Quotessence
Home / Topics / Parents Quotes

Parents Quotes

Browse 1491 quotes about Parents.

Parents Quotes

“...when your child dies, you feel everything you'd expect to feel, feelings so well-documented by so many others that I won't even bother to list them here, except to say that everything that's written about mourning is all the same, and it's all the same for a reason - because there is no read deviation from the text. Sometimes you feel more of one thing and less of another, and sometimes you feel them out of order, and sometimes you feel them for a longer time or a shorter time. But the sensations are always the same. But here's what no one says - when it's your child, a part of you, a very tiny but nonetheless unignorable part of you, also feels relief. Because finally, the moment you have been expecting, been dreading, been preparing yourself for since the day you became a parent, has come. Ah, you tell yourself, it's arrived. Here it is. And after that, you have nothing to fear again.”

“But I'm learning it's human nature to want the things you can't have. What changes is how you go about pursuing the things you want. When you're a little kid and you're told no, you scream and throw a temper tantrum. When you're a teenager and your parents tell you no, you're old enough to internalize your temper tantrum. But you're smarter and you're sneakier this time around. So you nod and act like you care when they say no, when they tell you who you can be friends with, when they say the know what's best. But then you go behind their backs to do it anyway. Because at some point, you need to start calling the shots. At some point, you need to start believing you know whats best. Or, I thought with a smile, you just stop asking for their permission in the first place.”

“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.”

“They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her.”

“What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problematic or offbeat aspects of their own characters. They can contemplate their anger, their sexuality, and their unpopular, awkward, or unfashionable opinions without losing confidence or collapsing into self-disgust. They can speak clearly because they have managed to develop a priceless sense of their own acceptability. They like themselves well enough to believe that they are worthy of, and can win, the goodwill of others if only they have the wherewithal to present themselves with the right degree of patience and imagination. As children, these good communicators must have been blessed with caregivers who knew how to love their charges without demanding that every last thing about them be agreeable and perfect. Such parents would have been able to live with the idea that their offspring might sometimes—for a while, at least—be odd, violent, angry, mean, peculiar, or sad, and yet still deserve a place within the circle of familial love.”

“I’m not surprised to find Dad and I tiptoeing around the edge of conversation. After all, we’ve never spent a great deal of time discussing affairs of the heart. I had classmates at school who had startlingly candid exchanges with their fathers, frequently settling down on their living room sofa to confer on relationships, sex, drugs and mental health. The nearest my own father ever came to opening up about relationships came a few weeks before my twelfth birthday, when I awoke to find a copy of ‘The Joy of Sex’ by my bedside. Inside, Dad had written Any questions, just ask! in a jaunty script, but I think we both sensed that at least one of us would die of embarrassment if we were ever to have the conversation, so I never followed up on the offer and, mercifully, neither did Dad.”

“Shit," Sirius says, staring after Teddy, who has run off after flatout stating that they couldn't make him leave to go meet a family that might want him, not when he has a family here. He intends to stay forever, apparently. It's not the first time a child they've taken in has been wary to leave, but every kid they've taken in has known that they would go, so despite trepidation and tears and swearing they'd miss them, they did say goodbye. Teddy is the first who outright refuses to, because he has everything he wants right here. Dorcas clears her throat. "I…didn't see that coming, I won't lie." "Believe me," Remus mutters, "we didn't either." "It was touch-and-go there for a bit," Sirius murmurs, then heaves a sigh. "Right, well, that's that, then." "What's what?" Dorcas asks, blinking. Remus stares at her. "He's staying." "He…can't," Dorcas says slowly. "That's not how the process works, Remus. You're only fostering him." "Yeah, uh, Dorcas, I love you—I do, I really do, but you're not taking our kid," Sirius tells her.”

“...Lady Middleton had taken the wise precaution of bringing with her their eldest child, a fine little boy about six years old, by which means there was one subject always to be recurred to by the ladies in case of extremity, for they had to enquire his name and age, admire his beauty, and ask him questions which his mother answered for him, while he hung about her and held down his head, to the great surprise of her ladyship, who wondered at his being so shy before company, as he could make noise enough at home. On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse. In the present case it took up ten minutes to determine whether the boy were most like his father or mother, and in what particular he resembled either, for of course every body differed, and every body was astonished at the opinion of the others.”

“I’m gonna come home, Mom, even if it’s not forever. I can take a semester off and then decide if I’ll go back next year. You guys need me here. It might be hard for Dad, and I—” “You’ll do no such thing,” Dad said, his voice raspy. “We didn’t mean to wake you,” Mom replied. “You didn’t. I always wake up when I’m needed.” Dad’s eyes on me were intense. “You’re not comin’ home.” “You’ve said it yourself, I belong here. You’re my family, and I’m supposed to be working this farm with you.” The words were heavy in my chest. “No, son. You don’t belong here. And not because we don’t love you or want you. You’re too damn bright a light for this place, and the last thing I want is to go to my grave knowing that my dreams for you dimmed that light.” “Dad… I…” I didn’t know what to say. Or what to feel, other than loved. “Nearly dying does a thing to a fella. I just… When I was goin’ down, all I was thinkin’ was, what if I died and my boy thinks I don’t love him? Don’t accept him? And listenin’ to you with your mama right now…you talk about that boyfriend of yours the way I always talked about her. Couldn’t believe she would give me the time a day, if I’m being honest. But I loved her and she loved me, and you love that boy just the same.”

“The idea of a child (of whatever age) forgiving a bad parent, and the unthinkableness of a happy ending without it, is very modern and not one that has much to do with Roald's world view at all. It is idealistic and sentimental, and is more concerned with relieving adult anxieties (there is nothing we can do so bad that it cannot ultimately be undone) than entertaining child viewers/readers or slaking their thirst for natural justice.”

“It's just, families are strange things, aren't they? You have this couple: one man, one woman. A male and a female, if you will. They mate, and why? To leave children behind. And what are the children supposed to do? Turn around and do the whole thing over again? Well, what do you do when what you've got isn't worth carrying on? The things people do for family.”