Family
Quotes - A brother is like gold and a friend is like diamond
“Love
doesn't make the world go 'round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”
―
Shannon Alder
“There
is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest
virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and
maintained.”
―
Winston S. Churchill
“A
bolt of warmth, fierce with joy and pride and gratitude, flashed through me
like sudden lightning. I don’t care about whose DNA has recombined with whose.
When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without
flinching—they are your family. And they were my heroes.”
―
Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty
“Your
daughter, your sister. She is salt to the sea,”
―
Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea
“Mother,
who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life,
it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.”
―
Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“A
brother is like gold and a friend is like diamond. If gold cracks you can melt
it and make it just like it was before. If a diamond cracks, it can never be
like it was before.”
―
Ali Ibn Abi Talib A.S
“You
can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but a the
same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind your stomach,
because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”
―
Wm. Paul Young, The Shack
“Family,"
she announced. "They're the people in your life you don't get to pick. The
ones that are given to you,as opposed to those you get to choose."
"You're
bound to them by blood," she continued, her voice flat. "Which, you
know, gives you that much more in common. Diseases, genetics, hair, and eye
color. It's like they're part of your blueprint. If something's wrong with you,
you can usually trace it back to them."
I
nodded and kept writing.
"But,"
she said, "even though you're stuck with them, at the same time, they're
also stuck with you. So that's why they always get the front rows at
christenings and funerals. Because they're the ones that are there, you know,
from the beginning to the end. Like it or not.”
―
Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
“The
shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a
ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of
culture.”
―
Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
“Babies
need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the
matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the
time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't.
It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if
anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from
modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected
person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I
can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on
women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk
about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I
simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination
conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery,
all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only
means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man
might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar.
But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling,
colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do
not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area,
deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain
area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a
certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand
how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.
How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of
Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How
can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything
to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic,
not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task;
I will never pity her for its smallness.”
―
G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
“Grief
is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped
away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is
never pretty, ours no exception.”
―
Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper
“Between
10 and 20 percent of people with anorexia die from heart attacks, other
complications and suicide; the disease has the highest mortality rate of any
mental illness. Or Kitty could have lost her life in a different way, lost it
to the roller coaster of relapse and recovery, inpatient and outpatient, that
eats up, on average, five to seven years. Or a lifetime: only half of all
anorexics recovery in the end. The other half endure lives of dysfunction and
despair. Friends and families give up on them. Doctors dread treating them.
They’re left to stand in the bakery with the voice ringing in their ears, alone
in every way that matters.”
―
Harriet Brown
“...he
prayed fundamentally as a gesture of love for what had gone and would go and
could be loved in no other way. When he prayed he touched his parents, who
could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all
children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl,
and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this
loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our
being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too
often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might
be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity's potential for
building a better world, so he prayed as a lament, as a consolation, and as a
hope....”
―
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
“Before
you were conceived, I wanted you. Before you were born, I loved you. Before you
were an hour, I would die for you. This is the miracle of love.”
―
Maureen Hawkins
“Being
mindful of Aunt Kathy’s presence, I turned to reading the Bible while sitting
in the living room. It was my way ofkeeping my aunt at bay. Yet, my facade
didn’t sustain me for long. I got called to the dining table anyway. Next, I
was told to follow Jerry’s instructions once we left the house. Then to my
surprise, Aunt Kathy made breakfast for me anyway. Immediately, I was on high
alert! “Oh hell, how do I get beyond this meal!”
There
I was staring at bread blackened on one side and too soggy to fall off the
plate. The bacon was two inches thick and fried hard enough to be a shoe
insert. The grits had settled to a pace.
My
eggs were a perfect substitute for popcorn. Even though I had no appetite, I
had to gobble
something
down or risk being ridiculed by my aunt.
Aunt
Kathy made her own homemade peach preserves. It was extremely sweet and more
concentrated than Playdough. I knew if she saw me using her sauce, she’d
overlook the other items I left untouched. If lucky, thefermentation was potent
enough to buzz me all day long. So, I made sure she’ll see me spreading that
paste all over my charcoal toast. Of course, I made the
yummy
sound “yums” as I took bite after bite. Fortunately, Aunt Kathy fell hook,
line, and sinker for my facade. “I seeyou love that jelly! But I’m not going to
let you eat all my jam! People will pay lots of money for that good stuff!”
“Yes
Ma’am,” I said. Simply amazing! Being she had food she thought I liked, there
was a limit.
But
if I hated something then I had to be force-fed.
As
Aunt Kathy talked, I fumbled and moved my food around as she gave me directives
for the day. “When school is over, make sure to wait on the steps for your
brother.”
“Yes
Ma’am,” I said once again.”
―
Harold Phifer, My Bully, My Aunt, & Her Final Gift
