Father Quotes - Page 78

In my father's language: "To create something out of nothing." That possibility exists in India even in old-world sectors like agriculture.

I felt my father's presence with me, helping me to commit to paper the feelings I had. I really heard my father speaking to me from the other dimension

I just wish I could understand my father.

My father says that almost the whole world is asleep, everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.

It's only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like.

Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries; but who can tell or who can explain them!

God sees us with the eyes of a Father. He sees our defects, errors and blemishes. But He also sees our value.

Whoever sees Christ as a mirror of the Father's heart, actually walks through the world with new eyes.

I attribute all of my success to my Catholic faith. My faith has given me the ability to be a good father, a good husband and most importantly a good person.

My father belonged to a commune, and the food was ghastly. My idea of food hell is the salad cream they'd pour all over bits of lettuce, cucumber and tomato. It was just disgusting.

I think my father [ Erwin Rommel] would have given the same answer. The British and Americans and the French were too strong, too strong and the strategy of this battle was too clever. And the war may be - it would have taken some weeks longer before the German front was penetrated. And by the way, today we know that it was better to lose the war than to win it with Hitler.

[Erwin Rommel] explained why in short words, what the two generals' message and then he explained his position and he gave some reason for his position. And then he said, "The ten minutes are over, and I have to leave now." Then my father said goodbye. He also told that us that in I think twenty or thirty minutes, I don't remember, "You will get a telephone call telling you that I have died of stroke."

The conventional explanation for Jewish success, of course, is that Jews come from a literate, intellectual culture. They are famously "the people of the book." There is surely something to that. But it wasn't just the children of rabbis who went to law school. It was the children of garment workers. And their critical advantage in climbing the professional ladder wasn't the intellectual rigor you get from studying the Talmud. It was the practical intelligence and savvy you get from watching your father sell aprons on Hester Street.

Outside his office my father had a framed copy of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to his son's teacher, translated into Pashto. It is a very beautiful letter, full of good advice. Teach him, if you can, the wonder of books...But also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside, it says. Teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat.

Being a father is the most important thing, if you ask me. It changed me as a person and gave me an all new life.

My father was overbearing. Very controlling. He was always the way he is, even before my success. He was not always a good person. He'd play mind games to make sure I knew my place. I don't see him, which is unfortunate. But I don't have any desire to see him. I vaguely know where he is, and I don't want to know.

Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother's voice couldn't make him change or turn back as he believed that once you can't love another human being you have no place in the world.

Mortality is a school of suffering and trials. We are here that we may be educated in a school of suffering and of fiery trials, which school was necessary for Jesus, our Elder Brother, who, the scriptures tell us, ‘was made perfect through suffering.’ It is necessary that we suffer in all things, that we may be qualified and worthy to rule, and govern all things, even as our Father in Heaven and His eldest son, Jesus.

Father of Light! great God of Heaven! Hear'st thou the accents of despair? Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven? Can vice atone for crimes by prayer.

My father was often angry when I was most like him.

The truth is, if you asked me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father.

If necessity is the mother of invention, conflict is its father.

My father taught me that the easiest thing to do was to quit. He'd say, 'It doesn't take any talent to do that.'

I remember hearing myself start to whimper, a five-year-old, crouched by the side of the road, staring into my father's eyes, whimpering because it was so dark and there was no one coming to help, whimpering because my mother was back in the crushed car, not moving, and my father was lying here in the dirt, not answering me, not holding me, not comforting me, not helping my mother get out of the car, and there was blood, so much blood, and broken glass everywhere, and it was so dark and so cold and no one was coming to help.

In fact, I take the view that God, in his infinite wisdom, didn't bother to spring for two joints - heaven and hell. They're the same place, but heaven is when you get everything you want and you meet Mummy and Daddy and your best friends and you all have a hug and a kiss and play your harps. Hell is the same place - no fire and brimstone - but they just all pass by and don't see you. There's nothing, no recognition. You're waving, “It's me, your father,” but you're invisible. You're on a cloud, you've got your harp, but you can't play with nobody because they don't see you. That's hell.