Quotes about fatherhood

H. Kirk Rainer - A Father and Future Felon

I begin the chapter and book on very elementary reasoning and a simple description: this description of relationships developed naturally and socially this reasoning that such relationships have long-existed and are very important—even eternal to those called 'special people'. My own freedom to choose this elementary reasoning has something to do with firsthand experience as one whose role has been reduced to the realm of illegal…with all the punishment. Such reasoning has consumed me in moments

Janvier Chouteu-Chando -

No true...father would be unconcerned about discord in his family that may cause it to disintegrate in his absence...

C. JoyBell C. -

I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.

Stephen Colbert - I Am America

A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God?

Orson Scott Card - Hart's Hope

Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on this shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind.

C.S. Lewis - Phantastes

An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe. [speaking of George MacDonald]

J.I. Packer - Knowing God

What is less often noticed is that it is precisely the kind of moral instruction that parents are constantly trying to give their children — concrete, imaginative, teaching general principles from particular instances, and seeking all the time to bring the children to appreciate and share the parent's own attitudes and view of life… The all-embracing principles of conduct

John Paul II - Crossing the Threshold of Hope

Original sin is not only the violation of a positive command … but … attempts … to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man with only a sense of the master-slave relationship.

Christopher Hitchens - Hitch-22: A Memoir

To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a fa

Janvier Chouteu-Chando - Me Before Them

You can’t say you love man as an individual if you have not dealt with the person’s complex personality, his or her unfamiliar habits, disturbing impulses and biological makeup.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando - Me Before Them

Unsettling emotions are capable of messing up the most beautiful minds in this world.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando - Me Before Them

the depth or humaneness of our love depends on the wideness of our souls.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando - The Girl on the Trail

Why do we complicate life, when it was meant to be very simple?

Janvier Chouteu-Chando - The Usurper: And Other Stories

Life is so sweet even though it is full of lies and half truths...

Janvier Chouteu-Chando - Disciples of Fortune

Nothing crushes the soul of a father more than the loss of the beloved son he failed to lavish his love on.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando - Me Before Them

You know you are getting old when yesterday turns out to be a fading memory you have difficulties recollecting, when today becomes a challenge that is hard to grasp and when tomorrow promises an uncertainty that you dread encountering.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando - Me Before Them

Never go for someone that represents something that is more of a fantasy than reality in this crazy world of lonely people, unless it is for the shortest time possible, and unless you have clearly figured out an exit strategy.

Joe McNally - The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets from One of the World's Top Shooters

I slid down in the seat and began to weep. I wept for her, for me, but mostly because the siren call of my first big story with a yellow border around it was more powerful than the call of fatherhood.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

The father who has selflessly poured himself into the life of his children may leave no other monument than that of his children. But as for a life well lived, no other monument is necessary.

Amit Dixit -

About my father.....My father was a very simple person. When I was small I never understood why he is so simple actually I disliked it. He use to go to office and return late and have dinner with us. I use to think he never stood for me on anything. But he was the person who uses to take me to the market for Diwali shopping. He uses to give me 20 Rs to eat at school when he had only 30. He tried to fulfill all my wishes in his range. He uses to take me on his bicycle after school tuition and wal

Donald Miller - Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

I know, from the three visits I made to him, the blended composite of love and fear that exists only in a boy's notion of his father.

Anthony Ryan - The Waking Fire

I've survived revolution, war, and over a decade on this continent," the Burgrave reflected. "But by all the ghosts of the hundred emperors, I think fatherhood will finally do me in.

kevin mcpherson eckhoff -

Soldiers of capitalism are the fathers of dissent.

Matshona Dhliwayo -

Passion stimulates you, love intoxicates you, marriage sobers you, and parenthood tries you.

Onyi Anyado -

For me, it’s not just about blessing my generation, I've done that already, I also have to be a father to the fatherless.

Junot Díaz - This Is How You Lose Her

Something must have happened, your mother speculated. In her mind a woman with no child could only be explained by vast untrammeled calamity. Maybe she just doesn't like children.Nobody likes children, Yunior, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.

Mona Simpson - My Hollywood

Too many times I'd left him reaching for me, from a babysitter's arms. "Am I still a mother?" I asked myself... What parts of the day could I cut out and still give him enough? Paul never asked himself that. He thought he was a great dad.

Neil Kennedy -

80There is no greater influence in the lives of your children than the words you speak over them. The blessing of the father is incredibly potent and powerful. Your words give your children potential. As their father, you are prophesying their future!

Raheel Farooq -

A successful father is not more successful than his children.

Andrew Galasetti - These Colors Don't Run

Papas should be loving their children so much that they cry when they gone. That’s what papas is supposed to do.

Andrew Galasetti - These Colors Don't Run

Do whatever you must do to protect your children and wife.

Andrew Galasetti - These Colors Don't Run

He says that we must protect our families no matter what. No matter what we got to do to protect them.

Asa Don Brown -

As fathers, we should have a desire to be active participants in our children’s lives.

Michael Lewis - Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood

Memory loss is the key to human reproduction. If you remembered what new parenthood was actually like you wouldn’t go around lying to people about how wonderful it is, and you certainly wouldn’t ever do it twice.

Drew Magary - Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood

We're constantly judging and grading other parents, just to make sure that they aren't any better than us. I'm as guilty as anyone. I see some lady hand her kid a Nintendo DS at the supermarket and I instantly downgrade that lady to Shitty Parent status. I feel pressure to live up to a parental ideal that no one probably has ever achieved. I feel pressure to raise a group of human beings that will help America kick the shit out of Finland and South Korea in the world math rankings. I feel pressu

Shannon Celebi - After Spring Comes

You’re saying, “What the hell am I gonna do with her?” You’re saying, “Shit, did she take her pills?” You’re saying, “Once upon a time, I used to have a little girl.

Sage Steadman - Upon Destiny's Song

He was not being courageous as he bore the freezing stream for his wife and children. He simply chose between the lesser of two evils—the pain and suffering he would endure in the river, a physical pain that he could stand to bear, or the pain and suffering he would feel if he had to watch his family wade across and freeze. It was not a decision. The choice had already been made the moment Ole proposed marriage to his wife and welcomed these beautiful daughters into the world.

L.R. Knost - Effective Discipline

Parenting has nothing to do with perfection. Perfection isn’t even the goal, not for us, not for our children. Learning together to live well in an imperfect world, loving each other despite or even because of our imperfections, and growing as humans while we grow our little humans, those are the goals of gentle parenting. So don’t ask yourself at the end of the day if you did everything right. Ask yourself what you learned and how well you loved, then grow from your answer. That is perfect pare

Ricky Shetty -

The best gift you can give to your kids is a happy marriage.

Vincent Carrella -

A father is only capable of giving what he has, and what he knows. A good father gives all of himself that is good.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

A ‘good’ father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a ‘good’ father who is also a ‘brave’ father will let the children without cultivate the child within.

Saul Bellow - Herzog

Well, there is a piece of famous advice, grand advice even if it is German, to forget what you can't bear. The strong can forget, can shut out history. Very good. Even if it is self-flattery to speak of strength--these aesthetic philosophers, they take a posture, but power sweeps postures away. Still, it's true you can't go on transposing one nightmare into another, Nietzsche was certainly right about that. The tender-minded must harden themselves. Is this world nothing but a barren lump of coke

Stefan D -

- Daddy won’t buy me a new pony, so I’m gonna burn my old one so he will have to buy me a new one. - Will a horse do? I'm a horse. I'm a horse. Yes, of course. Yes, of course. (That's a little children's poem.).-Jarod Kintz and Stefan D

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me

Anyone can make a baby, but it takes a man to be a father.

Cokie Roberts - From This Day Forward

When kids made a decision for themselves they have a vested interest in showing they were right. Lee wanted to prove to me that he had made the right choice so he worked hard and did well. If we'd forced him to go to college somewhere else all the incentives would've been different. Then he would have had a motive to prove that we were wrong.

Dan Pearce - Single Dad Laughing

Saturday mornings, I’ve learned, are a great opportunity for kids to sneak into your bed, fall back asleep, and kick you in the face.

Beverley Nichols - Down the Garden Path

It was not till I experimented with seeds plucked straight from a growing plant that I had my first success...the first thrill of creation...the first taste of blood. This, surely, must be akin to the pride of paternity...indeed, many soured bachelors would wager that it must be almost as wonderful to see the first tiny crinkled leaves of one's first plant as to see the tiny crinkled face of one's first child.

J. Richard Singleton -

No man wants his daughter to be the kind of girl whom he liked in high school.

Antonella Gambotto-Burke - Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love

Repudiating the vulnerability I felt had wrecked the lives of women around me, I modelled myself on my controlled father. I wanted his freedom and his focus. To him, a family was an aquarium: controlled, contained. To the women I knew, a family was everything.

Randy Alcorn - Courageous

[Nathan] wasn't blindly obsessed with a possession. He wasn't crazy. He was a hero--a father who'd risked his life to rescue his son.

Emily Matchar -

Now let's make Virginia Heffernan a man. Can you imagine the same kind of spittle-flecked rage directed at a busy working father who admits to feeding his kids Annie's Organic Mac & Cheese?

Alice Walker -

All her young life she has tried to please her father, never quite realizing that, as a girl, she never could.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

Do you suppose, gentlemen, that our children as they grow up and begin to reason can avoid such questions? No, they cannot, and we will not impose on them an impossible restriction. The sight of an unworthy father involuntarily suggests tormenting questions to a young creature, especially when he compares him with the excellent fathers of his companions. The conventional answer to this question is: 'He begot you, and you are his flesh and blood, and therefore you are bound to love him.' The yout

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

A father teaches his children that the battle is not determined by the enemy that stands around them, but by the God Who stands within them. And that lesson can only be driven home as they watch their father stand around them, while God stands within their father.

Thomas Allan Smail - The Forgotten Father

Abba is not Hebrew, the language of liturgy, but Aramaic, the language of home and everyday life … We need to be wary of the suggestion … that the correct translation of Abba is ‘Daddy.’ Abba is the intimate word of a family circle where that obedient reverence was at the heart of the relationship, whereas Daddy is the familiar word of a family circle from which all thoughts of reverence and obedience have largely disappeared … The best English translation of Abba is simply ‘Dear Father.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

To lead solely on the behalf of those being led is the utter pinnacle of fatherhood, and it is sad that so few ever stand on the summit.

Arlie Russell Hochschild - The Second Shift

In the history of American fatherhood, there have been roughly three stages, each a response to economic change. In the first, agrarian stage, a father trained and disciplined his son for employment, and often offered him work on the farm, while his wife brought up the girls. (For blacks, this stage began after slavery ended.) As economic life and vocational training moved out of the family in the early nineteenth century, fathers left more of the child-rearing to their wives. According to the h

Christopher Hitchens - Hitch-22: A Memoir

Incidentally, I have also learned a bit about the importance of avoiding feminine embarrassment ('Daddy,' wrote Sophia when she enrolled at the New School where I teach, 'people will ask "why is old Christopher Hitchens kissing that girl?"') and shall now cease and desist.

Sunday Adelaja -

Many Christians have no understanding of God’s fatherhood

Gabrielle Zevin - The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

His heart is too full, and no words to release it.

H. Kirk Rainer -

How can you be a 'Former-Father'? Is it possible to be a father but, because someone or something is determined to illegalize it, being a father becomes a thing of the past? Should you simply consign yourself to be effectively dead to your living children; as though the fact of being their father has somehow been terminated, nullified or otherwise, deemed non-existent? I believe the basic answer to be 'No!

Alan Cumming -

We both lacked the same thing in our childhoods - the love of a father... We both sought to fill that lack in our adult lives with family and love, as everyone does, but also with thrills and sometimes periods of recklessness. Luckily, I have always come back from my recklessness. Tommy Darling did not.

H. Kirk Rainer - A Once and Always Father

You cannot begin to understand the failure of marriage—or the living of these ideas commitment or covenant—without considering and factoring in the devaluing of fatherhood. The two are inextricably linked and dependent.

Robin Stevenson - The World Without Us

Mom hadn't met Ramon; her advocacy was more arm's length - petitions, the website, letter writing, meetings with politicians. Her friend Hanna had formed a close friendship with Ramon though, visiting him as often as she could. Hanna told me that Ramon's greatest regret was that he wouldn't get to see his daughter grow up.And Jeremy's dad, who had that opportunity, was just throwing it away.It made me furious, and I couldn't let it go.

Josh Hatcher - Manlihood: The 12 Pillars of Masculinity

I know that not every family is a clean-cut nuclear Mom and Dad at home situation - but I think every father needs to do whatever he can to be present in the lives of his kids. If you are in a situation where you have not been - fight for it. Don’t give up till you get it. Don’t be a jerk about it - don’t “fight” mom - but “fight” whatever things tell you to just give up. Send cards, make phone calls, pay your support, and do whatever you can to be present in the lives of your children.

James Anderson - The Never-Open Desert Diner

Men were often far different in their roles as fathers than they were as suitors, the memories of which kept them, out of necessity, both vigilant and violent, and even in tender moments, to their daughters.

Connie Kerbs -

Motherhood (and fatherhood) is one of the most important, while at the same time being one of the most long-time, unappreciated roles we may ever find ourselves in. Add to that, it seems at times to be taken as much for granted by our society at large, as by the developing young we pour our all into. Quality parenting is also wrought with joy and satisfaction at every turn, being one of the most rewarding, and fulfilling experiences we have the opportunity to know in this thing we call the human

Anthony Stevens - Jung: A Very Short Introduction

Where the parents are not 'good enough' the rest of the programme for life may be distorted and later stages in the archetypal sequence may fail to be realized. Thus, the boy whose father was inadequate or absent may fail to actualize his masculine potential sufficiently to establish the social or vocational role his talents equip him for, or he may be unable to sustain a relationship with a member of the opposite sex long enough for him to become an adequate husband or father himself.

Katlego Semusa -

To be quite frank, I don't know nor understand how one can stand up and say I'm a 'perfect father'! I reckon myself to be a great dad in my children's eyes and maybe the kids I interact with just by passing by and cracking a few jokes that eventually put a smile on their faces. I call myself a 'great dad' cause my CREATOR chose me to bring an innocent and beautiful life to this world because the Heavens above believed that: 1. I'd never compromise my child's happiness over anything or anyone! 2.

Craig D. Lounsbrough -

The difference between a ‘man’ and a ‘father’ is that the former shares his genes, but latter gives his life.

Ralph Moody -

Son, there are times a man has to do things he doesn't like to, in order to protect his family.

Clayton Lessor MA - LPC

Healthy boys grow into healthy men.

Clayton Lessor MA - LPC

According to most studies on the subject, boys who grow up without fathers grow up at a disadvantage.

Clayton Lessor MA - LPC

Teaching a boy to be a man is the primary job of a father.

Clayton Lessor MA - LPC

There’s a wound most troubled boys share, which, at its core, comes from the feeling that they don’t have their father’s unconditional love.

Clayton Lessor MA - LPC

When a boy feels as if no one cares about him, or as if he will never amount to anything, he truly believes it doesn’t matter what he does.

Clayton Lessor MA - LPC

Despite what you might believe right now, your son’s future is bright. You only need the right tools to help him get there.

Clayton Lessor MA - LPC

It’s time to stop dreaming about who you want your son to be and help him become the healthy, happy, and successful man he’s supposed to be.

Clayton Lessor MA - LPC

Healing, it turns out, is a journey. It doesn’t happen all at once.

Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus

Prospero the Enchanter's immediate reaction upon meeting his daughter is a simple declaration of: "Well, fuck.

John Wilmot -

Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.

Isadora Duncan - My Life

Many women to whom I have preached the doctrine of freedom have weakly replied, 'But who is to support the children?' It seems to me that if the marriage ceremony is needed as a protection to insure the enforced support of children, then you are marrying a man who, you suspect, would under certain conditions, refuse to support his children, and it is a pretty low-down proposition. For you are marrying a man whom you already suspect of being a villain. But I have not so poor an opinion of men tha

Drexel Deal - The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

Before I was born my father disowned me. You know those ones who get the females pregnant, and then say the baby is not theirs? He rejected me, told my mother that I am not his child, so I never had a relationship with my father. Shelton ‘Apples’ Burrows reform gang leader

Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia - NMAA Cooks

Assuming mother's absence is only for a short time, don't be too concerned if you find yourself being more relaxed than she is over what the children eat. It is far better to maintain harmony and let mother cope with the problem later. You can use the excuse "You are only having this because Mummy's in hospital!".

P.A. Speers - Type 1 Sociopath - When Difficult People Are More Than Just Difficult People

If you do not have a close friendship with your children, I will." Child Molester warning all parents from the book Type 1 Sociopath

Randy Alcorn - Courageous

Father to teenage son: "My relationship with you is more important than anything I've got to say to you.

Noorilhuda - The Governess

You strive all through your life, to get somewhere, to be something, Some One, to matter, to have this, to have that, fill up your life with possessions, bonds, connections and in the end, the greed is still there, one does not want to let go, not unless the great gods come down and say enough is enough, no more......till then all you want is one more day." - Frank Adams

Noorilhuda - The Governess

He tried to disguise how tired and ill he was, how depressing the thought of death was to him and how he spent his days and nights thinking up schemes of living beyond what the prognosis said. His hope, if not his heart, would find a way.

Dianna Hardy - Summer's End

We were immortal, did you know that? Did you feel it like me? We had the world at our feet and we were going to live forever. Then came life – growing inside you – and I became mortal.

H. Kirk Rainer - A Father and Future Felon

A faraway-father is distant from his children; not necessarily in geography, but socially—either by choice or by force. Our country has many fathers who are figuratively-forced far and away from their families. Legal force brings to bear disparate dads through such innovations as no-fault divorce, legal precedence, and post-divorce incrimination. I am one of these parents—portrayed or profiled as 'perpetrator'.

Rachel Joyce - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Did you have any yourself?" she said."Just one."Harold thought of David, but it was too much to explain. He saw the boy as a toddler and how his face darkened in sunshine like a ripe nut. He wanted to describe the soft dimples of flesh at his knees, and the way he walked in his first pair of shoes, staring down, as if unable to credit they were still attached to his feet. He thought of him lying in hit cot, his fingers so appallingly small and perfect over his wool blanket. You could look at the

Bill Cosby - Himself

I'm not the boss of my house. I don't know how I lost it, I don't know when I lost it, I don't really think I ever had it. But I've seen the boss's job...and I don't want it!

H. Kirk Rainer - A Father and Future Felon

My association of jail to high school is probably on the basic similarity of a communicable social-setting. These few settings represent a frame of reference: a somewhat fraternal order (though I never belonged to an actual fraternity) where people collect—and may be confined—and somewhat coalesce on a common cause. Jail was a remarkable and unique experience of fellows/fathers and a force of several….

Charles Haddon Spurgeon - Lectures to My Students

It is a pity that we cannot persuade all ministers to be men, for it is hard to see how other was they can be truly men of God.

Doris Kearns Goodwin - and the Golden Age of Journalism

Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, "armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father.

Doris Kearns Goodwin - and the Golden Age of Journalism

Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur plays for them, encourage pursuit of special interests, prompted them to write essays on their readings, and urge them to recite poetry.

Eleesha - The Soulful Pathway to Fatherhood: Soulfully Empowering Your Life's Journey & Purpose as a Father Through Positive Insp

As a Father, I willingly nurture & protect the Soul's of all those - I love.

Henri J.M. Nouwen - The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

The return to the "Father from whom all fatherhood takes its name" allows me to let my dad be no less than the good, loving, but limited human being he is, and to let my heavenly Father be the God whose unlimited, unconditional love melts away all resentments and anger and makes me free to love beyond the need to please or find approval.

Edward O. Sisson -

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent,