Best 67 quotes in «fathers and sons quotes» category

Help your father As he ages And loses his strength For it was he who sheltered you And protected you from the storms KhoiSan Book of Wisdom

He never had time to look at the stars and fulfill his dreams, as he was too busy in fulfilling mine my hero my father

He spoke slowly, his voice deeper and louder, every word tacked nine-inches deep into the beams of our minds.

He wanted to argue like this forever. This was better than nothing. There was no exhausting his anger at his father, and every word, however well intentioned or intentionally barbed, was a pull at a scab on his bloody heart. It was too late for any of this. There could ultimately be no healing. Marty had terminal cancer, and so did the two men have a cancer between them. They were terminal together, as father and son. They remained, momentarily exhausted, but it was really only that quiet between lightning and thunder as sound lags behind speed. The lightning had cracked the ground already, you just hadn't heard it yet.

He was all iron outside, but all father within.

He wishes he could remember everything. Anything. He doesn’t sense a bone in his body that can feel compassion or worthiness. Self-pity hides away as well, the lowest form of emotion not even capable of resting in his wrecked mind.

Hmm. Relationships between fathers and sons can be notoriously difficult, especially for two men who are as different as you and your father are." "Yes, and he's also the king--that makes our relationship impossible.

If one could speak two languages well and was raised on tea and baguettes for breakfast,in places where the most mundane daily business on the street is conducted in four languages, where horse carts park at cyber cafes, where would one go? Where could one go? Why,with a smile and a handshake, very far, indeed!

I am the father of three sons, Cameron, Jordan and Tristan. Each is as unique, as are the stars in the sky. Each is his own imposable planet, filled with creative brilliance, blessed with boundless intelligence and imbued with the kind of strength of character, born of an ancient warrior ethos.

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 am a proud father in the fulfillment I feel when I provide guidance to my son. We have tremendous sharing together, which I now share in words with you today, with only a humble choice of adjectives to truly describe the emotions I feel arising from my relationship with my son. I imagine each of us has relationships of which we can be proud.

I can show him how to be the right kind of stupid.

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.

If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me.

I've internalized my father- his impatience, his perfectionism, his rage. I no longer need my father to torture me. From this day on, I can do it all by myself.

If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, And-which is more-you'll be a man my son.

I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.

Il le constata avec la compassion des fils que la vie a transformé peu à peu en pères de leur père, et pour la première fois il souffrit de ne pas avoir accompagné le sien dans la solitude de ses erreurs.

I must be old, Pyotr thought to himself, if my son is being kind to me.

I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all. When Dad was tucking me in that night and we were talking about the book, I asked if he could think of a solution to that problem. "Which problem?" "The problem of how relatively insignificant we are." He said, "Well, what would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it one millimeter?" I said, "I'd probably die of dehydration." He said, "I just mean right then, when you moved that single grain of sand. What would that mean?" I said, "I dunno, what?" He said, "Think about it." I thought about it. "I guess I would have moved one grain of sand." "Which would mean?" "Which would mean I moved a grain of sand?" "Which would mean you changed the Sahara." "So?" "So? So the Sahara is a vast desert. And it has existed for millions of years. And you changed it!" "That's true!" I said, sitting up. "I changed the Sahara!" "Which means?" he said. "What? Tell me." "Well I'm not talking about painting the Mona Lisa or curing cancer. I'm just talking about moving that one grain of sand one millimeter." "Yeah? If you hadn't done it, human history would have been one way..." "Uh-huh?" "But you did do it, so...?" I stood on the bed, pointing one of my fingers at the fake stars, and screamed: "I changed the course of human history!" "That's right." "I changed the universe!" "You did." "I'm God!" "You're an atheist." "I don't exist!" I fell back onto the bed, into his arms, and we cracked up together.

I spent half my childhood trying to be like my dad. True for most boys, I think. It turns with adolescence. The last thing I wanted was to be like my dad. It took becoming a man to realize how lucky I’d been. It took a few hard knocks in life to make me realize the only thing my dad had ever wanted or worked for was to give me a chance at being better than him.

It's terrible never to find a father in a world chock-full of fathers of all sorts.

My father greeted me with his usual air of mild regret.

I wish I'd gotten to know my dad better too," Kent nodded, "because when I did know him, he already wasn't himself. But the thing is, I never blamed him." "Why's that?" "I suppose because trying to place blame on someone always seemed like an impossible task. Like trying to find the start of something that's actually an endless cycle. I just figured it was better to be hard on myself and to make sure that I was a better person to those I loved. That way I could break the cycle." Did you hear that, Dad? That's the kind of wisdom older brothers are put on this earth to dispense.

Minus: Papa, I'm scared. When I was hugging Karin in the boat, reality burst open. Do you understand? David: I do. Minus: Reality burst open, and I tumbled out. It's like a dream. Anything can happen. Anything. David: I know. Minus: I can't live in this new world. David: Yes, you can. But you must have something to hold on to. Minus: What would that be? A god? Give me proof of God. You can't. David: Yes, I can. But you have to listen carefully. Minus: Yes, I need to listen. David: I can only give you a hint of my own hope. It is to know that love exists as something real in the human world. Minus: A special kind of love, I suppose? David: All kinds, Minus. The highest and the lowest, the most absurd and the most sublime. All kinds of love. Minus: And the longing for love? David: Longing and denial. Trust and distrust. Minus: Then love is the proof? David: I don't know if love is proof of God's existence, or if love is God himself. Minus: To you, love and God are the same thing. David: That thought helps me in my emptiness and despair. Minus: Tell me more, Papa. David: Suddenly the emptiness turns into abundance, and despair into life. It's like a reprieve, Minus, from a death sentence. Minus: Papa... If it is as you say, then Karin is surrounded by God, since we love her. David: Yes. Minus: Can that help her? David: I believe so. Minus: ... Papa, would you mind if I go for a run? David: Off you go. I'll make dinner. See you in an hour. Minus: ... Papa spoke to me.

My father became a mythical figure, more force than man. . .he was a force my mother would use as a threat of wrath and punishment." In "Father Close, Father Far" New California Writing

my father...there was never any mistaking his love for me. When I walked into the room, his eyes lit up and he wrapped me in his arms as if it was Christmas morning and I was the best gift imaginable.

Some years later, after Scott’s death, we came my father and I to the Field Museum, a long dismal peristyle dwindling away into the howling distance, and inside stood before a tableau of Stone Age Man, father mother and child crouched around an artificial ember in postures of minatory quiet—until, feeling my father’s eye on me, I turned and saw what he required of me—very special father and son we were that summer, he staking his everything this time on a perfect comradeship—and I, seeing in his eyes the terrible request, requiring from me his very life; I, through a child’s cool perversity or some atavistic recoil from an intimacy too intimate, turned him down, turned away, refused him what I knew I could not give.

My own view of Father was not nearly so high-flown or complicated. For me he was flesh and blood and until the day I left Memphis behind, to take up residence in Manhattan, he remained simply a barrier between me and any independent life I might aspire to- a barrier to any pursuit of ideas, interests, goals that my temperament guided me toward.

Sons want their fathers' attention until the precise moment when fathers want their sons'.

Not long after our final lesson, on one of our Sundays at the lake, my father and I were walking along the shore when he noticed a small rock shaped like a bird. When he picked it up, I saw the quick gleam of satisfaction in his face and felt in an instant that I had less power to please him than a stone.

One is worthy as a son when he removes all his father’s troubles.

Our era has produced many great men--- robber barons, masters of innovation, beast of business---whose staggering wealth, incomparable ruthlessness and personal legends would seem to prove they are dominant species but then one has a look at their son, and doubts the theory of evolution entirely. -DR. Bertrand Legmam Cooper, Problems of Science and Society, Posted by One Who Has Known Both, 1900

That had been the end of Communism. I had a feeling watching the tape that America would be next, but for once I kept my mouth shut. In my silence I felt our common ground: here we were, two men, neither young, neither with money, neither earning a penny or holding down a job or owning a house, both thoroughly confused by the way the world was turning.

The first few years after Samuel came to Salinas Valley there was a vague distrust of him. And perhaps Will as a little boy heard talk in the San Lucas store. Little boys don't want their fathers to be different from other men. Will might have picked up his conservatism right then.

…the most devastating thing Finney could have said. Not that Peter was hated by his father. But that he’d been loved all along. He’d interpreted kindness as cruelty, generosity as meanness, support as tethers. How horrible to have been offered love, and to have chosen hate instead. He’d turned heaven into hell.

They both looked at me in a way that was fast becoming familiar: two parts bafflement to one part awe at my talent for making a bad situation worse.

Then John knew that a curse was renewed from moment to moment, from father to son. Time was indifferent, like snow and ice; but the heart, crazed wanderer in the driving waste, carried the curse forever.

There is no stronger brotherhood than between two boys who discover that both were born to fathers who waged war on their sons.

The nobleman fell to his knees. 'Sir, come down to my son ere he die.' His old face. His love for his son. None of us spoke, the old man kneeling so. I watched your eyes. The pity that pooled, this love of the father. 'Go thy way; thy son lives,' you said. And he raised his face to you, and we could see that he believed.

There are many things for which I owe gratitude to my dad. Most of all, I am grateful to the only man who could love my mother more than me.

Thoughts, pictures of him would come to me just a second after waking, shocking me from the forgetfulness of sleep, striking blows that were almost physical. And even in sleep I was not completely free. So often sleep brought dreams of him.

They won’t turn away a father who has come to find his son.

This book is about our lives and legacy as men connected through blood and– should nature have its way– the ultimate choice we as sons face to preserve our father’s legacy or to torch it to build something new.

This room is crowded, haunted by the stale breath of the living. Until now, I have been able to imagine him dead, gloriously rotting in soil, on his way to Hell, perhaps, or stuck in the mire of nothingness that catches wandering spirits. In that image I have found small degrees of warmth, a tangible explanation for not knowing my father. I look at the picture and enlarge it with my mind. It is impossible to sleep knowing the chance exists that I might still meet him. I feel the planet spinning under me, like a whirlpool, the surface shrinking so that everything must eventually touch. I resist until it shatters.

We are born with our father's names. We are not responsible for their failures. We are responsible for what they made us believe in. That is our only obligation. And it is even then a choice which we may sometimes be wise to ignore.

We all have someone in our lives that has disappointed us a time or two, someone that no matter what they do you still try to love them through it" I just stare down at our joint hands. "The boys' dad, our son Benjamin he…" she squeezes my hand "he loves the boys in his own way" I look up into her face, but she's looking past me at Ry and Jase. "It was hard to watch those two grow up without either of their parents around for them and we tried to make up for it. To be what they needed, but every time we taught them new things or helped them with their homework or even attended their sporting events; every single time I saw the boys faces fall in disappointment. I felt that I felt disappointed towards my Benjamin." I tighten my grip on her hand, knowing it must not be easy to admit out loud. "We all have a weak spot; their dad was ours. Until he wasn't until he couldn't be anymore.

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory. Build me a son whose wishbone will not be where his backbone should be; a son who will know Thee and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge. Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail. Build me a son whose heart will be clean, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past. And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, "I have not lived in vain.

We aren't always kind to one another, but want to be, and I believe that is the same thing.

Why did you do it? Give up everything to raise another man's son?' His father did look up at that. 'I didn't raise another man's son,' he said sharply. 'I raised my own.