A brother is a friend provided by nature.
A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. [Proverbs 18:19]
A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.
A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.
A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.
A farmer who had a quarrelsome family called his sons and told them to lay a bunch of sticks before him. Then, after laying the sticks parallel to one another and binding them, he challenged his sons, one after one, to pick up the bundle and break it. They all tried, but in vain. Then, untying the bundle, he gave them the sticks to break one by one. This they did with the greatest ease. Then said the father, Thus, my sons, as long as you remain united, you are a match for anything, but differ and separate, and you are undone.
A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian… and most of all, his family ought to know.
A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.
A small family is soon provided for.
Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.
Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances… in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.
Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.
All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.
All people are your relatives, therefore expect only trouble from them.
As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals –or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?
Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.