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Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives

Carl William Brown — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 13:14:53 +0000

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives by various authors from different eras to understand and meditate on the fundamental cell of our societies.

The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It … is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be.
Marianne E. Neifert

If I had been born into a very wealthy family, I would have written long novels, but accustomed to having to economize, I have developed a certain mastery of simple, short writing, so I can leave the ramblings and elaborate nonsense to those better than me.
Carl William Brown

Of all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the one with which we are most familiar. As we proceed through our lives, our experiences within the family give rise to some of our strongest and most intense feelings. Within the family context lies a paradox, however: although most of us hope for love and support within the family — a haven in a heartless world, so to speak — the family can also be a place of violence and abuse.
Marilyn Poole

What until now has been considered a “normal” family, made up of a father, a mother, and a number of children, has in recent years increasingly begun to be viewed as one among several options, which can no longer claim to be the only or even superior form of ordering human relationships. The Judeo-Christian view of marriage and the family with its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures has to a significant extent been replaced with a set of values that prizes human rights, self-fulfillment, and pragmatic utility on an individual and social level. It can rightly be said that marriage and the family are insitutions under siege in our world today, and that with marriage and the family, our very civilization is in crisis.
Andreas J. Kostenberger

In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.
Marge Kennedy

Every family has a story that it tells itself, that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates, some parts are sharpened, others dropped, and there is often debate about what really happened. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still agreement that this is the family story. And in the absence of other narratives, it becomes the flagpole that the family hangs its identity from.
A.M. Homes

If the only alternatives for our young people are the stadium, discos, TV, church, video games, social media, family, school, and the painful world of work, then perhaps we can better understand why some of them feel the desire to escape, even at the cost of ruining their lives forever.
Carl William Brown

Focus on your marriage. Because that’s the nucleus of the home, whatever you do to restore its health and strength will naturally restore what’s broken among the other relationships. If you have no children yet, this will make a comfortable nest for them to begin life well. If you have children, the changes you make in your marriage will affect the rest of the household more quickly and dramatically than you think.
Charles R. Swindoll

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
Erma Bombeck

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.
George Santayana

Marx was convinced that in the final phase of the bourgeoisie, the growing mass proletarianization would destroy the family, but he couldn’t say exactly what would replace it. These days, it’s easier to formulate hypotheses on this subject, and we suggest one: prostitutes.
Carl William Brown

All my family, my blood, is mixed up now. They don’t even all know each other. I just hope they don’t never hate or fight each other, not knowin who they are. Cause all these people livin are brothers and sisters and cousins. All these beautiful different colors! We!… We the human Family. God says so! FAMILY!
J. California Cooper

The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.
Gloria Steinem

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.”
Aesop

Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love’s own product. The child, this in-between to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
Hannah Arendt

A young Italian girl, even a good-looking one, would rather be slaughtered by two Nigerians than be with her family, at school, at the oratory, at church, at work, in the community – well, that says a lot about the rotten state of our society!
Carl William Brown

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.
Charles Dickens

The only perfect love to be found on earth is not sexual love, which is riddled with hostility and insecurity, but the wordless commitment of families, which takes as its model mother-love. This is not to say that fathers have no place, for father-love, with its driving for self-improvement and discipline, is also essential to survival, but that uncorrected father-love, father-love as it were practiced by both parents, is a way to annihilation.
Germaine Greer

The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmother. A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt and Helpists know it. They have jumped into the void left by the disappearance of morbid old ladies from the bosom of the American family.
Florence E. King

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?
Rose Macaulay

With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping “homeliness” entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all “sentiment” is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called “the Public,” the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state.
Wyndham Lewis

By profession, I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder – infinitely prouder – to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. While the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battlefield but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, “Our Father Who Art in Heaven.”
Douglas Macarthur

The Family is the Country of the heart. There is an angel in the Family who, by the mysterious influence of grace, of sweetness, and of love, renders the fulfillment of duties less wearisome, sorrows less bitter. The only pure joys unmixed with sadness which it is given to man to taste upon earth are, thanks to this angel, the joys of the Family.
Giuseppe Mazzini

But if we live in a global world, in a planetary village, and if we’ve all long been brothers and sisters and ours is one big family, then why are there still borders and illegal immigrants?
Carl William Brown

One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fiber of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardily.
Jonathan Raban

Who knows why Italy, the cradle and homeland of the Vatican, Catholicism, the Holy Family, and the Pope’s sermons on the mystical value of procreation, has long had a zero fertility rate?
Carl William Brown

In one family, all goes by two and two. If a member of it has any interest, he or she will confide it to some one other; but the rest know nothing. In another family, all feel what touches one; nothing is kept dark from the father and mother, brothers and sisters–all share. This family habit is by far the better, it strengthens the tie between the members, and makes the home one home.
Charles Buxton

There is one class of men who from time to time have taken a keen and practical interest in the constitution of the Family, and they are the Statesmen. They have realized how intimately the welfare of the State depends upon the influence and nature of the Families from which it is constituted; and they have endeavoured that the State in turn should mould and influence the Family to its own purposes.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

The whore is nothing more than a sordid image of a society that exploits parents and sells its sons to its daughters. A sublime embodiment of poverty, incompetence, and stupidity, she is one of those professionals who, despite not knowing how to do anything, earn a lot. This figure is the symbol of the incestuous ignorance of a world that rapes its victims, charging them handsomely, and despises them with respectability, at least until they too begin to reek of that excremental well-being, which is the most fetishistic characteristic of an increasingly masochistic reality. Mediocre beings who, as Shakespeare said, know how to deceive many men only to end up miserably thanks to the self-interested attentions of a single petty individual.
Carl William Brown

In retrospect, it was only a matter of time before the Family Dinner passed into history and fast foods took over. I knew its days were numbered the day our youngest propped my mouth open with a fork and yelled into it, “I want a cheeseburger and two fries and get it right this time.” I just didn’t serve meals with show business pizzazz.
Erma Bombeck

Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love’s own product. The child, this in-between, to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
Hannah Arendt

Forms of family life vary from one society to another. There are no universal rules about who is considered to be “in” a family, who lives with whom, who is socially allowed to have sex with whom, who shares economic resources and who has responsibility for children.
Marilyn Poole

Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress.
Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons

Rampant nostalgia for the modern family system, or more precisely, for an idealized version of a 1950s Ozzie and Harriet image of the family, has become an increasingly potent ideological force in the United States, with milder versions evident in Canada and England. Fundamentalist Christians and right-wing Republicans spearheaded the profamily movement that abetted the Reagan “revolution” of the 1980s. By the 1994 electoral season, however, even President Clinton had embraced the ideology of an explicitly centrist campaign for family values led by a small group of social scientists. This ongoing campaign portrays family breakdown as the primary source of social malaise in the United States, blaming the decline of the married-couple family for everything from crime, violence, and declining educational standards to poverty, drug abuse, and sexually transmitted disease.
Judith Stacey

Whoever is acquainted with the cruel injustice and unjust subordination frequently manifested in the family, whoever sees matters of lasting and supreme importance relative to the beginning and continuance of the family determined by momentary fancy or unreasoning passion, cannot but desire the construction of a social fabric in which reason may rule with perfect justice.
Charles Franklin Thwing

There are certain functions that the family performs. In the first place the family provides society with an orderly means of reproduction, while at the same time the norms of marriage control the potentially disruptive forces of sexuality. Second, the family provides physical and economic support for the child during the early years of dependence. The child receives its primary socialization in the family, learning the essential ideas and values required for adult life.
Adrian Wilson

Thus in modern times the family drifted on to the high seas, and the world of metaphor such a voyage suggests started to fix itself in the vocabulary of social analysis. Had the winds always blown so strongly as now? people would ask. Had the currents always been so powerful, the family so little able to navigate a separate course?
Edward Shorter

The great want in family life that strikes me is this, that there are so few tête-à-têtes. You live on from year’s end to year’s end, surrounded by those whom you love, and chatting together; but it is rare to be thrown alone with any one individual, and have really intimate talk with him or her. Yet the difference in value is immense between mere social chat, and that mingling of mind with mind, which is impossible if others are by. But the real fact is, that unless some effort is made for it, or unless circumstances are unusually favourable, the very members of the same family live, one might say, on parallel lines, without ever touching.
Charles Buxton

The number one need in all people is the need for acceptance, the need to experience a sense of belonging to something and someone. The need for acceptance is more powerful in your family than anywhere else…. If that need is not met by your family, trust me, your kids will go elsewhere to seek it in order to find approval and acceptance.
Phil Mcgraw

One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.
Jonathan Raban

Every family had its own peculiar cult, to which no stranger was ever admitted, and which alone could appease and satisfy the gods of that family. The cult was handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, and could not be lost without condemning the whole series of ancestors to eternal misery.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

The family indeed is dead, if what we mean by it is the modern family system in which units comprised of male breadwinner and female homemaker, married couples, and their offspring dominate the land. But its ghost, the ideology of the family, survives to haunt the consciousness of all those who refuse to confront it. It is time to perform a social autopsy on the corpse of the modern family system so that we may try to lay its troublesome spirit to rest.
Judith Stacey

Of all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the one with which we are most familiar. As we proceed through our lives, our experiences within the family give rise to some of our strongest and most intense feelings. Within the family context lies a paradox, however: although most of us hope for love and support within the family – a haven in a heartless world, so to speak–the family can also be a place of violence and abuse.
Marilyn Poole

Governments and politicians use the family as an indicator of the health and strength of social life. Politicians fear that any weakening of family life will in some way sap the vitality of national life…. The family is also important to businessmen. It is one of the major purchasing groups of our consumer society.
Adrian Wilson

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?
Rose Macaulay

If we could know as intimately as we know our more immediate parents the long line of ancestors through whom the family spirit has passed on its way to us, we should probably become fatalists in face of the apparently overwhelming evidence that there is nothing in us that has not come to us from, or at least through, the Family. Family portrait galleries are a striking confirmation of the persistence of characteristics which ultimately govern the fortunes of successive generations.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

I wanted to go to a place where you were important and people listened to what you had to say. Mothering hadn’t done that … and yet … wouldn’t it be ironic if my turf yielded the most important commodity being grown today? A family? A crop of children, seeded by two people, nourished by love, watered by tears, and in eighteen or twenty years harvested into worthwhile human beings to go through the process again.
Erma Bombeck

We all hold on to some image of the family we want, based one way or another on the family we had. Lots of people are thrilled about the families they came from, others couldn’t get away fast enough. Most people fall into that vast middle ground: great affection mixed with a few ideas for improvement. A couple of things they wish could have perhaps been done differently.
Paul Reiser

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Great quotes on family and relatives

Carl William Brown — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 13:59:15 +0000

Great quotes on family and relatives

Great quotes on family and relatives, a collection of authorial aphorisms on the fundamental core of society, even if on the whole it is not always idyllic.

A family in harmony will prosper in everything.
Chinese Proverb

There are only two families in the world, the haves and the have-nots.
Miguel De Cervantes

The family is the school of duties… founded on love.
Felix Adler

The babe at first feeds upon the mother’s bosom, but it is always on her heart.
Henry Ward Beecher

Close relatives, just like shoes, are the ones that cause the most trouble.
Carl William Brown

A writer is always unwelcome at the family table. Because we notice things. And then we use them.
Elizabeth Hardwick

Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.
Anthony Brandt

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.
Confucius

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
James G. Frazer

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.
Francis Picabia

All happy families resemble each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo tolstoy

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon

Cruel is the strife of brothers.
Aristotle

To be generalists, we could say that we are all children of God, that is, of an unknown father.
Carl William Brown

Family traditions counter alienation and confusion. They help us define who we are; they provide something steady, reliable and safe in a confusing world.
Susan Lieberman

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.
Samuel Johnson

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.
Mario Puzo

Family … the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
August Strindberg

The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for? its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be.
Florence Nightingale

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.
John Keats

Man is certainly an animal at least as stupid as his lower relatives, only he is also dangerously and destructively vain.
Carl William Brown

Family values are a little like family vacations -? subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of time. Though it rained all week at the beach, it’s often the momentary rainbows that we remember.
Leslie Dreyfous

The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have.
Ring Lardner

So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it.
Haniel Long

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.
Jeremy Taylor

All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Count Leo Tolstoy

Family is the most important thing in the world.
Princess Diana

A mother’s love is fashioned after God’s enduring love. It is endless and unfailing like the love of Him above.
Helen Steiner Rice

I would rather start a family than finish one.
Don Marquis

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation.
Margaret Mead

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
H. L. Mencken

In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm.
Isaac Rosenfeld

At funerals, the dead are the ones who feel better; at least they avoid the priests’ bullshit and the relatives’ gossip.
Carl William Brown

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

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

A family with an old person has a living treasure of gold.
Chinese Proverb

If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Love makes a family.
Gigi Kaeser

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.
Buddha

If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.
Quentin Crisp

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.
Matt Groening

I learned about the strength you can get from a close family life. I learned to keep going, even in bad times. I learned not to despair, even when my world was falling apart. I learned that there are no free lunches. And I learned the value of hard work.
Lee Iacocca

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
John Paul II

When I do something in my family because I really enjoy it, then my duty has become my pleasure. And it is a pleasure for all the people around me.
Dr. Jess Lair

Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.
Phyllis McGinley

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
Ann Oakley

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
V. S. Pritchett

God, Country, and Family, but above all Money, these are the cornerstones of hypocrisy.
Carl William Brown

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.
George Santayana

A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.
Susan Sontag

The hatred of relatives is the most violent.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.
Mark Twain

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Oscar Wilde

A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can’t provide stability, I’m not saying that… It does take a father, though.
Tom Delay

Better a loving single-parent family than a ‘conventional’ family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue.
Moby

Frankly, I’m fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us about family values. Our families have values. But our government doesn’t.
Bill clinton

If your family tree does not fork, you might be a redneck.
Jeff Foxworthy

He didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.
George Bernard Shaw

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
Margaret Mead

The holy restricted family: A loves B, somehow, and is loved back, one way or another! Neither of them gives a damn about the rest of the alphabet!
Carl William Brown

Family life is not a computer program that runs on its own; it needs continual input from everyone.
Neil Kurshan

Family is what grounds you.
Angelina Jolie

A close relative is one you see occasionally between family funerals.
Author Unknown

Our relatives are ours by chance, but we can choose our friends.
Jacques Delille

Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.
J. M. Synge

A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
George Ade

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.
Amos Bronson Alcott

Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach

You leave home to seek your fortune and, when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.
Anita Baker

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
Henry Ward Beecher

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.
Erma Bombeck

Never did I think that I became family entertainment.
Jimmy Buffet

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.
Confucius

Parents: persons who spend half their time worrying how a child will turn out, and the rest of the time wondering when a child will turn in.
Ted Cook

Alternatives to marriage and the traditional family: cohabitation, communes, celibacy, vows, suicide…
Carl William Brown

The family is the nucleus of civilization.
William J. Durant

What a man sows, that shall he and his relations reap.
Clarissa Graves

Nor need we power or splendor, wide hall or lordly dome; the good, the true, the tender — these form the wealth of home.
Sarah J. Hale

The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.
Louise Kapp Howe

A good many family trees are shady.
Robert Elliott Gonzales

The Family is the Country of the heart.
Giuseppe Mazzini

Families aren’t easy to join. They’re like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.
Erma Bombeck

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.
Freya Stark

Family… the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house — fathers, and a hell for children.
August J. Strindberg

Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
Martin Mull

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr

The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.
Sandra Day O’Connor

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.
George Eliot

There is an interconnectedness among members that bonds the family, much like mountain climbers who rope themselves together when climbing a mountain, so that if someone should slip or need support, he’s held up by the others until he regains his footing.
Phil Mcgraw

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.
André Maurois

Under any system of society … the family holds the future in its bosom.
Charles Franklin Thwing

For the Kennedys, politics was a family tradition; for the Holy Family, killing them was a tradition as well.
Carl William Brown

Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.
Henri-Frederic Amiel

Marriage is to family what legs are to a table.
Betty Jane Wylie

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
William Butler Yeats

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Oscar Wilde

The difference between us is that my family begins with me, whereas yours ends with you.
Author Unknown

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
Mark Twain

A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.
The Holy Bible

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.
Charles Swindoll

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described – and will be, after our deaths – by each of the family members who believe they know us.
Gloria Steinem

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.
George Bernard Shaw

The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven’s lieutenants.
William Shakespeare

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
Christina Rossetti

The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times.
Ronald David Laing

The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.
Evan Esar

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
Ann Oakley

It seems to be almost inevitable that the man who accepts a subordinate economic position in the Family degenerates into a loafer and a tyrant.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
John Paul Ii

The family that stays together probably has only one car.
Knofel Staton

The family and the couple are by far the most disintegrating centers of false moral, intellectual, and spiritual well-being in capitalist society.
Carl William Brown

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Bernard Shaw

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
Stella Benson

Never did I think that I became family entertainment.
Jimmy Buffet

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
Confucius

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.
Alex Haley

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?
Elizabeth Janeway

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
Paul Johnson

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.
Charles Lamb

Women know what men have long forgotten. The ultimate economic and spiritual unit of any civilization is still the family.
Clare Boothe Luce

A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian… and most of all, his family ought to know.
Dwight L. Moody

A brother is a friend provided by nature.
Legouve Pere

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Eleanor Roosevelt

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.
Erma Bombeck

A family is a unit composed not only of children, but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
Ogden Nash

Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights.
John Todd

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home and broods a nest of sorrows.
Jeremy Taylor

The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow…. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.
Louise Kapp Howe

Marriage is the agreement to let a family happen.
Betty Jane Wylie

Raising a family wasn’t something I put on my resumé, but I have to ask myself, would I apply for the same job again?
Erma Bombeck

In one family, every little plan or question is discussed amid bickering and irritation. In another, without the least effort, every discussion goes on amid perfect peace. This is just as easy, and infinitely more agreeable: only, in many homes it does not happen to be the family habit.
Charles Buxton

The most socially subversisve institution of our time is the one-parent family.
Paul Johnson

Children keep a family together, especially when one can’t get a babysitter.
Frederick Shepperd

Women’s liberationists spread the word that the only peaceful family is one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband is androgynous.
Emmett R. Tyell

My family begins with me, your family ends with you.
Author Unknown

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
Charles Wadworth

People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
Zig Ziglar

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
G. K. Chesterton

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon

A large family party is rather too much like a flight of tomtits; everlasting twitter, but no conversation; gregariousness without companionship.
Charles Buxton

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Oscar Wilde

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.
Francis Picabia

As a single dried tree, if fired, sets a whole forest on fire, so does a bad son destroy a whole family.
Chanakya

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
Stella Benson

I dedicate this aphorism to my relatives, just to let the world know that I had some.
Carl William Brown

Break up the institution of the family, deny the inviolability of its relations, and in a little while there would not be any humanity.
E. H. Chapin

The family is an absolute monarchy in miniature.
Abraham Miller

In the family, happiness is in the ratio in which each is serving the others, seeking one another’s good, and bearing one another’s burdens.
Henry Ward Beecher

Two people who know they do not understand each other, Breeding children whom they do not understand And who will never understand them.
T. S. Eliot

The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.
Charles Caleb Colton

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
Benjamin Franklin

Where can a person be better than in the bosom of their family.
Marmontel Gretry

The many books I have at home, among other things, serve both to keep relatives away and to keep me away from them.
Carl William Brown

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

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Thomas Jefferson

If the family goes, so goes our civilization.
Ronald Reagan

I’m from such an old family, it’s been condemned.
Phyllis Diller

God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same.
Anne Enright

In houses where, in place of that sacred, inmost flame of love, there is discord at the centre, the whole household becomes hypocritical.
William Makepeace Thackeray

That was what you did with family when you’d been worried about them, you grabbed them and held on to them and told them how much they’d pissed you off, and it was okay, because no matter how angry you got, they still belonged to you.
Cassandra Clare

The family was an art … and the dinner table was the place it found expression.
Don Delillo

I can’t wait to give my writing to my relatives; perhaps it will finally be a good opportunity for them to read a book.
Carl William Brown

When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it.
William Makepeace Thackeray

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire, to our sons, ambition. But, to our daughters, there is something which there are no words to express.
Joseph Addison

Families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other’s way, what a tangle.
John Updike

A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other’s individual aims and aspirations.
Buzz Aldrin

The government is becoming the family of last resort.
Jerry Brown

Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.
Sarah Dessen

Go to friends for advice, woman for love, strangers for charity and relatives for nothing.
Spanish Proverb

What family has no mariner in its tree? No fool, no felon. No fisherman.
Cormac Mccarthy

In that family where the husband is pleased with his wife, and the wife with her husband, happiness will assuredly be lasting.
Brahma

An advantage of poverty, your relatives gain nothing by your death.
Hebrew Proverb

Friends are “annuals” that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a “perennial” that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There’s a place in the garden for both of them.
Erma Bombeck

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
Andre Gide

What is family? They were the people who claimed you.
Sarah Dessen

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended — and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.
Robert Frost

The rich never have to seek out their relatives.
Italian Proverb

None but a mule denies his family.
Arabian Proverb

All people are your relatives, therefore expect only trouble from them.
Chinese Proverb

Govern a family as you would cook a small fish – very gently.
Chinese Proverb

In a broken nest there are few whole eggs.
Chinese Proverb

Man is the head of the family, woman the neck that turns the head.
Chinese Proverb

A small family is soon provided for.
English Proverb

A good son-in-law is like the acquisition of a new son; a bad one is like the loss of your daughter.
Jewish Proverb

Look for the good, not the evil, in the conduct of members of the family.
Jewish Proverb

One of life’s greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn’t good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.
Jewish Proverb

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.
Jewish Proverb

On the same topic you can also read:

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives

Quotes by authors

Quotes by arguments

Thoughts and reflections

Essays with quotes

Entertainment

News and events

The post Great quotes on family and relatives first appeared on The World of English.

Short news about Italy

Carl William Brown — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 12:38:46 +0000

Historical news and quotes about Italy

Short news about Italy, with an explanatory video on all 20 Italian Regions Stereotypes, from the book Italy in brief by Carl William Brown, a collection of quotes, news and thoughts about Italy

The name Italy comes from the word Italia, meaning “calf land,” perhaps because the bull was a symbol of the Southern Italian tribes.
Historical News

The capital of Italy is Rome (also known as the Eternal City) and is almost 3,000 years old. It has been the capital since 1871 and is home to the Dome of St. Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum, and the famous Trevi Fountain.
Historical News

By the year 2000 B.C., Italic tribes (Oscans, Umbrians, Latins) had established themselves in Italy. They were followed by the Etruscans in 800 B.C. and the Greeks, who established colonies known as Magna Graeca in southern Italy (present-day Apulia). Rome was founded in 753 B.C., and soon thereafter the Romans began conquering the peninsula.
Historical News

At its height in A.D. 117, the Roman Empire stretched from Portugal in the West to Syria in the east, and from Britain in the North to the North African deserts across the Mediterranean. It covered 2.3 million miles (two-thirds the size of the U.S.) and had a population of 120 million people. During the Middle Ages, Rome had perhaps no more than 13,000 residents.
Historical News

When McDonald’s opened in 1986 in Rome, food purists outside the restaurant gave away free spaghetti to remind people of their culinary heritage.
Italians created parmesan, provolone, mozzarella, and many other cheeses. Parmesan cheese originated in the area around
Historical News

Vatican City is the only nation in the world that can lock its own gates at night. It has its own phone company, radio, T.V. stations, money, and stamps. It even has its own army, the historic Swiss Guard.
Historical News

Parma, Italy. Italians also created many other cheeses, including gorgonzola, mozzarella, provolone, and ricotta. No one knows when the pizza was invented, but the people of Naples made it popular.
Historical News

The European Union law states that we have the free movement of companies, they have freedom of establishment. This is in fact the entire point of the whole Single Market program. One company, based anywhere inside the EU, can then sell to all 27 other countries in the EU without needing to have a permanent establishment in each of those 27. And believe me the EU isn’t going to allow someone to over turn that very basic foundation of the entire project. It’s just not going to happen. So I am perfectly free to buy any goods that are legally sold throughout Europe, provided that they can be delivered, even though they are not legal in Italy, even because in Italy only stupidity is legal.
Carl William Brown

Italian is a Romance language descended from Vulgar Latin, just like Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian, the dialect spoken by the people living during the last years of the Roman Empire. Before the Romans came, people spoke their own languages, and the mixture of these original tongues with Latin produced many of the languages and dialects that are still in use today. Italian has more Latin words than any other Romance languages, and its grammatical system remains similar to Latin. Latin is still the official language of the Vatican City in Rome. In the 1930s and 40s, Italian fascist Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) tried to eliminate foreign words from Italian. In soccer, “goal” became “meta” and Donald Duck became “Paperino.” Mickey Mouse became “Topolino” and Goofy became “Pippo.” While the ban was not permanent, the Italian names remain common.
Historical News

The world’s first operas were composed in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century. Opera reached the height of popularity in the nineteenth century, when the works of Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), and Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) became hugely popular. The late
tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007) is a national celebrity, and

Claudio Monteverdi (c. 1567-1643) is regarded as the father of the modern opera.
Historical News

Venice, Italy, is one of the world’s most beautiful and unusual cities. It was founded over 1,400 years ago on a collection of muddy islands in a wide and shallow lagoon. It has been sinking into the mud for centuries and is plagued by floods.
Italy was one of the founders of the EU and is a member of the Group of Eight (G8), a forum for eight of the world’s most powerful nations.
Historical News

In Italy there are about 60 million people and we know how high is the percentage of morons on national soil. However, in China there are about 1.4 billion people and in India almost 1.3 billion. Therefore I wonder then, if more or less all the world is a small village, with how many morons should we have to come to terms on the territory of this stupid planet. It’s the same the world over, or the world is the same wherever you go!
Carl William Brown

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was an Italian-born scientist. When he argued that the Earth revolved around the Sun, the Catholic Church imprisoned Galileo in his own house. The Church issued a formal apology in 1992.
Historical News

A part of northern Italy called Val Camonica contains about 350,000 petroglyphs that were created nearly 10,000 years ago. Brescia is a famous town at 75 km from there, it is very popular for Beretta arms industry, the oldest in the world, the Garda Lake and also because Carl William Brown was born there.
Historical News

Before the Romans came, people spoke their own languages, and the mixture of these original tongues with Latin produced many of the languages and dialects that are still in use today. If you know one of the Romance languages, you can often understand bits of another. Just as members of the same family can look similar but have totally different characters. You find the same contradictions in the dialects (regional or local language differences) in Italy and in other countries. If you visit Italy, you’ll hear various accents and dialects as you travel the country. Despite the number of dialects, you may be surprised to discover that everybody understands your Italian and you understand theirs. (Italians don’t normally speak in their dialect with foreigners.)
Linguistic News

About 70% of our English words come from Latin. This alone make Latin the most important language to influence English. For example, the word, promise, comes from “pro-mitto,” meaning to send before. Here are some more examples: word = verbum; canine = canis; college =collegium. I think you get the picture. Also Latin has influenced our grammar. For example, the distinction between “I” and “me” is based on cases. I equals nominative case in Latin and me equals dative, ablative and accusative cases. Even little things like the improper use of split infinitives come from Latin, since in Latin infinitives cannot be split. For example, to love is amare (one word) in Latin. So, in short, Latin continues to play a huge role.
Linguistic News

Italian is the official language of Italy and it is spoken by about 70 million people, primarily in this country. It’s the official language of San Marino as well, and one of the official languages of Switzerland, spoken mainly in Ticino and Grigioni cantons.
Linguistic News

The Italian Flag or il Tricolore is a green, white and red tricolor flag with equal panels representing the territories of the Republic of Italy. Adopted as the national flag on 1 January 1948, official colour designation under the Pantone Textile policy was established in 2003, then ratified into law in 2006.
Historical News

When I was growing up, my parents told me, “Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.” I tell my daughters, “Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.”
Thomas Friedman

Who goes to Rome a beast returns a beast.
Italian Proverb

Italy hasn’t had a government since Mussolini.
Richard Nixon

How did Italy manage to end up with no Caribbean islands at all? Christopher Columbus took the trouble to discover the

Caribbean personally before the end of the fifteenth century. Try to get a decent plate of spaghetti there now.
Calvin Trillin

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
Bertrand Russell

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Orson Welles

If Spain goes under, Italy will come under even more scrutiny.
Mario Monti

In the Church of San Giovanni (One of the finest Renaissance churches in Italy) you can see Tintoretto’s masterpiece, “Madonna with Four Saints”. In the Church of San Giacomo you can see Botticelli’s masterpiece, “Two Saints with the Madonna”. In the Church of San Bartolomeo do not miss Tiepolo’s huge canvas, “Madonna with Twenty Three Saints”. In the chapel of San Marco, the focus of attention is Perugino’s small painting, “Madonna with just One Saint”.
George Mikes

Italy is a geographical expression.
Prince Metternich

Certainly, in Italy, nobody takes light for granted.
Barbara Steele

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
Samuel Johnson

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
Erica Jong

Internet penetration in Italy is quite low and the Berlusconi media machine controls most of what people see.
Joichi Ito

I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.
Roberto Benigni

Gli italiani sono irrimediabilmente fatti per la dittatura.
Ennio Flaiano

The ideological mix-up is a natural, exasperating and, at the same time, endearing feature in this country of fierce individualists. There are seventy-five political parties in Italy – although not all are represented in parliament. Most of these parties are very small but even the smallest can boast of a sharp and unbridgeable ideological split. There is a party which has only one single member. He is schizophrenic.
George Mikes

You have to remember that Italy is second to none, in fact, if Germany has more than 3,500 brothels, Italy has the Vatican!
Carl William Brown

Appeal to all scholars of stupidity in the world. Come to Italy, this country has the highest rate of morons of the universe, especially among political, bureaucratic, judicial, religious, intellectual, artistic, and mass media members, so it is the best place to develop your own field research.
Carl William Brown

To be a true philosopher you must study stupidity a lot, that’s why, as Doctor Samuel Johnson used to say, a man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
Carl William Brown

Italy is one of the world leading country of bureaucracy and stupidity.
Carl William Brown

Since Italy is the land of bureaucratic and political nonsense, it tries to make up for the lost chances through a complex system of confused laws and logical stupidity.
Carl William Brown

The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom.
Oriana Fallaci

Italy is doomed to disappear, it is too stupid to survive!
Carl William Brown

The most hypocritical, bootlicking, obsequious, slavelike, submissive, unfree journalists in Europe, this is Italy.
Carl William Brown

The Italians may be clever and quick-witted but they are not intellectuals. They lack wanderlust, indeed, most of them lack intellectual curiosity in every shape and form.
George Mikes

In Italy there are a lot of illegal things, since the law is illegal too.
Carl William Brown

Prices in Italy are only slightly lower than in France, which means that Italy is a very expensive country for everyone, natives, visitors and tourists.
George Mikes

Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and dickheads.
Carl William Brown

The main characteristic of English conversation is that no one ever speaks; of Italian that everyone speaks at the same time. One iron law reigns supreme in Italian conversation: the survival of the loudest.
George Mikes

In Italy we have not a Common law legal system, we have a stupid one instead!
Carl William Brown

Hotel bills are scrupulously honest all over Italy… The only case which puzzled me occured in Naples. I wondered whether they were justified in adding 230 lire for heating to my bill in early June.
George Mikes

The Cathedral of this ancient and beautiful city of ……….* is of particular interest. It is the third largest Cathedral in Italy. It is a magnificent Gothic building (not pure Gothic but pure enough for the vast majority of tourists). The Italians, in their outlandish way, like to refer to the Cathedral as Il Duomo. * Fill in the name of the city with pencil. Rub it afterwards.
George Mikes

In Italy there are many illegal things, but stupidity is the most legal of all.
Carl William Brown

Italians intellectuals are few and far between. This is not a derogatory statement; nor is it a praise… Italy can boast of a number of intellectuals – brilliant and witty. But their number is small – much smaller than in France, England or Germany. The Italians, as a nation, do not read much. Observe a rush hour crowd in London or New York on the one hand and in Rome on the other. In London and New York one person in ten will be without a paper; in Rome one in ten will have a paper. The Italians will watch the women in the bus or tram, the crowd in the street or the passing shop-windows but they do not read.
George Mikes

The stupidest and most corrupted, dangerous, useless, incompetent, unfit and inefficient politicians in Europe: this is Italy.
Carl William Brown

On Amazon with Kindle Unlimited you can read the new edition of this book, that is Aphorismi et sententiae de italia et italis: Aforismi, citazioni, battute, invettive e riflessioni sull’Italia e gli Italiani (with English Quotes) by Carl William Brown

You can also download the first edition of the book with a lot of quotes about Italy by various authors from this link. Enjoy our beautiful country!

All 20 Italian Regions Stereotypes Explained

Christmas best humorous quotes

Carl William Brown — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 18:38:38 +0000

Christmas best humorous quotes

Christmas best humorous quotes, a collection of famous amusing aphorisms and funny quotes about Christmas for your holy laughter to spend a wonderful Christmas.

As our dear old friend Mark Twain used to say, mankind has only one truly effective weapon: laughter. So, in this Christmas season, when age is advancing, money is scarce, and the death toll continues to rise, I’ve decided to publish a new selection of humorous aphorisms and funny jokes about Christmas. While I’m fully aware that laughing during this time can be a challenging thing, I still want to have faith and be optimistic. After all, the three things that help us endure adversity, as old Kant reminds us, are precisely: hope, sleep, and laughter. And that’s precisely why I want to bring a breath of joy and lightheartedness to all who will read these funny Christmas quotes that are surely going to bring good tidings to you and your kin and help you get into the holiday spirit.
Carl William Brown

At Christmas, we must all be kinder, not more stupid!
Carl William Brown

Everyone’s nicer at Christmas. It’s the before and after that worries me.
Lucy van Pelt

After the Christmas holidays, my wife always puts me on a diet, but this year I don’t feel like it, and in protest, I’ve started a hunger strike!
Bilbo Baggins

It’s Christmas. I’m torn between feeling a great sense of brotherhood and going skiing in Cortina.
Altan

No one respects me. For Christmas, I gave my son a BB gun. And he gave me a T-shirt with a target on the back.
Rodney Dangerfield

You did it for me! So thank you. That means I’ll put your lover on my Christmas list, but only if I can find a letter bomb.
Woody Allen

During the Christmas holidays my parents always took me to my grandparents, but I didn’t enjoy the cemetery at all.
Carl William Brown

Okay, Christmas is an intimate holiday… but stop giving me underwear!
Boris Dress

According to a recent statistic, the most read phrase during the Christmas holidays is: “Batteries not included.”
Mauroemme

The last time I felt the Christmas spirit, the Ghostbusters were taking care of it.
Waxen

Mom, mom, why are we putting up a Christmas tree in October? How can I tell you you have cancer!
Anonymous

My father was a real bastard. At Christmas, he’d take us into the woods and say, ‘Children, the presents are under the tree. Guess which one?’
Mario Zucca

From a commercial standpoint, if Christmas didn’t exist, it would have to be invented.
Katherine Whitehorn

Christmas: A special day dedicated to the exchange of gifts, gluttony, drunkenness, the most sentimentality, general boredom, and domestic virtues.
Ambrose Bierce

Dear Baby Jesus, in this pandemic year of 2020, you took away my favorite singer: Juliette Gréco; my favorite actor: Sean Connery; my favorite soccer player: Diego Maradona; my favorite theatrical actor, Gigi Proietti; my favorite philosopher, Giulio Giorello (so to speak, of course). Listen to me now, I wanted to tell you that my favorite politician is … (insert the politician you think deserves to leave us as soon as possible) and that the year isn’t over yet! Best wishes again, and try your best.
Carl William Brown

As a child, it was tough. For Christmas, I was given batteries, with the words “Toy not included” written on them.
Rodney Dangerfield

There’s nothing sadder than waking up on Christmas morning and discovering you’re not a child.
Erma Bombeck

There’s so much crisis during this Christmas pandemic that the markets will surely open with a sharp decline.
Carl William Brown

Have you ever noticed that life seems to follow patterns? For example, I’ve noticed that every year around this time of year I hear Christmas music.
Tom Sims

We’re having a baby soon. Are you kidding? No, I’m actually having a baby: the doctor told me… it’ll be my Christmas present! But a tie was enough for me!
Woody Allen

Some enterprising youth should go from door to door on Christmas morning peddling batteries.
Jean Kerr

The ultimate in longevity is the Christmas fruitcake. It is a cake made during the holidays with fruits that make it heavier than the stove it is cooked in.
Erma Bombeck

What I don’t like about Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.
Phyllis Diller

The tradition of Festivus begins with the Airing of Grievances. I’ve got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you’re going to hear about it!
Frank Costanza

Best Christmas humor quotes

Rich, peaceful nations sell weapons to poor, war-torn nations; then at Christmas they collect toys to send to the children of families devastated by the planet’s various conflicts.
Carl William Brown

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was 6. Mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.
Shirley Temple

Turkey is good for Christmas, but Christmas is not good for turkey.
Achille Campanile

Nobody’s walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas.
Clark Griswold

Ugster vinyl pumps, Partridge Family records, plastic daisy jewelry, old postcards … It’s a magpie Christmas market.
Francesca Lia Block

It’s Christmas Eve. This morning in the shop, a woman asked me what time Midnight Mass is…
Sarotta

I would like a nice slice of Christmas Pam. Side of candy Pams. And perhaps some Pam chops with mint.
Michael Scott

Some people are born for Halloween, and some are just counting the days until Christmas.
Stephen Jones

You say you hate Washington’s birthday or Thanksgiving, and nobody cares, but you say you hate Christmas, and people treat you like you’re a leper.
Kate Beringer

My mother-in-law has come round to our house at Christmas seven years running. This year we’re having a change. We’re going to let her in.
Les Dawson

Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: There’s the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.
Marcelene Cox

Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed.
P.D. James

At Christmas, one in three Italians will go into debt for Christmas Eve dinner. The other two will go into debt for dinner.
Don Eugenio Iodice

I got myself for Secret Santa. I was supposed to tell somebody, but I didn’t.
Kevin Malone

Christmas is the season when people run out of money before they run out of friends.
Larry Wilde

I grew up on a Christmas Tree Farm, so this is a good season for me. I was too young to help with the hauling of the trees up the hills and putting them onto cars. So, it was my job to pull the praying mantis pods off of the Christmas trees. The problem with that is if you leave them on there, people bring them into their house. I forgot to check one time, and they hatched all over these people’s house – and there were hundreds of thousands of them!
Taylor Swift

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
George Carlin

I was Christmas shopping and ran into a guy on the street. I noticed his watch and said that it runs slow. He said, ‘So does the guy I stole it from.’
David Letterman

I got myself for Secret Santa. I was supposed to tell somebody, but I didn’t.
Kevin Malone

Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals when their cheery effect is needed.
P.J. O’Rourke

Christmas is a time when you get homesick, even if you’re home.
Carol Nelson

At the Festivus dinner, you gather your family around and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year.
Frank Costanza

Wife and husband at the table: “Of course, of course, dear, I like Christmas leftovers… but not in April!”
Anonymous

You have such a pretty face. You should be on a Christmas card.
Buddy, Elf

What are you doing for Christmas?” “I’m getting fat.”
Daniele Villa

Aren’t we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? You know, the birth of Santa.
Bart Simpson

Last Christmas, I was so broke that, to avoid disappointing my son, I had to tell him I’d bought him the Invisible Man doll.
Paolo Burini

No matter how many Christmas presents you give your child, there’s always that terrible moment when he’s opened the very last one. That’s when he expects you to say, ‘Oh yes, I almost forgot,’ and take him out and show him the pony.
Mignon McLaughlin

What about an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas? Drink some gluhwein, enjoy some hasenpfeffer.
Dwight Schrute

Christmas humor quotes

Christmas is awesome. First of all, you got to spend time with people you love. Secondly, you can get drunk and no one can say anything.
Michael Scott

But what do I care about having a good Christmas? The problem is the other 364 days.
Francesco De Collibus

Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed.
P.D. James

It will be a very traditional Christmas, with presents, crackers, doors slamming and people bursting into tears.
Victoria Wood

Down the chimney? You want me to take the toys down the chimney into a strange house, in my underwear?
Scott Calvin

Let’s be naughty and save Santa the trip.
Gary Allan

It’s always consoling to know that today’s Christmas gifts are tomorrow’s garage sales.
Milton Berle

Rome, the Baby Jesus was stolen from the nativity scene in the Imperial Forums. Word has spread that his father is very high up.
Lia Celi

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, it would be Christmas every day.
John Boehner

It’s easier to feel a little more spiritual with a couple of bucks in your pocket.
Craig Ferguson

There are three stages of man: he believes in Santa Claus; he does not believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.
Bob Phillips

You can’t fool me – there ain’t no Sanity Clause!
Chico Marx

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer and receipts for all major purchases.
Bridger Winegar

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.
Larry Wilde

A Christmas miracle is when your family doesn’t get into a single argument all day.
Melanie White

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.
Buddy, Elf

One thing I learned from drinking is that if you ever go Christmas caroling, you should go with a group of people. And also go in mid-December.
Louis C.K.

I left Santa gluten-free cookies and organic soy milk, and he put a solar panel in my stocking.
Earthman Adam

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it ‘Christmas’ and went to church; the Jews called it ‘Hanukkah’ and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘Happy Hanukkah!’ or (to the atheists) ‘Look out for the wall!’
Dave Barry

Christmas: It’s the only religious holiday that’s also a federal holiday. That way, Christians can go to their services, and everyone else can sit at home and reflect on the true meaning of the separation of church and state.
Samantha Bee

Christmas is a baby shower that went totally overboard.
Andy Borowitz

I don’t want Christmas season to end because it’s the only time I can legitimately indulge in one particular addiction: glitter.
Eloisa James

God invites us to humility and simplicity,” said the man who wore golden vestments while officiating Christmas Mass.
Massimo Meoni

Nothing’s as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.
Kin Hubbard

The ideal Christmas gift is money, but the trouble is you can’t charge it.
Bill Vaughan

That’s the true spirit of Christmas; people being helped by people other than me.
Jerry Seinfeld

Once again, we come to the holiday season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
Dave Barry

Santa Claus wears a red suit. He must be a communist. And long hair. He must be a pacifist. What’s in that pipe he’s smoking?
Arlo Guthrie

I just want to be rich enough to buy enough ornaments to cover more than one side of the tree.
Charlotte Christmas

I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, ‘Toys not included.’
Bernard Manning

Today I put up the Christmas tree. With the current crisis, I’m trying to earn some money by dressing up as a Christmas tree.
Massimo Bozza

Christmas is almost here. I’ll try to escape through the window.
Anonymous

Of course, Santa is dead. You force a guy to eat a billion cookies in one night, what do you think is going to happen?
Jimmy Kimmel

This past Christmas, I told my girlfriend for months in advance that all I wanted was an Xbox. That’s it. Beginning and end of list, Xbox. You know what she got me? A homemade frame with a picture of us from our first date together. Which was fine. Because I got her an Xbox. Anthony Jeselnik

This holiday season, no matter what your religion is, please take a moment to reflect on why it’s better than all the other ones.
Guy Endore Kaiser

Christmas humorous aphorisms

Share these funny holiday quotes with your friends and family to spread Christmas joy, or use them as clever Christmas-themed Instagram captions. You can even use them on coffee mugs or T-shirts and give them as gifts!
Keep Watching

Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year.
Victor Borge

Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food and beer…Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?
Bill Watterson

Sending Christmas cards is a good way to let your friends and family know that you think they’re worth the price of a stamp.
Melanie White

‘Mistletoe,’ said Luna dreamily, pointing at a large clump of white berries placed almost over Harry’s head. He jumped out from under it. ‘Good thinking,’ said Luna seriously. ‘It’s often infested with nargles.’
J.K. Rowling

More than Santa Claus, your sister knows when you’ve been bad and good.
Linda Sunshine

It’s all fun and games until Santa checks the naughty list.
Unknown

You can just hear Santa saying ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’ when you receive your credit card statement in January.
Kate Summers

Synthetic literature. Today: Christmas theme. Title: “I went with my girlfriend to see a nativity scene.” Development: “Two hearts, a hut.”
Andrea Balestrero

Christmas songs are like sexual intercourse: after the third one, you can’t take it anymore.
Flavio Oreglio

It’s Christmas Eve! It’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be.
Bill Murray

The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.
Johnny Carson

Christmas: the one time of year when you can’t avoid the nuts in your family muesli.
Charles Stross

So I’ve started wearing sweatpants to bed because I really don’t need Santa seeing me in my underwear.
Jeff Kinney

I hate, loathe and despise Christmas. It’s a time when single people have to take cover or get out of town.
Kristin Hunter

Waiting for a special occasion to kill me? Christmas is coming.
Cassandra Clare

I wish we could put some of our Christmas spirit in jars and open one up every month.
Unknown

There are 17 more shopping days until Christmas. So, guys, that means 16 more days till we start shopping, right?
Conan O’Brien

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights.
Maya Angelou

Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.
Johnny Carson

My wife, like many women, actually likes wrapping things. If she gives you a gift that requires batteries, she wraps the batteries separately, which to me is very close to being a symptom of mental illness.
Dave Barry

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
Katharine Whitehorn

Do you know why so many people love Jesus? Without Jesus, no Christmas.
Melanie White

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.
Jay Leno

I never get to see Santa Claus come down the chimney because I always get too tired and fall asleep from eating all his cookies while waiting for him.
Theodore W. Higginsworth

There are a lot of things money can’t buy. Not one of them is on my son’s list.
Milton Berle

Christmas is the season when you buy this year’s gifts with next year’s money.
Unknown

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.
Stephen Fry

My husband’s idea of getting the Christmas spirit is to become Scrooge.
Melanie White

Even before Christmas has said Hello, it’s saying ‘Buy Buy.’
Robert Paul

I bought my brother some gift wrap for Christmas. I took it to the Gift Wrap department and told them to wrap it, but in a different print so he would know when to stop unwrapping.
Steven Wright

At Christmas, tea is compulsory. Relatives are optional.
Robert Godden

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. But if the white runs out, I’ll drink the red.
Unknown

It was two weeks before Christmas. A slow time of year for raising the dead.
Laurell K. Hamilton

People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.
Anonymous

One good thing about Christmas shopping is it toughens you for the January sales.
Grace Kriley

People really act weird at Christmas time! What other time of year do you sit in front of a dead tree in the living room and eat nuts and sweets out of your socks?
Unknown

The older I get, the fewer useless gifts I get. The fewer I get, the less I have to wrap to re-gift for next Christmas.
Robert Rivers

The office Christmas party is a great opportunity to catch up with people you haven’t seen for 20 minutes.
Julius Sharpe

Christmas is such a carefree, low-pressure time – that’s one of the things I love about it.
Stephen King

I haven’t taken my Christmas lights down. They look so nice on the pumpkin.
Winston Spear

Christmas is a box of tree ornaments that have become part of the family.
Charles M. Schulz

Nothing says holidays like a cheese log.
Ellen Degeneres

Thank you, Stockings, for being a long flammable piece of fabric people like to hang over a roaring fireplace.
Jimmy Fallon

Once you stop believing in Santa, you get underwear for Christmas.
Unknown

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.
Garrison Keillor

Why is Christmas just like a day at the office? You do all the work, and the fat guy with the suit gets all the credit.
Unknown

Well, they’ll bark you down like carneys, sell you Christmas cards in June.
Tom Waits

Whenever you give someone a present or sing a holiday song, you’re helping Santa Claus. To me, that’s what Christmas is all about. Helping Santa Claus!
Louis Sachar

Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: There’s the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.
Marcelene Cox

Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours’ reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini.
Nick Hornby

Sixty great Christmas quotes

Carl William Brown — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 13:46:39 +0000

60 great quotes and aphorisms on Christmas

60 sixty great Christmas quotes and aphorisms by famous authors selected by Carl William Brown for the World of English blog, that is English-culture.com

I wish you a Merry Christmas sparkle with endless love, gladness and goodwill.
Lailah Gifty Akita

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
George Carlin

Christmas can be hard for those who have lost loved ones. This year especially I understand why.
Queen Elizabeth II

At Christmas we must all be more good-natured, not more stupid!
Carl William Brown

My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?
Bob Hope

Let’s be naughty and save Santa the trip.
Gary Allan

What do you think of Christmas?” “I like it,” she said. “I think we should have it every year.”
Liz Flaherty

Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.
Steve Maraboli

At Christmas we should be more good, not stupider!
Carl William Brown

Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.
T. S. Eliot

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!
Charles Dickens

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
Calvin Coolidge

Christmas ought to be brought up to date,” Maria said. “It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.
John Masefield

Christmas Eve is my favorite… I think the anticipation is more fun than anything else. I kind of lost that. The idea that something – food, traditions, an arbitrary date on the calendar – can be special because we decide it should be. We make it special. Not just for ourselves, but for others.
Kiersten White

60 best aphorisms and quotes about Christmas

Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.
Robert Lynd

The two most joyous times of the year are Christmas morning and the end of school.
Alice Cooper

From a theological point of view, Easter is the center of the Church year; but Christmas is the most profoundly human feast of faith, because it allows us to feel most deeply the humanity of God. The crib has a unique power to show us what it means to say that God wished to be “Immanuel” a “God with us”, a God whom we may address in intimate language, because he encounters us as a child.
Pope Benedict XVI

Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.
Graham Greene

I think commercialism helps Christmas and I think that the more capitalism we can inject into the Christmas holiday the more spiritual I feel about it.
Craig Ferguson

It’s funny to think that Christmas – a time known for its joyful togetherness – can be the loneliest time of the year for some.
Giovanna Fletcher

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!
Francis Pharcellus Church

Yes’ it’s true that I hate Santa too, dressed in his suit of silk. That’s why this year with the homemade cookies, I’m going to leave some poison milk.
Mark W. Boyer

If you can’t find the spirit of the holidays in your heart, you’ll never find it under a tree.
Michael Holbrook

Stupid rich nations sell arms to helpless poor nations; then at Christmas they collect toys to send to the children of families ruined by the various conflicts of the planet.
Carl William Brown

I have always thought of Christmas-time… as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Charles Dickens

T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
Clement Clarke Moore

Christmas isn’t a parade or concert but a piece of home you keep in your heart wherever you go.
Donna VanLiere

The Christmas story is penmanship of the most brilliant sort, where God crafted a beginning that would never be subject to an ending.
Craig D. Lounsbrough

Christmas is supposed to be this time when everyone is nice to one another and forgives one another and all that, but the true meaning of Christmas is presents. And in the real world, Santa’s not fair. Rich kids get everything and poor kids get secondhand crap their parents bust their asses to afford. It costs money just to sit on Santa’s lap.
Holly Black

There’s no experience quite like cutting your own live Christmas tree out of your neighbor’s yard.
Dan Florence

And then she realized that after that Christmas party, she didn’t really lose anything, except respect for everyone.”
Crystal Woods

Of course there is a Santa Claus. It’s just that no single somebody could do all he has to do. So the Lord has spread the task among us all. That’s why everybody is Santa Claus. I am. You are.”
Truman Capote

The three phases of Santa belief: Santa is real; Santa isn’t real; Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Alton Thompson

There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c’est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!
Agatha Christie

I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas into these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous, subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blashphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and any one who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.
George Bernard Shaw

I don’t think Christmas is necessarily about things. It’s about being good to one another, it’s about the Christian ethic, it’s about kindness.
Carrie Fisher

Christmas is best pondered, not with logic, but with imagination.
Max Lucado

I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a a note on it saying, toys not included.
Bernard Manning

Keeping Christ in Christmas” is like showing up at someone’s house every year, insisting on a party they never planned and never agreed to.
Rebecca McKinsey

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.
Katharine Whitehorn

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused—in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened—by the recurrence of Christmas.
Charles Dickens

Halloween isn’t the only time for ghosts and ghost stories. In Victorian Britain, spooky winter’s tales were part of the Christmas season, often told after dinner, over port or coffee.
Michael Dirda

Christmas is a conspiracy to make single people feel lonely.
Armistead Maupin

What I don’t like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.
Phyllis Diller

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
Benjamin Franklin

60 famous quotes about Christmas time

Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.
Dale Evans Rogers

And so this is Christmas…what have you done?
John Lennon

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
Shirley Temple

Perhaps the best Yuletide decoration is being wreathed in smiles
Author Unknown

We were so poor that my old man would go outside every Christmas and shoot his gun then come back and tell us that Santa Claus had committed suicide
Jack La Motta

The Pope: the only who never sees his boss, even at Christmas.
Author Unknown

What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?
Salman Rushdie

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.
G. K. Chesterton

People can’t concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December.
Ogden Nash

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.
Harlan Miller

Santa Claus has the right idea – visit people only once a year.
Victor Borge

Christmas is a time when you get homesick – even when you’re home.
Carol Nelson

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark
Dick Gregory

Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves.
Eric Sevareid

Christmas is a holiday that we celebrate not as individuals nor as a nation, but as a human family.
Ronald Reagan

There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes.
G.K. Chesterton

Our Playlist of best Christmas songs

Read also our other posts on Christmas ;

Christmas quotes ;

Best Christmas songs ;

60 great Christmas quotes ;

Christmas tree origin and quotes ;

Traditional Christmas Carols ;

Christmas jokes ;

Christmas cracker jokes ;

Christmas best humorous quotes ;

An Essasy on Christmas by Chesterton ;

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The post Sixty great Christmas quotes first appeared on The World of English.

Christmas quotes

Carl William Brown — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:22:09 +0000

Christmas quotes and aphorisms

Christmas great quotes and memorable aphorisms by The world of English, that is the English-Culture.com Blog and Carl William Brown.

The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that He might illuminate the world by His wisdom and excite it to the love of Himself.
Peter Abelard

It is a myth, not a mandate; a fable, not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.
Irwin Edman

A woman spent all Christmas Day in a telephone box without ringing anyone. If someone comes to phone, she leaves the box, then resumes her place afterwards. No one calls her either, but from a window in the street, someone watched her all day, no doubt since they had nothing better to do. The Christmas syndrome.
Jean Baudrillard

Christmas can be hard for those who have lost loved ones. This year especially I understand why.
Queen Elizabeth II (December 2021)

What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?
Salman Rushdie

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.
G. K. Chesterton

At Christmas we must all be more good-natured, not more stupid!
Carl William Brown

At Christmas everyone is better. It’s what happens before and after that worries me.
Lucy van Pelt (from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts)

People can’t concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December.
Ogden Nash

Midnight, and the clock strikes. It is Christmas Day, the werewolves birthday, the door of the solstice still wide enough open to let them all slink through.
Angela Carter

What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business.
G.K. Chesterton

Whatever else be lost among the years, Let us keep Christmas still a shining thing; Whatever doubts assail us, or what fears, Let us hold close one day, remembering Its poignant meaning for the hearts of men. Let us get back our childlike faith again.
Grace Noll Crowell

Christmas quotes and aphorisms

The universal joy of Christmas is certainly wonderful. We ring the bells when princes are born, or toll a mournful dirge when great men pass away. Nations have their red-letter days, their carnivals and festivals, but once in the year and only once, the whole world stands still to celebrate the advent of a life. Only Jesus of Nazareth claims this world-wide, undying remembrance. You cannot cut Christmas out of the Calendar, nor out of the heart of the world.
Anonymous

Year of the Lord 2023, after 63 years this is the first Christmas without my mother who passed away last October, and I can assure you that I am heartbroken, desolate, anguished, sad, melancholy, anxious, angry, fearful and without any desire to celebrate, or to live.
Carl William Brown

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.
Harlan Miller

Scrooge went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of homes, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure.
Charles Dickens

Even as an adult I find it difficult to sleep on Christmas Eve. Yuletide excitement is a potent caffeine, no matter your age.
Terri Guillemets

Christmas is a time when you get homesick – even when you’re home.
Carol Nelson

Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.
G.K. Chesterton

Christmas is just like your job. You do all the work and the fat guy with the suit gets all the credit.
Author Unknown

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark
Dick Gregory

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Charles Dickens

Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves.
Eric Sevareid

Christmas is not a date. It is a state of mind.
Mary Ellen Chase

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
Calvin Coolidge

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
Charles Dickens

Anything that inspires unselfishness makes for our ennoblement. Christmas does that. I am all for Christmas.
B.C. Forbes

Great quotes and aphorisms on Christmas

I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year.
David Grayson

Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
Washington Irving

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.
Garrison Keillor

Call a truce, then, to our labors – let us feast with friends and neighbors, and be merry as the custom of our caste. For if “faint and forced the laughter,” and if sadness follow after, we are richer by one mocking Christmas past.
Rudyard Kipling

Wretched excess is an unfortunate human trait that turns a perfectly good idea such as Christmas into a frenzy of last-minute shopping.
Jon Anderson

Santa Claus wears a Red Suit, he must be a communist. And a beard and long hair, must be a pacifist. What’s in that pipe that he’s smoking?
Arlo Guthrie

Christmas itself may be called into question, If carried so far it creates indigestion.
Ralph Bergengren

Christmas is a conspiracy to make single people feel lonely.
Armistead Maupin

There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.
Robert Lynd

Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!
Phyllis McGinley

This is the month, and this the happy morn, wherein the Son of heaven’s eternal King, of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born, our great redemption from above did bring.
John Milton

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart … filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.
Bess Streeter Aldrich

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
Shirley Temple

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.
Norman Vincent Peale

Christmas is a holiday that we celebrate not as individuals nor as a nation, but as a human family.
Ronald Reagan

Christmas – that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance – a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.
Augusta E. Rundel

Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.
Oren Arnold

When you with velvets mantled o’er, Defy December’s tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas.
William Robert Spencer

It is the most human and kindly of seasons, as fully penetrated and irradiated with the feeling of human brotherhood, which is the essential spirit of Christianity, as the month of June with sunshine and the balmy breath of roses.
George William Curtis

‘Twas Christmas broach’d the mightiest ale; ‘Twas Christmas told the merriest tale; A Christmas gambol oft could cheer The poor man’s heart through half the year.
Walter Scott

Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish. Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.
Francis C. Farley

Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.
Dale Evans Rogers

Christ was born in the first century, yet he belongs to all centuries. He was born a Jew, yet He belongs to all races. He was born in Bethlehem, yet He belongs to all countries.
George W. Truett

God walked down the stairs of heaven with a Baby in His arms.
Paul Scherer

‘Twas Christmas broach’d the mightiest ale; ‘twas Christmas told the merriest tale; a Christmas gambol oft could cheer the poor man’s heart through half the year.
Sir Walter Scott

At Christmas everything is more beautiful

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.
Charles Dickens

Christmas is the time for looking ahead courageously through the gates of the swiftly approaching new year … of resolving that the coming months will reflect a kinder, more forgiving and less heedless person than mirrored in the past.
Ellen V. Morgan

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Roy L. Smith

Christmas began in the heart of God. It is complete only when it reaches the heart of man.
Author Unknown

Three phrases that sum up Christmas are: Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, and Batteries not Included.
Author Unknown

I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys not included.
Bernard Manning

Merry Christmas! … What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ‘em through a round dozen of months presented against you? If I would work my will … every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas,” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.
Charles Dickens

Christmas begins about the first of December with an office party and ends when you finally realize what you spent, around April fifteenth of the next year.
P.J. O’Rourke

The message of Christmas is that the visible material world is bound to the invisible spiritual world.
Author Unknown

Christmas is for children. But it is for grown-ups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.
Lenora Mattingly Weber

May the spirit of Christmas bring you peace, The gladness of Christmas give you hope, The warmth of Christmas grant you love.
Author Unknown

The spirit of Christmas is always near; it shines like a beacon throughout the year. Don’t look in a store or high on a shelf, for sharing and giving are found in yourself.
Author Unknown

So stick up ivy and the bays, and then restore the heathen ways, green will remind you of the Spring, though this great day denies the thing, and mortifies the earth, and all, but your wild revels, and loose hall.
Henry Vaughan

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.
Katharine Whitehorn

There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes.
G.K. Chesterton

Be merry all, be merry all, With holly dress the festive hall; Prepare the song, the feast, the ball, To welcome merry Christmas.
William Robert Spencer

I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Wouldn’t life be worth the living Wouldn’t dreams be coming true If we kept the Christmas spirit All the whole year through?
Author Unknown

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