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African
“If you know his father and grandfather, don’t worry about his son.”
“The motherless child will suckle the grandmother.”
Chinese
“The old are the precious gem in the center of the household.”
“To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.”
German
“Even the devil’s grandmother was a nice girl when she was young.”
Indian
“The baby is not yet born, and yet you say that his nose is like his grandfather’s.”
Irish
“You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.”
Italian
“If nothing is going well, call your grandmother.”
Jewish
“One of life’s greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn’t good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.”
“When you have a grandchild, you have two children.”
Sioux
“A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass.”
Spanish
“Children brought up by their grandparents are generally spoiled.”
“Those who have no grandparents lose very much.”
Traditional
“Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”
“A good man will have wealth to leave his grandchildren.”
“Children’s children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children.”
Welsh
“Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild.”
Aeschylus
“Learning is ever young, even in old age.”
Louisa May Alcott
“A house needs a grandma in it.”
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
“To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent — that is to triumph over old age.”
Joyce Allston
“Grandparents, like heroes, are as necessary to a child’s growth as vitamins.”
Irina Baronove-Tennant
“It’s so important to give your children and grandchildren inspiration … Teach them to notice, to pay attention, to appreciate, and to be inquisitive. Don’t just look, try to see.”
Dave Barry
“The best babysitters, of course, are the baby’s grandparents. You feel completely comfortable entrusting your baby to them for long periods, which is why most grandparents flee to Florida.”
Marjory Barslow-Greenbie
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature / But beautiful old people are works of art.”
Paulette Bates Alden
“Her grandmother, as she gets older, is not fading but rather becoming more concentrated.”
Hilaire Belloc
“Dear Grandmamma, with what we give / We humbly pray that you may live / For many, many happy years: / Although you bore us all to tears.”
Teresa Bloomingdale
“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.”
Erma Bombeck
“A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.”
Hal Boyle
“Does Grandpa love to baby-sit his grandchildren? Are you kidding? By day he is too busy taking hormone shots at the doctor’s or chip shots on the golf course. At night he and Grandma are too busy doing the cha-cha.”
Anthony Brandt
“Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.”
Thomas Berry Brazelton
“Grandparents who want to be truly helpful will do well to keep their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves until these are requested.”
Pam Brown
“Becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you’re just a mother. The next you are all-wise and prehistoric.”
Pearl S. Buck
“Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.”
Gail Lumet Buckley
“Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future.”
Rachel Carson
“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”
Jimmy Carter
“Because (grandparents) are usually free to love and guide and befriend the young without having to take daily responsibility for them, they can often reach out past pride and fear of failure and close the space between generations.”
Lord Chesterfield
“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.”
Eth Clifford
“My grandfather was a giant of a man … When he walked, the earth shook. When he laughed, the birds fell out of the trees. His hair caught fire from the sun. His eyes were patches of sky.”
Claudette Colbert
“Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same energy — the mother.”
G. Norman Collie
“Grandchildren don’t make a man feel old; it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother.”
Billy Crystal
“I’m going to be your grandpa! / I have the biggest smile. / I’ve been waiting to meet you for such a long, long while.”
Ellen DeGeneres
“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the hell she is.”
Marcy DeMaree
“Grandma always made you feel she had been waiting to see just you all day and now the day was complete.”
Geoff Dench
“Grandparents should play the same role in the family as an elder statesman can in the government of a country. They have the experience and knowledge that comes from surviving a great many years of life’s battles and the wisdom, hopefully, to recognise how their grandchildren can benefit from this.”
Mary Mapes Dodge
“Grandma told me all about it, / Told me so I couldn’t doubt it, / How she danced, my grandma danced; long ago….”
John Donne
“No spring, nor summer hath such grace. As I have seen in one autumnal face.”
Edward H. Dreschnack
“Just about the time a woman thinks her work is done, she becomes a grandmother.”
Suzette Haden Elgin
“A Grandmother is a safe haven.”
Ralph Ellison
“I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
Vaughn J. Featherstone
“What a wonderful contribution our grandmothers and grandfathers can make if they will share some of the rich experiences and their testimonies with their children and grandchildren.”
Fanny Fern
“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.”
Allan Frome
“Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from the responsibilities so that we can be friends.”
Betty Ford
“Holding these babies in my arms makes me realize the miracle my husband and I began.”
Jamie Foxx
“My Grandmother would say, ‘Make sure you look good. Make sure you speak well. Make sure you remain that Southern gentleman that I’ve taught you to be.'”
Robert Fulghum
“I love this child. Red-haired — patient and gentle like her mother — fey and funny like her father. When she giggles I can hear him when he and I were young. I am part of this child. It may be only because we share genes and that therefore smell familiar to each other…. It may be that a part of me lives in her in some important way…. But for now, it’s jelly beans and ‘Old MacDonald’ that unite us.”
Ruth Goode
“Our grandchildren accept us for ourselves, without rebuke or effort to change us, as no one in our entire lives has ever done, not our parents, siblings, spouses, friends — and hardly ever our own grown children.”
Rudolph Giuliani
“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.”
Alex Haley
“Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.”
Joy Hargrove
“One of the most powerful handclasps is that of a new grandbaby around the finger of a grandfather.”
Linda Henley
“If God had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn’t have given us grandmothers.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Blood is a destiny. One’s genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry.”
Victor Hugo
“If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.”
“There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.”
Samuel Johnson
“Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.”
Joseph Joubert
“Life is a country that the old have seen, and lived in. Those who have to travel through it can only learn the way from them.”
Gottfried Keller
“Soup simmering, music of idle gossip, yammering kids, domestic chaos — long adjusted to this rolling scene, you show them your lofty calm.”
Jean Kerr
“When the grandmothers of today hear the word ‘Chippendales,’ they don’t necessarily think of chairs.”
Jay Kesler
“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….”
Helen Ketchum
“Grandmothers are voices of the past and role models of the present. Grandmothers open the doors to the future.”
Florence King
“Let’s bring back grandmothers! A real family consists of three generations. It’s time Americans stopped worrying about interference and being a burden on the children and regrouped under one roof.”
Arthur Kornhaber, M.D.
“The very fact that you don’t look or act or feel like the grandparents of even a generation ago does not mean that you are less, but that you are more — in effect, an evolved form of grandparents, primed to do a bigger and more challenging job than any group before you.”
“If grandmas hadn’t existed, kids would have inevitably invented them.”
Mike Krzyzewski
“It’s funny what happens when you become a grandparent. You start to act all goofy and do things you never thought you’d do. It’s terrific.”
Maggie Kuh
“We must act as elders of the tribe, looking out for the interests of the future and preserving the precious compact between the generations.”
Suzanne La Follette
“No one … who has not known that inestimable privilege can possibly reaslise what good fortune it is to grow up in a home where there are grandparents.”
Janet Lanese
“God gave us loving grandchildren as a reward for all our random acts of kindness.”
“Whether she is a homemaker or career woman, all a grandmother wants is her family’s love and respect as a productive individual who has much to contribute.”
“It’s impossible for a grandmother to understand that few people, and maybe none, will find her grandchild as endearing as she does.”
“Being a grandmother is our last chance to act like a kid without being accused of being in our second childhood.”
Doug Larson
“Few things are more delightful than grandchildren fighting over your lap.”
“There’s nothing like having a grandchild to restore faith to heredity.”
“The idea that no one is perfect is a view most commonly held by people with no grandchildren.”
Bill Laurin
“If I would have known that grandchildren were going to be so much fun I would have had them first.”
Camara Laye
“They pampered me, especially my grandmother … I loved her with all my heart.”
Mel Lazarus
“The secret of life is to skip having children and go directly to grandchildren.”
Madeline L’Engle
“She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.”
Eda J. LeShan
“Our attitudes toward retirement, marriage, recreation, even our feelings about death and dying may make much more of an impression than we realize.”
Sam Levenson
“The reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy.”
“The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent.”
Judith Levy
“When a child is born, so are grandmothers.”
Abraham Lincoln
“I don’t know who my grandfather was
I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“So many things we love are you!”
Paul Linden
“Something magical happens when parents turns into grandparents. Their attitude changes from “money-doesn’t-grow-on-trees” to spending it like it does.”
Art Linkletter
“Posterity is the patriotic name for grandchildren.”
Joyce K. Allen Logan
“When it seems the world can’t understand, your grandmother’s there to hold your hand.”
Sarah Long
“My grandfather was a wonderful role model. Through him I got to know the gentle side of men.”
Sophia Loren
“There is a fountain of youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age.”
Lucretius
“In a brief space the generations of beings are changed, and, like runners, pass on the torches of life.”
Horace Mann
“It would be more honourable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more.”
Don Marquis
“In order not to influence a child, one must be careful not to be that child’s parent or grandparent.”
Joan McIntosh
“They say genes skip generations. Maybe that’s why grandparents find their grandchildren so likeable.”
Margaret Mead
“Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.”
“The closest friends I made all through life have been people who also grew up close to a loved and loving grandmother or grandfather.”
Christopher Morley
“It is as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness of their grace.”
“By the time the youngest children have learned to keep the house tidy, the oldest grandchildren are on hand to tear it to pieces.”
Charles and Ann Morse
“A child needs a grandparent, anybody’s grandparent, to grow a little more securely into an unfamiliar world.”
“The history of our grandparents is remembered not with rose petals but in the laughter and tears of their children and their children’s children. It is into us that the lives of grandparents have gone. It is in us that their history becomes a future.”
Grandma Moses
“Even now / I am not old. / I never think of it, and yet / I am a grandmother to eleven grandchildren.”
“My great grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop.”
Lewis Mumford
“Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.”
Ogden Nash
“When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.”
F. W. Nietzsche
“A man’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.”
Donald A. Norberg
“Surely, two of the most satisfying experiences in life must be those of being a grandchild or a grandparent.”
Henry Old Coyote
“The feeling of grandparents for their grandchildren can be expressed this way: “Our children are dear to us; but when we have grandchildren, they seem to be more dear than our children were.”
William Osler
“Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.”
Bryna Nelson Paston
“Truth be told, being a grandma is as close we ever get to perfection. The ultimate warm sticky bun with plump raisins and nuts. Clouds nine, ten, and eleven.”
John Pearson
“The Queen Mother, with a lifetime’s popularity, seemed incapable of a bad performance as national grandmother — warm, smiling, human, understanding, she embodied everything the public could want of its grandmother.”
Gene Perret
“What a bargain grandchildren are! I give them my loose change, and they give me a million dollars’ worth of pleasure.”
“I always give my grandkids a couple of quarters when they go home. It’s a bargain.”
“Grandchildren don’t stay young forever, which is good because Pop-pops have only so many horsey rides in them.”
“My grandkids believe I’m the oldest thing in the world. And after two or three hours with them, I believe it, too.”
“Do you know why grandchildren are always so full of energy? They suck it out of their grandparents.”
“An hour with your grandchildren can make you feel young again. Anything longer than that, and you start to age quickly.”
“I don’t intentionally spoil my grandkids. It’s just that correcting them often takes more energy than I have left.”
“I wish I had the energy that my grandchildren have — if only for self-defense.”
“On the seventh day God rested. His grandchildren must have been out of town.”
“Grandparents are there to help the child get into mischief they haven’t thought of yet.”
“Two things I dislike about my granddaughter — when she won’t take her afternoon nap, and when she won’t let me take mine.”
“I like to do nice things for my grandchildren — like buy them those toys I’ve always wanted to play with.”
“My grandchild has taught me what true love means. It means watching Scooby-Doo cartoons while the basketball game is on another channel.”
“Grandchildren: the only people who can get more out of you than the IRS.”
“You’re more trouble than the children are” is the greatest compliment a grandparent can receive.”
Tom Potts
“The birth of a grandchild is a wonderful and exciting event! That wonder and excitement continues throughout life.”
Alvin F. Poussaint
“Just as a father feels it is all ending and his children are off to start their own families, a new role begins. In midlife, Dad may experience his second “fatherhood” as a grandparent.”
“Grandfathers do have a special place in the lives of their children’s children. They can delight and play with them and even indulge them in ways that they did not indulge their own children. Grandfather knows that after the fun and games are over with his adorable grandchildren he can return to the quiet of his own home and peacefully reflect on this phenomenon of fatherhood.”
J.B. Priestley
“To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child’s delight added to your own, so that there is now a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness.”
Robert L Rice, M.D.
“A friend of mine was asked how she liked having her first great-grandchild. ‘It was wonderful,’ she replied, ‘until I suddenly realized that I was the mother of a grandfather!'”
Fred Rogers
“The presence of a grandparent confirms that parents were, indeed, little once, too, and that people who are little can grow to be big, can become parents, and one day even have grandchildren of their own. So often we think of grandparents as belonging to the past; but in this important way, grandparents, for young children, belong to the future.”
Andy Rooney
“Elephants and grandchildren never forget.”
Rita Rudner
“Have children while your parents are still young enough to take care of them.
Alison Judson Ryerson
“Even young grandparents seem enormously old to a small child, although the child may politely deny it. One small girl, feeling proud of reaching the monumental age of four, turned to her young-looking grandmother and asked, ‘How come I’m so old if you’re so new?'”
Lexie Saige
“Sometimes our grandmas and grandpas are like grand-angels.”
Seattle, Chief of the Duwamish, Suquamish and allied Indian tribes
“You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mothers. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.”
“A grandma’s name is little less in love than is the doting title of a mother.”
“Good old grandsire … we shall be joyful of thy company.”
Charles W. Shedd
“Some of the world’s best educators are grandparents.”
Will Shriner
“I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather — not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.”
Laura Spiess
“Grandma and Grandpa, tell me a story and snuggle me with your love. When I’m in your arms, the world seems small and we’re blessed by the heavens above.”
Adlai Stevenson
“It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!”
Susan Strasberg
“I loved their home. Everything smelled older, worn but safe; the food aroma had baked itself into the furniture.”
Igor Stravinsky
“It’s one of nature’s way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.”
Margaret Thatcher
“We have become a grandmother.”
Phyllis Theroux
“We should all have one person who knows how to bless us despite the evidence, Grandmother was that person to me.”
Helen Thomson
“Most grandmas have a touch of the scallywag.”
Kitty Tsui
“You are the sun, grandma, you are the sun in my life.”
Liv Ullmann
“Soon I will be an old, white-haired lady, into whose lap someone places a baby, saying, ‘Smile, Grandma!’ — I, who myself so recently was photographed on my grandmother’s lap.”
Gore Vidal
“Never have children, only grandchildren.”
Mary H. Waldrip
“Grandchildren are God’s way of compensating us for growing old.”
Alice Walker
“Our mothers and grandmothers … moving to music not yet written.”
Hannah Whithall Smith
“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!”
Mrs. Margaret Whitlam
“Now that I’ve reached the age where I need my children more than they need me, I really understand how grand it is to be a grandmother.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“It’s not that age brings childhood back again,
Age merely shows what children we remain.”
John Wooden
“Our land is everything to us…. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it — with their lives.”
Lois Wyse
“Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation.”
“If I had known how wonderful it would be to have grandchildren, I’d have had them first.”
“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.”
“Didn’t we, like our grandchildren, begin with a childhood we thought would never end? Now, all of a sudden, I’m older than my parents were when I thought they were old.”
Aby Yahya
“Look, how they scold me for all my loving and tippling, now that the silvery edges shine forth from my brow!”
Henny Youngman
“My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.”
“Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting.”
“Grandmothers are just antique little girls.”
“Grandfathers are just antique little boys.”
“A grandmother is a babysitter who watches the kids instead of the television.”
“There’s no place like home except Grandma’s.”
“A married daughter with children puts you in danger of being catalogued as a first edition.”
“Grandmas never run out of hugs or cookies.”
“Grandmas hold our tiny hands for just a little while, but our hearts forever.”
“A grandfather is someone with silver in his hair and gold in his heart.”
“Grandfathers are for loving and fixing things.”
“It’s such a grand thing to be a mother of a mother — that’s why the world calls her grandmother.”
“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
“Grandmother-grandchild relationships are simple. Grandmas are short on criticism and long on love.”
“The best place to be when you’re sad is Grandpa’s lap.”
“I have a warm feeling after playing with my grandchildren. It’s the liniment working.”
“Grandmother — a wonderful mother with lots of practice.”
“A grandparent is old on the outside but young on the inside.”
“It’s amazing how grandparents seem so young once you become one.”
“A garden of Love grows in a Grandmother’s heart.”
“A grandmother is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher, and a little bit best friend.”
“Grandparents are similar to a piece of string — handy to have around and easily wrapped around the fingers of their grandchildren.”
“A grandmother is a mother who has a second chance.”
“No cowboy was ever faster on the draw than a grandparent pulling a baby picture out of a wallet.”
“My granddaughter came to spend a few weeks with me, and I decided to teach her to sew. After I had gone through a lengthy explanation of how to thread the machine, she stepped back, put her hands on her hips, and said in disbelief, ‘You mean you can do all that, but you can’t play my Game Boy?'”
“My grandson was visiting one day when he asked, ‘Gramma, do you know how you and God are alike?’ I mentally polished my halo while I asked, ‘No, how are we alike?’ ‘You’re both old,’ he replied.”
“Truth be told, there’s nothing better than being a grandparent. All our elders know this and it is evidenced by that twinkle in their eyes. Of course, they know more than they let on — life’s secrets have come to them through time, experience, and patience.”
“Grandparents are a family’s greatest treasure, the founders of a loving legacy, The greatest storytellers, the keepers of traditions that linger on in cherished memory. Grandparents are the family’s strong foundation. Their very special love sets them apart. Through happiness and sorrow, through their special love and caring, grandparents keep a family close at heart.”
“Grandparents are the footsteps to the future generations.”
“Grandparents are a delightful blend of laughter, caring deeds, wonderful stories and Love.”
“Grandparents bring about a side that you probably wish that’s how your parents dealt with you while you were a child. Abundance of indulgence and unwavering love.
“Grandparents make the world … a little softer, a little kinder, a little warmer.
“Unconditional positive regard is rarely given by anyone except a grandparent.”
“A zest for life is one of the most important examples a grandparent can pass on to their grandchildren.”
“Grandchildren give us a second chance to do things better because they bring out the best in us.”
“Although you’ve raised children of your own, now you don’t have to worry about all the responsibilities that come with parenting. You’ve earned the right to enjoy being a grandparent.”
“Blessed be the ties that bind generations.”
“A Grandmother is a special person who causes a joyful happening in the heart of a child.”
“Grandma’s kitchen … kids eat free.”
“Grandmas never run out of hugs or cookies.”
“I’m the twinkle in my Grandpa’s eye….”
“The handwriting on the wall means the grandchildren found the crayons.”
“Grandpas always have time for you when everyone else is too busy.”
“Grandpas have the patience and time to teach you how to sail a model boat or take you to a football match.”
“Only your granddad and your granny can be relied on never to get angry with you, even when you’ve been really, really naughty.”
Back to Grandparents Day Home »
In the years since Jimmy Carter first declared Grandparents Day a national holiday in 1978, we’ve been following his call to reflect on the impact grandparents have on our own lives — and on society. In that spirit, we’ll help you celebrate the grands in your life with creative gifts, activities for the whole family, and more.
