Fathers And Sons Quotes

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;!”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father's Advice to His Son

“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.”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father's Advice to His Son

“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.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer

“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.”
― Arthur Miller, All My Sons

“Tell me, son, what do you seek?”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“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.”
― Bernard Taylor, The Godsend

“Boys do not long for fathers who will usher them through the gauntlet of psychological disconnect. They long for fathers who have themselves survived intact. Boys do not ache for their father's masculinity. They ache for their fathers' hearts.”
― T. Real

“Once I said to my father, 'Why do you want me?'

I still think that's the bravest thing I've ever done.”
― China Miéville, This Census-Taker

“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.”
― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

“I began to see that he was flawed. We are all flawed, but it is a powerful moment when you realize that about your parents. Still, I loved him no less for it. I know I have flaws, and my children are free to realize this and make their own corrections.”
― Ziauddin Yousafzai, Let Her Fly: A Father's Journey

“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.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Rainy Season

“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.”
― Lynn Austin, Gods and Kings

“He was sentimental, and, like most sentimental people, he was both cruel and abused.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“There need be no struggle when we are all the same weight.”
― Daniel Kraus, Whalefall

“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”
― Dagoberto Gilb

“But with all this said, wine was given to gladden the heart of man (Ps. 104:15), and one of the duties a father has is that of teaching his son to drink.”
― Douglas Wilson, Future Men: Raising Boys to Fight Giants

“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.”
― Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis

“He had died in a trap that he had helped only a little to set, and they had all betrayed him in their various ways before he died. All sentimental people are betrayed so many times.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“If everything is the same thing, then does anything matter?” I insist. He caps his pen, pauses, and finally says, “Well, I suppose it’s the way it’s all arranged that gives it meaning . . . it’s how it’s put together. But then again, in the grand scheme of things . . . no, it probably doesn’t matter in the way we think it does.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“To believe that it is fair to punish an entire race or gender for the actions of a few individuals from that race or gender, who benefited a small group connected to the corrupt and guilty members of that race or gender, one must be ready to accept this reasoning when it affects them personally. We are after all Africans who believe in the spirit of Ubuntu, reciprocity, universally interpreted as the golden rule. If you believe in penalizing every white person for the actions of a few white politicians and their associates who have benefited from those actions, then it is only fair for you, as a black person, to also accept responsibility for all the corruption within the ANC, given that the ANC supposedly represents the black majority.

Whether you benefited is immaterial, as is the case for government-sanctioned affirmative action policies. We know it was a minority of white people who supported apartheid because the 1992 referendum to end apartheid was supported by 68,73 percent of the white population that voted.”
― Salatiso Mdeni, The Homeschooling Father, How and Why I got started.: Traditional Schooling to Online Learning until Homeschooling

“Every boy deserves to believe him father is good, but if each father were good, we’d be living in a different kind of world.”
― Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You

“I smiled, knowing all too-well, that my father was finally starting to realize that we were no longer in his control, and his reign as our puppet master was long over.”
― Emily Grace, River Of Sorrows

“Bereaved, she made it home, thanked the neighbor and headed to bed to sob herself to sleep.
Rich’s arrival from work was followed by a rattlesnake response to the two children wandering the house without supervision. Finding Gail in bed, he berated his wife for her selfishness.
Gail announced the miscarriage to Rich. “I hope you’re happy.”
He shrugged and said, “I’m sorry about that. Comm ci comme sa. You win some, you lose a bunch. I guess I’ll go fix spaghetti for the girls.”
She turned over to look him in the eye. “It was a beautiful, perfectly formed little boy,” she said with a tear-streaked face. Rich looked a little stunned at the news.
He heard his wife’s voice dull compared to the coursing blood in his ears. “Yes, he looked like you. His curls, his lashes…” Maybe he would have wanted a son, but the wheels of his mind kept turning. “There’s always another night, another baby to be had when he’s out of college, another son to be born when we’re more financially stable.” “If you wouldn’t have tricked me…”
“Into this pregnancy,” she finished his thought. “And so, you think you have tricked me back.”
― Lynn Byk, The Fearless Moral Inventory of Elsie Finch

“In the end I said to her, "You can't understand me; we belong to two different generations." She was terribly offended, but I thought to myself, "What's one to do? The pill is bitter but it has to be swallowed." Now our turn has come, and our heirs can say to us, "You don't belong to our generation. Swallow the pill.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Dads, let your faith be a flame that ignites a fire of righteousness in the hearts of your sons. Be a shining example of God's love and strength, that they may grow into mighty men of God, unwavering in their faith and unshakeable in their character. Let your legacy be one of victorious faith, not defeated complacency, that your sons may rise up and change the world for Christ.”
― Shaila Touchton

“See Me In One by Stewart Stafford

Crave not aged flight,
Your titian crown ringed,
With cherubim cheeks,
In child's play, winged.

I shed this life's skin,
My texts echoing guide,
Find flesh through them,
Righteous wordage sighed.

In forest dark, I found you,
All before, a stillborn nought,
Of everything in ardour rendered,
Your form, pride's ransom bought.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“As the pavement expanded, his innocence was slowly buried under asphalt, swallowed as all childhoods eventually are. But the earth protested, bending and warping the pavement with roots and blades of grass that pushed up through the cracks, and he learned that wildness was not something that can ever be tamed.”
― Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within

“His father smiles, all the lines in his face collapsing, but this time, the map they draw leads to a quiet joy.”
― Addison Lane, Blackpines: The Antlers Witch: The Girl Who Grew Antlers

“The Musket's Progeny by Stewart Stafford

The musket's progeny, gunpowder's rise,
Heirloom ingot cast in festering dirt,
No scaldy-faced defecator's lies,
Can tarnish gold's immutable worth.

Besmirched, perpetual gleam to my eyes,
Ne'er base, but plundered from thy berth,
Another's private treasure, I cannot despise,
Until thy loan fadeth i' th' afterbirth.

With cloistered secrets to impart,
Our correspondence doth expand,
Let it encompass thy tiny heart,
For when it groweth to understand.

When from distant quays, emotion sails,
My words guide thee in storms and gales.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“He spent the strike slagging off other miners. He never shifted a single one of his prejudices. And recently, while we were making things nice at the house he was upstairs boiling with anger. The way he turns up at the football field all raging and full of spite about the boys trying to get a clear shot at the goal. Violence, man. At some level they pass that on to you, the violence. Unless you say no.”
― Andrew O'Hagan, Mayflies