"The family is one of nature's masterpieces."
-George Santayana

"Science has established two facts
meaningful for human welfare:
first, the foundation
of the structure of human personality
is laid down in early childhood;
second, the chief engineer in charge
of this construction is the family."
-Meyer Francis Nimkoff

There is one practice which any family can
maintain and that is the practice of a time of
worship at each family meal. Nearly all families
are together for at least one meal a day and,
in any case, should sacrifice much else to make
this possible.The table is really the family altar!
Here those of all ages come together
and help to sustain both their physical
and their spiritual existence.
If a sacrament is
"an actual conveyance of spiritual
meaning and power by a material process,"
then a family meal can be a sacrament.
It entwines the material
and the spiritual in a remarkable way."
-Elton Trueblood

"The family is the nucleus of civilization."
-William J. Durant

"Call it a clan, call it a network,
call it a tribe, call it a family:
Whatever you call it,
whoever you are... you need one."
-Jane Howard

"What families have in common the world around
is that they are the place where people learn
who they are and how to be that way."
-Jean Illsley Clarke

"Family life is full of major and minor crises..
the ups and downs of health, success and failure
in career, marriage, and divorce..
and all kinds of characters.
It is tied to places and events and histories.
With all of these felt details,
life etches itself into memory and personality.
It's difficult to imagine
anything more nourishing to the soul."
-Thomas Moore