He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch
him do it. ~Clarence Budington Kelland
A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms
when his hands are empty. ~Author Unknown
Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must
inspire one or the other. ~Joseph Joubert
One father is more than a hundred Schoolemasters. ~George
Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs, 1640
Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call
him father! ~Lydia M. Child, Philothea: A Romance,
1836
Henry James once defined life as that predicament which
precedes death, and certainly nobody owes you a debt of
honor or gratitude for getting him into that predicament.
But a child does owe his father a debt, if Dad, having
gotten him into this peck of trouble, takes off his coat and
buckles down to the job of showing his son how best to crash
through it. ~Clarence Budington Kelland
A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And
when she is a woman he turns her back again. ~Enid Bagnold
Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest
inheritance. ~Ruth E. Renkel
A father carries pictures where his money used to be.
~Author Unknown
The father who would taste the essence of his fatherhood
must turn back from the plane of his experience, take with
him the fruits of his journey and begin again beside his
child, marching step by step over the same old road.
~Angelo Patri
My father, when he went, made my childhood a gift of a half
a century. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated
from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
It is much easier to become a father than to be one. ~Kent
Nerburn, Letters to My Son: Reflections on Becoming a Man,
1994
The words that a father speaks to his children in the
privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in
whispering-galleries, they are clearly heard at the end and
by posterity. ~Jean Paul Richter
Any man can be a father. It takes someone special to be a
dad. ~Author Unknown
Two little girls, on their way home from Sunday school, were
solemnly discussing the lesson. "Do you believe there is a
devil?" asked one. "No," said the other promptly. "It's
like Santa Claus: it's your father." ~Ladies' Home
Journal, quoted in 2,715 One-Line Quotations for
Speakers, Writers & Raconteurs by Edward F. Murphy
Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about
their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was
not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a
boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he
could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a
role called Being a Father so that his child would have
something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector,
who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic
possibilities of life. ~Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the
Vanities
Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.
~Gloria Naylor
Sons are for fathers the twice-told tale. ~Victoria Secunda, Women and Their Fathers, 1992
Why are men reluctant to become fathers? They aren't
through being children. ~Cindy Garner
Fathers represent another way of looking at life - the
possibility of an alternative dialogue. ~Louise J. Kaplan,
Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to Individual,
1978
There's something like a line of gold thread running through
a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually
over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up
in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love
itself. ~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined
Cemetery, 1994
There are three stages of a man's life: He believes in
Santa Claus, he doesn't believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa
Claus. ~Author Unknown
Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is
soap-on-a-rope. ~Bill Cosby
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I
could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I
got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had
learned in seven years. ~Mark Twain, "Old Times on the
Mississippi" Atlantic Monthly, 1874