My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money, because Africa was the ‚dark continent‘, and because I was a girl.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.

I will say this: one of the things that is a pain when you’re expecting children is how much advice unsolicited people give you when you’re not asking for it.

Like every parent, when you start your family, your life completely changes. And you completely live for someone else. I find that the most extraordinary thing. Your life is handed over to someone else. From that moment on, they come first in every choice you make. It’s the most wonderful thing.

I have 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they keep me young.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

I had my first baby at twenty-one.

No one loves the man whom he fears.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.

A strong man doesn’t have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn’t match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.

I don’t pick up toys. I crush them.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

We love things we love what they are.

I have no problem yelling at anybody’s kid – free of charge!

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

If something inconveniences my children too much or takes me away from them, I won’t do it.

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

I like to talk about my obsession with french fries because I don’t want people to think that ‚Let’s Move‘ is about complete, utter deprivation. It’s about moderation and real-life changes and ideas that really work for families.

Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‚Well gee, let’s not mess this up.‘ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

My wife and I are very affectionate.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out!

When I was growing up, I wanted to adopt, because I was aware there were kids that didn’t have parents.

My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

Heaven gives us hope and makes our present burdens easier to bear.

I didn’t have any children of my own.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

I’m not an analyzer. I’ve got a son that analyzes everything and everybody. But I don’t analyze people.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

‚Love Story‘ is actually about a guy that I almost dated. But when I introduced him to my family and my friends, they all said they didn’t like him. All of them!

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

True nobility is exempt from fear.

That is America. That is America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it. We embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own.

Political courage is not political suicide.