or romantic. Whether it was twisted or pure, fulfilled or unrequited, love was always at the source. — James W. Hall

Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do. — Ingrid Newkirk

Mrs. Winterson did not have a soothing personality. Ask for reassurance and it would never come. I never asked her if she loved me. She loved me on those days when she was able to love. I really believe that is the best she could do. — Jeanette Winterson

Pray daily for your family. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The beggarly question of parentage
what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom. — Thomas Hardy

The two bond over their mutual lack of family ties: Saul from his disownment, Miriam from the car accident that orphaned her as a college junior. Both want children. Miriam has inherited her parents' idea of procreative legitimacy, wants to compensate for her only-child-dom. She sees in Saul the househusband who will enable her parental ambitions without disabling her autonomy. In Miriam, Saul sees the means to a book-lined study and a lifestyle conducive to mystical advancement. They are both absolutely certain these things equal love. — Myla Goldberg

I have a son,' says JJ, marveling at the sound and truth of the words ...
'You know, I love you and Mom ... But I don't even know this baby and the love- ' JJ clears his throat and wipes his suddenly wet eyes with the back of his hand. 'It's bigger. I'd lie down in traffic for him right now. I didn't know it could get bigger.'
Joe nods. 'This is only the beginning. — Lisa Genova

In response to our fast-food culture, a 'slow food' movement appeared. Out of hurried parenthood, a move toward slow parenting could be growing. With vital government supports for state-of-the-art public child care and paid parental leave, maybe we would be ready to try slow love and marriage. — Arlie Russell Hochschild