~ Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground.
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~ The family is one of nature's masterpieces. ~
~ Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted.
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~ If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable - each segment distinct. ~
~ Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. ~
~ There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained ~
~ The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family. ~
~ Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to this country and to mankind is to bring up a family. ~
~ American families have always shown remarkable resiliency, or flexible adjustment to natural, economic, and social challenges. Their strengths resemble the elasticity of a spider web, a gull's skillful flow with the wind, the regenerating power of perennial grasses, the cooperation of an ant colony, and the persistence of a stream carving canyon rocks. These are not the strengths of fixed monuments but living organisms. This resilience is not measured by wealth, muscle or efficiency but by creativity, unity, and hope. Cultivating these family strengths is critical to a thriving human community.
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~ Govern a family as you would cook a small fish - very gently.
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Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.
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~ Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. ~