The relationship between grandparent and grandchild is a sacred one unique in its own right. When a newborn comes into the family, they usually have at least two generations’ unconditional love. Grandparents are there for their children’s children as they grow up from wanting to curl up in grandpa’s lap, to asking grandma for life advice. Grandparent quotes capture the beautiful relationship between grandma, grandpa, and grandchild.
After all, being a grandparent is like a second round of parenting, but now you can always say “yes” and not have to be responsible for the tantrums that follow when you say “no.” From funny (second) mom quotes about being a grandma to meaningful quotes about family, you can read one or more these heartwarming grandparent quotes when you see or call your grandparent(s) next to show you are thinking of them always. If you’re missing your grandparents because they are no longer with you, allow these quotes bring you a little comfort.
And if you are a grandparent yourself, then you will probably find a fair amount of these quotes rather relatable (for better or for worse). Either way, quotes about being a grandparent serve as daily reminders that we should be present for our elders while they are with us so we can create strong bonds that will last after they pass on.
“There are no words to describe the happiness in holding your baby’s baby.” — Unknown
“Some of our greatest blessings call us grandma and grandpa.” — Unknown
“Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.” — Alex Haley
“Grandfathers are just antique little boys.” — Unknown
“A child needs a grandparent, anybody’s grandparent, to grow a little more securely into an unfamiliar world.” — Charles and Ann Morse
“The best parents get promoted to grandparents.” — Unknown
“The reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy.” — Sam Levenson
“You never know the love of a grandparent until you become one.” — Unknown
“Sometimes our grandmas and grandpas are like grand-angels.” — Lexie Saige
“A grandparent has silver in their hair and gold in their heart.” — Unknown
“Grandparents are the best kind of grownups.” — Unknown
“Few things are more delightful than grandchildren fighting over your lap.” — Doug Larson
“Parents know a lot but grandparents know everything.” — Unknown
“When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.” — Ogden Nash
“There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.” — Victor Hugo
“You are the sun, Grandma, you are the sun in my life.” — Kitty Tsui
“Becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you’re just a mother. The next you are all-wise and prehistoric.” — Pam Brown
“The old are the precious gem in the center of the household.” — Chinese Proverb
“If nothing is going well, call you grandmother.” — Italian Proverb
“Grandma always made you feel she had been waiting to see just you all day and now the day was complete.” — Marcy DeMaree
“I loved their home. Everything smelled older, worn bu safe; the food aroma had baked itself into the furniture.” — Susan Strasberg
“Grandmas never run out of hugs or cookies.” — Unknown
“No cowboy was ever faster on the draw than a grandparent pulling a baby picture out of a wallet.” — Anonymous
“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
“Grandparents are there to help the child get into mischief they haven’t thought of yet.” — Unknown
“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
“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
“Grandpas always have time for you when everyone else is too busy.” — Unknown
“There is nothing more wonderful than the love and guidance a grandparent can give his or her grandchild.” — Edward Fays
“Grandparents are always 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
“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, ten, and eleven.” — Bryna Nelson Paston
“A grandmother is a babysitter who watches the kids instead of the television.” — Unknown
“They say genes skip generations. Maybe that’s why grandparents find their grandchildren so likeable.” — Joan McIntosh’
“One of the most powerful handclasps is that of a new grandbaby around the finger of a grandfather.” — Joy Hargrove
“Children brought up by their grandparents are generally spoiled.” — Spanish Proverb
“What a bargain grandchildren are! I give them my loose change, and they give me a million dollars’ worth of pleasure.” — Gene Perret
“Every house needs a grandmother in it.” — Louisa May Alcott
“Just about the time a woman thinks her work is done, she becomes a grandmother.” — Edward H. Dreschnack
“Uncles and aunts, and cousins, are all very well, and fathers and mothers are not to be despited; but a grandmother, at holiday time, is worth them all.” — Fanny Fern
“A grandparent is old on the outside but young on the inside.” — Unknown
“Grandchildren are God’s way of compensating us for growing old.” — Mary H. Waldrip
“If God had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn’t have given us grandmothers.” — Linda Henley
“Grandparents, like heroes, are as necessary to a child’s growth as vitamins.” — Joyce Allston
“To a small child, the perfect granddad is unafraid of big dogs and fierce storms but absolutely terrified of the word ‘boo.'” — Robert Brault
“The best place to be when you’re said is grandpa’s lap.” — Unknown
“Grandmas don’t just say ‘that’s nice’ — they reel back and roll their eyes and throw up their hands and smile. You get your money’s worth out of grandmas.” — Unknown
“It’s such a grand thing to be a mother of a mother — that’s why the world calls her grandmother.” — Unknown
“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
“I’m made up of the memories of my parents and my grandparents, all of my ancestors. They’re in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I’m made up of everyone I’ve ever met who’s changed the way I think.” — Terry Pratchett
“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
“Being pregnant is the most natural thing our bodies can do. Our grandparents did it without all these books, and they came out okay.” — Jamie-Lynn Sigler
“We hear lots of stories where grandparents go to a store and buy a smartphone so they can keep in touch with kids and grandkids.” — Jan Koum
“Being pretty on the inside means you don’t hit your brother and you eat all your peas — that’s what my grandma taught me.” — Lord Chesterfield
“My Grandmother would say, ‘Make sure you look good. Make sure you speak well. Make sure you mean that Southern gentleman that I’ve taught you to be.'” — Jamie Foxx
“In this huge old occidental culture our teaching elders are books. Books are our grandparents!” — Gary Snyder, Practice of the Wild
“Grandparents enjoy most the company of their grandchildren. For with them, they experience the miracle of being 10 again.” — Meeta Ahluwalia
“In some respects, generations rebelling against their parents result in resemblance to their grandparents.” — Criss Jami
“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 fifty, you kind of stop giving a shit what others think.” — Liz Fenton, The year We Turned Forty
“A grandmother thinks of her grandchildren day and night, even when they are not with her. She will always love them more than anyone would understand.” — Karen Gibbs, A Gallery of Scrapbook Creations
“Kids are hard — they drive you crazy and break your heart — whereas grandchildren make you feel great about life, and yourself, and your ability to love someone unconditionally, finally, after all these years.” — Anne Lamott, Some Assembly Required
“For grandparents, a baby represents them, their hopes and their desire for the future.” — Apollo
“The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent.” — Sam Levenson
“Love is the greatest gift that one generation can leave to another.” — Richard Garnett
“Grandparents are, without a doubt, some of the world’s best educators.” — Charles W. Shedd
“A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.” — Emma Bombeck
“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
“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
“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
“Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from the responsibilities so that we can be friends.” — Allan Frome
“My grandfather was a wonderful role model. Through him I got to know the gentle side of men.” — Sarah Long
“Never have children, only grandchildren.” — Gore Vidal
“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
“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
“It is as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness of their grace.” — Christopher Morley
“A grandmother is a safe haven.” — Suzette Haden Elgin
“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
“Have children while your parents are still young enough to take care of them.” — Rita Rudner
“It’s special, grandparents and grandchildren. So much is 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
“Posterity is the patriotic name for grandchildren.” — Art Linkletter
“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
“When it seems the world can’t understand, your grandmother’s there to hold your hand.” — Joyce K. Allen Logan
“Elephants and grandchildren never forget.” — Andy Rooney
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.” — Henry Youngman
“A baby has a way of making a man out of his father and a boy out of his grandfather.” — Angie Papadakis
“Surely, two of the most satisfying experiences in life must be those of being a grandchild and or a grandparent.” — Donald A. Norber
“A grandma is warm hugs and sweet memories. She remembers all of your accomplishments and forgets all of your mistakes.” — Barbara Cage
“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
“We should all have one person who knows how to bless us despite the evidence, Grandmother was that person to me.” — Phyllis Theroux
“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
“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
“Her grandmother, as she gets older, is not fading but rather becoming more concentrated.” — Paulette Bates Alden
“A grandparent is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher, and a little bit best friend.” — Unknown
“I know you’ve loved me since I was born, but I’ve loved you my whole life.” — Unknown
“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 recognise how their grandchildren can benefit from this.” — Geoff Dench
“Most grandmas have a touch of the scallywag.” — Helen Thomson
“Grandchildren don’t make a man feel old; it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother.” — G. Norman Collie
“I’m the twinkle in my Grandpa’s eye…” — Unknown
“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
“As you are now so once were we.” — James Joyce
“Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy — the mother.” — Claudette Colbert
“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
“My grandfather was a giant of a man…When he walked, the earth shook. When he laughed, the birds fell out of the trees. His hair caught fire from the sun. His eyes were patches of sky.” — Eth Clifford
“Grandparents are like stars. You don’t always see them, but you know they’re there.” — Unknown
“It is one of nature’s ways that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.” — Igor Stravinsky
“To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.” — Thomas Bailey Aldrich
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature. But beautiful old people are works of art.” — Marjory Barstow-Greenbie
“I used to think I was too old to fall in love again, then I became a grandparent.” — Unknown
“Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting.” — Unknown
“Holding these babies in my arms makes me realize the miracle my husband and I began.” — Betty Ford
“Grandchildren: The only people who can get more out of you than the IRS.” — Gene Perret
“I don’t spoil my grandkids, I’m just very accommodating.” — Unknown
“Grandparents aren’t old…they’ve just been having fun longer.”
“Happiness is laughing with your grandchild about something highly nonsensical.”
“All grandchildren are smart and beautiful — and obviously take after their grandma.”
“Grandparents fill the world with love.”
“The littlest feet make the biggest footprints in our heart.”
“Because I’m such a good grandmother, I’m currently helping the little ones look for their chocolate…which I ate last night.”
“The fastest way to locate your grandchildren? Turn off the WiFI — they’ll appear like magic.”
“For every ‘no’ we say as parents, we get to say ‘yes’ as grandparents.”
“Being a grandparent is my happily ever after.”
“Grandchildren fill our homes with laughter and fill our heats with love.”
“I’m proud of many things in my life but nothing beats being a grandma.”
“A grandparent stops noticing the mistakes of their children because they become so enchanted with the wonderful things their grandchildren do.”
“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.”
“A grandparent’s love knows no bounds. It does not recognize bedtimes or curfews and agrees dinner can be cookies and ice cream. It can provide unlimited cuddles and kisses. And always has time for just one more story.”
“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.”
“Blessed are those who spoil and snuggle, hug and hope, pray and pamper for they shall be called grandparents.”
“Grandparents hold our hands for just a little while, but our hearts forever.”
“Grandparents are like magicians. They can create wonderful memories for their grandchildren out of thin air.”
“There will never be a day like the day your grandchild was born.”
“A grandparent’s love is strong and deep, filled with memories to treasure and keep.”
“If children are the rainbow of life, then grandchildren are the pot of gold.”
“There is no greater sound than the sound of your grandchildren laughing.”
“Grandparents are a family’s strongest foundation. They are the founders of a loving legacy and the keepers of family traditions that linger on in cherished memories.”
“I am so grateful for my grandparents. They might know all my flaws, but they choose to love me anyway.”
“Yes, I’m a parent and a grandparent. If you think my hands are full, you should see my heart.”
“You never outgrow the loving arms of your grandparent.”
“I knew you’d be an incredible grandparent, but wow, you’ve exceeded my expectations.”
“Grandparents never tire of watching their grandchildren flourish.”
“A day with your grandparents restores your soul.”
“A grandparent’s love feels like nobody else’s.”
“A grandparent’s love will never grow old.”