Timeless Wisdom: A Heartwarming Collection of Grandparents Inspirational Quotes

"Grandparents can have a profound influence on their grandchildren. Their time is generally not as encumbered and busy as the parents', so books can be opened and read, stories can be told … Children then obtain a perspective of life which not only is rewarding but can bring them security, peace, and strength."

- Ezra Taft Benson

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

- Alex Haley

"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 Giuliani

"Make up your mind to this. If you are different, you are isolated, not only from people of your own age but from those of your parents' generation and from your children's generation too. They'll never understand you and they'll be shocked no matter what you do. But your grandparents would probably be proud of you and say: 'There's a chip off the old block,' and your grandchildren will sigh enviously and say: 'What an old rip Grandma must have been!' and they'll try to be like you."

- Margaret Mitchell

"Grandparents are a treasure in the family. Please, take care of your grandparents: love them and let them talk to your children!"

- Pope Francis

"Human beings look separate because you see them walking about separately. But then we are so made that we can see only the present moment. If we could see the past, then of course it would look different. For there was a time when every man was part of his mother, and (earlier still) part of his father as well, and when they were part of his grandparents. If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would look like one single growing thing — rather like a very complicated tree. Every individual would appear connected with every other."

- C.S. Lewis

"Surely, two of the most satisfying experiences in life must be those of being a grandchild or a grandparent."

- Donald A. Norberg

"Surely, two of the most satisfying experiences in life must be those of being a grandchild and or a grandparent."

- Donald A. Norberg

"Grandparents, like heroes, are as necessary to a child's growth as vitamins."

- Joyce Allston

"Grandchildren are God's way of compensating us for growing old."

- Mary H. Waldrip

"No one who has not known that inestimable privilege can possibly realize what good fortune it is to grow up in a home where there are grandparents."

- Suzanne La Follette

"Becoming a grandparent is a second chance. For you have a chance to put to use all the things you learned the first time around and may have made mistakes on. It’s all love and no discipline. There’s no thorn in the rose."

- Joyce Brothers

"Don’t ever, ever underestimate the will of a Grandfather. We’re madmen, we don’t give a damn; we got here before you and they will be here after you. We’ll make enemies, we’ll break laws, we’ll break bones, but you will not mess with the grandchildren!"

- President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen), The West Wing

"There is nothing more wonderful than the love and guidance a grandparent can give his or her grandchild."

- Edward Fays

"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 recognize how their grandchildren can benefit from this."

- Geoff Dench

"Going to see my grandparents was the highlight of my childhood summers. I was doted upon, admired, entertained and overfed. I was never more content and happy."

- Carolyn Anthony

"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."

- Ruth Goode

"A child needs a grandparent, anybody's grandparent, to grow a little more securely into an unfamiliar world."

- Charles and Ann Morse

"Love is the greatest gift one generation can leave another."

- Richard Garnett

"Grandparents are always being told that they are living history to their grandchildren, that they give the children the reassurance of their roots. For me and many grandmothers I have talked to, it works the other way as well. They give us continuity."

- Ruth Goode

"It's special, grandparents and grandchildren. So much simpler. Is it always so, I wonder? I think perhaps it is. While one's child takes a part of one's heart to use and misuse as they please, a grandchild is different. Gone are the bonds of guilt and responsibility that burden the maternal relationship. The way to love is free."

- Kate Morton

"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."

- Jay Kesler

"Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being."

- Margaret Mead

"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."

- Jay Kesler

"Every house needs a grandmother in it."

- Louisa May Alcott

"I feel like my grandparents and parents gave me a tremendous amount. And if I can pass some of that on, then I’ll be very happy."

- Caroline Kennedy

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

- Ogden Nash

"Family is the most important thing in the world."

- Princess Diana

"Grandparents are both our past and our future. In some ways they are what has gone before, and in others, they are what we will become."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- President Jimmy Carter

"Grandparents, like heroes, are as necessary to a child’s growth as vitamins."

- Joyce Allston

"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."

- Jimmy Carter

"I'm made up of the memories of my parents and my grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think."

- Terry Pratchett

"Grandparents can be very special resources. Just being close to them reassures a child, without words, about change and continuity, about what went before and what will come after."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Lois Wyse

"If you’re lucky enough to still have grandparents, visit them, cherish them and celebrate them while you can."

- Regina Brett

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

- Lois Wyse

"You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them."

- Desmond Tutu

"A child needs a grandparent, anybody’s grandparent, to grow a little more securely into an unfamiliar world."

- Charles and Ann Morse

"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."

- Laura Spiess

"Grandmothers are voices of the past and role models of the present. Grandmothers open the doors to the future."

- Helen Ketchum

"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."

- Laura Spiess

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

- Victor Hugo

"Telling stories to my children that I was, in my turn, told by my parents and grandparents makes me feel part of something special and odd, part of the continuous stream of life itself."

- Neil Gaiman

"The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent."

- Sam Levenson

"My grandparents suffered through the Depression, World War II, then came home to build the greatest middle class in human history. Lord knows they weren't perfect, but they sure came closest to the American dream."

- Max Brooks

"Love is the greatest gift that one generation can leave to another."

- Richard Garnett

"You make all your mistakes with your own children so by the time your grandchildren arrive, you know how to get it right. Plus, once you turn 50, you kind of stop giving a s**t what others think."

- Liz Fenton

"A grandma is warm hugs and sweet memories. She remembers all of your accomplishments and forgets all of your mistakes."

- Barbara Cage

"One of the most powerful handclasps is that of a new grandbaby around the finger of a grandfather."

- Joy Hargrove

"God gave us loving grandchildren as a reward for all our random acts of kindness."

- Janet Lanese

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

- Gene Perret

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

- Phyllis Theroux

"I grew up with my grandparents around. I think that's important for a child. If for no other reason than to hear stories about their parents when they were children."

- Al Roker

"I would love to go back and travel the road not taken, if I knew at the end of it I’d find the same set of grandkids."

- Robert Brault

"Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from our responsibilities so that we can be friends."

- Dr. Allan Fromme

"It seems to me that sometimes the worst parents make the best grandparents. I'm not sure why. Maybe because there is enough of a generational separation that they don't see their grandchildren as an extension of themselves, so their relationship isn't tainted by any self-loathing. And of course, just growing older seems to soften and relax people."

- Sarah Silverman

"You are the sun, Grandma, you are the sun in my life."

- Kitty Tsui

"Some of the world's best educators are grandparents."

- Dr. Charlie W. Shedd

"Grandma always made you feel she had been waiting to see just you all day and now the day was complete."

- Marcy DeMaree

"Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts."

- Joan Didion

"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."

- Billy Crystal

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

- Gene Perret

"The old are the precious gem in the center of the household."

- Chinese Proverb

"When it seems the world can’t understand, your grandmother’s there to hold your hand."

- Joyce K. Allen Logan

"Grandmas and grandpas are grand-angels."

- Terri Guillemets

"If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother."

- Victor Hugo

"Grandparents are, without a doubt, some of the world’s best educators."

- Charles W. Shedd

"Grandchildren don’t make a man feel old; it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother."

- G. Norman Collie

"Truth be told, being a grandma is as close as we ever get to perfection. The ultimate warm sticky bun with plump raisins and nuts. Clouds nine, 10, and 11."

- Bryna Nelson Paston

"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."

- Fanny Fern

"Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from the responsibilities so that we can be friends."

- Dr. Allan Fromme

"My grandfather was a wonderful role model. Through him, I got to know the gentle side of men."

- Sarah Long

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

- Nicholas Brault

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

- Gene Perret

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

- Gene Perret

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

- Lois Wyse

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

- Sam Levenson

"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."

- Hannah Whitall Smith

"A grandmother is a safe haven."

- Suzette Haden Elgin

"We grow up opposing our parents only to become like them enough to oppose our children who behave as we once did — a reminder of how dreadful we were toward those now-vindicated grandparents. And you thought God had no sense of humor."

- Richelle E. Goodrich

"In my grandparents' time, it was believed that spirits existed everywhere...in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything... I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything."

- Hayao Miyazaki

"When she smiles, the lines in her face become epic narratives that trace the stories of generations that no book can replace."

- Curtis Tyrone Jones

"From Alan Lightman's intricate 1993 novel Einstein's Dreams; set in Berne in 1905: 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."

- Christopher Hitchens

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

- Pam Brown

"It is one of nature’s ways that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us."

- Igor Stravinsky

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

- Doug Larson

"To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age."

- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"It’s impossible for a grandmother to understand that few people, and maybe none, will find her grandchild as endearing as she does."

- Janet Lanese

"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."

- Teresa Bloomingdale

"I don’t intentionally spoil my grandkids. It’s just that correcting them often takes more energy than I have left."

- Gene Perret

"Like many men and women who make egregious and irretrievable mistakes with their own children, she would redeem herself by becoming the perfect grandmother."

- Pat Conroy

"Elephants and grandchildren never forget."

- Andy Rooney

"Grandchildren are God’s way of compensating us for growing old."

- Mary H. Waldrip

"Just about the time a woman thinks her work is done, she becomes a grandmother."

- Edward H. Dreschnack

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

- Gene Perret

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

- Lewis Mumford

"A baby has a way of making a man out of his father and a boy out of his grandfather."

- Angie Papadakis

"Grandfathers know a lot. I know this because I am a grandfather and I feel like I know a lot of things, and frankly I’m rarely wrong."

- Blaine Pardoe

"In order to influence a child, one must be careful not to be that child’s parent or grandparent."

- Don Marquis

"Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it 'opportunity.'"

- Charles J. Sykes

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

- Susan Strasberg

"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."

- Mike Krzyzewski

"If I would have known that grandchildren were going to be so much fun I would have had them first."

- Bill Laurin

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

- Gene Perret

"Holding these babies in my arms makes me realize the miracle my husband and I began."

- Betty Ford

"If God had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn’t have given us grandmothers."

- Linda Henley

"It is one of nature's ways that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us."

- Igor Stravinsky

"Posterity is the patriotic name for grandchildren."

- Art Linkletter

"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature / But beautiful old people are works of art."

- Marjory Barstow-Greenbie

"A man’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy — the mother."

- Claudette Colbert

"The best baby-sitters, 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."

- Dave Barry

"They say genes skip generations. Maybe that’s why grandparents find their grandchildren so likable."

- Joan McIntosh

"My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle!"

- Henry Youngman

"I’m world famous. Throughout the globe—north, south, east, and west — there are literally four people who know my name. It’s great to have all four grandparents still living, and widely dispersed around the world."

- Jarod Kintz

"Sometimes our grandmas and grandpas are like grand-angels."

- Lexie Saige

"My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the heck she is."

- Ellen DeGeneres

"It is as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness of their grace."

- Christopher Morley

"On the seventh day God rested. His grandchildren must have been out of town."

- Gene Perret

"The very old and the very young have something in common that makes it right that they should be left alone together. Dawn and sunset see stars shining in a blue sky; but morning and midday and afternoon do not, poor things."

- Elizabeth Goudge

"Never have children, only grandchildren."

- Gore Vidal

"Have children while your parents are still young enough to take care of them."

- Rita Rudner

"From my observation, the older you get, the more you like the word 'cozy.' That's why most of the elderly wear pants with elastic waistbands. If they wear pants at all. This may explain why grandparents are in love with buying grandkids pajamas and bathrobes."

- Holly Goldberg Sloan

"My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle."

- Henny Youngman

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

- Emma Bombeck

"No spring, nor summer hath such grace. As I have seen in one autumnal face."

- John Donne

"As you are now so once were we."

- James Joyce

"Children brought up by their grandparents are generally spoiled."

- Spanish Proverb

"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 hold our hands for just a little while, but our hearts forever."

"When the child you love has a child you love with all that is within you, only then will you know just how grand being a grandparent truly is."

"Grandparents are the best kind of grownups."

"Grandparents are voices of the past and the door to the future. They provide us with the wisdom from a lifetime of experience that should never be undervalued."

"Grandparents are like stars. You don’t always see them, but you know they’re there."

"A grandparent has silver in their hair and gold in their heart."

"A grandparent is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher, and a little bit best friend."

"There will never be a day like the day your grandchild was born."

"There is nothing like grandchildren in your arms to put a smile on your face, a lump in your throat, and a warm feel in your heart."

"Grandparents make the world a little softer, a little kinder, and a little warmer."

"A grandparent is old on the outside but young on the inside."

"Some of our greatest blessings call us grandma and grandpa."

"The best place to be when you’re sad is Grandpa’s lap."

"Unconditional positive regard is rarely given by anyone except a grandparent."

"Love each other. Love our children. Love our children’s children."

"I know you've loved me since I was born, but I've loved you my whole life."

"The best parents get promoted to grandparents."

"I know you’ve loved me since I was born, but I’ve loved you my whole life."

"Grandparents are the perfect blend of love, laughter, and happy memories."

"Grandparents are a delightful blend of laughter, caring deeds, wonderful stories and love."

"There is no distance that can lessen a grandparent’s love."

"Blessed are those who spoil and snuggle, hug and hope, pray and pamper, for they shall be called grandparents."

"If children are the rainbow of life, then grandchildren are the pot of gold."

"Kisses, cuddles, cookies, and treats, days spent with our grandparents are always so sweet."

"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."

"A grandma is someone who’s dear in every way. Her smile is like the sunshine that brightens each new day."

"Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild."

"A grandparent is old on the outside, but young on the inside."

"Grandfathers are just antique little boys."

"The smart, kind, beautiful child… must have got it from their grandparents."

"If Mom says no, ask Grandma. If Grandma says no… Who are we kidding? Grandma never says no."

"Grandma serves kisses, counsel, and cookies daily."

"Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting."

"You never know the love of a grandparent until you become one."

"No cowboy was ever faster on the draw than a grandparent pulling a baby picture out of a wallet."

- Anonymous

"A grandmother is a babysitter who watches the kids instead of the television."

"Parents know a lot, but grandparents know everything."