Family

A family consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by analogous or comparable relationships — including domestic partnership, cohabitation, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership (as occurred in the Roman Empire). In many societies, family ties are only those recognized as such by law or a similar normative system. The different types of families occur in a wide variety of settings, and their specific functions and meanings depend largely on their relationship to other social institutions.

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• The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
  • Article 16(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• Eine Familie, die keine schwarzen Schafe hat, ist keine charakteristische Familie.
  • A family without a black sheep is not a typical family.
  • Heinrich Böll, "Die schwarzen Schafe" (1951); cited from 1947 bis 1951 (Köln: F. Middelhauve, 1963) p. 478. Translation: "Black Sheep", in Leila Vennewitz (trans.) The Stories of Heinrich Böll (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995) p. 408.

• The Court must never forget, and will never forget, first of all, the rights of family life which are sacred.
  • Bowen, L.J., In re Agar-Ellis, Agar-Ellis v. Lascelles, (1883), id., L. R. 24 C. D. 337; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 188.

• God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear,
  To give sign we and they are his children, one family here.
  • Robert Browning, Saul, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845).

• Jason Street: When success is essential to keeping a family together there is nothing a man won't do. Nothing.
  • Friday Night Lights, New York, New York Episode 3.07.

• Don Corleone: You spend time with your family?
  Johnny Fontane: Sure I do.
  Don Corleone: Good. 'Cause a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.
  • The Godfather (1972).

• The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have past at home in the bosom of my family…. public emploiment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one’s family and affairs.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Willis, Jr., April 18, 1790.—The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 16, p. 353 (1961).

• The family consists of those who live under the same roof with the pater familias; those who form (if I may use the expression) his fire-side.
  • Lord Kenyon, C.J., R. v. Inhabitants of Darlington (1792), 4 T. R. 800; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 92.

• i
  have often noticed that
  ancestors never boast
  of the descendants who boast
  of ancestors i would
  rather start a family than
  finish one blood will tell but often
  it tells too much
  • Don Marquis, "A Roach of the Taverns", Archy and Mehitabel, pp. 156–57 (1927).

• A friend loves you for your intelligence, a mistress for your charm, but your family's love is unreasoning; you were born into it and are of its flesh and blood. Nevertheless it can irritate you more than any group of people in the world.
  • André Maurois, The Art of Family Life, Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939).

• When harmony, mutual consideration and trust pass out of the home, hell enters in.
  • David O. McKay, Pathways To Happiness, (1957), p. 296.

• If I knew something useful to me and harmful to my family, I should put it out of my mind. If I knew something useful to my family and not to my country, I should try to forget it. If I knew something useful to my country and harmful to Europe, or useful to Europe and harmful to the human race, I should consider it a crime.
  • Charles de Montesquieu, as quoted by Robert John Loy, Montesquieu, chapter 3, p. 122 (1968).

• The thing you can always rely on, your core person, comes from your family's attention and love.
  • Martin Short, Parade Magazine (January 23rd, 2000).

• The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting.
  • Stein, Gertrude. Paris France. New York: Liveright, 1970. (p. 107).

• All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
  • Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part I, Chap. i. (1875–1877).

• For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house.
  • Bible, Micah 7:6.