Filial Duty Quotes

• Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

  Alan Dundes

  Children, Grandparent, Asian Culture

  90 Copy quote

• A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Daughter, Kings, Honesty

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.234, Cambridge University Press

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• If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.

  Laozi

  Love, Inspirational, Lying

  "An Essential Part of Being'" by Brian Weatherley, November 12, 2010.

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• The parental, and filial affections seem to be as ardent, their sensibility and attachment, as active and faithful, as those observed to be in human nature.

  William Bartram

  Attachment, Faithful, Affection

  William Bartram (2012). “Travels of William Bartram”, p.21, Courier Corporation

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• Sometimes children do forget their filial responsibilities.

  Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

  Children, Responsibility, Sometimes

  29 Copy quote

• That’s the thing with the young these days, isn’t it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short.

  Nick Hornby

  Errors, People, Joy

  "A Long Way Down". Book by Nick Hornby, June 7, 2005.

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• Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior.

  Julian Barnes

  Fashion, Girlfriend, Jobs

  4 Copy quote

• The paternal and filial duties discipline the heart, and prepare it for the love of all mankind. The intensity of private attachment encourages, not prevents, universal benevolence.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Heart, Attachment, Discipline

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2015). “The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1: Lectures, 1795: On Politics and Religion”, p.46, Princeton University Press

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