Quotes about father
page 6

“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Truth, Understanding, Thinking

“My mother wasnʹt sleeping with anybody. She doesnʹt even sleep with my father.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Sleep

“When my father would yell at me, I told myself someday I'd use it in a book.”

Paula Danziger (1945–2004) American children's writer

Books

“There is a tiger in my room,' said Frances.
'Did he bite you?' said Father.
'No,' said Frances.
'Did he scratch you?' said Mother.
'No,' said Frances.
'Then he is a friendly tiger,' said Father. 'He will not hurt you. Go back to sleep.”

Russell Hoban (1925–2011) American British novelist, children's writer and illustrator

Source: Bedtime for Frances

Sleep, Hurt

“Then why can’t I bully you into procreating? (Wulf)
See! I’m the only human in history to have Viking yenta of his very own. God, how I wish my father had been a fertile man. (Chris)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

God, History

“You've managed-- in our short three years together-- to kill not only my god, but my father, my brother, and my fiance. That's kind of like a homicidal hat trick. It's a strange foundation for a relationship, wouldn't you say?”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

God

“He roared at me furiously for ten minutes after he finally managed to put out the sulky and determined fire, calling me a witless muttonheaded spawn of pig farmers-"My father's a wood-cutter," I said- "adOf axe-swinging lummocks!" he snarled.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

“I said: "He cannot be so bad if he loves roses so much."
"But he is a Beast," said Father helplessly.
I saw that he was weakening, and wishing only to comfort him I said, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?”

Robin McKinley book Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

Source: Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

Love

“Kat had been picking things up since her third birthday, when Hamish and Angus's father took them all to the circus because he needed to "borrow" an elephant.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

Birthday

“I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

Source: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book): Mønti Pythøn Ik Den Hølie Gräilen

Food, Animals

“Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It's about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.”

Arturo Pérez-Reverte book The Flanders Panel

Source: The Flanders Panel

War, Art

“After all, a woman didn't leave much behind in the world to show she'd been there. Even the children she bore and raised got their father's name. But her quilts, now that was something she could pass on.”

Sandra Dallas American writer

Children, World

“Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaasla. (Nobody cares who your father was, only the father you'll be.) - Mandalorian saying”

Karen Traviss British science fiction author

Source: Order 66:

“it seemed to me that I had never met
another person on earth
as discouraging to my happiness
as my father.
and it appeared that I had
the same effect upon
him.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Happiness, Appearance, Personality

“God, as a loving Father, will stretch our souls at times. The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched…. God will tutor us by trying us because He loves us, not because of indifference!”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

Love, God, Music, Soul

“From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.
Darkness, you know, is relative.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Like her father, he wasn't comfortable sharing his thoughts and feelings. She tried to explain that she needed to be closer to him, but it had never seemed to make a difference.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Feeling

“Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: The Woman Destroyed

Daughters, For Father

“I see you looking at my cookies,' my father said to Morelli. 'Don't even think about it. Go get your own cookies.”

Janet Evanovich Twelve Sharp

Source: Twelve Sharp

Thinking

“Beat him until there’s no skin left on his back. If he passes out, wake him and beat him again. (Father)
Love you, too, Father. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Love

“He's right. I'm a worthless bastard fathered by a bastard even more worthless than I am." [Fury]”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dead After Dark

“If we will but let our God and Father work His will with us, there can be no limit to His enlargement of our existence”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Source: Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III

God

“You dare to stand with my enemy? (Stryker)
Against you, Father, I’d stand with Mickey Mouse. (Urian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“Boys are like drugs,' her father said, 'just say no.”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Simply Irresistible

Boy

“When the sins of our fathers visit us
We do not have to play host.
We can banish them with forgiveness
As God, in his His Largeness and Laws.”

August Wilson Fences

Source: Fences

God, Law, Forgiveness

“Sleep every chance you get. Eat every chance you get. Those were two of the many lessons that Kat learned at her father’s knee and her uncle’s table.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

Sleep, Learning, Chance

“The past is the father of the present.”

Agatha Christie book Hallowe'en Party

Source: Hallowe'en Party

Past, For Father

“Tell my father I wish to be his son.”

Mario Puzo (1920–1999) American Novelist

“In spite of the seven thousand books of expert advice, the right way to disciplne a child is still a mystery to most fathers and… mothers Only your grandmother and Genghis Khan know how to do it.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Books, Way

“Jem told me what Ragnor Fell said about my father,” Will said. “That for my father, there was only ever one woman he loved, and it was her for him, or nothing. You are that for me. I love you, and I will only ever love you until I die —”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love

“Bear in mind, children, that they listen to you because you are kids—not because you are right. That's how our Father listens to us … We never understand what we're praying, and God, in His mercy, does not answer our prayers according to our understanding, but according to His wisdom.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Lufkin, Texas http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/lufkin-texas-jul1997-full.html (July 19, 1997) <br class="br">In Concert

Wisdom, God, Children, Understanding

“Men and swords. My father said that if you put any able-bodied man, no matter how peaceful, into a room with a sword and a practice dummy and leave him alone, eventually the man would pick up the sword and try to stab the dummy. It is human nature.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

Men, Peace, Nature

“My father tutored me well on amnesia. He always said it was a necessary ingredient for any friendship. (Kiara)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Friendship

“He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Truth, History, Time, Parting

“Like death, his father's presence was cold and often callous, but it was real -- brutally honest, inescapably dependable.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Death, Dependency

“Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Error, Universe

“I am very comfortable with conflict, be it of the legal or mortal kind. My father was a mediator, a bridge maker. I am a grave maker.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

“It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard of righteousness but because God their Father loves them.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love, God, People, Forgetting

“Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

World

“Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Men, World

“Most fathers don't threaten to disembowel their daughter's boyfriends."

"That's not true. And anyway, that's not what I actually said. It was much worse.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Daughters

“Humility was a cult in my family. I only got it out of my father by accident when he was very old that he had won an Olympic gold medal.”

Hugh Laurie (1959) British actor, comedian, writer, musician and director

Family

“Hey, Ocean Eyes,” my father said. “Where’d you go on us?”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

“Every year, the memories I have of my father become more faint, unclear, and distant. once they were vivid and true, then they became like photographs, and now they are more like photographs of photographs.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Distant, Memory

“Anyway, that's how it is! Either they obey the law, or they're expelled!! And make sure they wear their veils correctly…" - "If hair is as stimulating as you say, then you need to shave your moustache!" My father actually said that.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

Source: The Complete Persepolis

Law

“A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love, Loyalty

“I must be overtired', Buttercup managed. 'The excitement and all.'
'Rest then', her mother cautioned. 'Terrible things can happen when you're overtired. I was overtired the night your father proposed.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Night

“College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking..”

David Sedaris Naked

Source: Naked

Drink

“Hate is the father of all evil.”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Source: Fall of Kings

Hate, Evil

“If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian… I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

“Your father's an asshole. It's not a disease. You don't have to catch it.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

Disease

“The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold, (1802)
The last three lines of this form the introductory lines of the long Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood begun the next day.
Context: My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Nature

“As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America

World, Thinking

“Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Victory

“You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Dead

“My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together?

Bread, of course.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Family

“If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago, her father used to say, 'she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

People, Boy, Fight, Country

“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love, Death, Loyalty

“… and clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He draws us closer to Himself.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Love, Drawing

“Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

Winter, Past

“My father insisted that the boys in my life were directly responsible for my juvenile-delinquent tendencies.
My mother, more accurately, assumed that I was the bad influence.”

Lisa Lutz (1970) US author

Source: The Spellman Files

Life, Boy

“On my life, Magnus, I swear this is the truth: your father is a Norse god. Now, hurry. We're in a twenty- minute parking spot.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Life, God, Truth

“The way Magnus’ breath had sounded, rattling in his chest, before he’d said his father’s name.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Way

“Michael has never cried during a Broadway show. Except in that scene where Tarzan's ape father is brutally murdered.

And that was only because he was laughing so hard.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Princess Mia

“My father has a high opinion of his opinion”

Chelsea Handler book Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

Source: Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

“A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God?”

Stephen Colbert book I Am America (And So Can You!)

Source: I Am America

God, Children, Understanding, Teachers

“Tory a father isn’t supposed to fear his fourteen-year-old daughter. That being sad, you terrify me.”

Kathy Reichs book Seizure

Source: Seizure

Sadness, Fear, Daughters

“Sadie," he said forlornly, "when you become a parent, you may understand this. One of my hardest jobs as a father, one of my greatest duties, was to realize that my own dreams, my own goals and wishes, are secondary to my children's.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Children, Dreams, Understanding, Parent

“The secret is to know how to lie" he used to say, " and to know when someone's lying to you". His father, Steve eventually decided, must have known how to lie.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Lie, Secret, Lying

“I had nothing to fear from my father.
Except his disappointment.
Which was no small thing.”

Barbara Delinsky (1945) American writer

Source: Escape

Fear, Disappointment

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“It's not a pretty world, Papa.'
'I've noticed,' my father said softly.”

Chaim Potok book My Name Is Asher Lev

Source: My Name Is Asher Lev

World

“Palindrome as well. My sister's name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times World Scrabble Champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score.”

Jasper Fforde book The Big Over Easy

Source: The Big Over Easy

World, Game, Sister, Time

“Faster!" Shane yelled. Eve hit the gas hard, and whipped around a slower-moving van. The firing ceased, at least for now. "You see why I didn't want you to stop?"
"Okay, your father is officially!" Eve yelled. "Oh my God, look at my car!”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

God, Cars

“I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Variant: ... the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.
Source: As I Lay Dying

Time, Dead

“God sees us with the eyes of a Father. He sees our defects, errors and blemishes. But He also sees our value.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

God, Error

“Her father said she was a princess. He did not see that she was a brave knight.”

Anne Ursu (1900) American writer

Source: Breadcrumbs

Princess

“When I was little I bragged about my firefighting father: my father would go to heaven, because if he went to hell he would put out all the fires”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Hell

“My father used to say that it’s not enough to just beat an attacker off. You have to hurt them enough that they’ll know not to tangle with you anymore. Or preferably kill them. (Wren)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Hurt

“Father said conflict develops the character”

Zelda Fitzgerald book Save Me the Waltz

Source: Save Me the Waltz

“A father's suspicion…' she began.
Is as powerful as a mother's intuition.'

~pg 87, Ruana Singh and Jack Salmon”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

“God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.”

William Peter Blatty book The Exorcist

Source: The Exorcist

God

“My father said that a silent person is trying to hide something.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: Raven's Shadow

Personality

“There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Lovers, Time

“It's the way our founding fathers would have wanted it, if they had founded corporations instead of just a country.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Way, Country

“He still didn't think I was good enough for you."

"No father thinks any man is good enough for his daughter.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Source: The Longest Ride

Thinking, Daughters

“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Epitaph, upon his instructions to erect a "a plain die or cube … surmounted by an Obelisk" with "the following inscription, and not a word more…because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered." It omits that he had been President of the United States, a position of political power and prestige, and celebrates his involvement in the creation of the means of inspiration and instruction by which many human lives have been liberated from oppression and ignorance.
Posthumous publications

Freedom, Universe