Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 88.
Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 90.
Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)
“The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
Context: I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children; whose work serves the earth he lives on and from and with, and is therefore pleasurable and meaningful and unending; whose rewards are not deferred until "retirement," but arrive daily and seasonally out of the details of the life of their place; whose goal is the continuance of the life of the world, which for a while animates and contains them, and which they know they can never compass with their understanding or desire.
The Unforeseen Wilderness : An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge (1971), p. 33; what is likely a paraphrase of a portion of this has existed since at least 1997, and has sometimes become misattributed to John James Audubon: A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.
“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
"Paranoid Android"
Lyrics, OK Computer (1997)
Narrated Anas, in Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 2, Number 15
Sunni Hadith
Sometimes attributed to Audubon in recent years, there are no occurrences of this statement that have been located prior to 1997, and it is probably derived from the remarks of Wendell Berry:
I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children; whose work serves the earth he lives on and from and with, and is therefore pleasurable and meaningful and unending; whose rewards are not deferred until "retirement," but arrive daily and seasonally out of the details of the life of their place; whose goal is the continuance of the life of the world, which for a while animates and contains them, and which they know they can never compass with their understanding or desire.
The Unforeseen Wilderness : An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge (1971), p. 33
Misattributed
“If you love God, you can't love only some of his children.”
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly (2004), p. xvii
Context: We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times. It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can't love only some of his children.
