Ah, families. Whether it’s a peaceful night in with the kids or dealing with a teenager pre-exams, they can be a source of both joy and stress, of anger and comfort.
We may not always get on with our families. But we all have them – and they have shaped us into the people we are today. No wonder, then, that so many artists, musicians and writers have included quotes about family in their work.
Whoever your family are, one thing is for sure, we wouldn’t be who we are without them.
Read on for some of the best literary quotes about family – warm fuzzy feeling guaranteed!
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“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”
Oscar Wilde
“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.”
Agatha Christie
“Family is a life jacket in the stormy sea of life.”
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
“I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world.”
Louise May Alcott, Little Women
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“Even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you had your mother at your back, you’d be okay. Some deep-rooted part of you would know you were loved. That you deserved to be loved.”
Jojo Moyes, One Plus One
“It’s not gender that makes a family; it’s love. You don’t need a mother and a father; you don’t necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who’s got your back.”
Jodi Picoult
“I sustain myself with the love of a family”
Maya Angelou
“No mother is ever, completely, a child’s idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well.”
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
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“For there is no friend like a sister, In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands.”
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems
“The family – that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.”
Dodie Smith, Dear Octopus
“Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself.”
Zadie Smith, NW
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