Family pride

“ The mother's heart yearns fondly as she, too, watches with more intense anxiety, lest a shadow should fall, or a rude wind should blow, upon her opening flower. Thus, while the sons in a family may, perhaps, call forth more of the pride and the ambition of their parents, the daughters claim almost all the tenderness, and more than an equal portion of watchfulness and care. ”

“ In the case of pride of birth, it is well that the child should be brought face to face and heart to heart with the 'great humility' of our Pattern. But that being done, this sense of family distinction is a wonderful lever to raise the little world of the child's nature. Noblesse oblige. He must needs add honour and not dishonour to a distinguished family. ”

“ What is called family pride is often founded upon an illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself, as it were, in his great-grandchildren. ”

“ The strain of the parents to provide education and preparation for success in life on the part of their children, and the happiness won by them from their children's success are as important as the more familiar form of family pride which is felt by children in a view back upon their ancestry. ”

“ So let the father and mother treat each other and their children, and you will, my readers, obtain a noble reward in the increasing happiness and comfort of your family circles—in the manliness which will belong to the sons—in the mental and moral graces which will adorn the daughters. The family will thus become the school of virtue and the bulwark of society—the reciprocal influence of brothers and sisters thus trained will be of untold power on each other's character. ”

“ We may look about us and see what it is and can do for men and women. Few, perhaps, are standing on the heights of their own being when they build the family altar. Yet in the love and sacrifice of plain and unknown fathers who cheerfully toil for their loved ones, in the patient endurance of simple-hearted mothers who give so much of their lives in ready service to husband and family, in the frolic-joy and eager activity of ordinary children whose only dower is the free and happy service of their parents, is the fruit and the promise of the human family. ”

“ In the common course of human affairs families are separated, and parents removed by death; but so long as brothers and sisters live, they might, if bound by true affection, remain to be a blessing and a help to each other; and should their parents be spared to them beyond the usual period of family union, what richer harvest could they reap, what more entire fulfilment of their hopes, what reward more precious for "all their sorrows, all their cares," than to see their children happy in them, and in each other? ”

“ It is hardly conceivable that in any society, however primitive, there were not some real families—even when custom ran otherwise—in which marriage meant love and kindness and the mutual sharing of responsibilities. And these families, today as always, are the creators and preservers of the spiritual gains of the human race. It has been beautifully said of the family in such a form, that "it is greater than love itself, for it includes, ennobles, makes permanent, all that is best in love. ”

“ A FAMILY on the throne is an interesting idea also. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. ”

“ Are not marriage and death twined hand in hand, to render that home desolate which once resounded with the laugh of many gleesome hearts, with the glad tones of youthful revelling and joy? True, in those halls they often meet again, and the hearts of the parents are not lone, for the family of each child is a source of inexpressible interest to them ”

“ It destroys the fireside, makes virtue an outcast, takes from human speech its sweetest words, and leaves the heart a den, where crawl and hiss the slimy serpents of most loathsome lust. Civilization rests upon the family. The good family is the unit of good government. The virtues grow about the holy hearth of home—they cluster, bloom, and shed their perfume round the fireside where the one man loves the one woman. Lover—husband—wife—mother—father—child—home!—? without these sacred words, the world is but a lair, and men and women merely beasts. ”

“ and now, at the moment when the wishes of both sisters would be accomplished in their marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the family! ”

“ It is impossible to tell you all the little exquisite instances of kindness and attention we have received from this excellent family. The respect, affection, and admiration with which, à propos to everything great and small, they remember my father and mother, is most touching and gratifying. ”

“ All foolish quarrels will be forgotten, and the spirit of love and good will pervade all their actions, as the children resolve to aid their kind parents in family cares, the brother and sister mutually assisting each other, and with cheerful, bright faces make a perpetual sunshine at home. ”

“ She also says that "in all cases where there is an affinity of souls and the sympathy of friendship, love is what it always was and always will be, the coöperation of the father with the mother in the education of the children as well as the coöperation of the mother with the father in all great social works." She thus links her ideal of true freedom for the choices of love with social obligations and hence again with what is best in inherited family life. ”

“ I need not say that the good, peaceable man is happy in his family. How children love a kind parent! How they enjoy home when he is there, with his happy laugh and innocent jest! His wife is proud of that husband, and blesses God for such a father for her little ones. ”

“ He should say, I will support them who have supported me, I will perform their duties, I will guard their possessions, I will make myself worthy to be their heir, and when they are gone I will pay honour to their memory. And in five ways the parents show their affection for their son. They keep him from vice, they train him in virtue, they provide him with a good education, they unite him to a suitable wife, and in due time make over to him the family heritage. ”

“ Barring all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! ”

“ Now and then we find one who, under such teaching and benevolent guidance, has fully repaid all the thought and care which has been bestowed upon her, and who, by her fidelity and unwearied energy, has won the love and grateful appreciation of all, and is looked upon as the good angel of the family. ”

“ In this little volume we have a picture, too, of what the world would call a happy family, in which a naturally strong, honest woman is shrivelled into a mere echo of her husband, and the popular sentiment of the class to which she belongs. ”

“ The father then is to set the example of self-sacrificing love and devotion; and the mother, of Christian obedience when it is required. Every boy is to be trained for his future domestic position by labor and sacrifices for his mother and sisters. It is the brother who is to do the hardest and most disagreeable work, to face the storms and perform the most laborious drudgeries. In the family circle, too, he is to give his mother and sister precedence in all the conveniences and comforts of home life. ”

“ And my great wish is, that young people who read this record of our lives and adventures should learn from it how admirably suited is the peaceful, industrious, and pious life of a cheerful, united family, to the formation of strong, pure, and manly character.
None take a better place in the great national family, none are happier or more beloved than those who go forth from such homes to fulfill new duties, and to gather fresh interests around them. ”

“ Of all the blessings that Americans enjoy, our families are perhaps the most precious. It is within the family that we first gain an understanding of who we are and learn to respect the individuality of others. ”

“ But a family that ruins itself to save the honor of a name, a mother who lets her children go one by one to do their duty, a young man who prefers the charm of a pure marriage to the temptations of a sensual love—what interest have such people for us? ”

“ Finally, pliancy of character; not to be hard to deal with, touchy, sour, proud; not to be obstinately rooted in one's ideas, not to grow impatient about mere nothings, but to have a large mind and a generous heart. The home of a family whose members possess these qualities is a paradise on earth. ”

“ The Moral Elite in the Modern Family.—Above all, we have to-day a growing number who live in the spirit of a true marriage and a noble cradle of infancy and show by actual example what the family is meant to be. These prophesy a marriage that 45demands each of the other that a perfect life shall perfect their love. These give a new pattern and type of parenthood, woven of the tears and joy, the aspiration and the service of those who call children from the storehouse of universal life, not in response to careless passion but in the solemn joy of creative purpose. ”

“ Their tempers, unruffled by the endless jealousies and competitions incident to our mode of life, were singularly placid, and that love of offspring, where children were truly an unmixed blessing, was a common sentiment which united all the branches of the family, and predominated over every other. ”

“ Yet how many go on from day to day with an uncomplaining and heroic cheerfulness which does not strike the onlooker, simply because it is so common, like the toothache, that it attracts but little sympathy or attention.
In one day such a mother may win moral victories beside which the brilliant engagements of the battlefield would pale. It is not one that she has to consider and contend with, but many; the diversity of disposition in one family is truly amazing, and affords a most interesting psychological study. ”

“ Here go a family group, the children with new hats and ruffles, grandfather a little behind, with the hand of an own pet boy or a girl in his; observe the joy of their faces; what complacent happiness on the ruddy countenance of the healthy old man. The parents are also happy, but betray the unconscious anxiety of those who love their children, and are sensible of the serious duties inseparable from their condition; the four little ones know not the cares of affection, and, consequently, their looks are full of delight, eagerness, and curiosity. ”

“ She delighted and blessed her own family by her uniformly correct and Though not formed to mingle and shine in the noisy haunts of dissipation, she was eminently fitted to increase the store of domestic happiness, to bring pleasure and tranquillity to the fireside, and to gladden the fond heart of a parent. ”

“ It is a part of the mother's duly, then, and one to which especial attention should be paid, to see that a spirit of exclusiveness does not find place among her children; and this can only be done effectually by inspiring them with comprehensive, generous, and affectionate feelings toward each other, so that no single member of the family shall esteem any happiness as complete, in which the others do not partake. ”

“ But this family affection, this domestic solution of the problem of happy self-sacrifice, is intended to encourage and show us the way to a wider extension of our love, and thereby of our use and happiness. ”

“ With what pleasure do we look upon a family, through the whole of which reign mutual love and esteem, where the parents and children are companions for one another, without any other difference than what is made by respectful affection on the one side, and kind indulgence on the other; where freedom and fondness, mutual raillery and mutual kindness, show that no opposition of interest divides the brothers, nor any rivalship of favour sets the sisters at variance, and where every thing presents us with the idea of peace, cheerfulness, harmony, and contentment? ”

“ You have now happy prospects opening to you: a family, already noble, prepared to receive you with open arms and joyful heart; and who, by their love to you, will teach another family (who know not what an excellence they have confederated to persecute) how to value you. Your prudence, your piety, will crown all. You will reclaim a wretch that, for an hundred sakes more than for his own, one would wish to be reclaimed. ”

“ The further, therefore, from this, my friends, that you can remove your own family, the greater will be your own happiness and comfort, and you must remember that the responsibility of this rests upon each one of you individually. Let your brother or sister never receive an unkind, unbrotherly or unsisterly act, never perceive an unaffectionate look, nor experience an uncourteous neglect, and you will do very much towards making your family the abode of as perfect peace as can be enjoyed upon earth, and cause it to present the loveliest and most attractive scene this side of heaven. ”

“ We seem to see our own fathers and mothers, and their fathers and mothers, linked to ourselves, and through us to our children and our children's children, until all the generations [Pg 198] of the world—past, present, and future—become as one family in a great bond of fellowship, even as all the joy and sorrow of humanity find one common home in the heart of the Lord Christ who loves us. ”

“ Only through the Family can come the deepest joys of life and can the most intimate duties be transmuted into joys. As son, as husband, as father, as brother, he fulfilled the ideals of each of those relations, and, so strong was his family affection, that, while still a comparatively young man, he drew to him as a patriarch might, not only his own children, but his kindred in many degrees. ”