Quotes about family

Blood is thicker than water, you hear. Ha! Let me tell you, some blood flows thinner. And some water is as thick as sludge.

For police officers, “close relative” frequently rhymes with “prime suspect.”

My wife and children are dear to me. Let them not grieve for me. Let them remember that the brave should be prepared to meet death; and I will do as becomes a Dakota.

...all of them had tried to forget it. They did not talk about it; they never mentioned it. But it lingered, like a bad smell. It had suffused them so deeply it could never wash out. (chapter six, p124)

I then saw my sisters led forth, and sold to different owners; so that we had not the sad satisfaction of being partners in bondage. When the sale was over, my mother hugged and kissed us, and mourned over us, begging of us to keep up a good heart, and do our duty to our new masters. It was a sad parting; one went one way, one another, and our poor mammy went home with nothing.

I was not permitted to see my mother or father, or poor sisters and brothers, to say good bye, though going away to a strange land, and might never see them again. Oh the Buckra people who keep slaves think that black people are like cattle, without natural affection. But my heart tells me it is far otherwise.

The heirs, naturally, wanted everything to be theirs as soon as possible. No one is more rapacious, ruthless, and impatient than a loving family member.

Out of the corner of his eye, Singh noted that the younger brother looked scared. There were secrets within this family. But was there anything odd in that? All families had something to hide, a sin that loomed large in the household although trivial in the greater scheme of things. A quarrel between members, feuding factions, perhaps an affair. It didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the missing woman.

Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel’s childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and the triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things—the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossing and connections casual, dialogues imminently (sic) forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.

Not a single family finds itself exempt from that one haunted casualty who suffered irreparable damage in the crucible they entered at birth.

But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.