Dates and Celebrations

The father who raises a son to have a profession he once dreamed of, and the mother who uses her daughter as the adult companion her husband is not; the parents who urge their children into accomplishments as status symbols—all these and many more are ways of subordinating a child’s authentic self to a parent’s needs.

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children’s affection than the need they have of his assistance, if that can be called affection.

There are some extraordinary fathers, who seenl, during the whole course of their lives, to be giving their children reasons for being consoled at their death.

If you and your child were going to be lulled tomorrow/would you not give him to eat today?

I perceive affection makes a fool / Of any man too much the father.

A kiss, when all is said, what is it? / An oath that’s given closer than before; / A promise more precise; the sealing of / Confessions that till then were barely breathed; / A rosy dot placed on the i in loving.

Deep in the cavern of the infant’s breast / The father’s nature lurks, and lives anew.

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.

To an old father, nothing is more sweet / Than a daughter. Boys are more spirited, but their ways / Are not so tender.

Those marriages generally abound most with love and constancy that are preceded by a long courtship. The passion should strike root and gather strength before marriage be grafted on it.

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child’s board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.

A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither.

The lover says how beautiful you are, now that you love me.

A kiss is a rosy dot over the 'i' of loving.

'Honour thy father and thy mother' stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.

'Honour thy father and thy mother' stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.

My father taught me to work he did not teach me to love it.

You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.

The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother's always a Democrat.

Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better.

The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, you've had a great life.

The founding fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents.