Ralph Ellison
Novelist, Essayist
"I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed."
Grandparent quotes
Grandparent
252 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Willie Nelson
Musician, Actor
"I started learning my lessons in Abbot Texas, where I was born in 1933. My sister Bobbie and I were raised by our grandparents [...] We never had enough money, and Bobbie and I started working at an early age to help the family get by. That hard work included picking cotton. [...] Picking cotton is hard and painful work, and the most lasting lesson I learned in the fields was that I didn't want to spend my life picking cotton."
Erma Bombeck
Humorist, Writer
"A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up."
Erma Bombeck
Humorist, Writer
"A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn't charge more after midnight - or anything before midnight."
Gore Vidal
Writer, Essayist, Playwright
"I suspect that our own faith in psychiatry will seem as touchingly quaint to the future as our grandparents' belief in phrenology seems now to us."
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Grandparent quotes (page 1 of 13)
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"Imagine that everything you are typing is being read by the person you are applying to for your first job. Imagine that it's all going to be seen by your parents and your grandparents and your grandchildren as well."
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"Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity."
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"We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body."
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"Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches."
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"Every house needs a grandmother in it."
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"I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It's particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren't living nearly as well."
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"Because my great-grandparents were enslaved people, the legacy of slavery was something that didn't seem impersonal or disconnected. That's what motivated me to get into law."
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"Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents pots and pans - the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum."
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"I was brought up by great parents and great grandparents who told me, 'Never, ever think that you're better than anyone else or that what you do is so important that the world won't miss you once you're gone,' and I kind of translate that into the stardom thing."
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"Your grandparents did not endure the indignities of a steerage journey to Ellis Island so that you could stand outside a discothèque and beg a wallpaper designer to take you in with him."
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"It would be more honourable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more."
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"Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn't even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we're going to stop it."
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"I feel like my grandparents and parents gave me a tremendous amount. And if I can pass some of that on, then I'll be very happy."
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"All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you."
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"I went to church with my grandparents sometimes and I loved it."
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"I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated."
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"Good old grandsire ... we shall be joyful of thy company."
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"At NBC I wasn't really sure if the grandparents were going to get my sense of humor on a particular topic."
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"If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother."
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"The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents."
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