Grandma Quotes: 104 Lines You'd Actually Write Down

The bank: showing 104 of 104

• You warm the plates. I do it in my own kitchen now and nobody here knows why.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Swap the plates for whatever she does that you caught yourself doing.

• Everything I know about staying calm I learned watching you cook for nine people in a kitchen built for two.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• The kids ask for your pancakes by name. They have never once asked for mine.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Works on a photo of the kids eating. Put the line on the back, not the front.

• Half of what I can fix, I can fix because you let me hold the flashlight.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You never called a job finished until the tools were back on the shelf, and it took me thirty years to agree with you.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You are the reason I check the oil.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Six words. Good on a photo caption, where anything longer covers the picture.

• You are the only two people alive who will look at four hundred photographs of the same child and ask whether there are more.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You are the last people I know who are pleased when the phone rings.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You found the drawer with the pans at eleven months old and it has never been properly shut since.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Change the drawer. Every grandchild has ruined exactly one cupboard.

• I do not need you to be good at anything. I have already heard you laugh.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• I liked you on the day you arrived and I have liked you every day since, which is harder to fake than love.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Your grandfather has explained the furnace to you four times. Let him do it a fifth.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• There are three cookies in this house your mother does not know about. They are yours.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: A grandmother writing down to a child. Change the number and the hiding place.

• Today is for the two people who drove four hours to watch a school play with six lines in it.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Swap in the actual drive and the actual play. The specifics are the whole joke.

• I have never once left your house without something wrapped in foil.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Name what was in the foil. Half a pie says more than the sentence does.

• Every time it turns cold I hear you telling me to button my coat. I button it.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You taught me that a recipe is a suggestion and a pinch is whatever you say it is.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• I have your hands. I noticed last week, peeling an orange the way you do.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Swap the orange for whatever you caught your hands doing. Keep it that small.

• Nobody else has ever been that pleased to see me walk through a door.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Your kitchen was the one room in the world where I was never in the way.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You always had time for me. I did not know how rare that was until I had none.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Everything I bake, I bake a little worse than you, and I have made my peace with it.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You told me to wear a hat. I am forty-one years old. I am wearing a hat.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Put in your real age. It is funnier the older you are.

• Your rule, as I understood it: if you are hungry, eat. If you are not hungry, eat a little.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Everyone says I get my stubbornness from you. I have decided to take it as a compliment.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You taught me to drive in an empty parking lot and never once raised your voice.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: If he did raise his voice, say so. That version is funnier and just as true.

• You never said much at the table, so when you did, all of us leaned in.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• I still measure twice, because you stood there and watched until I did.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You showed me that being kind and being tough are the same job.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Every fish I catch, I describe the way you described yours: a little bigger.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Thank you for teaching me every card game you know, and none of the ways you cheat at them.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You are the last man alive who can fold a road map back the way it came.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Your house still smells exactly the same, and I check every time I walk in.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You made the house that every other kid on the street wanted to visit.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Fifty years in, you still save each other the last bite.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Change the number to theirs. A card for a couple wants one detail only the two of them share.

• You let them have dessert first, then act surprised when nobody eats dinner.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• I would drive any distance to watch you do almost anything.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You fell asleep on my chest when you were small and I did not move for two hours. Worth it.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You ask more questions than anyone I know. Keep asking. Ask me first.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Your drawing of me is still up. You gave me six arms. I have decided to keep them.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

  Use it like this: Describe the actual drawing. Every grandparent has one with too many limbs.

• One day a year is not much, so this card covers the other three hundred and sixty-four.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Happy Grandparents Day to the woman who taught three generations to say please.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Happy Grandparents Day, Grandpa. Thank you for every early morning you gave to us.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• Whatever this family does well, it learned somewhere, and both of you were there first.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• You raised your own children in a hurry and you are raising ours slowly. We noticed which one you preferred.

  Ours: written by FamilyLetter, not a quotation

• “Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.”

  Alex Haley, Reader's Digest, 1987

  Use it like this: The most-printed line in this whole category, and one of the few that turns out to have a real source behind it.

• “I think it was my grandmother who gave me my ease in being a woman.”

  Margaret Mead, Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years, 1972

  Use it like this: For a granddaughter writing to the grandmother she is turning into. Say what the ease is, underneath.

• “Never have children, only grandchildren.”

  Senator Thomas Pryor Gore, recalled by his grandson Gore Vidal, Palimpsest, 1995

  Use it like this: Everywhere else this is credited to Gore Vidal. It was his grandfather's line and Vidal said so in print.

• “Grandmas defy description. They really do. They occupy such a unique place in the life of a child.”

  Erma Bombeck, At Wit's End, 1967

  Use it like this: Contiguous text from the book, and it stops where the book's sentence stops. Do not stitch the later clauses back on; they are a paragraph, not a card.

• “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.”

  Rudolph W. Giuliani, New York City Grandparents Day proclamation, September 6, 1996

  Use it like this: Everywhere else this runs with no source at all. It is from a City Hall proclamation, and the press release is still online.

• “…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.”

  Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder, 1965

  Use it like this: The second half of a longer sentence, which is why it opens mid-thought. Carson wrote the essay about taking her small grandnephew out into the world, which is as close to a grandparent line as she gets.

• “what we have loved, / Others will love, and we will teach them how;”

  William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book XIV, 1850

  Use it like this: Punctuated as the poem punctuates it: lowercase at the start because it follows a colon, and a slash where the line breaks. Tidy it up if you like, but know you changed it.

• “…everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.”

  Margaret Mead, Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years, 1972

  Use it like this: The end of a longer sentence, hence the ellipsis. Mead spent her career arguing it.

• “There are certain things that a grandmammy or a granddaddy can do for a child that no one else can.”

  Alex Haley, interview in Time, “Haley’s Rx: Talk, Write, Reunite”, 1977

  Use it like this: Ten years before the stardust line, and the same thought in his own plainer words.

• “I don't think she ever knew that a deep-brooding love hung over everything she touched.”

  Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969

  Use it like this: Angelou on Momma, the grandmother who raised her. For a grandmother who loved you without ever saying it.

• “Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation.”

  Lois Wyse, Funny, You Don't Look Like a Grandmother, 1988

• “Grandchildren are so much fun I should have had them first”

  Lois Wyse, book title, 1992

  Use it like this: It is a book title, so it has no full stop. Sign it from the grandparent, not to one.

• “A grandparent pretends he doesn't know who you are on Halloween.”

  Erma Bombeck, At Wit's End, syndicated column, 1974

  Use it like this: Usually printed as “A grandmother pretends she…”. This is how Bombeck wrote it in 1974.

• “A grandparent loves you when you're a bald baby to a bald father and all the hair in between.”

  Erma Bombeck, At Wit's End, syndicated column, 1974

  Use it like this: Funniest on a card from a grandchild who has started losing his own hair.

• “There is no greater love in all the world than the love of grandparents for grandchildren.”

  Sam Levenson, You Can Say That Again, Sam!, 1979

• “She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility.”

  Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro-Ng, statement on the death of their grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, 2008

  Use it like this: Written the day after she died. For a card after a loss, or to a grandmother while she can still read it.

• “A grandfather is a father twice over and a grandmother is a mother twice over.”

  Pope Francis, Address at the meeting with the elderly, 28 September, 2014

• “Happy is the family who have grandparents close by!”

  Pope Francis, Address at the meeting with the elderly, 28 September, 2014

  Use it like this: For grandparents who live close. If they don't, send it anyway and tell them you wish they were.

• “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be,”

  Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, 1864

  Use it like this: The first two lines of the poem run together. The trailing comma is Browning's; drop it on a card.

• “Because I would rather be with my grandfather on the Alp than anywhere on earth.”

  Johanna Spyri, Heidi, translated by Elisabeth P. Stork, 1915

  Use it like this: Heidi, home from the city, on why she came back. Swap the Alp for wherever he lives.

• “But grandfather, sometimes I felt as if I could not bear it any longer to be away from you!”

  Johanna Spyri, Heidi, translated by Elisabeth P. Stork, 1915

  Use it like this: For a grandchild who has been away a long time. It is what Heidi says on her first night home.

• “Oh, grandmother, I know what it is like to come home.”

  Johanna Spyri, Heidi, translated by Elisabeth P. Stork, 1915

• “Any boy would love his grandfather … especially one that had been as kind to him as you have been.”

  Frances Hodgson Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy, 1886

  Use it like this: The cut is only the speech tag. Cedric says it to the Earl, who is not used to being called kind.

• “Yes, you'll be my boy as long as I live”

  Frances Hodgson Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy, 1886

  Use it like this: The Earl to his grandson. A grandfather writing down to a grandchild; say girl if she is one.

• “I would have found my way back to YOU, grandfather … never fear.”

  Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841

  Use it like this: Nell to her grandfather. The capitals are Dickens's, and they are the reason to use it.

• “Grandfather’s eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle.”

  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, 1918

• “I admired the cheerful zest with which grandmother went about keeping us warm and comfortable and well-fed.”

  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, 1918

  Use it like this: A grandmother getting a family through a prairie winter. Works for one who got yours through something.

• “And then she can tell the most wonderful stories.”

  Hans Christian Andersen, Grandmother, translated by Mrs. H. B. Paull, 1845

  Use it like this: Starts with “And then” because the sentence before it is about her silk dress. Start yours with something she wears.

• “Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children”

  Charles Lamb, Dream-Children: A Reverie, 1822

  Use it like this: The opening of the essay; the sentence carries on. Follow it with a story from when she was small.

• “They are the love of our lives, and the life of our love.”

  President Joe Biden, Proclamation 10255, National Grandparents Day, 2021

  Use it like this: He wrote it about his own grandchildren. It reads just as well going the other way.

• “Grandparents are storytellers and gatekeepers of family tradition.”

  President Joe Biden, Proclamation 10444, National Grandparents Day, 2022

• “They are the centerpieces of family gatherings and the glue that keeps so many families together.”

  President Joe Biden, Proclamation 10444, National Grandparents Day, 2022

• “In our hearts, we carry the lessons our grandparents instilled in us.”

  President Joe Biden, Proclamation 10620, National Grandparents Day, 2023

• “our grandparents are our heroes, our confidantes, and our fiercest advocates.”

  President Barack Obama, Proclamation 9490, National Grandparents Day, 2016

  Use it like this: The end of a longer sentence, which is why it opens lowercase. Capitalize it on a card; nobody will mind.

• “For many of us, our grandparents were among our earliest teachers and caregivers.”

  President Barack Obama, Proclamation 8858, National Grandparents Day, 2012

• “We owe so much of who we are and what we have to our grandparents.”

  President Barack Obama, Proclamation 9321, National Grandparents Day, 2015

• “Grandparents give their grandchildren gifts no one else can give.”

  President Ronald Reagan, Message on the Observance of Grandparents Day, 1985

• “Most of us can remember having long talks with our grandparents and hearing stories of days gone by.”

  President Ronald Reagan, Message on the Observance of Grandparents Day, 1983

  Use it like this: Follow it with one of the stories. That is the whole card.

• “Of course grandparents everywhere will tell you how much richer their lives are because of their grandchildren.”

  President Ronald Reagan, Message on the Observance of Grandparents Day, 1986

• “The words of grandparents have special value for the young.”

  Pope Francis, General Audience, 11 March, 2015

• “Blessed is the house where an older person lives!”

  Pope Francis, Message for the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, 2022

  Use it like this: Nine words. Good for a family that has a grandparent living with them.

• “The future of the world depends on this covenant between young and old.”

  Pope Francis, Message for the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, 2021

• “Children's children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers.”

  Proverbs 17:6, King James Version

  Use it like this: The most quoted verse in this category, and usually quoted in half a dozen different wordings. This is the King James one.

• “Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon Israel.”

  Psalm 128:6, King James Version

• “But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children.”

  Psalm 103:17, King James Version

• “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children.”

  Proverbs 13:22, King James Version

  Use it like this: The verse continues past this clause. Quoting the first half is normal; write the reference underneath so she can find the rest.

• “Teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons.”

  Deuteronomy 4:9, King James Version

• “The unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice.”

  2 Timothy 1:5, King James Version

  Use it like this: The only grandmother in the New Testament named as the reason somebody believes. Good on a card to a churchgoing grandmother; it will land.

• “And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it.”

  Ruth 4:16, King James Version

  Use it like this: Naomi holding her grandson Obed. For a grandmother who did the night feeds, this is her verse.

• “And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age”

  Ruth 4:15, King James Version

  Use it like this: Said to Naomi about her new grandson. The verse runs on past this clause; stop here.

• “And Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face: and, lo, God hath shewed me also thy seed.”

  Genesis 48:11, King James Version

  Use it like this: Jacob, an old man, meeting his grandsons. For a grandfather meeting a new baby, nothing in the Bible fits better.

• “The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the grey head.”

  Proverbs 20:29, King James Version

• “The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.”

  Proverbs 16:31, King James Version

  Use it like this: Hoary means white with age. Worth a word of your own underneath if the card is going to a child to read aloud.

• “And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you”

  Isaiah 46:4, King James Version

  Use it like this: The first half of the verse. It is God speaking, which makes it a comfort to send rather than a compliment.

• “With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.”

  Job 12:12, King James Version

• “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age”

  Psalm 92:14, King James Version

  Use it like this: The verse goes on to call them fat and flourishing. Most people stop before that, and you may want to.

• “Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation”

  Psalm 71:18, King James Version

• “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.”

  Psalm 145:4, King James Version

• “Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.”

  Joel 1:3, King James Version

  Use it like this: Three generations in one sentence. Good under a photo with all three in it.