Dates and Celebrations

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

He kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Judaism had been a religion of the father; Christianity became a religion of the son. The old God the Father fell back behind Christ; Christ, the Son, took his place, just as every son had hoped to do in primeval times.

At bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.

Being in love with the one parent and hating the other are among the essential constituents of the stock of psychical impulses which is formed at that time and which is of such importance in determining the symptoms of the later neurosis. . . . This discovery is confirmed by a legend that has come down to us from classical antiquity. . . . What I have in mind is the legend of King Oedipus.

“She is the child of the universe.” “The universe makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.”

It was a maxim with Foxey—our revered father, gentlemen—“Always suspect everybody.”

About 60 years ago, I said to my father, “Old Mr. Senex is showing his age; he sometimes talks quite stupidly.” My father replied, “That isn’t age. He’s always been stupid. He is just losing his ability to conceal it.”

A man first quarrels with his father about three-quarters of a year before he is born.

[ Explaining why he did not consult his father, former President George H. W. Bush, on the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003 :] There is a higher father that I appeal to.

My father provided; he gathered things to himself and let them fall upon the world; my clothes, my food, my luxurious hopes had fallen to me from him, and for the first time his death seemed, even at its immense stellar remove of impossibility, a grave and dreadful threat.

Our genes keep unfolding as long as we live. Harry tastes in his teeth a sourness that offended him on his father’s breath. Poor Pop. His face yellowed like a dried apricot at the end.

Any father whose son raises his hand against him is guilty: of having produced a son who raised his hand against him.

How easily a father's tenderness is recalled, and how quickly a son’s offenses vanish at the slightest word of repentance!

Greatness of name in the father oftentimes overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow lulls the growth.

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

Few sons, indeed, are like their fathers. Generally they are worse; but just a few are better.

[H]ard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.

I have had prayers answered—most strangely so sometimes—but I think our heavenly Father’s lovingkindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me.