inspirational quotes

Brothers & Sisters

What's the good of news if you haven't a sister to share it? -Jenny DeVries

She is your mirror, shining back at you with a world of possibilities. She is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best, and loves you anyway. She is your partner in crime, your midnight companion, someone who knows when you are smiling, even in the dark. She is your teacher, your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink. Some days, she's the reason you wish you were an only child. -Barbara Alpert

We may look old and wise to the outside world. But to each other, we are still in junior school. -Charlotte Gray

If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she's wearing your best sweater. -Pam Brown

Like branches on a tree we grow in different directions yet our roots remain as one. Each of our lives will always be a special part of the other. -Author Unknown

The best thing about having a sister was that I always had a friend." -Cali Rae Turner

If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child. -Linda Sunshine

To have a loving relationship with a sister is not simply to have a buddy or a confident -- it is to have a soulmate for life. -Victoria Secunda

My sister taught me everything I need to know, and she was only in the sixth grade at the time. -Linda Sunshine

"A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost." -Marion C. Garretty

"Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of my spirit. Had it not been for the woman-mother, the woman-sister, and the woman-friend, I would have been sleeping among those who seek the tranquility of the world with their snoring." - Kahlil Gibran

What sets sisters apart from brothers and also from friends is a very intimate meshing of heart, soul and the mystical cords of memory. -Carol Saline

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life. -Charles M. Schulz

Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship. -Margaret Mead

The mildest, drowsiest sister has been known to turn tiger if her sibling is in trouble. -Clara Ortega

A sister is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit, a golden thread to the meaning of life. -Isadora James

Help your brothers boat across, and you will reach the shore. ~Hindu proverb

Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet. ~Vietnamese Proverb

The family is one of nature's masterpieces. ~George Santayana

Help one another is part of the religion of sisterhood. ~Louisa May Alcott

A brother is a friend given by Nature. ~Legouve

Lord help the mister that comes between me and my sister... ~Irving Berlin

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. ~Desmond Tutu

Our siblings push buttons that cast us in roles we felt sure we had let go of long ago - the baby, the peacekeeper, the caretaker, the avoider.... It doesn't seem to matter how much time has elapsed or how far we've traveled. ~Jane Mersky Leder

Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow. ~Benjamin Disraeli

How do people make it through life without a sister? ~Sara Corpening

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother ... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too. ~Anna Quindlan

Boys are found everywhere on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running around or jumping to. Mothers love them, little girls hate them, older sisters and brothers tolerate them, adults ignore them and Heaven protects them. ~Alan Beck

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. ~Jane Howard

I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother and I found all three. ~Author Unknown

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart. ~Helen Keller

I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at. ~Maya Angelou

Motherhood

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly. ~Ambrose Bierce

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials. ~Meryl Streep

God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers. ~Jewish Proverb

Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. ~Oprah Winfrey

Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs in my field, since the payment is pure love. ~Mildred B. Vermont

A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. ~Peter De Vries

One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage. ~Robert Fulghum

My mom is literally a part of me. You can't say that about many people except relatives, and organ donors. ~Carrie Latet

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. ~Tenneva Jordan

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends - but only one mother in the whole world. ~Kate Douglas Wiggin

I cannot forget my mother. [S]he is my bridge. When I needed to get across, she steadied herself long enough for me to run across safely. ~Renita Weems

A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them. ~Victor Hugo

Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease. ~Lisa Alther

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. ~Washington Irving

Fatherhood

Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at bat. Then fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher's mound. Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together. Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over again. ~Jimmy Piersal, on how to diaper a baby, 1968

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. Clarence B. Kelland 1881-1964

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys." ~Harmon Killebrew

Babies

If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. ~Bruce Barton

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. ~Leo J. Burke

The last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” ~ Victor Frankl

The child’s foot still doesn’t know it’s a foot, it wants to be a butterfly or apple. –Pablo Neruda

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. – Emerson

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. -Shakespeare

To become a real boy, you must prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish. –from Pinocchio

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its soul. –Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing. --Willliam Butler Yeats Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. ~Martin Luther King Jr.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Buddha

“What we think, we become.” ~Buddha

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship. ~Buddha
Education is much more than a matter of imparting the knowledge and skills by which narrow goals are achieved. It is also about opening the child's eyes to the needs and rights of others. ~Dalai Lama

Connection with gardens, even small ones, even potted plants, can become windows to the inner life. The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer. ~Patricia R. Barret

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true. ~Buddha

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin. ~anonymous

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. ~Buddha

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. ~Buddha

What we think, we become. ~Buddha

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it. ~Buddha

“If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart.” ~Buddha

"We must make our lives as we sew, stitch by stitch." ~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore