“But it may be that there is happiness in the very things we rejected - in work and responsibility. In the rearing of children and in the challenge of permanent love.”

“I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love & duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting & challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.”

“Children want the same things we want.
To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted.”

“The deepest and most enduring thirst common to us all is the desire for love and happiness. You and I spend a great part of our lives struggling towards self-fulfilment and joy, while at the same time we are very occupied in the daily responsibilities to our families, our work, the countless little things that absorb our time.”

“It is very true that we ought to think of the happiness of others; but it is not often enough said that the best thing we can do for those who love us is to be happy ourselves.”

“We must reject dictatorship in whatever form it takes — and especially when it rears its head in our own midst on the bench.”

“Love is an incurable disease. In love, there is permanent suffering. Those who love and those who are happy are not the same.”

“If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.”

“This is going to be hard and difficult work. The coalition will throw up all sorts of challenges, but I believe together we can provide that strong and stable government that our country needs, based on those values, rebuilding family, rebuilding community, above all, rebuilding responsibility in our country. Those are the things I care about, those are the things that this Government will now start work on doing. Thank you very much.”

“The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.”