I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Parenting involves making difficult decisions that may not always be appreciated by children.
This quote by Bette Davis highlights the complex and often challenging nature of parenting. It suggests that a parent must sometimes enforce rules or boundaries that may lead to temporary feelings of resentment or hatred from their child, pointing to the deep emotional involvement and sacrifices that come with raising a child. To be a parent often means to prioritize long-term well-being over immediate acceptance or affection, implying that experiencing hatred from your child can be an indication of effective parenting.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
Sharing this quote during a parenting seminar to discuss the challenges of raising children.
More from Bette Davis
All quotes βI have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable... I suppose I'm larger than life.
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.
Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.
Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.
If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.
Similar quotes
Momma was home. She was the most totally human, human being that I have ever known, and so very beautiful. Within our home, she was an abundance of love, discipline, fun, affection, strength, tenderness, encouragement, understanding, inspiration, support.
In A Man With a Pipe, my brother observed that although my father had been seen as intellectual and my mother more a creature of temperament, she had often been the more levelheaded of the two. In sum, we miss them as we love them, equally and always.
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
I felt like I needed to come to terms with the decision I'd made to let go of my family. What do you do when you want to be loyal to your family but you feel that loyalty to them is in conflict somehow with loyalty to yourself?
A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society.
I tell my children now that they are older, 'If something happens to me... don't make no big fuss over me. Don't make no big expense on my funeral. Don't put any pressure on the rest of the family. I've loved everybody, and I hope they loved me. But don't create this big expense for the family.'