Quotes For Father
A collection of quotes on the topic of family, for parents, for father, father.
Best quotes for father
“It's easier to build strong children then repair broken men.”
Variant: It is easier to build strong men, than to repair broken ones.
Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
“The pain passes but the beauty remains.”
As quoted in: Instituto Nacional de Previsión (Spain) (1974). 6.o Congreso Internacional de Medicina Fisica: 2-6 julio 1974. p. 424
Renoir replied to Matisse, who had asked him why he persisted in painting at the expense of such torture.
undated quotes
“To live in the hearts we leave behind is to live forever.”
Source: Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
“There is another world, but it is in this one.”
Il y a assurément un autre monde, mais il est dans celui-ci...
Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, Gallimard, 1968.
“There are no have-to's, just choices”
Quotes For Father
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Variant: Life can only be understood going backward, but must be lived going forward.
“It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”
"The Poet's Story," January 1, 1972 entry
A Small Journal (1974)
“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Source: In Country Sleep, and Other Poems
“If there is a good will, there is great way.”
Not found in Twain's works, this was attributed to him in Reader's Digest (September 1939): no prior attribution known. Mark Twain’s father died when Twain was eleven years old.
Disputed
Variant: 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 the old man had learned in seven years.
“To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.”
Hallowed Ground (1825)
Variant: To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.
“My father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.”
“A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.”
“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”
“I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.”
A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941)
Context: The black arrowed swoop of the moment swung high into the unceilinged future, ten, fifty, sixty years, may be: then, past seeing, up to that warmthless unconsidered mock-time, when nothing shall be left but the memorial that fits all (except, if there be, the most unhappiest) of human kind: I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.
2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica
Context: I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being.
So when I was working in kitchens, I did good work.
As quoted in the New York Times Magazine (11 September 1994).
“The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature. ”
Pt. 1, ch. 11
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
“My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.”
“Death ends a life, not a relationship”
Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
Attributed to Reverend Theodore Hesburgh in Sol Gordon Let's Make Sex a Household Word: A Guide for Parents and Children (John Day Company, 1975), p. 79
Misattributed
“To be as good as our fathers we must be better.”
1880s, The Scholar in a Republic (1881)
“The important thing is to be nothing.”
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)
“There are many kinds of success in life worth having.”
Source: 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Ch. IX : Outdoors and Indoors, p. 336; the final statement "quoted by Squire Bill Widener" as well as variants of it, are often misattributed to Roosevelt himself.
Variant: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Attributed to Roosevelt in Conquering an Enemy Called Average (1996) by John L. Mason, Nugget # 8 : The Only Place to Start is Where You Are. <!-- The Military Quotation Book, Revised and Expanded: More than 1,200 of the Best Quotations About War, Leadership, Courage, Victory, and Defeat (2002) by James Charlton -->
Context: There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison. It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone; but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching. And as for a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as an end — why, the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing. There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty in life: "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are."
“Fatherhood is great because you can ruin someone from scratch.”
"Late Night with Conan O'Brien," January 29, 2009
“Love is the whole and more than all.”
Source: 100 Selected Poems
Source: The Woman Destroyed
“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.”
“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent
“it's wrong to be right; it's right to be wrong.”
On his 75th birthday (1947), in reply to a question on whether he was afraid of death, quoted in the N. Y. Times Magazine on November 1, 1964, p. 40 according to Quote It Completely! (1998), Gerhart, Wm. S. Hein Publishing, p. 262 ISBN 1575884003
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Part 9, LIV
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)
“Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.”
Quote as translated in The Encyclopedia of Religion Vol. 11 (1987), by Mircea Eliade, p. 459
The Ash Wednesday Supper (1584)
“The business of business is business.”
Widely attributed to Milton Friedman, and sometimes cited as being in his work Capitalism and Freedom (1962) this is also attributed to Alfred P. Sloan, sometimes with citation of a statement of 1964, but sometimes with attestations to his use of it as a motto as early as 1923.
Disputed
Those Winter Sundays (lines 1-5), from Collected Poems (1985)
“The future was not what it used to be.”
Source: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 156)
“Everything happens for me, not to me.”
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)
“Man knows that love is, but not what it is.”
Divine Love and Wisdom #1
“Where there is the will, we can make it.”
Jiang Yi-huah (2014) cited in " Jiang seeks to boost tourism numbers to 10 million http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2014/01/03/2003580395" on Taipei Times, 3 January 2014
“The business of business is business.”
Widely attributed to Friedman, and sometimes cited as being in his work Capitalism and Freedom (1962) this is also attributed to Alfred P. Sloan, sometimes with citation of a statement of 1964, but sometimes with attestations to his use of it as a motto as early as 1923.
Disputed
Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin
Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin
“What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?”
Those Winter Sundays (lines 13-14)
“Nothing’s different, but everything has changed.”
“The Forever Trees”, p. 331
The Ivory and the Horn (1996)
