Materialism And Family Quotes

Well, they're queer; but they're all very old, and so they're bound to be. But they're not mental,' explained Mother; adding candidly, 'Anyway, not enough to be put away. ~ Gerald Durrell

Yes, I was determined to have a happy Christmas' 'Did you?' 'I think so. I don't remember it much, and that's always a good sign, isn't it? ~ Evelyn Waugh

Bear? What am I?" I sigh. "My brother." He cocks an eyebrow. "My big brother." "Damn right. And what do my parents have in abundance?" "A tolerance for someone like you?" He glares at me. I sigh again. "Disposable income." "And who just made a big speech about family and love and other gay things?" Goddammit. "Me. ~ T.J. Klune

My family, they're story tellers. My mom is Irish, and my dad is Italian. In my family, we weren't allowed to watch TV while we ate - we had to sit around the table and tell stories about our day. ~ Meg Cabot

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family. ~ George Santayana

When I was born, my dad and my mom gave me names, but in Africa, when your child is born, especially close family members can suggest names they want to add on. Maybe your grandmom and your grandpop have something to add to the name of the child. ~ Dikembe Mutombo

I come from a very musical family. My dad taught me to play guitar. I play violin and drums as well. Violin, I started in elementary school. Drums actually came when I was in a program called 'Rock Star,' which was really awesome. We were doing a song by the Ramones, so I thought, 'Why not play the drums?' ~ Amandla Stenberg

I want to know all of your family - your aunt and her husband and her son and also your uncle the pastor. I anticipate your uncle the pastor! He will try to convert me, maybe?"
"Are you kidding? Uncle Theron couldn't convert a kitten."
"Theron," Pyotr repeated. He made it sound like "Seron." "You are doing this to torture me?"
"Doing what?"
"So many th names!"
"Oh," Kate said. "Yes, and my mother's name was Thea."
He groaned. "What is the surname of these people?" he asked.
After the briefest pause, she said, "Thwaite."
"My God!" He clapped a hand to his forehead.
She laughed. "I'm pulling your leg," she told him. He lowered his hand and looked at her. "I was just kidding," she clarified. "Really their surname is Dell."
"Ah," he said. "You were joking. You made a joke. You were teasing me!" And he started capering around the cart. "Oh, Kate; oh, my comical Kate; oh, Katya mine…"
"Stop it!" she said. People were staring at them. "Quit that and tell me which syrup you want."
He stopped capering and selected a bottle, seemingly at random, and dropped it into the cart. ~ Anne Tyler

The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

My family and I live in a wing of a Georgian mansion in East Sussex, which was built in the 1780s and fell into disrepair. It was rescued in the Seventies and carved into six terrace houses. ~ Simon Toyne

The Ting Tings have been a huge hit in my family. I have two young daughters, and both of them love that record, so I pretty much have to listen to that ten times a day. ~ Adam Schlesinger

We've pretended too much in our family, Luke, and hidden far too much. I think we're all going to pay a high price for our inability to face the truth. ~ Pat Conroy

My mom's a Christian and she loves me; that whole side of my family is Christian and I have no problem with it. ~ Jake Shears

I find that balancing my life with my work with the kids at St. Jude, working on books, working on my career as an actor and taking time out for my husband and family help to cushion a lot of the blows. ~ Marlo Thomas

We used to be so proud that our country offered far more economic opportunities than the feudal system in Great Britain, with its royal family, princesses and dukes. But social mobility in the UK is higher than in the US. Our social rift is as big as it was in the 1920s. ~ Robert Reich

Personal freedom and interpersonal relationships in marriage are positive aspects of growth in marriage. At the same time they can pose a serious danger in family harmony and degradation of some of the fundamental values if carried too far. ~ Anonymous

Perhaps fate has a way of turning things around and making something good out of the action of someone who failed humanity without meaning to. ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

You know how everything seems so normal when you're growing up," she asked plaintively, "and then comes this moment when you realize your whole family is nuts? ~ Karen Joy Fowler

Terror thrives on the bottomless pit of imagination, and the imagination comes to life with the passage of time. Time is its vintner, the family its furtile field. ~ Mark Nykanen

When Seymour and I were five and three, Les and Bessie played on the same bill for a couple of weeks with Joe Jackson -- the redoubtable Joe Jackson of the nickel-plated trick bicycle that shone like something better than platinum to the very last row of the theater. A good many years later, not long after the outbreak of the Second World War, when Seymour and I had just recently moved into a small New York apartment of our own, our father -- Les, as he'll be called hereafter -- dropped in on us one evening on his way home from a pinochle game. He quite apparently had held very bad cards all afternoon. He came in, at any rate, rigidly predisposed to keep his overcoat on. He sat. He scowled at the furnishings. He turned my hand over to check for cigarette-tar stains on my fingers, then asked Seymour how many cigarettes he smoked a day. He thought he found a fly in his highball. At length, when the conversation -- in my view, at least -- was going straight to hell, he got up abruptly and went over to look at a photograph of himself and Bessie that had been newly tacked up on the wall. He glowered at it for a full minute, or more, then turned around, with a brusqueness no one in the family would have found unusual, and asked Seymour if he remembered the time Joe Jackson had given him, Seymour, a ride on the handle bars of his bicycle, all over the stage, around and around. Seymour, sitting in an old corduroy armchair across the room, a cigarette going, wearing a blue shirt, gray ~ J.D. Salinger

He sits aloof from the rest of the family, an inaccessible island with a rocky shoreline. You cannot make landfall on your own. You must first take my mother on board as the pilot to guide you through the treacherous channel. And her MO depends on the nature of the mission.

Sometimes when we had infuriated him, she was like one of those little grooming fish swimming right up to the great white shark in an apparently suicidal approach an nibbling at the menacing snout. And we would hold our breath, waiting for her to be gobbled up in a flash of fish fangs, but the great white wld exhibit some instinctive override, some primal understanding of emotional symbiosis, and would tolerate her proximity. And so the pattern had been established over decades. ~ Peter Godwin

As I was escorted outside by the officers, my friends looked back at me with blank expressions. I don't think they knew what to say to me. I had lied to them about my home life. They had always been there for me and probably would have understood if I had told them the truth from the start, but it was too late. All the lies I had told them about having a perfect family had been shattered by that one incident. ~ Jen Naumann

The best school of discipline is home. Family life is God's own method of training the young, and homes are very much as women make them. ~ Samuel Smiles

There is a certain depth of illness that is piercing in it's isolation: the only rule of existence is uncertainty, and the only movement is the passage of time. One cannot bear to live through another loss of function, and sometimes friends and family cannot bear to watch. An unspoken, unbridgeable divide may widen. Even if you are still who you were, you cannot actually fully be who you are. ~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey

She who can paint a masterpiece or write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind. But she who would willingly and anxiously rear successfully a family of beautiful healthy sons and daughters whose lives reflect the teachings of the gospel, deserves the highest honors that man can give, and the choicest blessings of God. In fact, in her high duty and service to humanity, endowing with mortality eternal spirits, she is a co-partner with the Great Creator Himself. ~ David O. McKay

This, child, is our worship. To live and survive and play to God from the depths of our souls. This is the call that binds us. When we worship in the good times, it brings God joy. But worship in the midst of agony?" Her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth and she shook her head. It was an action befitting the wisdom of the words she'd chosen. "That is authentic adoration of our Creator. An orchestra will worship together, as one body. As one song. A family must do no less. ~ Kristy Cambron

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes. ~ Jack Kornfield

You mean somethin' to me in a way, for a man, he wants the world to know it. I'm proud you're on my arm and in my bed and I want to share that with my family. Don't keep takin' that away from me. ~ Kristen Ashley

The problem with people today, is, they have religions but they have no spirituality. They go to church but they cannot even manage the condition of their own souls. They take pride to state the name of their religions and broadcast these things on facebook and everywhere, thinking that the nature of their religion represents the nature of their spirit. It's just the same as how they present their cars, houses, and degrees to the world - to stand as a representation of what they are. That's not spirituality; that's still materialism. Yes, perhaps your car, house and degree represents what you've achieved (or what your status in society is); but your religion does not represent what your spirit is like. You cannot go to a certain church or belong to a certain group of people and have that be a replica of your spirit. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I wanted to give you something that would last forever. Something that would surpass the world, that would still be alive and bright even after you passed away. Something beautiful. For your eyes and smile only. But I never found it. All I could give you is words. Words which were as fleeting as the heartbeats that shook my soul whenever you looked my way. ~ F.K. Preston

I wanted to say, "Hey, Pope Francis," but I cried like a baby. I was reduced to a very humble set of feelings, because it was not about what was said: There's a presence. That was a blessing for myself and my family and everyone there to be a part of that. ~ Joseph Fiennes

As a layperson, I consider myself fairly well-educated in terms of politics. My family always has been really interested in politics, and various members of my family have a hand in politics in upstate New York. ~ Reid Scott

___It was night. There was a drizzle, so Emily's black Japanese umbrella was up. The two were close beneath it, walking in long strides, beautiful, sinister-looking lovers, narrow squared shoulders in dark coats. A tall pickup truck sped by and a was a phlem struck the edge of the pavement near where they were walking. Emily raised a finger, cocked her thumb, and said, "Bang."
___"Got the left rear tire." said Anthony.
___"The truck rolled," she added, "and burst into flames."
___"He's still alive," said Anthony, "climbing out of the broken rear window, his hair and clothes ablaze, screaming for help."
___"Punky boys come and piss on him," said Emily.
___The discussion was very quiet, very earnest.
___"They put out the fire from his burning body," said Anthony, "but he dies later in the burn ward."
___"His family is relieved and happy," said Emily with stunning finality.
___Twenty-four hours later the spitting driver dies on a suburban highway near his home, his pickup spinning out of control on black ice, the vehicle exploding into flame. Anthony and Emily never know about it, never guess a connection to their curse, having never thought of him a second time. ~ Jessica Amanda Salmonson

I know Spanish pretty well. I'm half-Puerto Rican - my mom is from Puerto Rico - so I have a lot of family there, and my mom's first language is Spanish. But growing up in the States, and with my dad being from the States, I'm kind of just like this white kid. ~ David Lambert

Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on. The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family. ~ Tony Robbins

It can only benefit the city to have endless waves of exceptionally capable, even brilliant, folk unfettered by class and family connections. They change the world once a generation. That is certainly worth something. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Left-wing ideas are predicated on Marx's materialist understanding. Whether or not an individual who espouses Left-wing ideas considers himself a Marxist - and few have since the fall of the Soviet Union - Left-wing ideas are predicated on Marx's materialist understanding of life. In popular jargon, 'materialism' means an excessive love of material things. But philosophically, 'materialism' means that only matter is real; there is no reality beyond the material world. ~ Dennis Prager

The traveling salesmen fed me pills that made the lining of my veins feel scraped out, my jaw ached ... I knew every raindrop by its name, I sensed everything before it happened. Like I knew a certain oldsmobile would stop even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside, I knew we'd have an accident in the rain. I didn't care. They said they'd take me all the way. ~ Denis Johnson

Young women you will be the ones who will provide the example of virtuous womanhood and motherhood. You will continue to be virtuous lovely praiseworthy and of good report. You will also be the ones to provide an example of family life in a time when families are under attack, being redefined and disintegrating. You will understand your roles and your responsibilities and thus will see no need to lobby for rights. ~ Elaine S. Dalton

The slave labors, but with no cheer-it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens' trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

The dog becomes the repository of those model human properties that we have cynically ceased to find among humans. Where today can we find the full panoply of William Bennett's Book of Virtues-from Courage and Responsibility to Loyalty and Family Values-but in Lassie and Beethoven and Millie and Checkers and Spot? ~ Marjorie Garber

It is impossible to forget the sense of dignity which marks the hour when one becomes a wage-earner ... I felt that I had suddenly acquired value to myself, to my family, and to the world. ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

I imagine people might look at me and think 'Oh, she has been single-mindedly working on her career all these years and those family issues have fallen by the wayside', but that is absolutely not the case. ~ Savannah Guthrie