Quotes & Sayings About Father Figures

To you your father should be as a god;
One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax,
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it. — William Shakespeare

My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw - which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them. — Nigel Rees

How the devil did he get himself caught?"
"By being no brighter than you," Suzette snapped before her father could answer.
"God, you are a fishwife," Jeremy said with disgust and then muttered to himself, "It figures Dicky would marry sweet little mousy Christiana himself and stick me with the sister who was a harpy. — Lynsay Sands

I'm a woman; in so many ways I've been programmed to please. I took the job and spent time hunkered over figures, budgets, charts, and fiscal-year projections. I tried, but I hated it.
"Working at a job you don't like is the same as going to prison every day," my father used to say. He was right. I felt imprisoned by an impressive title, travel, perks, and a good salary. On the inside, I was miserable and lonely, and I felt as if I was losing myself. I spent weekends working on reports no one read, and I gave presentations that I didn't care about. It made me feel like a sellout and, worse, a fraud.
Now set free, like any inmate I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. — Kathleen Flinn

One of the grandest figures that ever frequented Eastern Yorkshire was William Smith, the distinguished Father of English Geology. My boyish reminiscence of the old engineer, as he sketched a triangle on the flags of our yard, and taught me how to measure it, is very vivid. The drab knee-breeches and grey worsted stockings, the deep waistcoat, with its pockets well furnished with snuff-of which ample quantities continually disappeared within the finely chiselled nostril-and the dark coat with its rounded outline and somewhat quakerish cut, are all clearly present to my memory. — William Crawford Williamson

Thomas Cromwell is now about fifty years old. He has a labourer's body, stocky, useful, running to fat. He has black hair, greying now, and because of his impermeable skin, which seems designed to resist rain as well as sun, people sneer that his father was an Irishman, though really he was a brewer and a blacksmith at Putney, a shearsman too, a man with a finger in every pie, a scrapper and a brawler, a drunk and a bully, a man often hauled before the justices for punching someone, for cheating someone. How the son of such a man has achieved his present eminence is a question all Europe asks. — Hilary Mantel

He looks off to the side and sees the two figures coming closer. Craig's mother. His oldest brother, Sam, a senior at the high school. They head right to Craig, and Craig's mother asks him if he's okay. He nods slightly. "Sam was watching, and he came to get us." Us. Craig hears the us, and at first doesn't understand it. Then his father and his other brother, Kevin, are there, too. "Parked the car," Craig's father says. "Your mom couldn't wait. — David Levithan

I used to think that the worst form of discrimination for women was being hit on or hearing something disparaging. What's even more challenging for young women is a very senior male who will take an interest in you, who see themselves as father figures or mentors. — Leila Janah

My mother and father used to take me to church in Mexico and Texas, wer I used to live. The huge figures of saints and crucifixions. Religion played a big role in my life. — Richard Ramirez

One of the towering figures of the age of Enlightenment was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, known to this day in German-speaking lands as the poet of princes and prince of poets. Unlike Voltaire, he openly practiced esoteric disciplines, particularly alchemy. He wrote a famous verse about the Cathars, which translated says: "There were those who knew the Father. What became of them? Oh, they took them and burned them!" Goethe's chief work, of course, is his Faust. As noted in chapter 8, the figure of Faust was inspired by the image of the early Gnostic teacher Simon Magus, one of whose honorific names was Faustus. While in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play, — Stephan A. Hoeller

When I was a child I had a fishless aquarium. My father set it up for me with gravel and plants and pebbles before he'd got the fish and I asked him to leave it as it was for a while. The pump kept up a charming burble, the green-gold light was wondrous when the room was dark. I put in a china mermaid and a tin horseman who maintained a relationship like that of the figures on Keat's Grecian urn except that the horseman grew rusty. Eventually fish were pressed upon me and they seemed an intrusion, I gave them to a friend. All that aquarium wanted was the sound of the pump, the gently waving plants, the mysterious pebbles and the silent horseman forever galloping to the mermaid smiling in the green-gold light. I used to sit and look at them for hours. The mermaid and the horseman were from my father. I have them in a box somewhere here, I'm not yet ready to take them out and look at them again. — Russell Hoban

Literature's father figures can only loom, intimidate, and inspire for so long before they must be slain by their offspring. — Larry McCaffery

I've never known my real father, and I've never looked for a father figure in a boyfriend, but I suppose I have looked for real father figures in my life - and I've acquired more than one. I certainly couldn't ask for better ones. I love them enormously - and they know that. — Naomi Campbell

Welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, Daniel. I could make out about a dozen human figures scattered among the library's corridors and platforms. Some of them turned to greet me from afar, and I recognized the faces of various colleagues of my father's, fellows of the secondhand-booksellers' guild. To my ten-year-old eyes, they looked like a brotherhood of alchemists in furtive study. My father knelt next to me and, with his eyes fixed on mine, addressed me in the hushed voice he reserved for promises and secrets. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Her father said, whenever the subject came up, that if she'd lose some weight, she'd find a boyfriend. She knew that wasn't necessarily the case, since plenty of girls who had perfect figures and were half her size couldn't find a boyfriend. And other girls who were overweight were happily married, engaged or had significant others.Romance, she knew, wasn't directed tied to your weight, there were a lot of other factors. — Danielle Steel

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers ... How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? — Robert Jensen

There Rhoda sits staring at the blackboard,' said Louis, 'in the
schoolroom, while we ramble off, picking here a bit of thyme,
pinching here a leaf of southernwood while Bernard tells a story.
Her shoulder-blades meet across her back like the wings of a small
butterfly. And as she stares at the chalk figures, her mind lodges
in those white circles, it steps through those white loops into
emptiness, alone. They have no meaning for her. She has no answer
for them. She has no body as the others have. And I, who speak
with an Australian accent, whose father is a banker in Brisbane, do
not fear her as I fear the others. — Virginia Woolf

I grew up being terrified of my parents, particularly my father figures. — Flea

My father left when I was three, and I have no memory of him. The most significant male figures in my life were my grandfather, in whose house I lived during the first 10 years of my childhood, and later my stepfather. — Isabel Allende

Baseball always gets credit for the foundational part of masculinity - the father thing. The eternal game of backyard catch, 'Field of Dreams', the Ripkens, the Griffeys, the Bondses, so on. But football is the real paternal game, because it's a conveyor belt of father figures, in the form of coaches. — J.R. Moehringer

But natural to expect that the deeds of the great messenger should be just the works of the Father done in little. If he came to reveal his Father in miniature, as it were (for in these unspeakable things we can but use figures, and the homeliest may be the holiest), to tone down his great voice, which, too loud for men to hear it aright, could but sound to them as an inarticulate thundering, into such a still small voice as might enter their human ears in welcome human speech, — George MacDonald

Jesus disclosed that God is compassionate. Jesus spoke of God that way: "Be compassionate, as God is compassionate." Compassion is the primary quality of the central figures in two of his most famous parables: the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan. And Jesus himself, as a manifestation of the sacred, is often spoken of as embodying compassion. — Marcus Borg

Fathers are so necessary as examples and guides for our children in wisdom and virtue. Without father figures, young people often feel orphaned; left adrift at a critical moment in their growth and development. — Pope Francis

Dr. Ockenga had been a student of Machen's at Princeton University and followed him out. But then Ockenga, like Dad, became a critic of the fundamentalist's endless civil wars and started looking for a new way to present a friendlier evangelical faith (and face). He helped invent a movement called the New Evangelicals. Their mascot was Billy Graham. Other figures like Carl Henry, founder of Christianity Today magazine (and a man who became bitterly jealous of my father in later years), criticized fundamentalism's failure to address the world's intellectual and social needs. A movement was born - modern evangelicalism, a fundamentalism-lite where everyone could more or less do their own theological thing, as long as they "named the name of Christ" and paid lip service to the "inerrancy" of the Bible. On — Frank Schaeffer

He was big, that Sid. He was a force, a character, and I wondered fleetingly if Sally and I would ever seem as big to our offspring as Sid had seemed to us. — Martha Moody

Surrogate fathers and other male figures stepped in to give guidance after my dad died. Businessmen taught me to honor my commitments; others gave me opportunities beyond my wildest imaginations. Authors and speakers set good, solid examples of high standards and lofty goals for me; mature, committed Christians nurtured and instructed me. — Zig Ziglar

At best, God can be viewed as nothing more than an uncaring incompetent father-figure — George Carlin

Two historical figures play prominent roles in this book: a pair of priests who lived centuries apart but who were tied together by fate. During the seventeenth century, Father Athanasius Kircher was known as the Leonardo da Vinci of the Jesuit Order. — James Rollins

A father who doesn't show respect to his wife, a parent who is disrespectful to their child's teacher or to the cashier in the store must come to expect disrespect from his own child as that is what he has learnt is acceptable behavior by the figures in authority in his life. — David Abudram

When gangs took over the [abandoned public land in Philadelphia] and the neighborhood took a turn for the worse, horses became a way of saving lives. By getting boys interested in raising a horse rather than killing another human being, these cowboys gave the youth something positive: father figures, focus, and the ability to stand tall. — G. Neri

Dumbledore had not raised his voice, he did not even sound angry, but Harry would have preferred him to yell; this cold disappointment was worse than anything. — J.K. Rowling

The historian Arthur Schlesinger has pointed out that people tend to get interested in politics again every 30 years. The universe moves in cycles of three. The number figures in everything from Pythagoras's theory that the universe is based on three to the Father-the-Son-and-the-Holy- Ghost to the three-sided pyramidal shapes that intersect in the Jewish Star of David. The notion of the mystical three, metaphysically, spiritually, and even politically, is quite interesting to me. — Marianne Williamson

How long had it had been since she'd thought back on the evenings around the fire, number games at the kitchen table, or listening to her father sing? Too long. Yes, there had been bad times. And she had tallied them like figures in a column, not remembering to factor in the good. She had doctored the books. — Julie Klassen

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all. — Alice Walker

Grown-ups love figures ... When you tell them you've made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? " Instead they demand "How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? " Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The Jews are the conscience of the world. They are the father figures, stern, critical, and forbidding. — Raul Hilberg

The animus is symbolized by male figures appearing in a womans dreams and fantasies, as a husband, son, father, lover, Prince Charming. — Esther Williams

My mum left my dad when I was six months old, so I don't know him at all. I had no male figures in my life, really. I had my godfather, but he's more like a grandfather, so I was quite sheltered. I've never tried to find my father. — Catherine Tate

Hogan studied the kids around him and their relationships with their fathers. "I've watched kids who had no father figure, kids who had bad father figures, kids who had average situations, kids who had incredible situations, and I've watched the effect on their lives in terms of confidence, in terms of direction, in terms of decision making, in terms of influence, peer pressure. And I have deduced in my heart that the dad is the greatest influence. — David Thomas

My voice as a filmmaker is always about boys searching for their fathers. And not only boys, but all children looking for those figures in their lives. — Sheldon Candis

I knew personally many figures in this novel: Harold Urey, who greeted me at the grad students reception at UCSD in 1963; Karl Cohen, my father-in-law; — Gregory Benford

The figure of my father looms large in my imagination. — Jonathan Franzen