99 Heartwarming Family Quotes

In a world that often moves too fast, family remains our steadfast anchor, providing love, support, and a sense of belonging. Whether it's shared laughter over dinner, whispered words of encouragement, or warm embraces during tough times, the bonds we nurture with our loved ones create a tapestry of cherished memories. In this collection of the top 99 heartwarming family quotes, you'll find nuggets of wisdom and inspiration that celebrate the beauty and complexity of familial connections. These quotes serve as a gentle reminder of the joy and strength that family brings into our lives, sparking reflections on what truly matters 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. “The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don't know, but until your mom dies it seems like all the other women in your life can never be more than just your mistress.” - Chuck Palahniuk

3. “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the heck she is.” - Ellen DeGeneres

4. “Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we're related for better or for worse...and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.” - Rick Riordan

5. “My dear young cousin, if there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.” - Rick Riordan

6. “Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be a person in whom they can have faith. When you are old, nothing else you've done will have mattered as much.” - Lisa Wingate

7. “You cannot know where your people are going if you don't know where your people have been.” - Forrest Carter

8. “People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.” - Edmund Burke

9. “...And talking of the dear family party which would then be restored, of their mutual pursuits and cheerful society, as the only happiness worth a wish.” - Jane Austen

10. “I'm allergic to family occasions. Sometimes I think we'd do better as dandelion seeds-no family, no history, just floating off into the world, each on our own piece of fluff.” - Sophie Kinsella

11. “In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.” - Marge Kennedy

12. “One must love God first, and only then can one love one's closest of kin and neighbors. We must not be idols to one another, for such is not the will of God.” - Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

13. “It was funny how dad was more honest in a book that anyone in the world could pick up and read than he could be talking to me. Or maybe it was sad. One or the other. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.” - Gabrielle Zevin

14. “That's what so many people didn't understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake world, where nothing lasted, and things were real only to the extent they harmed or helped people inside their homes.” - Orson Scott Card

15. “In family matters you can get over anything. That's one thing you'll learn as an adult. There's a lot you have to learn which is a lot worse than that. You'd never think of forgiving a friend for some of the things your parents did to you. But with friends it's different. Friends aren't the roll of the dice.” - Pat Conroy

16. “Spending time with the ones who are dear to you is like being in a dream, is it not?” - Sakura Tsukuba

17. “I didn't know what I wanted to Be...A sense that I had permanently botched things already, embarked on the trip without the map. and it scared me too, that I might end up as a mother of 3 working in a psychiatrist's office, or renting surfboards...I guess I saw their lives as failed somehow, absent of the Big Win...What is fate was an inherited trait? What if luck came through the genetic line, and the ability to "succeed" at your chosen "direction" was handed down, just like the family china? Maybe I was destined to be a weed too.” - Deb Caletti

18. “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

19. “Jerome said, It's like, a family doesn't work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?” - zadie smith

20. “I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching--they are your family.” - Jim Butcher

21. “That's my town,' Joaquin said. 'What a fine town, but how the buena gente, the good people of that town, have suffered in this war.' Then, his face grave, 'There they shot my father. My mother. My brother-in-law and now my sister.' 'What barbarians,' Robert Jordan said. How many times had he heard this? How many times had he watched people say it with difficulty? How many times had he seen their eyes fill and their throats harden with the difficulty of saying my father, or my brother, or my mother, or my sister? He could not remember how many times he heard them mention their dead in this way. Nearly always they spoke as this boy did now; suddenly and apropos of the mention of the town and always you said, 'What barbarians.” - Ernest Hemingway

22. “These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jaggedrocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out.” - Rebecca Wells

23. “we need a mass of ancestors at our backs as ballast. Sometimes, we feel it's impossible to push into the future without such a weight behind us, without such heaviness to keep us steady, even if it is imaginary. And the more frightening the future is, the more complicated it seems to be, the more we steady ourselves with the past.” - Lauren Groff

24. “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

25. “Family is more than blood” - Cassandra Clare

26. “I'm serious, Harry, don't go." But Harry only had one thought in his head, which was to get back in front of the mirror, and Ron wasn't going to stop him.That third night he found his way more quickly than before. He was walking so fast he knew he was making more noise than was wise, but he didn't meet anyone.And there were his mother and father smiling at him again, and one of his grandfathers nodding happily. Harry sank down to sit on the floor in front of the mirror. There was nothing to stop him from staying here all night with his family. Nothing at all.” - J.K. Rowling

27. “Siblings: children of the same parents, each of whom is perfectly normal until they get together.” - Sam levenson

28. “There's no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.” - Jill Churchill

29. “Well,' she said, adjusting a pot lid, 'I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jaime's family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I'll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jaimie.'Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie's gaffe. 'You will,' I said.She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. 'I hope so. But that's just the thing, right? Family isn't something that's supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They're born, they die. It's always evolving, turning into something else. even that picture of Jamie's family was only the true representation for that one day. But the next , someone had probably changed. It had to.'...Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn't actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone's eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.” - Sarah Dessen

30. “The problem is that we don't believe that we are much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholic and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.” - Mitch Albom

31. “Maybe children just want whatever it is they don't get. And then they grow up and give their children what they wanted, be it silence or information, affection or independence--so that child, in turn, craves something else. With every generation the pendulum swings from opposite to opposite, stillness and peace so elusive.” - Laura Moriarty

32. “We want to climb in with you,' Dermot said. 'We'll all sleep better.'That seemed incredibly weird and creepy to me - or maybe I only thought it should have. I was simply too tired to argue. I climbed in the bed. Claude got in on one side of me, Dermot on the other. Just when I was thinking, I would never be able to sleep, that this situation was too odd and too wrong, I felt a kind of blissful relaxation roll through my body, a kind of unfamiliar comfort. I was with family. I was with blood.And I slept.” - Charlaine Harris

33. “What I hope you'll remember, Grace-is that all your life there will be people who have more than you-and people who have less. Grace hung her head. What's really important,'Miss Louise went on to say,'are the connections you have with the people you love. Your family, your friends, Grace-truly, those are the things that matter. Those are the things that will always matter the most.” - Priscilla Cummings

34. “You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.” - Aravind Adiga

35. “Church has believed that parents probably wont' assume responsibility for their own children's growth, so they have tried to become a parent substitute. This in turn ha s fostered parents to adopt a "drop-off" mentality. Maybe the greatest gift a church can give parents is the confidence and courage to do what God has wired them to do.” - Reggie Joiner

36. “She serves me a piece of it a few minutesout of the oven. A little steam risesfrom the slits on top. Sugar and spice -cinnamon - burned into the crust.But she's wearing these dark glassesin the kitchen at ten o'clockin the morning - everything nice -as she watches me break offa piece, bring it to my mouth,and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen,in winter. I fork the pie inand tell myself to stay out of it.She says she loves him. No waycould it be worse.” - Raymond Carver

37. “For Saffron," it said in shaky old writing on the damaged base, and on the other side, "Saffy's angel."Saffron, picking up the broken fragments one by one, said it didn't matter. She hugged Rose and Indigo and Caddy and Sarah, and said again and again that it didn't matter, it didn't matter at all.” - Hilary McKay

38. “Families are designed to nurture the minds, wills, and emotions of its members so that the barriers created by fear of the unknown can be replaced by the confidence that comes from knowing you are loved whether you succeed or fail.” - Leigh A. Bortins

39. “...; Clary saw the group of lycanthropes look up, alert as a group of hunting dogs senting game. She turned- And saw Luke, tired and bloodstained, coming through the double doors of the Hall. She ran toward him. Forgetting how upset she'd been when he'd left, and forgetting how angry he'd been with her for bringing them here, forgetting everything but how glad she was to see him. He looked surprised for a moment as she barreled toward him- then he smiled, and put his arms out, and picked her up as he hugged her, the way he'd done when she'd been very small. He smelled like blood and flannel and smoke, and for a moment she closed her eyes, thinking of the way Alec had grabbed onto Jace the moment he'd seen him in the Hall, because that was what you did with family when you'd been worried about them, you grabbed them and held on to them and told them how much they'd pissed you off, and it was okay, becaused no matter how angry you got, they still belonged to you. And what she had said to Valentine was true. Luke was her family.” - Cassandra Clare

40. “Before I can say I am, I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were -- inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and not familial.” - Wallace Stegner

41. “Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but...Friends, somebody said, are "god's apology for relations." (p. 129)” - Christopher Hitchens

42. “The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish’.” - Mitch Albom

43. “Families are like puzzles. They fit together in a certain way, and if one piece is missing, it throws everything off.” - Richard Schiff

44. “I wanted only a familiar voice, someone who knew me. Not some earlier, larval version of myself. . .” - Jennifer Haigh

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

46. “(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

47. “It always gave me a peculiar feeling to catch a glimpse of my parents' lives before I was born.” - Robert Drewe

48. “Between 10 and 20 percent of people with anorexia die from heart attacks, other complications and suicide; the disease has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Or Kitty could have lost her life in a different way, lost it to the roller coaster of relapse and recovery, inpatient and outpatient, that eats up, on average, five to seven years. Or a lifetime: only half of all anorexics recovery in the end. The other half endure lives of dysfunction and despair. Friends and families give up on them. Doctors dread treating them. They’re left to stand in the bakery with the voice ringing in their ears, alone in every way that matters.” - Harriet Brown

49. “‎"All that history, the love & laughter, is designed for youth. It is what keeps the story of who we are alive from one generation to the next. It ensures our indelible mark in the souls of generations we will never have the pleasure of holding in a warm embrace. Life is short people. Before you know it, another decade will pass, people you love will be lost to this world, and all that will be left of them is what we carry in our hearts." Elsie Love 2011” - Elsie Love

50. “The heart of a person only beats when it's surrounded by blood, by family.” - Erica Goros

51. “Family's not family unless it's totally messing you up. I'm pretty sure that's the point” - Alexandra Bullen

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

53. “When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.” - George Bernard Shaw

54. “Flea stared at us, "I can't decide what's worse. Losing family members or not having a family member to lose.” - Maria V. Snyder

55. “Dia adek yang paling gue sayang, yang kalau misalnya gue denger petir gede aja akan gue telepon buat nanya apa dia baik-baik aja.” - Fauzan Mukrim

56. “It is the mess that readers love. The fact that sometimes the people who love us the most aren't people we're related to, but people who join our family later. The book acknowledges how difficult family relationship are, and this fuss just proves it.” - Kristine Grayson

57. “Clearly God was in some kind of mood on my birthday.” - Jodi Picoult

58. “Having a little girl has been like following an old treasure map with the important paths torn away.” - Heather Gudenkauf

59. “What can we do?" Mom asked again.I shrugged.But she kept asking, as if there were something she could do, until I just kind of crawled across the couch into her lap and my dad came over and held my legs really tight and I wrapped my arms all the way around my mom's middle and they held on to me for hours while the tide rolled in.” - John Green

60. “Do you know how marriage was defined in ancient Greece? Noel said in a calmer tone. Its really simple. A virgin goes to mans house with the family gathered as witnesses. The virgin and the man share a fire, a meal, and a bed. If the girl wasn't a virgin in the morning, then the couple was considered married. That's it” - Josephine Angelini

61. “We wanted a family so bad, all of us. And we just grabbed each another and made us one. Simple as that.” - Cynthia Rylant

62. “C'est affreux ces rendez-vous annuels qui autorisent les gens à faire un bilan de votre vie, trois questions et leurs yeux vous disent "tu n'as pas avancé", au mieux avec inquiétude, au pire avec mépris.” - Agathe Hochberg

63. “You need to make time for your family no matter what happens in your life” - Matthew Quick

64. “I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.” - August Wilson

65. “Individuality, family, and community are, by definition, expressions of singular organization, never of "one-right-way" thinking on the grand scale. Children and families need some relief from government surveillance and intimidation if original expressions belonging to THEM are to develop. Without these freedom has no meaning.” - John Taylor Gatto

66. “If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.” - Melina Marchetta

67. “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

68. “Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.” - Bernard Branson

69. “Can’t you imagine? Haven’t you told her about the place enough?” He tried the handle again, as if that could change anything. Meggie had covered the whole door with quotations. They looked to him now like magic spells written on the white paint in childish hand. Take me to another world! Go on! I know you can do it. My father has shown me how. Odd that your heart didn’t simply stop when it hurt so much.” - Cornelia Funke

70. “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

71. “He’d learned years ago it was better not to dwell too much on who was related to whom on the godly side of things. After Tyson the Cyclops adopted him as a brother, Percy decided that that was about as far as he wanted to extend the family.” - Rick Riordan

72. “Family is not an important thing, it is everything” - Michael J. Fox

73. “I could never leave,' Pine Sap said. 'Why?' she asked.Pine Sap shrugged, and gestured in the direction of the village. 'Because I think people must be the same everywhere. Only these people are my bones.” - Jodi Lynn Anderson

74. “We can't choose our blood, but we can choose those who run importance in our lives.” - Alina Baker

75. “Of all the titles that I've been privileged to have, the title of 'dad' has always been the best.” - Ken Norton

76. “She smiled and feigned enthusiasm, although she cared little for the game. Sometimes that's what you did for the people you loved.” - Julie Klassen

77. “It's always thoughts of family that drive me crazy, and it's always my friends who bring me back.Agents of Light and Darkness p.218” - Simon R. Green

78. “exemplar, n.It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done.You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath.” - David Levithan

79. “If there’s one thing I learned, it is that blood families can sometimes be the pits; it’s the one you make for yourself that really gives you a home and people to love.” - Joss Stirling

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

81. “It happens to be one of those days when I see everybody in the family, including myself, through the wrong end of a telescope.” - J.D. Salinger

82. “Un des problèmes essentiels qui se posent à propos de la femme, c'est la conciliation de son rôle reproducteur et de son travail producteur.” - Simone de Beauvoir

83. “This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.” - Richard Peck

84. “la culpa era de su ceguera de progenitor, la misma, (...) que nos impide ver que nuestros hijos, al fin y al cabo, son tan buenos o tan malos como los demás” - José Saramago

85. “The family landed in the Western Hemisphere in the person of Roger Blake Wolfe, who arrived with a price on his head.” - James Carlos Blake

86. “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

87. “And here she was. Lying on the floor of a dusty, empty, locked room thinking how grateful she felt.She smiled, though it hurt tremendously to do so, thinking how blessed she had been to have spent twelve years with the most precious gifts from God. She felt honored that they called her mother. She knew she had done the best she could teaching them about life and love, faith and family. Margo lay slowly dying from the wounds inflicted by a monster, but she was at peace. Because though the devil meant it for evil, God turned it to good.” - Karen Luellen

88. “I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.” - Mario Puzo

89. “I reread An Imperial Affliction until Mom woke up and rolled over toward me around six. She nuzzled her head against my shoulder, which felt uncomfortable and vaguely Augustinian.” - John Green

90. “I thought how you can never tell just by looking at them what they were thinking or what was happening In their lives. Even when you got daft people or drunk people on buses, people that went on stupid and shouted rubbish or tried to tell you all about themselves, you could never really tell about them either... I knew if somebody looked at me, they'd know nothing about me, either.” - David Almond

91. “I just want you to see out there, where it's blue and wild and full of adventure. And then I want you to see in here, where there's a warm yellow glow and your family is making dinner and your mom and dad are dancing and your little sister is hoping that you'll throw a smile her way.” - Melissa C. Walker

92. “Tidak ada perasaan yang bertahan selamanya. Aku belajar itu dari Papa. Cepat atau lambat, sesuatu yang kita miliki akan hilang dan yang tertinggal kemudian cuma rasa benci.” - Windry Ramadhina

93. “There is no such thing as a normal family so don't trip off it, just deal with it.” - Ice-T

94. “Even with my deepest soul I knew too well that all of these were just a stairs to heaven.” - Fernando Lachica

95. “Anyone can be polite to a stranger. Anyone can remain charming when spending time with an acquaintance, but what about those with whom we have familiarity? We hurt, offend and piss off the ones we love the most. Whenever we come home from playing nice and kissing ass instead of lips, we remove the masks and be who we really are.” - Donna Lynn Hope

96. “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

97. “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

98. “My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She’d set her coffee down, making a noise that made me look her way. I’d begun to notice her less and less often, like her colors were fading and blending in with walls. She was shrinking. Or maybe her sphere of influence in the family was shrinking. My dad glanced at her, too, and then wrote something on a napkin. He slid it across the counter to me—Don’t worry. Come home in one piece. Have fun and act like a sixteen-year-old for a change.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

99. “Kujamiiana si anasa tena katika maisha yangu. Ni hitaji muhimu kwa ujenzi wa familia.” - Enock Maregesi