40 Quotes About Family That Perfectly Capture Your Special Bond

YOUR ENTIRE CLAN WILL LOVE THESE SWEET QUOTES.

Whether you're talking about the love you feel for your parents, your siblings, or your grandparents, the bond of a family is hard to put into words. Luckily, some of life's luminaries were able to articulate their thoughts on family so you don't have to. Scroll through these quotes about family to find something that hits home, and share it with your loved ones to make their day.

Allie Hogan / Best Life
"I sustain myself with the love of family."
—Maya Angelou
"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."
—George Burns
"One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family."
—Jonathan Safran Foer, from Everything Is Illuminated
"When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching—they are your family."
—Jim Butcher
"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world, a mother's love is not."
—James Joyce
"I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured."
—Mitch Albom, from For One More Day
"That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable."
—Deb Caletti
"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you."
—Frederick Buechner
"Home is where you are loved the most and act the worst."
—Marjorie Pay Hinckley
"A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss… That's the trade-off. But I'll take it all."
—Brad Pitt
"You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you."
—George R.R. Martin, from A Game of Thrones
"Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family."
—Anthony Brandt
"Siblings: children of the same parents, each of whom is perfectly normal until they get together."
—Sam Levenson
"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about."
—Angela Schwindt
"This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work."
—Mitch Albom, from Tuesdays with Morrie
"My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct."
—Jodi Picoult, from Keeping Faith
"When all the dust is settled, and all the crowds are gone, the things that matter are faith, family, and friends."
—Barbara Bush
"We must take care of our families wherever we find them."
—Elizabeth Gilbert
"The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family."
—Mother Teresa
"Your greatest contribution may not be something you do but someone you raise."
—Unknown

"It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives."
— Mitch Albom, from The Five People You Meet in Heaven
"Is this what family is like: the feeling that everyone's connected, that with one piece missing, the whole thing's broken?"
—Trenton Lee Stewart, from The Mysterious Benedict Society
"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."
—Haniel Long
"Atticus says you can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't."
—Harper Lee, from To Kill a Mockingbird
"You are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges."
—Elizabeth Berg, from The Art of Mending
"He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away."
—Zadie Smith, from On Beauty
 "The family is one of nature's masterpieces."
—George Santayana
"A happy family is but an earlier heaven."
—George Bernard Shaw
"The only wealth in this world is children; more than all the money, power on earth, you are my treasure."
—Michael Corleone, from The Godfather: Part III
"Family is not an important thing—it's everything."
—Michael J. Fox
"The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us all to become our best while looking our worst."
—Marge Kennedy
"In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past, bridge to our future."
—Alex Haley
"Family is a life jacket in the stormy sea of life."
—J.K. Rowling
"Families are like branches on a tree. We grow in different directions yet our roots remain as one."
—Unknown
"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them."
—Desmond Tutu
"Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family."
—Trenton Lee Stewart
"The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other."
—Mario Puzo
"Families are like fudge—mostly sweet with a few nuts."
—Les Dawson
"Family and friends are hidden treasures; seek them and enjoy their riches."
—Wanda Hope Carter
"There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained."
—Winston Churchill