Best 314 quotes in «fatherhood quotes» category

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 youth involuntarily reflects: 'But did he love me when he begot me?' he asks, wondering more and more. 'Was it for my sake he begot me? He did not know me, not even my sex, at that moment, at the moment of passion, perhaps, inflamed by wine, and he has only transmitted to me a propensity to drunkenness- that's all he's done for me.... Why am I bound to love him simply for begetting me when he has cared nothing for me all my life after? Oh, perhaps those questions strike you as coarse and cruel, but do not expect an impossible restraint from a young mind. 'Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window'.

Dust is the parent of a star!

Dwight Eisenhower said that from the beginning, his mother and father operated on an assumption that set the course of his life - that the world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence. Eisenhower's parents assumed, and taught their children, that if their children weren't alive, their family couldn't function. (page 34)

Even sorrow has its silver lining, as the emotion that pours forth reminds us of our capacity to love, and to be loved.

Every child grows up thinking their father is a hero or villain until they are old enough to realize that he is just a man

Every man, who desires to become a true father, has to look continually to the Lord, that he might learn of Him how to relate to his own children

Every man can provide provision to his children if he is committed and hardworking but a man who fails to enter into the depths of the mind of his children is not is father, but a master who owns a slave!

Fatherhood is the greatest education a man can ever receive.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy

Father is an animal the moment he loves his public reputation more than his children but the father becomes a father of his children, the moment he loves his children more than his public reputation. Fathers who are addicted to their public reputation than their children are plenty whereas transparent and sincere fathers who loves their children than their reputation are few. And that requires sacrifice that proves you are worthy of being a father of your child. Don't be one, if you cant be one of the sacrificers!

Father is an animal the moment he loves his public reputation more than his children but the father becomes a father of his children, the moment he loves his children more than his public reputation. Fathers who are addicted to their public reputation than their children are plenty whereas transparent and sincere fathers who loves their children than their reputation are few. And that requires sacrifice that proves you are worthy of being a father pf your child!

Fathers! You have no idea the impact that your example has on the person your child will become. Everything you say to them will be like a stud or brick in their construction. Would you build a house with crappy supplies? Do you think that you can skimp on costs and still expect a quality house? Do you think you can just toss it all together and hope it stands up? No! You have to have a plan, the right materials, and careful construction procedures to build a proper house. You can't ignore your kids, or parent without any thought. You can't consistently lose your temper and insult them and expect them.to grow up healthy and whole. I'm not a perfect parent, and you won't be either. But we HAVE to think about what effect our actions has on them.

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.

Fathers are no longer men, most are only boys who pretend.

Fatherhood is a man's main goal and appointed purpose in life.

Father is an animal the moment he loves his public reputation more than his children but a father becomes the father of his children, the moment he loves his children more than his public reputation. Fathers who are addicted to their public reputation than their children are plenty whereas transparent and sincere fathers who loves their children than their reputation are few. And that requires sacrifice which proves you are worthy of being the father of your child. Don't be one, if you cant be one of the sacrificers!

Fathers who consider themselves as the best father of their children are often the worst father in the eyes of their children. Give the mentally deprived child what they need, not what you know!

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

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.

Forget Batman: when I really thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wanted to be my dad.

For every guy who loves being a dad, there’s another who realizes too late that he’s created something his wife loves more than him.

He locked himself up in his sanctuary of art and carried the keys with him at all times. He maintained the social façade for financial security. The more tragedies were shackled to his name, the more demand there was for his public persona to clean up after the family name and showcase his art to overshadow his domestic disasters. His prominent reputation in the limelight of the town kept buzzing while the man behind the infamy withered in privacy.

...having a child is like casting off your own childhood forever. It's as if it's only then that you really grasp what it means to be a man. You're scared too that all your weaknesses will be laid bare, because fatherhood demands more than you can give.... I always felt I had to earn your love, because I loved you so, so much.

Healthy boys grow into healthy men.

He needed me to do what sons do for their fathers: bear witness that they’re substantial, that they’re not hollow, not ringing absences. That they count for something when little else seems to.

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.

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

He was a father. That’s what a father does. Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.

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.

He was all iron outside, but all father within.

He was not at all what is called ‘a character’. He was an innocent, affable old man who had somehow preserved his good humor – much more than that, a mysterious and tranquil joy – throughout a life which to all outward observation had been overloaded with misfortune. He had like many another been born in full sunlight and lived to see night fall.

He was fortified by a memory which kept only the good things and rejected the ill. Despite his sorrows, he had had a fair share of joys and these were ever fresh and accessible.

He welcomes the chance to do fatherly things with the little girl, and those ten morning minutes with dear little four-year-old Ruby, with her deep soulful eyes, and the wondrous things she sees with them, and her deep soulful voice, and the precious though not entirely memorable things she says with it, and the smell of baby shampoo and breakfast cereal filling the car, that little shimmering capsule of time is like listening to cello music in the morning, or watching birds in a flutter of industry building a nest, it simply reminds you that even if God is dead, or never existed in the first place, there is, nevertheless, something tender at the center of creation, some meaning, some purpose and poetry.

He would not live the life of his daughter by falling apart and not giving her anything but anticipated grief and collateral heartache. He wanted to imprint paternal love on her body. Maybe she would be strong and regenerated enough to stay, and maybe his intense affection would work its magic.

Horses' eyes are covered with blinders to keep them unaware of their surroundings and focused on the race or pulling a wagon. Horses without blinders are horses who can be themselves. I want Adam to be himself, without any blinders, which only means I must continue telling him the story.

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!

However precise the results offered by paternity testers, the truth was recognized by societies that flourished long before they appeared: that fatherhood means more than genes alone.

I am wounded. I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.

I am a face in a trance, evoking duende. My face imbues breath and stuns you with star-spirit. I am grove-face, story-teller face, and dawn-bringer face. A face as common as carrots and celery, called upon as a father to be cook, waiter, servant, and maid.

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 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 and has prevailed for as long as my role has been at risk.

I don't know why I wanted a girl,' he says, as if to himself. 'I mean, I wouldn't swap Louis, but when they said, 'It's a boy!', I thought: 'Oh, well.' Everyone else was incredibly pleased that it was a boy – grandparents are always very pleased when it's a boy for some reason. Another one's on the way, and I hope it's going to be a girl. After that, I'll stop. I think it can be a real mistake to sort of plug away for a particular sex … you end up having millions and they're all boys.

I can speak of our baby like this to no one else. Who but his father would linger over the exact width of his gummy little smile or the blueness of his eyes, or the sweetness of his little lick of tawny hair on his forehead?

I blinked. Because even though my dad never, ever complained about being a young dad, I always wondered about his regrets. How his need to keep abandoned, sad things might apply to me, too.

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

i don't want to give the impression that I fault my father. I don't. The truth is that he's one of my heroes. He's monumental to me. I believed - and still do - that a man must stand in the door of his home and let the wolf get him before the wolf gets his family. The wolf never got my father or his family, and I admire Daddy's guts. He never slacked off work or lied to me or shrugged his responsibilities. He dealt with his family from a distance, but was available, when needed. Eventually I'd do the same. I don't know whether I was copying him or whether, by coincidence, my work, like Daddy's, simply kept me away. All I know is that in many ways, big and small, I've followed my father.

...if I were an angel of the Lord, I would mark the doors of each of my children's homes with an X, so that plague and misfortune would pass over them. Alas, I lack the qualifications. So when there was still world and time enough I fretted. I nagged. I corrected. I got everything wrong.

I felt something I had never felt before, a mixture of fear and pride. I liked it. This was fatherhood. The biggest mistake anyone could make, and yet universally accepted. I had arrived.

If you can't afford to give your child the right to pursue their dreams, you have no right to breed.

If there's a perk to having such a fucked up father, it's that he's in no position to judge.