Quotes & Sayings About Great Fathers

Has it ever occurred to you that a woman, when she is powerful, is more powerful than a man?" "Powerful in a different way, perhaps." Laud said: "It's a power partly based on fear. Perhaps the fear is atavistic, memories of babyhood. Women change the nappy, give the breast or withhold it." Langton said with a faint smile: "Not now, apparently. Fathers change nappies and it's usually a bottle." "But I'm right, Hubert, about power and fear. I wouldn't say it outside these walls, but life in Chambers would be a great deal easier if Venetia fell under that convenient Number 11 bus." He paused, and then asked the question to which he needed an answer. "So I have your support, have I? Can I take it that I'm your choice to succeed you as Head of Chambers? — P.D. James

Speaking to the Heart is a great encouragement to men who want to be better husbands and fathers. It is both a practical job description of fatherhood-showing how fathers build strength in their children-and an inspiring call to family leadership. Any father who takes this book to heart and puts its wisdom into action will be known to his children as a great man. — James Stenson

Fathers can find great inspiration in faith. — Bruce Feiler

If you want to feel the life and the body of great men who are long gone, go to their tombs or monuments; if you want to understand the real life and the wisdom of great men who are long gone, go to their libraries! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the face. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sat next to him and said, "Box about: twill come to my father anon." — John Aubrey

mighty tribes of men who had once inhabited this vast continent, but were now exterminated by internecine wars; that their fathers had told them of a great flood, which had covered all the land, except the highest peaks of the mountains, where some of the inhabitants and the buffaloes resorted, and saved themselves from destruction. — T.D. Bonner

You don't have to have a terrific voice or know how to read music. The only requirement is that you enjoy singing, fun and fellowship. And, this is a great hobby for fathers and sons to share. — Dick Miller

A woman may achieve greatness, or at any rate great renown, by merely being a wonderful wife and mother, like the mother of the Gracchi; whereas the men who have achieved great renown by being devoted husbands and fathers might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Charles I was an unfortunate king, but an admirable family man. Still, you would scarcely class him as one of the world's great fathers, and his children were not an unqualified success. Dear me! Being a great father is either a very difficult or a very sadly unrewarded profession. Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him - or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them. — Dorothy L. Sayers

We should all aspire in life to do a multitude of things well - to be a great father, to be a good husband, to be a good lover, you know, to try to do things the best you can is very important to me. — Matthew Modine

There are a thousand small honest breweries in this country that because they have been too poor and localized to compete with the big boys have been forced to close, or else operate under famous names while they turn out yeast, or hops, or some other important but unnamed ingredient of the main company's beer. Now, with the trains full of soldiers and supplies rather than pale ale, perhaps people far from the great breweries will turn again to their local beer factories and discover, as their fathers did thirty years ago, that a beer carried quietly three miles is better than one shot across three thousand on a fast freight. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

The strength of a man is in his character. A strong man is great man of wisdom who understands, his top priority is to his family. — Ellen J. Barrier

No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them. — Henry David Thoreau

Our children need to assimilate the wonder that is India when they are young, so that they imbibe the principles of our founding fathers and continue to build this great nation. — Shallu Jindal

Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due. — Jon Stewart

Insofar as we have freedoms, it's not because some great wise Founding Fathers granted them to us. It's because people like us insisted on exercising those freedoms - by doing exactly what we're doing here - before anyone was willing to acknowledge that they had them. — David Graeber

The United States of America was once a great nation... but this United States is not the one our founding fathers set out to build over 200 years ago. This United States stands for everything its citizens have fought against throughout its history: oppression, unwarranted violence against innocent and weaker countries or its own citizens, trampling of human rights, crooked legal systems, and socialism. — J.C. Allen

And truly, when you look at the Constitution and our founding fathers and their writings, the things that made this country great, you might draw those conclusions: That they were conservative. They were fiscally conservative and socially conservative. — Sharron Angle

Our dad was a great guy and we will never forget him. — Lara St. John

Time is hastening on, and we
What our fathers are shall be,
Shadow-shapes of memory!
Joined to that vast multitude
Where the great are but the good. — John Greenleaf Whittier

Well, Betsy," he said, "your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith's trunk for a desk. That's fine. You need a desk. I've often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can't understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. "
"Bob!" said Mrs. Ray. "You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry."
"Cry, eh?" said Mr. Ray, grinning. "In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you're going to be a writer."
Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed.
"But if you're going to be a writer," he went on, "you've got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics. — Maud Hart Lovelace

There can be no freedom without order, and there is no order without virtue. Now, that's a simple enough formulation, but it's an insight found not only in the writings of Founding Fathers like Washington or great political thinkers like Edmund Burke; it is also found in a great part of our Judeo-Christian tradition. — Ronald Reagan

Today at school I will learn to read at once; then tomorrow I will begin to write, and the day after tomorrow to cipher. Then with my acquirements I will earn a great deal of money, and with the first money I have in my pocket I will immediately buy for my papa a beautiful new cloth coat. But what am I saying? Cloth, indeed! It shall be all made of gold and silver, and it shall have diamond buttons. That poor man really deserves it; for to buy me books and to have me taught he has remained in his shirt sleeves ... And in this cold! It is only fathers who are capable of such sacrifices! ... — Carlo Collodi

Our fathers of faith have done a great job delivering our nations from the clutches of idolatry and witchcraft through signs and wonders — Sunday Adelaja

John Adams, by then one of the country's founding fathers, wrote to a friend: I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes. — Tom Standage

The majority of women in Welmont with children Charlie's age never miss a soccer game and don't earn special good mother status for being there. This is simply what good mothers do. These same mothers herald it an exceptional event if any of the dads leave the office early to catch a game. The fathers cheering on the sidelines are upheld as great dads. Fathers who miss the games are working. Mothers who miss the games, like me, are bad mothers. — Lisa Genova

I think you have a great women's ministry when the women of your community fall wildly in love with Jesus. Church ladies like this are the overflow of women who are empowered to lead, to challenge, to seek justice and love mercy, to follow Jesus to the ends of the earth like our church mothers and fathers of the past.
You have a great women's ministry when there is room for everyone. You have a great women's ministry when you have detoxed from the world's views and unattainable standards for women and begun to celebrate the everyday women of valor, sitting next to you, and when you encourage, affirm, and welcome the diversity of women
their lives, their voices, their experiences
to the community.
You have a great women's ministry when your women are ministering
to the world, to the church, to one another
pouring out freely the grace they have received, however God has gifted them, including cooking and crafts, strategy and leadership. — Sarah Bessey

If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path. — Daniel Webster

In the late 1970s, the controversial "Iroquois influence theory" posits that the Longhouse People's divinely given Great Law of Peace so inspired Franklin and others among the founding fathers that it served as the model for the Articles of Confederation, the governing document of the United States for the first decade of its existence, and the precursor of the Constitution ratified in 1787. — Peter Manseau

Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because he kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end up in the furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar? — Elie Wiesel

In those days the Great Enemy, of whom Sauron of Mordor was but a servant, dwelt in Angband in the North, and the Elves of the West coming back to Middle-earth made war upon him to regain the Silmarils which he had stolen; and the fathers of Men aided the Elves. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Hear me, people: We have now to deal with another race- small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. — Sitting Bull

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence. — Charles A. Beard

You are A MAN, not just a man; don't be diminished. Live up to your grand potential. — Richelle E. Goodrich

NUM14.18 The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. — Anonymous

We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. — James A. Garfield

Were our pupil's disposition so bizarre that he would rather hear a tall story than the account of a great voyage or a wise discussion; that at the sound of a drum calling the youthful ardour of his comrades to arms he would turn aside for the drum of a troop of jugglers; that he would actually find it no more delightful and pleasant to return victorious covered in the dust of battle than after winning a prize for tennis or dancing; then I know no remedy except that his tutor should quickly strangle him when nobody is looking or apprentice him to make fairy-cakes in some goodly town - even if he were the heir of a Duke - following Plato's precept that functions should be allocated not according to the endowments of men's fathers but the endowments of their souls. — Michel De Montaigne

These ceremonies which are used in the administration of the Sacraments, each of which we receive as delivered and entrusted to us through the hands of the fathers, must especially be retained and observed with great devotion. — Peter Canisius

Heaven would be a comfy armchair ... .You'd get a great, private phonograph, and all of eternity to listen to your life's melody. You could isolate your one life out of the cacophonous galaxy - the a cappella version - or you could play it back with its accompaniment, embedded in the brass and strings of mothers, fathers, sisters, windfalls and failures, percussion cities of strangers. You could play it forward or backward, back and back, and listen to the future of your past. You could lift the needle at whim, defeating Time. — Karen Russell

You do not know your danger, Theoden. These hobbits will sit on the edge of ruin and discuss the pleasures of the table, or the small doings of their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, and remoter cousins to the ninth degree, if you encourage them with undue patience. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I'm now reading Tertullian, Cyprian, and others of the church fathers with great interest. In some ways they are more relevant to our time than the Reformers, and at the same time they provide a basis for talks between Protestants and Roman Catholics. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are constantly trying to cope with what our fathers or our grandfathers did. I wrote the book 'Great War of Civilization,' and my father was a solider in the First World War which produced the current Middle East - not that he had much to do with that - but he fought in what he believed was the Great War for Civilization. — Robert Fisk

I mean, I look at my dad. He was twenty when he started having a family, and he was always the coolest dad. He did everything for his kids, and he never made us feel like he was pressured. I know that it must be a great feeling to be a guy like that. — Adam Sandler

I am going to the City myself, human girl. After my mother was widowed, my siblings and I went each our separate ways: M-Through-S to be a governess, T-Through-Z to be a soldier, and I to seek our old grandfather - the Municipal Library of Fairyland, which owns all the books in all the world. I hope that he will accept me and love me as a grandson and teach me to be a librarian, for every creature must know a trade. I know I have bad qualities that stand against me - a fiery breath being chief among these - but I am a good beast, and I enjoy alphabetizing, and perhaps, I may get some credit for following in the family business." The Wyverary pursed his great lips. "Perhaps we might travel together for a little while? Those beasts with unreliable fathers must stick together after all. And I may be a good deal of help in the arena of Locating Suppers. — Catherynne M Valente

Wise statesmen ... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began ... — Abraham Lincoln

From Alan Lightman's intricate 1993 novel Einstein's Dreams; set in Berne in 1905: With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great-aunts ... and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own ... Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. — Christopher Hitchens

Your Kentuckian of the present day is a good illustration of the doctrine of transmitted instincts and peculiarities. His fathers were mighty hunters, - men who lived in the woods, and slept under the free, open heavens, with the stars to hold their candles; and their descendant to this day always acts as if the house were his camp, - wears his hat at all hours, tumbles himself about, and puts his heels on the tops of chairs or mantel-pieces, just as his father rolled on the green sward, and put his upon trees or logs, - keep all the windows and doors open, winter and summer, that he may get air enough for his great lungs, - calls everybody "stranger", with nonchalant bonhommie, and is altogether the frankest, easiest, most jovial creature living. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Attractive Etonians who go straight onto the Stock Exchange missing University on their fathers advice: the raw material of the great bores. — Geoffrey Madan

We live an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them ... If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. — Calvin Coolidge

I was raised in the greatest of homes ... just a really great dad, and I miss him so much ... he was a good man, a real simple man ... Very faithful, always loved my mom, always provided for the kids, and just a lot of fun. — Max Lucado

The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers
a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so. — Shirley Chisholm

It is my firm belief that the God of Heaven raised up the founding fathers and inspired them to establish the Constitution of this land. This is part of my religious faith. To me this is not just another nation. It is a great and glorious nation with a divine mission to perform for liberty-loving people everywhere. — Ezra Taft Benson

There are people whose learning is so great, they seem to inhabit a different realm of species-hood entirely. Somehow, they appear untroubled by the nullness. They are filled up with history and legends and beautiful poetry and all the gestures of all the great people down through time. When they talk, they are carried on a sea of their own belonging. It is like they were born to be fathers to us all. — Sheila Heti

The truth is that all great men have had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers. — Robert Green Ingersoll

But it is obvious that our fathers, whose efforts have planted these great and prosperous cities along the once lonely trails of our own broad land, received all the fundamentals of civilization as a heritage from their European ancestors. — James Henry Breasted

I've never been part of anything so great as those three kids. — Al Roker

Work alone isn't enough for me and mine; we know how to break our backs, but the great dream Of my fathers was to be good at doing nothing. — Cesare Pavese

The Catholic Inquisition is well-known for its persecutions, but the Protestants were no better. An infamous example of Protestant evil, an example given by Thomas Jefferson, is the execution of Michael Servetus. A Spanish physician, Servetus wrote that the doctrine of the Trinity makes no sense, that it contradicts the idea that there is only one God. Servetus was condemned to die by the Catholic Inquisition, but he wasn't present, so they couldn't kill him. He had fled to Protestant Switzerland, expecting to be protected there. Instead, the city leaders in Geneva, with the approval of John Calvin (one of the great fathers of Protestant thought) and other Protestant leaders across Europe, had Servetus burned alive (with green wood to give him longer to repent) in 1553. — Russ Kick

I would want my legacy to be that I was a great son, father and friend. — Dante Hall

As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity on both counts. — Shirley Chisholm

Even though the money is great and the fame is great, you still have a lot of disenfranchised young men that are participating in the NFL that are not very happy. A lot of them are very bitter. A lot them are very angry. So many of them have had no fathers and no home life, and basically, no education. — Jim Brown

Our era has produced many great men
robber barons, masters of innovation, beast of business
whose staggering wealth, incomparable ruthlessness and personal legends would seem to prove they are dominant species but then one has a look at their son, and doubts the theory of evolution entirely.
-DR. Bertrand Legmam Cooper,
Problems of Science and Society,
Posted by One Who Has Known Both, 1900 — Anna Godbersen

I would love to be a father. I had a great father who taught me how gratifying that is. I'm not going to deny myself that. I think I'd be good at it. Everybody wants that experience. I definitely do. — Mike Myers

As part of the great solar tradition that can be found in many places globally, the peoples of the ancient Near and Middle East revered a wide variety of sun deities, including the Babylonian Shamash and "god of the fathers," as well as the Canaanite goddess Shapash. These deities possessed numerous divine epithets and attributes adopted by biblical figures such as Yahweh, Samson and Jesus. — D.M. Murdock

Among the famous sayings of the Church fathers none is better known than Augustine's, "Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." The great saint states here in few words the origin and interior history of the human race. God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say. Should faulty education and perverse reasoning lead a man to conclude otherwise, there is little that any Christian can do for him. For such a man I have no message. My appeal is addressed to those who have been previously taught in secret by the wisdom of God; I speak to thirsty hearts whose longings have been wakened by the touch of God within them, and such as they need no reasoned proof. Their restless hearts furnish all the proof they need. — Anonymous

When the same lessons of life that taught them teaches you, you get a good understanding of what made them become who and what they became; you appreciate them better and you uphold the dignity of their integrity in high esteem! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

With the sole aim of liberating themselves from the servitude of religion, which alone could preserve them in society, and, lacking any other restraint, they turned their backs upon the true God of their fathers, Adam and Noah, and descended into a bestial liberty in which, dispersed throughout the great forest of the earth, they lost their language and weakened every social custom. — Giambattista Vico

Two of the great leaders of the past - Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass - had White fathers - who deserted them. Now Margo Jefferson, who is hard on me and the fellas, wrote in the Times that she has nocturnal, erotic fantasies about John Wayne. What's up with these feminists? Do you see these double standards these feminists have? They dream about John Wayne, but they're hard on us [Black men]. — Ishmael Reed

While the newspaper press of America is in, or near, its present abject state, high moral improvement in that country is hopeless. Year by year, it must and will go back; year by year, the tone of public feeling must sink lower down; year by year, the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all decent men; and year by year, the memory of the Great Fathers of the Revolution must be outraged more and more, in the bad life of their degenerate child. — Charles Dickens

There are good fathers and bad fathers, good sons and bad sons, good husbands and bad ones, but great friends are all alike. We choose them and keep them. We aren't bound to them by anything but love. — Sarah Manguso

Nabokov calls every great novel a fairy tale, I said. Well, I would agree. First, let me remind you that fairy tales abound with frightening witches who eat children and wicked stepmothers who poison their beautiful stepdaughters and weak fathers who leave their children behind in forests. But the magic comes from the power of good, that force which tells us we need not give in to the limitations and restrictions imposed on us by McFate, as Nabokov called it.
Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. — Azar Nafisi

A great many political speeches are literary parricides; they kill their fathers. — George D. Prentice

We fall into the great continuing circle of dancers. Some leave the floor, tired but giddy; others have only just arrived. They are eager to wear their new status as ladies, to be paraded about and lauded until they see themselves with new eyes. The fathers beam at their daughters, thinking them perfect flowers in need of their protection, while the mothers watch from the margins, certain this moment is their doing. We create illusions we need to go on. And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty. The light is liberating. Necessary. Terrifying. We stand naked and emptied before it. Adn when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to shield us from its relentless truth.
But the girls! Their eyes glow with the fever dream of all they might become. They tell themselves this is the beginning of everything. And who am I to say it isn't? — Libba Bray

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

When Christian theology becomes traditionalism and men fail to hold and use it as they do a living language, it becomes an obstacle, not a help to religious conviction. To the greatest of the early Fathers and the great scholastics theology was a language which, like all language, had a grammar and a vocabulary from the past, but which they used to express all the knowledge and experience of their own time as well. — Lily Dougall

Over and over and with the least provocation, they pulled from their stock of stories tales about the old folks, their grands and great-grands; their fathers and mothers. Dangerous confrontations, clever manoeuvres. Testimonies to endurance, wit, skill and strength. Tales of luck and outrage. But why were there no stories to tell of themselves? About their own lives they shut up. Had nothing to say, pass on. As though past heroism was enough of a future to live by. As though, rather than children, they wanted duplicates. — Toni Morrison

Isn't my music the last of the real rhythm and blues? Isn't it great? It's because of my musicians, we were weaned on Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, all the founding fathers, the gods of thunder, who invented the foundation and the pulse of the greatest music in the world! — Ted Nugent

Accepted - and treasured." "Treasured?" "Our men - our fathers, our brothers, and our husbands protect and care for us." "And that is shown by hiding you under this shawl?" "It's not hiding us, Leah. The shawl, this head covering, is a declaration before man and God. His divine Law proclaims women to be of great worth and orders that they be protected. First through their father, then their husband. If the husband dies, then women are protected through next of kin. And if there are no next of kin, the community. If this is not fulfilled, Leah, it is not the fault of God's Law, it is the fault of those to whom his Law was given. — Janette Oke

I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate. — James Gates Percival

I think that we approach the problem of romantic love all wrong when we start with the questions: why do so many relationships fail? I think that the interesting question is why do some succeed? Because if you consider how most of us were raised, how most of us were brought up, how few of us had decent role models in terms of our fathers or mothers, how inadequately we were prepared or educated for love as adults; it seems to me that the great miracle is that some people through their own independence, or their own perseverance, or their own creativity, make it. — Nathaniel Branden

The best fathers have the softest, sweetest hearts. In other words, great dads are real marshmallows. — Richelle E. Goodrich

It is important to note that research has shown that men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who have abusive fathers do; the disrespect that abusive men show their female partners and their daughters is often absorbed by their sons.
So while a small number of abusive men do hate women, the great majority exhibit a more subtle-though often quite pervasive-sense of superiority or contempt toward females, and some don't show any obvious signs of problems with women at all until they are in a serious relationship. — Lundy Bancroft

May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their adversity, &c. Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is good, and His mercies endure forever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, shew how He hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the; desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord His loving kindness, and His wonderful works before the sons of men. — William Bradford

What a sublime idea of the infinite might of the great Architect, the Cause of all causes, the Father of all fathers, the Ens Entium! For if we would compare the Infinite, it would surely require a greater Infinite to cause the causes of effects than to produce the effects themselves. — August Weismann

Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity, to extinguish the malignant passions; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties? — William Wilberforce

While [the Arians], like men sprung from a dunghill, truly "spoke from the earth" [Jn. 3:31], the bishops [of Nicea], not having invented their phrases for themselves, but having testimony from their fathers, wrote as they did. For ancient bishops, of the great Rome and our city [i.e., Alexandria, Egypt, where Athanasius was bishop], some 130 years ago, wrote and censured those who said that the Son was a creature and not consubstantial with the Father. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. — Henry David Thoreau

No sin is so great but the satisfaction of Christ and His mercies are greater; it is beyond comparison. Fathers and mothers in tenderest affections are but beams and trains to lead us upwards to the infinite mercy of God in Christ. — Richard Sibbes

A great father is one whose children look up to him rather than away from him. — Richelle E. Goodrich

It's rare to see a man step up and say "I can be a great father and learn about gymnastics with my daughter and take her to dance lessons because I love her." I can make time to blow bubbles on the back porch. It doesn't cause your man card to be revoked. — Dan Alatorre

The Founding Fathers believed that faith in God was the key to our being a good people and America's becoming a great nation. — Ronald Reagan

It may be added, that the same change took place in dogmatic teaching, as in the exposition of Scripture. This indeed was still more to be expected, for the issue of controversies and the decrees of Councils had given to the doctrinal statements of the Fathers an authority, or rather prerogative, which was never claimed for their commentaries. Accordingly, S. John Damascene's work on the Orthodox Faith in the viiith century is scarcely more than a careful selection and combination of sentences and phrases from the great theologians who preceded him, principally S. Gregory Nazianzen. A comment or scholia by the same author upon S. Paul's Epistles have come down to us, which are mainly taken from S. Chrysostom, but with some use of other expositors. — Thomas Aquinas

I had no expectations about fatherhood, really, but it's definitely a journey I'm glad to be taking. Number one, it's a great learning experience. When my mother told me it's a 24/7 job, she wasn't kidding. — Christopher Meloni

Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness. — William Bradford

We carry adolescence around in our bodies all our lives. We get through the Car Crash Age alive and cruise through our early twenties as cool dudes, wily, dashing, winsome ... shooting baskets, the breeze, the moon, and then we try to become caring men, good husbands, great fathers, good citizens. — Garrison Keillor

Oh, but this gift isn't the same as an ermine. This is property. Don't you understand how rare that is for a woman? Property always belongs to our fathers, brothers, husbands, sons. We never get to own anything."
"Don't tell me you're one of those women with radical ideas."
"No," she returned. "I'm one of those women with nothing. There are a great many of us. — Tessa Dare

Fathers are the future's keepers, as it was in the beginning when the only begotten Son became Father to Man and the Great Circle of Father to Son; Son to Father began. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives
when the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands. — George Eliot

The Founding Fathers and our fathers are rolling over in their graves as this great country voluntarily abandons its dreams of equal opportunity, achievement and prosperity and sows the seeds of its own destruction. — David Limbaugh

Good mothers and good fathers and good families don't always have great children. — Cissy Houston

And when children begin to use their reason, fathers and mothers should take great pains to fill their hearts with the fear of God. This the good Queen Blanche did most earnestly by St. Louis, her son: witness her oft-repeated words, "My son, I would sooner see you die than guilty of a mortal sin;" words which sank so deeply into the saintly monarch's heart, that he himself said there was no day on which they did not recur to his mind, and strengthen him in treading God's ways. — Saint Francis De Sales