In so far as the familyas an institution turns women into darling littleslaves andmenintotheirchief providers and unweaned dependents, the problem of a satisfactory marriage remains incapable of purely private solution.

-Mills, C(harles) Wright
  The Sociological Imagination, ch.1.

   If these sketches should prove the means of deterring onefamily fromsinking their property, andshipwrecking all their hopes, by going to reside in the backwoods of Canada, I shall consider myself amply repaid for revealing the secrets of the prison-house, and feel that I have not toiled and suffered in the wilderness in vain.

-Moodie, Susanna ne¤  e Strickland
  Roughing It in the Bush; or,  A Life in Canada, vol.2, ch.14, 'Adieu to the Woods'.

England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much- quoted passage, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, pt.3,'Shopkeeper at War'.

A family with the wrong members in controlöthat, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, pt.3,'The English Revolution'.

Yiddish is a household tongue, and God, like other members of the family, is sweetly informal in it.

-Ozick, Cynthia
  Metaphor and Memory.

One thing this family does not need to do is make itself resented by thousands more people.

-Rockefeller, David
Explaining his reluctance to join the management of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Quoted in Peter Collier and David Horowitz The Rockefellers (1976).

It's a family jokethat when Iwas a tinychild Iturned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefullyasked,'Momma, do we believe in winter?'

-Roth, Philip Milton
  Portnoy's Complaint,'The Most Unforgettable Character I've Ever Met'.

In our lore, the Jewish family was an inviolate haven against every formof menace, frompersonal isolationto gentile hostility. Regardless of internal friction and strife, it was assumed to be an indissoluble consolidation† Family indivisibility, the first commandment.

-Roth, Philip Milton
  The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography,'Dear Zuckerman'.

The censorious said that she slept in a hammock and understood Yeats's poems, but her family denied both stories.

-Saki pseudonym of  Hector Hugh Munro
The Chronicles of Clovis,'TheJesting of Arlington Stringham'.

You see, family life is all the life she knows: she's like a bird bornina cage, that would dieif you let it looseinthe woods.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  Bill Collins about his wife. Getting Married.

   To begin with, I was born with an unreasonably large stock of relations, who have increased and multiplied ever since. My aunts and uncles were legion, and my cousins as the sands of the sea without number. Consequently, even a low death-rate meant, in the course of mere natural decay, a tolerably steady supply of funerals for a by no means affectionate but exceedingly clannish family to go to. Add to this that the town we lived in, being divided in religious opinion, buried its dead in two great cemeteries, each of which was held by the opposite faction to be the ante- chamber of perdition, and by its own patrons to be the gate of paradise.

-Shaw, George Bernard
'Music in London'.

It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to makethantobuy.Thetaylordoesnot attempttomakehis ownshoe†All ofthemfind itfor their interestto employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours and to purchase with a part of its produce†whatever else they have occasion for† What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom† Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.4, ch.2.

The familyöthat dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape.

-Smith, Dodie
  Dear Octopus.

I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men [the princes,William and Harry] so that their souls are not simply immersed by dutyand tradition, but can sing openlyas you planned.

-Spencer, Charles, Earl
  Oration at the funeral of his sister, Diana, Princess of Wales, 6 Sep.

What is the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would reply.

-Sterne, Laurence
^67  Tristram Shandy, bk.1, ch.21.

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

-Strindberg, August
  The Son of a Servant.

A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.

-Swift,Jonathan
  A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country.

As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows.On the occasions when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across the primeval swamps†the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages Iget from being a bacheloröand, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.

-Plum
  The InimitableJeeves, ch.16.

Women leave the Royal Family in only one modeöwith their heads cleaved from the shoulders.

-York, Sarah, Duchess of
  My Story.