To My Father Quotes

#1. It was important to my father that I go to Hebrew school three days a week for two or three hours each time. To me, it felt endless. Think about it from a kid's perspective: I would finish my normal school day, then get on a bus and go to another school. That was tough to take.

Steve Sheinkin

#2. You can't compare me to my father. Our similarities are different.

Dale Berra

#3. We didn't have television in those days, and many people didn't even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.

Beverly Cleary

#4. It was truer to my father to let the songs he'd sung die with him, little by little, averse at a time. How could these art-mongers constantly ignore the mortality of beauty, a pleonasm if ever I'd heard one?

Dimitri Verhulst

#5. I remember when my father passed away, we drove the funeral procession past the bank so he could say one last goodbye. That's how much the bank meant to my father.

Alexi Giannoulias

#6. We are a family of professionals, especially doctors. Thanks to my father, I got exposed to a whole lot of things. I call him a Renaissance man.

Lillete Dubey

#7. I didn't feel particularly close to my father.

Henry Louis Gates

#8. We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf"
Opening to "My Father's Son," attributed to George Orwell

George Orwell

#9. My mother wanted a conservative, secure life, and she has been married to my father since she was 18 ... A lot of hard work went into that marriage and a lot of not getting what you want.

Kimberly Quinn

#10. When I pray, I feel close to my Father in Heaven, and I feel His guiding hand in my life. If there is one thing I have learned, it is this: God knows us, He loves us, and He is waiting to help us.

Jane Clayson

#11. Among the values of classical learning I estimate the Luxury of reading the Greek & Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals ... I think myself more indebted to my father for this, than for all the other luxuries his cares and affections have placed within my reach.

Thomas Jefferson

#12. I still relate to my father very much. I mean, I talk to him in a certain way, as we do talk to the dead.

Daniel Day-Lewis

#13. We didn't like each other when you were alive," I muttered to my father. "You think living in my head is going to change that?

Devon Monk

#14. When I got to college, when I finally fled the suffocation that I'd built around myself - because, to my father's credit, he'd never asked me to captain our plagued family's ship - it all collapsed.

Allison Winn Scotch

#15. I find myself lacing my fingers together and bowing my head. Sometimes my father did this in the morning before sitting down at the breakfast table, but I never asked him what he was doing. Still, I would like to feel like I belong to my father again before I . . . well, before it's over.

Veronica Roth

#16. I look up to my father, because he's very, very experimental in his cuisine, and he puts a lot of love into things. He's the best. To me.

Thu Tran

#17. People tend to fear the ghosts in their own family. You feel these family curses and think, 'If it happened to my father, it could happen to me.'

Christian Louboutin

#18. I'm very fond of an old map of London that used to belong to my father. I'm a big London fan, and the evolution of the city is astonishing, when you look back to Pepys and how small it was - everyone knew each other.

Ben Schott

#19. Gatsby's self-willed metamorphosis from farm boy to prince is many ways identical to my father's. Like Gatsby, my father fueled this transformation with the "colossal vitality of his illusion". Unlike Gatsby he did this on a school teacher's salary.

Alison Bechdel

#20. I didn't know at first that there were two languages in Canada.Ijustthoughtthatthere was oneway tospeak to my father and another to talk to my mother.

Louis St. Laurent

#21. From my earliest memories, my aunt was squirting out oil paint. I could just eat it. I would go from her studio and walk down to my father's house, and there he was, working in egg tempera.

Jamie Wyeth

#22. The process was remarkably cathartic. I'd sit and listen to my father's voice - having not heard some of these tapes for 30 years and hearing his voice laying me down for a nap, our giggles and cooking dinner - and I remembered all those wonderful days. Normal days.

Jennifer Grant

#23. I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.

{His teacher was the legendary philosopher Aristotle}

Alexander The Great

#24. My last name is Wellsley, but a lot of people say it's Lowendowski, which is my mother's last name, and I had it changed to my father's when I was 18.

Cory Wells

#25. I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.

Rodney Dangerfield

#26. As I left, promising to mention her to my father, Olga said: Now you can play hide-and-seek in the whole
world.

J.G. Ballard

#27. Thanks to my father, we were always in good horses.

Facundo Pieres

#28. There was a great complexity to my father. He was a devoted family man. But, in the same breath, he simply was not suited to an anchored life. He should have been somebody who had a backpack, an old map, a bit of change in his pocket and that was it - roaming the world.

Christian Bale

#29. Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?" ... I met his gaze and I did not blink. "Words of comfort," I said to my father.

Abraham Verghese

#30. I don't want to lose my legs, you know. I don't want to be wheeled around in a wheelchair. I don't want to be attached to a catheter. I saw all that stuff happen to my father, and as much as it upset me because I loved my father so much, it also really traumatized me.

Dan Hill

#31. I held my father's hand while he died of cancer, and it's really painful when you do something like that up close and personal. My mother was already gone, and I was very, very close to my father.

Elizabeth Warren

#32. I once said to my father, when I was a boy, 'Dad we need a third political party.' He said to me, 'I'll settle for a second.'

Ralph Nader

#33. The first time I saw nitroglycerine was in the beginning of the Crimean War. Professor Zinin in St. Petersburg exhibited some to my father and me, and struck some on an anvil to show that only the part touched by the hammer exploded without spreading.

Alfred Nobel

#34. The boy I just kissed is talking to my father. The boy I want to kiss again is waiting for my mother to serve
pancakes.
I must fight the urge to freak.

David Levithan

#35. What could be more natural for me than to look upon the Abbot as representing the highest human ideal worth striving for, just as the position of the humble village priest had appeared to my father in his own boyhood days?

Adolf Hitler

#36. My cousin. His name is Abel. He is two years older than I. Next to my father, he is dearest to my heart.

Celia Mcmahon

#37. The Greek is importantly different: "Jesus said to her, 'Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God

John Dominic Crossan

#38. I think I was respectful to my father in that I only told the portions that he had already told. So, I never went outside of the things that he had already stated in his article because then I think it becomes unfair.

Michael Landon Jr.

#39. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.

Beverly Cleary

#40. To my father, art had no restrictions. He was a true 'American Primitive.' He greatly enjoyed sketching and photography, carrying a camera with him whenever he could,

John Carter Cash

#41. The value of holding a grudge. And to always refer to my father sarcastically as Mr. Wonderful.

Jon Stewart

#42. I think Chris Martin is younger than I am, but when I met him, I felt like I was talking to my father. It's so strange, that feeling when someone is that famous - you assume that they are either older or better.

Jenny Lewis

#43. Finding out how the rest of the world lives is a normal part of rumschpringe. I didn't think it was up to my father-or my bishop-to squash that kind of curiosity.

Mary Ellis

#44. I had a real job at fourteen years old. At seventeen, I was on my own. At twenty, I cut the liver out of a drifter and gave it to my father! 'Cause my dad's a drinker and I love my dad. And for eighty bucks, you can do anything in Mexico!

Christopher Titus

#45. I looked up to my father when I was 7 and 8. I believed it was my calling to be in the big leagues. I'd been raised by a family that always told me I could do anything I wanted.

Barry Zito

#46. to my father's amazement, was an ancient but clearly recognizable painting of Marco Polo, who must have visited Huai'an during his thirteenth-century travels about China. The priest asked my father to donate a picture of Jesus for his collection, and, after thinking about it, Daddy did.

Katherine Paterson

#47. I grew up listening to my father argue politics into the night and taking trips every Saturday to the Hood River library where my mother maintained her interest in reading and encouraged the same from her sons.

Dale T. Mortensen

#48. Thanks to my father who, as it was to turn out, had already taught me most of what I needed to know about business in his butcher's shop in Belfast. Thanks to my mother, who taught me that there are many things in life much more important than business.

Russell Napier

#49. To my father, who told me the stories that matter. To my mother, who taught me to remember them.

Marita Golden

#50. My greatest accomplishment is succeeding in life, and I owe that to my family and twenty years in the military. I don't regret leaving the farm and ranch for the Army. Although I may have been a disappointment to my father, I achieved more than he could ever dream of in his short life.

Tom Johnson

#51. I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.

Adolf Hitler

#52. To my father. Thank you for teaching me that we all deserve to be forgiven.

Cassia Leo

#53. I was always listening to my father more than anyone. I was always afraid of my father more than anyone. But there's a moment in time where other men in your life can have a huge impact.

Kevin Costner

#54. My mother spoke of Christ to my father, by her feminine and childlike virtues, and, after having borne his violence without a murmur or complaint, gained him at the close of his life to Christ.

Saint Augustine

#55. You swore.You swore to my father that you would do everything in your power to protect Anastasia's and my interests in Hecate.
Even I could have told her that was a bad move.Dad just looked pissed.

Rachel Hawkins

#56. But wherever I was I played baseball. That's all I lived for. When I sat up on the front seat of that covered wagon next to my father, I was wearing a baseball glove. That showed anybody who was interested where I wanted to go.

Smoky Joe Wood

#57. We had a dog who was named Pushinka, who was given to my father by a Soviet official. And we trained that dog to slide down the slide we had in the back of the White House. Sliding the dog down that slide is probably my first memory.

John F. Kennedy

#58. Music is like a river or stream that has come down to us through time, bringing nurture to man's soul. From the past masters, this music flowed to my father and through him to me. I want to keep this stream flowing. I don't want it to die. It must spread all over the world.

Ali Akbar Khan

#59. I can't see any separation between my music and my life. I play pretty much race music: its about what happened to my father, to me, and what can happen to my kids.

Archie Shepp

#60. I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get this, Daddy, I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'

Bharati Mukherjee

#61. I want away to the house of death, to my father under the low, clay roof.

Seamus Heaney

#62. I should have listened to my father. "Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience?" he would say. "Plan a fun family day out.

Jojo Moyes

#63. I was only fifteen when I finished my high-school studies, always having held first rank in my class. The fatigue of growth and study compelled me to take almost a year's rest in the country. I then returned to my father in Warsaw, hoping to teach in the free schools.

Marie Curie

#64. My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

Haruki Murakami

#65. I spent most of my youth hauling sides of beef and pork to my father's shop. Carrying you is far more enjoyable."
"How sweet," Annabelle mumbled sickly, her eyes closed. "Every woman dreams of being told that she's preferable to a dead cow.

Lisa Kleypas

#66. You scratch whatever itches you choose," Charles told her, his voice cold and quiet."Enjoy yourself. But at the end of the day, you remember that Isaac belongs to my father - and to me. He is necessary to us as you are not. You will leave him unharmed or I will hunt you down and destroy you.

Patricia Briggs

#67. When I was born ... the doctor came out to the waiting room and said to my father ... I'm very sorry. We did everything we could ... but he pulled through.

Rodney Dangerfield

#68. Obviously, at this age, I've lost people in my life. But with a parent, it's just different. I was very attached to my father and had this naive little-girl notion that he'd always be around. So I'm finding acceptance of my father's death is the hardest thing to accept.

Carol Leifer

#69. Thanks to my father, I didn't have to face the tough side of life. Probably that's why I always chose love over money.

Sonam Kapoor

#70. I see by your letter to my father that you are rather afraid the French may invade England.

William John Wills

#71. I've always referred to my father as 'my coach' because we were always able to separate our relationship into the roles of coach and parent.

Sebastian Coe

#72. I owed it to my father that I was elected to Parliament in the first place, but I owed it to my mother that I stuck it out once I got there.

Agnes Macphail

#73. If I'm going for advice for anything in my life, I go straight to my father because he has the answers.

Jessica Simpson

#74. Prior to my father's death, I was having a hard time committing to a career as an artist, but that's not because of who he was - it was because of who I am. It's true, though, that I felt I shouldn't compete with him, and that those feelings went away after he died.

Kiki Smith

#75. As a child i used to complain to my father about not having toys and he would say (calvero points at his own head) this is the greatest toy ever created. Here lies the secret of all happiness.

Anonymous

#76. Across the board, from my mother to my father to my aunts and uncles, everybody has always given me a lot of love.

Amos Lee

#77. Even if someone is competent, it's so damned easy to crucify him as long as he's only working on his father's account. So at the beginning I certainly wanted to prove myself to my father and the rest of society. That quickly turned into a greater challenge. My lifestyle hasn't changed as a result.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou

#78. I once complained to my father that I didn't seem to be able to do things the same way other people did. Dad's advice? 'Margo, don't be a sheep.People hate sheep. They eat sheep.'

Margo Kaufman

#79. Return those shoes to the shoemaker Return this hand to my father This pillow to the pillowmaker Those slippers to the shop. That wainscot to the carpenter, But my mind my tranquil and eternal Mind Return it to whom?

Jack Kerouac

#80. I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.

Robert Morgan

#81. Unlike my mother, my father does not cry quietly. His wails roll out like a wave of pain, and I scramble to roll up my window. My mother cannot hear that. I cannot bear to hear it myself. I am not used to my father's crying. I've had no time to harden my heart against him.

Margaret Peterson Haddix

#82. I was very dawn to people I loved, to my family, to my father, to my sister, to my brothers.

Frederick Lenz

#83. To my father, business was the highest calling, but to my mother, medicine was the top profession.

William Standish Knowles

#84. I was very close to my father. At the age of ten I wanted to do plays, and my father was very encouraging. When I applied to different acting schools, he was right there and very supportive.

Kim Cattrall

#85. It wasn't easy telling my family that I'm gay. I made my carefully worded announcement at Thanksgiving. It was very Norman Rockwell. I said, 'Mom, would you please pass the gravy to a homosexual?' She passed it to my father. A terrible scene followed.

Bob Smith

#86. My father had osteomyelitis-his left arm was withered between his elbow and his shoulder ... But the amputation of a Stone Age man called Leaf, a stoneworker, does not relate to my father at all ...

Jim Crace

#87. My other brother, the Lord Lucas, who was heir to my father's estate, and as it were the father to take care of us all, is not less valiant than they were, although his skill in the discipline of war was not so much, not being bred therein.

Margaret Cavendish

#88. All remember about my mother," Nibs told them, "is that she often said to my father, 'Oh, how I wish I had a cheque-book of my own!' I don't know what a cheque-book is, but I should just love to give my mother one.

J.M. Barrie

#89. Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I'd do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.

Steve Martin

#90. I owe my life to my father. I remember that my first Christmas present was a ball. In the district where we lived, there weren't many kids who had one.

Sergio Aguero

#91. The first thing, when I got the money, I knew I would support somebody. And the person I supported was my family. Because we were really in debt with the money. And - so I gave to my father this suitcase full of money. And he couldn't believe it. And that was something very special.

Michael Schumacher

#92. I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn't have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him.

Jane Fonda

#93. I wasn't close to my father, but I wanted to be all my life. He had a funny sense of humor, and he laughed all the time - good and loud, like I do. He was a gay Irish gentleman and very good-looking. And he wanted to be close to me, too, but we never had much time together.

Judy Garland

#94. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost.

Leslye Walton

#95. When you're 6 or 7, your father becomes this wonderful presence in your life. I really responded to my father. And then, the very moment I realized that I loved him unconditionally, that life was going to be great just because he was in it, he was gone.

Tim Allen

#96. When I turned 30, due to my father's heart history and my family genetics, I vowed to start seeing a cardiologist every year and just really be proactive and take my own heart health into my own hands.

Jennie Garth

#97. What are you saying, Benvolio? You would like to speak to my father about my hand in marriage?

Emily Whitaker

#98. I felt that even the sun belonged to my father, that I had no right to it because it was shining upon my father's house. I was like his roses, something that belonged to him and not to me.

Charles Bukowski

#99. I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

Margaret Thatcher

#100. Good-bye, I say to Grandfather, and to my father, and I hold the tube in the river and pause a moment. We hold the choices of our fathers and mothers in our hands and when we cling on or let them slip between our fingers, those choices become our own.

Ally Condie