Quotes

You Will Never Do Anything in This World Without Courage

“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”

Aristotle

The Unlived Life of the Parent

“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.”

Carl Jung
Swiss Psychologist (1875 – 1961)

Unselfishly Give a Great Deal of Ourselves

Parenting is hard. Balancing work and family is hard. Kids are kids. Our families are not accessories to our lives or objects we can control completely. And if we want to be the sort of parents to raise children of character and integrity, we have to unselfishly give a great deal of ourselves to the project.

“Toy Times”, Holiday 2008/2009, Author Unknown

We Think our Fathers Fools

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.
Alexander Pope

A Little Woman

“A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.”

Enid Bagnold

He didn’t tell me how to live…

He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
Clarence Budington Kelland

You’ll Never Be Ready

You’ll NEVER be ready. That’s just the way it is.
My Own Father, circa 2004/2005, said in response to some comment from me about trying to be more fully prepared to have a child

You Can Be Called a “Real Son”

“When your father is alive, observe his will. When your father is dead observe his former actions. If, for three years [after the death of your father] you do not change from the ways of your father, you can be called a ‘real son’.”

Confucius, Chinese social philosopher, 479 B.C.

True Fatherhood is Mainly Not Generating a Human Body…

“True fatherhood therefore, is not only or even mainly generating a human body in this world. It is also and mainly collaborating with the mother in developing the human soul for everlasting life in eternity.”
Friar John A. Hardon, S.J., 1996 (link)

…Good Men to Do Nothing

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke