Best 7965 quotes in «father quotes» category

Hey, he's awesome. A little unstable, but awesome. We got along great." Adrian opened the door to the building we were seeking. "And he's a badass in his way too. I mean, any other guy who wore scarves like that? He'd be laughed out of this school. Not Abe. He'd beat someone almost as badly as you would. In fact..." Adrian's voice turned nervous. I gave him a surprised look. "In fact what?" "Well...Abe said he liked me. But he also made it clear what he'd do to me if I ever hurt you or did anything bad." Adrian grimaced. "In fact, he described what he'd do in very graphic detail. Then, just like that, he switched to some random, happy topic. I like the guy, but he's scary.

His father's last word, which Sean had never told anyone, not even his mother, hadn't been goodbye: it had been hello. He hadn't died; he'd been set free from the constraints of history and flesh. And while the fathers of other children could only be the people they were, and were forced to live the lives they'd made for themselves, the Philip Steiner of his son's daydreams was all the possible versions of himself that Sean could imagine. He was always near, always ready to listen, always offering solace. He was all the possible fathers. He was a dragonslayer and a titan of industry; he was a cunning detective and a grizzled gunfighter; he was an astronaut and a priest and a jailer of thieves. He lived in the shadows, and he filled his son's world with light.

Honey, there is no one right way to eat cannelloni.

How does a boy without a father grow up to be a man? How does he learn to make the hard decisions he's going to have to make in life? The ones only a man can teach?

How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.

Humility is a virtue of the heavenly, not arrogance. Are we the most superior beast on earth? No, not in strength and not in intelligence. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Both rats and monkeys have been shown to learn from error, yet we have not. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause on earth. Is destroying God's creations really serving God - or the devil? And what father would want to see his children constantly divided and fighting? What God would allow a single human life to be sacrificed for monetary gain? Again, the Creator or the devil?

I always play with words,now i'm out of words i don't know how to describe you because you're my Father.. But surely i can say i love you

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well. {His teacher was the legendary philosopher Aristotle}

I ask you to kill my father for the crime of bringing me into existence.

I believe that it should be the blessing of every child to be born into a home where that child is welcomed, nurtured, loved, and blessed with parents, a father and a mother, who live with loyalty to one another and to their children.

I’d like you to come to Kauai with me,” I say. “And Scottie. I think it would be good to get her away from the hospital for a day. We can leave in the morning, find him, and be home tomorrow night. If it takes us a day longer, that’s fine, but we won’t stay more than two nights. That’s our deadline. If we don’t find him, then at least we know we tried.” “And this will make you feel better somehow?” “It’s for her,” I say. “Not for him or me.” “What if he’s a wreck? What if he loses his shit?” “Then I’ll take care of him.” I imagine Brian Speer wailing on my shoulder. I imagine him and my daughters by Joanie’s bed, her lover and his loud sobs shaming us. “Just so you know, I am angry. I’m not this pure and noble guy. I want to do this for her, but I also want to see who he is. I want to ask him a few things.” “Just call him. Tell his office it’s an emergency. They’ll have him call you.” “I want to tell him in person. I haven’t told anyone over the phone, and I don’t want to start now.” “You told Troy.” “Troy doesn’t count. I just need to do this. On the phone he can escape. If I see him in person, he’ll have nowhere to go.” We both look away when our eyes meet. She hasn’t crossed the border into my room. She never does during her nighttime doorway chats. “Were you guys having trouble?” Alex asks. “Is that why she cheated?” “I didn’t think we were having trouble,” I say. “I mean, it was the same as always.” This was the problem, that our marriage was the same as always. Joanie needed bumps. She needed rough terrain. It’s funny that I can get lost in thoughts about her, but when she was right in front of me, I didn’t think much about her at all. “I wasn’t the best husband,” I say. Alex looks out the window to avoid my confession. “If we go on this trip, what will we tell Scottie?” “She’ll think we’re going on a trip of some sort. I want to get her away from here.

I cannot imagine how much I must’ve suffered in my previous lives to be fortunate enough to have parents like you in this life.

I didn't want them ever to believe that life began when the man of the house arrived home. We didn't wait for Dad. It was his job now to catch up with us.

Do it, Zhian urges. Let me out, Zahra. Let me out. Listen to me first, I demand. There are jinn charmers out here—did you hear them? They are playing, filling the hills with their charms. You must not go near the humans, or we will both end up right back where we started. We could take them together, he replies. You and I—working as a team. We would be unstoppable! To that, I only send him an image of the lamp, and he curses. I quickly relay to him the deal I made with Nardukha. Zhian stews in his jar, his impatience hammering through my thoughts. When I finish, he spits, So do it! Let me out! I glance around, making sure we’re alone, then lift the jar high before dashing it against a rock. The pottery shatters, as does the charm that held Zhian captive inside. A burst of smoke fills the air, red and angry. It swells and thunders. “Quiet!” I hiss. “They’ll come!” I do not fear mortals! “Then you’re an idiot. If it weren’t for me, they’d still have you bottled up in their crypts.” My father would not allow it! Zhian swirls around me, his wind pulling at my hair and my black cloak. Dragon heads materialize in the smoke, snapping and hissing dangerously close to my face. He would burn their city for my sake! He would sink their ships and wreck their walls!

I blinked and the images were gone. But I remembered how the laugh and the howl and the splash would ripple and echo in the stillness of our lake, and I wondered if ripples and echoes like those ever fully die away, if somewhere in the woods my father's joyful yelps still bounced quietly off the trees. Silly thought, but there you go.

I bring this up because in writing some thoughts about a father, or not having a father, I feel as though I'm writing a book about a troll under a bridge or a dragon. For me, a father was nothing more than a character in a fairy tale. I know fathers are not like dragons because fathers actually exist. I have seen them on television and sliding their arms around their wives in grocery stores, and I have seen them in the malls and in the coffee shops, but these were characters in other people's stories. The sad thing is, as a kid, I wondered why I couldn't have a dragon, but I never wondered why I didn't have a father. (page 20)

I decided I would go with them, but it would be at my father's house that I would eat. I would share his food, and his poverty.

I don’t remember his face or the place we ate. I only remember how he grabbed my hand and his voice when he spoke of his dad.

I dread dinner with Father. I dread his suffocating shroud of silence. I dread his end-of-day rituals. Most of all, I detest what comes last: his lock-up-for-the-night clatter. These sounds rasp my already fragile nerves. Click, clang, grind, zing, clap, schlik: horrid sounds.

I do what I do because I love God, as I love your children, as I love humanity, as I love peace, truth, and justice for all. I may not be a fan of religion, but I am a big fan of God. I choose not to subscribe to any one religion because I recognize truths in them all — both the truths and flaws. For anybody to believe that any father would want to see his children fighting is madness. It does not make the Creator happy to see anybody massacre any of his beautiful creations. If you must know the religion I choose, I choose LOVE. If you must know the name of my god, his name is Truth, or rather 'He Who is One, The One Who is All.

I drift off for a while. I don't know how long, but when I open my eyes, the Oscars are still on and Alex tells me that Sid has gone and this makes me a little sad. Whatever the four of us had is over. He is my daughter's boyfriend now, and I am a father. A widower. No pot, no cigarettes, no sleeping over. They'll have to find inventive ways to conduct their business, most likely in uncomfortable places, just like the rest of them. I let him and my old ways go. We all let him go, as well as who we were before this, and now it's really just the three of us. I glance over at the girls, taking a good look at what's left.

If a son has a peaceful relationship with his father, if neither of them ever shows contempt for the other, then either the father is a fool, or the son is.

I felt like a trophy child, someone he had around to show off. It felt like it was more important that his daughter was perfect—but, I was his daughter and I was neither of those things. I worked hard to get my grades, and I tried so hard to meet his expectations, but I failed. Over and over again, I fell short. I didn't measure up. That feeling never faded.

If he could not restore her to the status of a respectable woman, then Sohrab would make her into something else entirely, something hitherto unknown in their entire extended family, an educated woman, a professional woman.

If parenting was an adventure sport, it would be the most courageous sport in the world. It involves venturing into the unknown, full of unexpected twists and turns, and is completely unpredictable. It is also thrilling and rewarding. Parenting is by far my boldest adventure. I’m not an expert, but I am a mother who loves her children and I believe in family. Parenting is not something you do so much as who you are. You don’t “do” mothering. You don’t “do” fathering. You are a mother. You are a father. You are in the process of shaping a life and leaving a legacy.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then dissatisfaction must be its father.

If you are a good parent, please continue to be a good one. But if you are bad parent, today is a great new beginning for you to start a great new chapter of parenthood.

I have done at least one good thing: become a person my father would hate.

If you want to know what God thinks about any situation in the world, think like a parent.

I got an A on the third quiz in American history, an A, dammit. Last time I got a B up from a C and my father said, "if you can get a C you can get a B, if you can get a B you can get an A."- I got an A and my father said, "grades don't mean anything.

I had a choice. My instincts told me to hurry up and give the choking man the Heimlich maneuver. My brain told me to stay still until he expired and chalk this one up to divine intervention.

I had to ask Scottie what TYVM meant, because now that I’ve narrowed into her activities, I notice she is constantly text-messaging her friends, or at least I hope it’s her friends and not some perv in a bathrobe. “Thank you very much,” Scottie said, and for some reason, the fact that I didn’t get this made me feel completely besieged. It’s crazy how much fathers are supposed to know these days. I come from the school of thought where a dad’s absence is something to be counted on. Now I see all the men with camouflage diaper bags and babies hanging from their chests like little ship figureheads. When I was a young dad, I remember the girls sort of bothered me as babies, the way everyone raced around to accommodate them. The sight of Alex in her stroller would irritate me at times—she’d hang one of her toddler legs over the rim of the safety bar and slouch down in the seat. Joanie would bring her something and she’d shake her head, then Joanie would try again and again until an offering happened to work and Alex would snatch it from her hands. I’d look at Alex, finally complacent with her snack, convinced there was a grown person in there, fooling us all. Scottie would just point to things and grunt or scream. It felt like I was living with royalty. I told Joanie I’d wait until they were older to really get into them, and they grew and grew behind my back.

I have just taught Soli to make borscht! Yesterday I bought beets with big, glossy leaves still caked with wet soil. Naneh washed them in the tub until her arthritis flared, but she's promised to make dolmas with the leaves. After we closed Soli tucked the beets under coals and roasted them all night. When I woke up I smelled caramel and winter and smoke. It made me so hungry, I peeled a hot, slippery one for breakfast and licked the ashes and charred juices off with my burnt fingertips. Noor, bruised from betrayal, remembered borscht, remembered stirring sour cream into the broth and making pink paisley shapes with the tip of her spoon, always surprised by the first tangy taste, each time anticipating sweetness. Her mother had called it a soup for the brokenhearted. She marveled at her father's enthusiasm for borscht, when for thirty years each day had been a struggle. Another man would've untied his apron long ago and left the country for a softer life, but not Zod. He would not walk away from his courtyard with its turquoise fountain and rose-colored tables beneath the shade of giant mulberry trees, nor the gazebo, now overgrown with jasmine, where an orchestra once played and his wife sang into the summer nights.

If you're male, and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.

If you sum up your judgment of me, the result you get is that, although you don't charge me with anything downright improper or wicked . . . , you do charge me with coldness, estrangements and ingratitude. And, what is more, you charge me with it in such a way as to make it seem my fault, as though I might have been able, with something like a touch on the steering wheel, to make everything quite different, while you aren't in the slightest to blame, unless it be for having been too good to me. This, your usual way of representing it, I regard as accurate only in so far as I too believe you are entirely blameless in the matter of our estrangement. But I am equally entirely blameless. If I could get you to acknowledge this, then what would be possible is—not, I think, a new life, we are both much too old for that—but still, a kind of peace . . .

I have the solution to all my problems. I have money, position, the running of one of the country’s legendary cattle stations. I can even get the girl I want. I can’t buy her, of course. She’s got money of her own. But I’m pretty sure if I talk to her dad, he’ll give me the green light.

I hope she can’t tell that I’m appraising her and that I’m completely worried by what I see. She’s excitable and strange. She’s ten. What do people do during the day when they’re ten? She runs her fingers along the window and mumbles, “This could give me bird flu,” and then she forms a circle around her mouth with her hand and makes trumpet noises. She’s nuts. Who knows what’s going on in that head of hers, and speaking of her head, she most definitely could use a haircut or a brushing. There are small tumbleweeds of hair resting on the top of her head. Where does she get haircuts? I wonder. Has she ever had one before? She scratches her scalp, then looks at her nails. She wears a shirt that says I’M NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL. BUT I CAN BE! I’m grateful that she isn’t too pretty, but I realize this could change.

I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people-the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime. I am sorry I could not see my father.

I know an alcoholic is the worse, but sometimes I wonder if it's better to have a drinking father that lives at home, or a drinking father, that never comes around.

I know that when I read the Bible, my life is transformed. I think differently. I act differently. I talk differently.

I lied to Father . . . to spare him. I broke our family rule: better to hurt with the truth than comfort with a lie. I woke up today with a list of his expectations and I'm tiring of it.

{Miller, who was president of American Federation of Musicians, had this to say about Robert Ingersoll at his funeral} On behalf of 15,000 professional musicians, comprising the American Federation of Musicians, permit me to extend to you our heart-felt and most sincere sympathy in the irreparable loss of the model husband, father, and friend. In him the musicians of not only this country, but of all countries, have lost one whose noble nature grasped the true beauties of our sublime art, and whose intelligence gave those impressions expression in words of glowing eloquence that will live as long as language exists.

I look at my parents the way mothers look at their toddlers. I take every chance to witness them undisturbed. To study every detail as if sitting for an important exam. I take note of their hands, the curves of their ears, the way they envelop a room and greet others. The way their souls shine through when they speak of something they love, like a candid photograph unveiling beauty and truth. Even though I am present in the same space as them, I am distanced because of the intensity of my love. Every heartbeat reminds me of the ephemeral nature of our bodies and the blessedness of these moments until my father looks up from his book and catches me smiling. And like a child he is bewildered for a moment and smiles back.

I'm going to be a person who writes stories. I never told mom and dad how much I loved them. I wanna be someone who can tell a lot of people how much I love them.

In a patriarchal society, one of the most important functions of the institution of the family is to make feel like a somebody whenever he is in his own yard a man who is a nobody whenever he is in his employer’s yard.

Implicit [in the psychiatric literature] is a set of normative assumptions regarding the father's prerogatives and the mother's obligations within the family, The father, like the children, is presumed to be entitled to the mother's love, nurturance, and care. In fact, his dependent needs actually supersede those of the children, for if a mother falls to provide the accustomed intentions, it is taken for granted that some other female must be found to take her place. The oldest daughter is a frequent choice... The father's wish, indeed his right, to continue to receive female nurturance, whatever the circumstances, is accepted without question.

I'm supposed to be a man but I can't help thinking no one ever showed me what that is supposed to look like. Maybe that is why I ride the middle all the time—never offending anyone, never getting a hard time, but never much standing out either.

In these last days, what the world really needs is courageous parenting from mothers and fathers who are not afraid to speak up and take a stand.

In hindsight, the grand hero ideal she always thought he encompassed chipped away and all that remained was a cheap imitation. He embodied everything she’d hidden from in her adolescence. Boyfriends, relationships, and sex all led to disaster. Being alone was better than shattered and broken like mother: disenchanted with the life she’d been forced into.

Inside my house, nobody was home, except everybody, but it was easy to feel like those were one and the same.