Great Grandparents Quotes

All of us are displaced. Few people live where their great-grandparents lived or speak the language their great-grandparents spoke.

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.

I learned a history not then written in books but one passed from generation to generation on the steps of moonlit porches and beside dying fires in one-room houses, a history of great-grandparents and of slavery and of the days following slavery; of those who lived still not free, yet who would not let their spirits be enslaved.

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.

I don't have many actors in my family, but I do have a Great Uncle that is a film-maker in Philadelphia, and my great-great-grandparents were Flamenco dancers in the 30's in New York, they were Spanish dancers.

Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.

I like to do nice things for my grandchildren - like buy them those toys I've always wanted to play with.

Young people need something stable to hang on to - a culture connection, a sense of their own past, a hope for their own future. Most of all, they need what grandparents can give them.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash.

How come you don't work fourteen hours a day? Your great-great-grandparents did. How come you only work the eight-hour day? Four guys got hanged fighting for the eight-hour day for you.

Kenya is rapidly developing its industry and manufacturing, and its cultural identity as a new country. We had a humongous history pre-British, and when we were colonized and violently reshuffled, we had to decide who we were again. We couldn't rest on the stories and the cultures of our great-grandparents.

From the windows of my office in Boston ... I can see the Golden Stairs from Boston Harbor where all eight of my great-grandparents set foot on this great land for the first time. That immigrant spirit of limitless possibility animates America even today.

[On James Gould Cozzens' By Love Possessed:] It is a vast enterprise encompassing all sorts of love, except, naturally, those branches which extend to Jews, Negroes, and people who have lost track of their great-grandparents.

Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild.

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.

The idea that no one is perfect is a view most commonly held by people with no grandchildren.

To a small child, the perfect granddad is unafraid of big dogs and fierce storms but absolutely terrified of the word "boo."

Grandchildren don't stay young forever, which is good because Pop-pops have only so many horsey rides in them.

Grandparents are there to help the child get into mischief they haven't thought of yet.

"You're more trouble than the children are" is the greatest compliment a grandparent can receive.

Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me.

We should all have one person who knows how to bless us despite the evidence, Grandmother was that person to me.

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

What is it about grandparents that is so lovely? I'd like to say that grandparents are God's gifts to children.

Posterity is the patriotic name for grandchildren.

A grandma's name is little less in love than is the doting title of a mother.

A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween.

Few things are more delightful than grandchildren fighting over your lap.

A mother becomes a true grandmother the day she stops noticing the terrible things her children do because she is so enchanted with the wonderful things her grandchildren do.

Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation.

When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.

An hour with your grandchildren can make you feel young again. Anything longer than that, and you start to age quickly.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

If I had known how wonderful it would be to have grandchildren, I'd have had them first.

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.

Becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you're just a mother. The next you are all-wise and prehistoric.

My grandchild has taught me what true love means. It means watching Scooby-Doo cartoons while the basketball game is on another channel.

What a bargain grandchildren are! I give them my loose change, and they give me a million dollars' worth of pleasure.

It's one of those things that it's everything you think it is, but then again you have to - you need time to really process the entire situation. You stand out on that platform afterwards and you're looking at the ballpark and the fans and the W flags everywhere, and truthfully I do think about everybody, I think about the fans and their parents and their grandparents and great-grandparents and everything that's been going on here for a while. So you think that - I think about my coaching staff.

A grandparent is old on the outside but young on the inside. If your baby is "beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses, sleeps on schedule and burps on demand, an angel all the time," you're the grandma.

We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did.

Uncles and aunts, and cousins, are all very well, and fathers and mothers are not to be despised; but a grandmother, at holiday time, is worth them all.

I loved their home. Everything smelled older, worn but safe; the food aroma had baked itself into the furniture.

We rarely know who our ancestors were. Who can even remember the names of their great-grandparents? They have vanished into the dim and distant past

I was raised in an Irish-American home in Detroit where assimilation was the uppermost priority. The price of assimilation and respectability was amnesia. Although my great-grandparents were victims of the Great Hunger of the 1840's, even though I was named Thomas Emmet Hayden IV after the radical Irish nationalist exile Thomas Emmet, my inheritance was to be disinherited. My parents knew nothing of this past, or nothing worth passing on.

If becoming a grandmother was only a matter of choice, I should advise every one of you straight away to become one. There is no fun for old people like it!

With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.

There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.

I've been accused of being old before my time more than once. It's true that I've always felt an affinity for, and been comfortable around, older people. I attribute this to a childhood spent around my grandparents - and even a great-grandparent or two. I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.

What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance. They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humor, comfort, lessons in life. And, most importantly, cookies.