| We give our children their lives, but they, in turn, gleefully take ours away. — Bill Purdin He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. — Clarence Budington Kelland Father! – to God himself we cannot give a holier name. — William Wordsworth 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. — John Gregory Brown Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child. — Mary MacCracken What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give. — P. D. James The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy. — Alfred North Whitehead The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. — Saki Young people have an almost biological destiny to be hopeful. — Marshall Ganz I must take issue with the term ‘a mere child,’ for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult. — Fran Lebowitz If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. — Bruce Barton A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark. — Chinese Proverb Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he or she was born in another time. — Rabbinical Saying Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach. — Arnold Glasow Good parents give their children roots and wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them. — Jonas Salk Children need models more than they need critics. — Joseph Joubert There’s no snow day like a Friday snow day. — Blythe Purdin What gift has Providence bestowed on man that is so dear to him as his children? — Cicero I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it. — Harry S. Truman When a child is born, a father is born. A mother is born, too of course, but at least for her it’s a gradual process. Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to what’s happening. She becomes what’s happening. But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once. On the other side of a plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time. Even if he should decide to abandon it forever ten minutes later, the memory will nag him to the grave. He has seen the creation of the world. It has his mark on it. He has its mark on him. Both marks are, for better or for worse, indelible. All daughters and sons, are prodigals if they’re smart. Assuming the Old Man doesn’t run out on them first, they will run out on him if they are to survive, and if he’s smart he won’t put up too much of a fuss. A wise father sees all this coming, and maybe that’s why he keeps his distance from the start. He must survive too. Whether they ever find their way home again, none can say for sure, but it’s the risk he must take if they’re ever to find their way at all. In the meantime, the world tends to have a soft spot in its heart for lost children. Lost fathers have to fend for themselves. Even as the father lays down the law, he knows that someday his children will break it as they need to break it if ever they’re to find something better to replace it. Until and unless that happens, there’s no telling the scrapes they will get into trying to lose Dad and find themselves. Terrible blunders will be made — disappointments and failures, hurts and losses of every kind. And they’ll keep making them even after they’ve found themselves too, of course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on. And every hard knock they ever get knocks the father even harder still, if that’s possible, and if and when they finally come through more or less in one piece at the end, there’s maybe no rejoicing greater than his in all creation. — Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. — Frederick Douglass It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. — Helen Adams Keller |
