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When looking for quotes to caption your family memories, you want to pick the best fitting one for each memory you have, whether you'll keep them in an online photo album, on social media, or inside a memory book.
This can be difficult if you don’t know what sayings go well with each type of family memento, so you may end up with the wrong quote-memory pairs.
Don’t worry, we won’t let this happen to you. After all, we are experts in memory quotes, whether you're reminiscing about love, friends, or family.
Without further ado, in this article you will find no less than 45 quotes that work like a charm, whether your family memories highlight:
1. "In truth, a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love."
- Marge Kennedy
About quote's author: Marge Kennedy knows a thing or two about family since she is an author who has written many educational books for parents, kids, and teachers from kindergarten to high school.
2. "You are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges."
- Elizabeth Berg, The Art of Mending
About quote's author: Elizabeth Berg is a New York Times bestselling author, and one of her greatest novels is The Art of Mending, where a seemingly ordinary family is forced to reexamine their disparate lives.
3. "Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family."
- Anthony Brandt
About quote's author: Anthony Brandt is an adventure book author and editor who collaborated with National Geographic, The Atlantic, GQ, Esquire, and many other magazines.
4. "My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct."
- Jodi Picoult, Keeping Faith
About quote's author: Jodi Picoult writes novels about family, relationships, love, and more. She got many awards for her wordsmith qualities of "unassuming brilliance", per Stephen King.
5. "You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them."
- Desmond Tutu
About quote's author: Desmond Tutu was born into a poor family but went on to become a cleric that earned the Nobel Prize for Peace for combating discrimination.
6. "The family–that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to."
- Dodie Smith, Dear Octopus
About quote's author: best known for writing the popular children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians, Dodie Smith grew up without a father until age 14, when her mother remarried.
7. "The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life."
- Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
About quote's author: Richard Bach is a New York Times best selling author whose most famous work is Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Bach is also a very passionate pilot.
Because family vacations and those short holiday trips tend to be some of the greatest memories families collect, below you can find quotes that go well with almost any photos you and your dear ones had taken during your travels.
8. "No matter where you are. Whether it’s a quarter mile away or half way across the world. You'll always be family."
- Dominic Toretto, Furious 7
Although the quote above works well for family vacation memories, it also fits memories of family members that are no longer with us.
This is because the quote appears in the ending of the Furious 7 movie when Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) says goodbye to Brian O'Conner, interpreted by Paul Walker, an actor who had deceased due to a car crash before the Furious 7 film was launched.
Here is the actual movie scene where Vin Diesel utters the quote:
About quote's author: Dominic Toretto, interpreted by actor Vin Diesel, is one of the main protagonists in the Fast and Furious movie series.
9. "Being part of a family means smiling for photos."
- Harry Morgan
About quote's author: Harry Morgan is a fictional character played by actor James Remar in Dexter, a TV series about a serial killer, who spends his days solving crimes and nights committing them.
10. "There are two kinds of travel: first class and with children."
- Robert Benchley, Pluck and Luck
About quote's author: Robert Benchley was an American humorist and film actor who attended Harvard University and wrote for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.
11. "A road trip is a way for the whole family to spend time together and annoy each other in interesting new places."
- Tom Lichtenheld
About quote's author: Tom Lichtenheld is a children's book author and illustrator who has no less than 32 books under his name.
12. "Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience."
- Francis Bacon
About quote's author: Francis Bacon was an English philosopher, author, and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. His work is regarded as having had an impact on the scientific revolution.
13. "In the end, kids won’t remember that fancy toy you bought them, they will remember the time you spent with them."
- Kevin Heath
About quote's author: Kevin Heath is a former Australian rules footballer who made his senior debut in the Australian Football League when he was only 18 years old.
14. "I breathe in...
The comfort
Of my home,
The safe walls,
The scents of childhood
On the pillows
I breathe in...the silence
Of my own heart
Aching with tenderness...
With memories..
Of home."
- Sanober Khan, A tough, a tear, a tempest
About quote's author: Sanober Khan is an Indian poet and writer whose work has been featured in respectable journals, like the Taj Mahal Review.
15. "Childhood is love; childhood is gaiety; childhood knows no cares"
- Giovanni Papini, Un uomo finite
About quote's author: Giovanni Papini was an Italian journalist, novelist, and philosopher who had a lonely childhood and an aversion toward religion of any kind.
16. "Every day we make deposits in the memory banks of our children."
- Charles R. Swindoll
About quote's author: Charles R. Swindoll is a Christan pastor and the founder of a popular radio programme named Insight for Living.
17. "Two of the greatest gifts we can give our children are roots and wings."
- Hodding Carter, Where Main Street Meets the River
About quote's author: Hodding Carter was a prized journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for condemning the ill treatment of Japanese Americans returning from World War II.
18. "The greatest legacy we can leave our children is happy memories."
- Og Mandino
About quote's author: Og Mandino was a successful American author with over 50 million copies sold worldwide. However, Mandino started his adult life in a turbulent way as his mother had suddenly died from a heart attack months before he was scheduled to enter college.
19. "A life-long blessing for children is to fill them with warm memories of times together. Happy memories become treasures in the heart to pull out on the tough days of adulthood."
- Charlotte Kasl
About quote's author: Charlotte Kasl was a professional psychologist, counselor, and author whose areas of specialty included addiction, spirituality, and finding joy, among others.
20. "What we remember from childhood, we remember forever — permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen."
- Cynthia Ozick
About quote's author: Cynthia Ozick is a gifted American author who concentrates on topics involving memory remembrances, such as the disparaged self, identity rebuilding after immigration, and trauma.
21. "Childhood is what anyone wants to remember. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction."
- Carol Shields
About quote's author: Carol Shields was a Canadian-American author who received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1993 for her work The Stone Diaries.
22. "Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever."
- Joel Osteen
About quote's author: Joel Osteen is an American pastor and televangelist who had 5 siblings, so he had plenty of family members to spend Christmas dinners around.
23. "When you look back on all the Christmases in your life, you'll find you've created family traditions and lasting memories. Those memories, good and bad, are really what help to keep a family together over the long haul."
- Caroline Kennedy
About quote's author: Caroline Kennedy is the daughter of former US president J.F. Kennedy and his wife Jaqueline Kennedy. She is an author, attorney, and former ambassador. Caroline has 3 children.
24. "Because when I look at you, I can feel it. And I look at you and I’m home."
- Dory, Finding Nemo
About quote's author: Dory is the main protagonist in Finding Dory, an animated movie that highlights the real meaning of family.
25. "I am filled time and again
with a heart-aching wonder
when I think
of the fire
and frost of memories
of the everlastingness
of love
the solace
of family
and the power
of prayer."
- Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence
26. "The memories created with those we love, conversations and laughter around the kitchen table, quality time spent with family, friends, and people in need, and a chance to make a difference in the world are the "things" that bring the greatest joy."
- Rita Wilkins, in Downsize Your Life, Upgrade Your Lifestyle: Secrets to More Time, Money, and Freedom
About quote's author: Rita Wilkins is an author, an interior designer, and the mother of two happily married sons and is excited about becoming a new grandmother.
27. "A happy family is but an earlier heaven."
- George Bernard Shaw
About quote's author: George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He had two sisters and lived in poverty during his early life.
28. "It didn’t matter how big our house was; it mattered that there was love in it."
- Peter Buffett, Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment
About quote's author: Peter Buffet is a musician, New York Times bestselling author, and the youngest son of billionaire investor Warren Buffet.
29. "You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is."
- Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life
About quote's author: Shauna Niequist is a New York Times bestselling author with two sons, Henry and Mac.
30. "For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands."
- Christina Rossetti
About quote's author: Christina Rossetti was a 19th-century poet that had two brothers and one sister.
31. "It is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks."
- George Orwell, Why I Write
About quote's author: George Orwell was a famous English novelist and journalist best known for the satirical novella Animal Farm.
32. "Ohana means family and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten."
- from Lilo and Stitch
About quote's author: Lilo and Stich is an animated adventure-comedy series that starts when a dysfunctional family adopts what proves to be a scientific experiment.
33. "You see? He lives in you."
- Rafiki, The Lion King
About quote's author: Rafiki is a mandrill that acts like a guiding shaman in the animated movie The Lion King.
Did you know that cute quotes are just one of the many things you can learn from animations? Check out the other benefits of watching animated movies.
34. "The memories we make with our family is everything."
- Candace Cameron Bure
About quote's author: although Candace Cameron Bure had several roles in her career so far, from actor known for her part in Fuller House to becoming a New York Times bestselling author, she always focused on her family.
35. "The family is link to our past, bridge to our future."
- Alex Haley
About quote's author: Alex Haley was an American writer, best known for publishing Roots: The Saga of an American Family and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
36. "Well, I guess there's one problem left. (...) How much I'm going to miss her."
- King Triton, The Little Mermaid
About quote's author: King Triton is the father of Ariel, the main protagonist in the animated Disney movie The Little Mermaid.
37. "Sadly enough, the most painful goodbyes are the ones that are left unsaid and never explained."
- Jonathan Harnisch, Freak
About quote's author: Jonathan Harnisch is an imaginative author with many published books who suffers from schizophrenia.
38. "At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent."
- Barbara Bush, Reflections: Life After the White House
About quote's author: Barbara Bush was the wife of George H.W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States, and the mother of U.S. President George W. Bush.
39. "To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future."
- John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back
About quote's author: John Corey Whaley is an awarded American writer that writes novels for young adults.
40. "Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten."
- George Bernard Shaw
41. "we always knew
that good times came
with termination contracts
even if we weren't quite ready
to sign it."
- Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence
42. "A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones."
- Kristin Hannah
About quote's author: Kristin Hannah is a New York Times bestselling author, best known for writing The Nightingale and Firefly Lane.
43. "Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory."
- Dr. Seuss
About quote's author: Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) was a children's book author best known for works like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Lorax.
44. "Hope is above, not found in the deep,
I am alive in your memories and dreams when you sleep,
I will greet you at sunset and with the moon's evening smile,
I will light your path home.. every last lonely mile..."
- Shannon L. Adler, The Voyager
About quote's author: Shannon L. Adler is an inspirational author with books on narcissism, marriage, and family.
45. "Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that’s what you’re left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich."
- Mike Mills
About quote's author: Mike Mills is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who's best known for Beginners and 20th Century Women, two comedy dramas.
With all these 45 quotes that go well with all sorts of family memories, it's very hard to get out of ideas when you stumble across your next family memory, whether you are putting together a memory book or preparing a caption for a new post on social media.
And remember, sometimes the best "I miss you" message for your family is a past memory with a heartwarming caption.
