89 Heartwarming Family Quotes

In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it's easy to overlook the little moments that make family so special. Whether it's shared laughter over a meal, quiet nights in, or the simple comfort of knowing someone always has your back, family is at the heart of our most cherished memories. To celebrate the love and warmth of these treasured bonds, we've curated a collection of the top 89 heartwarming family quotes. Let these words inspire you to appreciate and nurture the connections that mean the most.

1. “I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

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

3. “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

4. “Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.” - Kay Redfield Jamison

5. “The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. ” - C.S. Lewis

6. “By marrying to soon, many individuals sacrifice their chance to struggle through this purgatory of solitude and search toward a greater sense of self-confidence. They glance at the world outside the family and with hardly a second thought grasp anxiously for a partner. In marriage they seek a substitute for the security of the family of origin and an escape from aloneness. What they do not realize is that moving so quickly from one family to another, they make it easy to transfer to the new marriage all their difficult experiences in the family of origin. ” - Augustus Y. Napier

7. “We are a noisy and blessed little family” - Nancy E. Turner

8. “Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion.” - Leigh Hunt

9. “Friends are God's way of apologizing for your family.” - Wayne W. Dyer

10. “You don't know what it's like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, not about her children or the world, who was always suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams. When my first pen pal, Tomoko, stopped writing me after three letters she was the one who laughed: You think someone's going to lose life writing to you? Of course I cried; I was eight and I had already planned that Tomoko and her family would adopt me. My mother of course saw clean into the marrow of those dreams, and laughed. I wouldn't write to you either, she said. She was that kind of mother: who makes you doubt yourself, who would wipe you out if you let her. But I'm not going to pretend either. For a long time I let her say what she wanted about me, and what was worse, for a long time I believed her.” - Junot Diaz

11. “It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts.” - Michael Chabon

12. “I'm not sure if I know any 'functional' families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don't have a full range of problems.” - David Sheff

13. “Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING PLACES--modified by a vandal or a disgruntled employee to read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN. If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn't be his life raft.” - Nick Flynn

14. “Oh, brothers and sisters, families can be forever! Do not let the lures [or the irritants] of the moment draw you away from them! Divinity, eternity, and family--they go together, hand in hand, and so must we!” - Spencer W. Kimball

15. “Maintaining connections with family and community across class boundaries demands more than just summary recall of where one’s roots are, where one comes from. It requires knowing, naming, and being ever-mindful of those aspects of one’s past that have enabled and do enable one’s self-development in the present, that sustain and support, that enrich. One must also honestly confront barriers that do exist, aspects of that past that do diminish.” - bell hooks

16. “On closer examination, we are simply a banal tragedy spread over two generations.” - Peter Høeg

17. “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.” - Paul Pearsall

18. “All i have to offer is this: i hold a valid driver's license and I know the way to the hospital. I can hang curtains, flip a mattress, load a dishwasher. I can deliver a pizza, lend a steadying arm, laugh at a morbid joke and compliment a bad wig and I know the metric system. I doubt that's gonna be enough.” - Brian Fies

19. “But to mourn, that's different. To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for the person.” - Olive Ann Burns

20. “Unless today is well lived, tomorrow is not important.” - Alan Sakowitz

21. “literature is a way in which we can learn to live deeper lives -- husband with wife, parent with child, brother with sister, fellow member with fellow member. Most good authors are better than we are. They are much better company than our own friends. What comes from good company? What comes from good company is better manners, greater sensitivity, greater sensibility, greater empathy, great sympathy. Reading good literature makes us more capable of understanding other people, of loving other people, those whom we don't particularly want to love, even our enemies, as well as those closest to us. How can we expect to have full marriages when we are not going into those marriages with full minds and fine sensibilities? We are ignoring the tremendous possibilities of a delicate, well-poised, rich, sensitive life if we ignore the literature of the past. There is no substitute.” - Arthur Henry King

22. “I'll love you forever,I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be.” - Robert N. Munsch

23. “i love playing and chatting with children...feeding and putting them to bed with a little story, and being away from the family has troubled me throughout my...life. i like relaxing at the house, reading quietly, taking in the sweet smell that comes from the pots, sitting around a table with the family and taking out my wife and children. when you can no longer enjoy these simple pleasures something valuable is taken away from your life and you feel it in your daily work.” - Nelson Mandela

24. “Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.” - Holly Black

25. “Everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other” - Stephen Chbosky

26. “When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.” - Libba Bray

27. “How can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me?” - Rabih Alameddine

28. “She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it.” - Curtis Sittenfeld

29. “I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.” - Christopher Hitchens

30. “It's a commonly expressed and rather nice, romantic notion that we are all "sisters" and "brothers."Let's be real. Fact is, we might be better served to accept that we are all siblings.Siblings fight, pull each other's hair, steal stuff, and accuse each other indiscriminately.But siblings also know the undeniable fact that they are the same blood, share the same origins, and are family.Even when they hate each other.And that tends to put all things in perspective.” - Vera Nazarian

31. “I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about.” - Toni Morrison

32. “Tragedy, he precieved, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.” - George Orwell

33. “Leah: I want those gubs Mommy.Kate: They're not 'gubs' they're 'gloves'Aaden and Leah try and say glovesLeah: Gloves!Kate: Good job!Aaden: Gubs!Kate: No” - Kate Gosselin

34. “They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her.” - W. Somerset Maugham

35. “It's all right, Tessa, you can go. We love you. You can go now.''Why are you saying that?''She might need permission to die, Cal.''I don't want her to. She doesn't have my permission.” - Jenny Downham

36. “The love of money is the root of all evil, therefore selfishness must be the seed.” - M.D. Birmingham

37. “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

38. “Family was even a bigger word than I imagined, wide and without limitations, if you allowed it, defying easy definition. You had family that was supposed to be family and wasn't, family that wasn't family but was, halves becoming whole, wholes splitting into two; it was possible to lack whole, honest love and connection from family in lead roles, yet to be filled to abundance by the unexpected supporting players.” - Deb Caletti

39. “Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more.” - Robin Hobb

40. “Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.” - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

41. “We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair. ... That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and kind. [...]My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents' side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings.” - Wallace Stegner

42. “I liked having some time to myself. Our family was such a close one, you could get smothered. Of course, we didn't always agree with one another. Sometimes I quarreled with my brother and sisters, but I couldn't remember hating anyone for more than five minutes.” - Gloria Whelan

43. “There is no experience like having children.’ That’s all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.” - Mitch Albom

44. “Together we shared a bond not even death would violate.” - Dee Remy

45. “(I think Rowdy might be the most important person in my life. maybe more important than my family.) Can your best friend be more importamt than your family?” - Sherman Alexie

46. “He crouched at the care window and looked in. "What a lovely family you have. What a charming family. They're all lovely. Except for that one." His finger jabbed the glass. "That one's a bit ugly."The American stepped towards him. "What? What did you say?""Oh, don't worry. I'm sure his personality makes up for his face.” - Derek Landy

47. “You must try to have a positive attitude. It does not matter how small a person is. One can still change the future. Size is only a state of mind. You know – it is how you use your wits that counts. Nothing can stop us, if we put our hearts into it. Anything is achievable girls, anything at all!” - Nathalie M. Leblanc

48. “I’ve never had anorexia, but I know it well. I see it on the street, in the gaunt and sunken face, the boney chest, the spindly arms of an emaciated woman. I’ve come to recognize the flat look of despair, the hopelessness that follows, inevitably, from years of starvation. I think: That could have been [me]. It wasn’t. It’s not.” - Harriet Brown

49. “Women were created gullible. It they weren't no babies would be born.” - Dakota Dawn

50. “We are a motley bunch. But we more than make up for it with tenacity." ~ Ralston to Simon” - Sarah MacLean

51. “A best friend is the only one that walks into your life when the world has walked out.” - Shannon L. Alder

52. “We're all family--the only family we've got. It doesn't have to be blood.” - Holly Cupala

53. “There is a rustle of dead leaves. Dried sap, a branch crack, the whirring teeth of Mr. Omaru's saw. My father--my real father--is a limb that got axed off the family tree a long time ago now. My mother coughs and cleans phantom juices off her silver with a cloth doily. My sisters clench their knives.” - Karen Russell

54. “But they're family, and you forgive them, even if they are human equivalent of hyenas. Because that's what you do, Posey. Forgive.” - Kristan Higgins

55. “Cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey.” - Jack Layton

56. “Nona was as wacky as they came.” - Holly Hood

57. “He made it very clear that he didn’t want me here,” she said at last. “That my remaining at the Institute is not the happy chance I thought it was. Not in his view.” “And after I just finished telling you why you should consider him family,” Jem said, a bit ruefully. “No wonder you looked as if I’d just told you something awful just happened.” “I’m sorry,” Tessa whispered. “Don’t be. It’s Will who ought to be sorry.” Jem’s eyes darkened. “We shall throw him out onto the streets,” he proclaimed. “I promise you he’ll be gone by morning.” Tessa started and sat upright. “Oh – no, you can’t mean that─” He grinned. “Of course I don’t. But you did feel better for a moment there, didn’t you?” - Cassandra Clare

58. “The home is the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose, and that is to support the ultimate career.” - C.S. Lewis

59. “80% of man's happiness is based on love - love for others, love for self, love for family, love for friends, love for work, love for nature, and love for being loved.” - Ogwo David Emenike

60. “They’re close. Voices loud and fierce, Slapping faces with words. A scream … A cry … They’re getting closer. Did I lock the door? It’s too late to check. They’re coming. I barely move, barely breathe. Perhaps they’ll go away. But they’re getting closer. The door slams against the wall. My eyes squeeze shut. This curtain is not a shield. They’re here. They’ve come for me. I freeze. Metal rings clank together. My barrier is cast aside. Wearily, I look. Reddened eyes glower at one another … But not at me. I wonder. A moment of silence … Water streams down my face. Steam rolls around my flesh. I glare at the intruders And slide the curtain between us. I wait. He shrieks, “She took my glow stick!” She howls, “No, I didn’t!” I scowl. “Go tell your father about it.” They leave. I inhale the lavender mist. Slather bubbles over my skin. Five more minutes … And, next time, I shall lock the door.” - Barbara Brooke

61. “Who will kiss you? Who will rock you to sleep?" His voice was slow, drowsy."You never did," I said, trying to tease him. "You were more father to me than my father, but you never did that.""Someone should. Someone should love you. I will bite him if he will not.” - Rachel Hartman

62. “It's not about blood,"says Lucius. "It's about who you shareyour life with.Where you feelyou really belong.” - Emma Cameron

63. “But they were not friends. They were here to keep each other from spinning off alone into the dark matter of the universe.” - Carol Anshaw

64. “Kau lahir penuh harapan dan kau memberiku sedikit harapan itu.” - Fenny Wong

65. “This is my country, that is your country; these are the conceptions of narrow souls - to the liberal minded the whole world is a family.” - Virchand Raghavji Gandhi

66. “People need space; families need air; love needs light. Like Mrs. Anastagio always said, ―You need enough rooms to love someone properly.” - Damon Suede

67. “I have gone into town to buy a few last things we need for the expedition: Peruvian wasp repellent, toothbrushes, canned peaches, and a fireproof canoe. It will take a while to find the peaches, so don't expect me back until dinnertime. Stephano, Gustav's replacement, will arrive today by taxi. Please make him feel welcome. As you know, it is only two days until the expedition, so please work very hard today. Your giddy uncle, Monty” - Lemony Snicket

68. “They shared a laugh, and then the silence that so often intruded on their discussion asserted itself once again, a gap born of equal parts weariness, familiarity and--conversely--the many differences that fate had created between those who had once gone about lives that were but variations on a single melody.” - Christopher Paolini

69. “Your home is where your family is... Where someone waits for you and thinks about you.” - Tony DiTerlizzi

70. “Mankind has a mandate to care for the earth and all that is within it, especially the animals, and an animal should never be placed in a position where he needs to be concerned about such things. But this is not that time.” - Tara Pollard

71. “Si conoces una familia funcional, no la conoces bien.” - Andres Roemer

72. “You need to decide to stop letting their crazy box you in.” - Ella Fox

73. “A young girl needs to spread her wings, but a young woman needs roots.” - Sydney Logan

74. “I live precariously through my characters - so I want them to be loved passionately, live vibrantly, love unconditionally. Make friends they would die for - Explore unimaginable possibilities from all warps of life. And to never forget those that held their hands when life got scary. Wiped their tears away after a broken heart. Helped them back on their feet when others let them down. I want my characters to have family and friends - just like mine :)” - Patti Roberts

75. “I like these games we play, the ones that involve our heads and our hearts ~ Page 212” - S.L. Scott

76. “I don't really know them, but I know this: they're just like your kids were. Or are. Sweet, trusting, good in ways we adults hardly even remember. We have to look out for them. Not because of the tattoos, or in spite of them, but because they're kids and we're supposed to look out for kids.” - Sabrina Vourvoulias

77. “Then the musical instruments appeared. Dad’s snare drum from the house, Henry’s guitar from his car, Adam’s spare guitar from my room. Everyone was jamming together, singing songs: Dad’s songs, Adam’s songs, old Clash songs, old Wipers songs. Teddy was dancing around, the blond of his hair reflecting the golden flames. I remember watching it all and getting that tickling in my chest and thinking to myself: This is what happiness feels like.” - Gayle Forman

78. “There is nothing better for your family than for you to be at your best, for you to be at your own peace, for you to be showing them in every way who you are, and what you stand for.” - Steve Maraboli

79. “And what about tomorrow then? And all the tomorrows to come? Why can't we talk about it? Why can't we ever talk about it?” - Judith Guest

80. “Growing up, Joe had adored his brother, Then he'd come to hate him. Now, he mostly didn't think about him. When he did, he had to admit, he missed his laugh.” - Dennis Lehane

81. “Joe closed his hand over the watch and it was still warm from his father's pocket, ticking against his palm like a heart.” - Dennis Lehane

82. “For some reasonthen, I remember how Sam hated to be laughed at, and all of the times I did it anyway, because I wanted him to feel stupid, and I wonder how anybody can be cruel to someone they love. How can anyone do anything but love each other and be kind when at the end of it all, waiting quietly, sure as the dark at the end of the loveliest day, is only this?” - C.J. Flood

83. “Uncommon anxiety came to us in common hours when other people were doing mundane things like taking out the trash or checking their phones. But there was nothing to be done for this. We couldn’t change who we were or what had happened.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

84. “Here was what I wanted to happen when I walked through the door after my first real date and my first ever kiss. I wanted my mom to say, “Dear God, Meg, you’re glowing. Sit and tell me about this boy. He let you borrow his jacket? That’s so adorable.” Instead, I came off the high of that day by writing a letter to my dead brother and doing yoga between my twin beds, trying to forget my absent mother.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

85. “Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out because a formal place has been set for it. At the moment when things have gotten sufficiently loose, the secret selves that these familiar persons hold inside them shake the room...An undercurrent of clowning and jostling is part of the process by which we succeed finally in making our necessary noise: despite the difficulty of getting the words right, of getting the singers on the same page, of keeping the ritual from falling apart into the anarchy of separate impulses. From such clatter--extended and punctuated by whatever instrument is handy, a triangle a tambourine, a Chinese gone--beauty is born.” - Geoffrey O'Brien

86. “No one’s smart when it comes to family. Blood is thicker than smart.” - K.D. McEntire

87. “Be it a house, be it a car or be it a little motorbike, there is always a place for the family!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

88. “And the pomegranates,/like memories, are bittersweet/as we huddle together,/remembering just how good/life used to be” - Guadalupe Garcia McCall

89. “There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.” - Shannon L. Alder