Quotes on Fatherhood

That’s the thing with the young these days, isn’t it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short.

I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.

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.

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.

Fatherhood is not an easy assignment, but it ranks among the most imperative ever given, in time or eternity.

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

There's so much negative imagery of black fatherhood. I've got tons of friends that are doing the right thing by their kids, and doing the right thing as a father - and how come that's not as newsworthy?

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a president of the United States.

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

Men, to exist, to become complete and mature, need to feel the joy of fatherhood. When a man does not have this desire, something is missing in this man, it is like an incomplete life: a life that stops half way. The grace of fatherhood; of giving life to others, of pastoral paternity, of spiritual paternity is a gift from God.

Fatherhood is the unending imperfect task of turning yourself into your dad while secretly maintaining the unbridled elation of your boyhood

It's hard having kids because it's boring... It's just being with them on the floor while they be children. They read Clifford the Big Red Dog to you at a rate of 50 minutes a page, and you have to sit there and be horribly proud and bored at the same time.

I wasn't anything special as a father. But I loved them and they knew it.

The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them.

A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality.

Not every successful man is a good father. But every good father is a successful man.

I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father's equal, and I never loved any other man as much.

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.