parenthood

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
0812cc5	I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.	childhood children fatherhood growing-up inspirational inspirational-life inspirational-quotes inspiring kids life life-and-living living motherhood parenthood parenting parenting-children	C. JoyBell C.
9da1f37	Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.	child faith parental-love parenthood parents	Richard Dawkins
b7593d6	He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that's for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I'll be bound - you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters?	parenthood	Gustave Flaubert
31a8df1	Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.	encouragement leadership mentoring parenthood teaching	Pat Conroy
2078aff	Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.	parenthood	George Eliot
a77ab7e	...my father, [was] a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee. At worst? He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw jutting out, giving him the look of a wounded, vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room ... I'm sure he told himself: 'I never hit her'. I'm sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun.	abusive abusive-parents anger broken-home childhood childhood-memories communication divorce emotional-abuse family father fight fighting fights fury heartbreak heartbroken love love-lost malice mental-abuse mother parenthood parents parents-and-children rage scared sexism silence terror	Gillian Flynn
aaaa1fb	Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.	parenthood	Jodi Picoult
506a1f7	It's the silliness--the profligacy, and the silliness--that's so dizzying: a seven-year-old will run downstairs, kiss you hard, and then run back upstairs again, all in less than 30 seconds. It's as urgent an item on their daily agenda as eating or singing. It's like being mugged by Cupid.	parenthood	Caitlin Moran
1c887e4	"It is not true that "love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." Love alters all the time; it is fluid, in perceptual flux, an evolving business across a lifetime."	parenthood	Andrew Solomon
97f44f6	I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were entirely transactional: 'We're out of milk again.' (I'll get some today.) 'I need this ironed properly.' (I'll do that today.) 'How hard is it to buy milk?' (Silence.) 'You forgot to call the plumber.' (Sigh.) 'Goddammit, put on your coat, right now, and go out and get some goddamn milk. Now.' These messages and orders brought to you by my father, a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee.	abusive abusive-relationship abusive-relationships bad-parenting broken-home childhood childhood-memories communication depression divorce family father fight fighting fights heartbreak love love-lost mother parenthood parents parents-and-children relationship sexism silence	Gillian Flynn
10a09d2	I guess you just have to trust your kids, trust that their innate interest in life will win out in the end, don't you think?	life love parenthood parenting	George Saunders
c4dcbf1	There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.	childhood development parenthood	Pat Conroy
bff0bb4	Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.	karma parenthood wrath	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
0473522	"Before they had kids, if asked to conjure images of parenthood they would have said things like "Reading in bed," and "Giving a bath," and "Running while holding the seat of a bicycle." Parenthood contains such moments of warmth and intimacy, but isn't them. It's cleaning up. The great bulk of family life involves no exchange of love, and no meaning, only fulfillment. Not the fulfillment of feeling fulfilled, but of fulfilling that which now falls to you."	meaning parenthood	Jonathan Safran Foer
528d838	The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.	life parenthood	John Updike
f091e65	Originality must compound with inheritance.	grace-of-god heritage identity innovation legacy parenthood	Harold Bloom
39aa9ff	It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly lost and bewildered amid an assortment of cardboard boxes and suitcases in a spartan room not unlike a prison cell that it really hit home that he was vanishing out of our lives and into his own.	growing-up love parenthood	Bill Bryson
7a19a77	A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write because that was exactly how it felt.	family fatherhood love motherhood parenthood	Jonathan Safran Foer
576b474	"Why do men like me want sons?" he wondered. "It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone."	expectation failed-ambition fatherhood parenthood	John Steinbeck
d005c7f	When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who'd lost children wrote to me. ''I lost one, too,'' they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn't lost any children. I'm just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword)	imagination parenthood	John Irving
ae76f92	Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That's what love is supposed to be like, right? But in fact, if you think about it, that's kind of a strange belief. Given what we know about the way people really are. Selfish and shortsighted and egotistical and needy. Why should being a parent, in and of itself, somehow confer superior-personhood on everybody who tries it? Obviously it doesn't.	franzen love neediness parenthood selfishness	Jonathan Franzen
5d95f6b	Memories particularly of when they weren't being what parents are nine-tenths of the time, the taskmasters, the examples, the moral authorities, the nags of pick-that-up and you're-going-to-be-late, keepers of the diary of her duties and routines, memories, rather, of when they found one another afresh, beyond the tensions between parental mastery and inept childish uncertainty, of those moments of respite in a family's life when they could reach one another in calm	parenthood	Philip Roth
124c0db	it's my responsibility to cultivate the man in my son. I can't be passive about that.	maturity parenthood	Randy Alcorn
c8e4de5	Do not expect too much from your child and she will grow in your love... But if you push her too much, you will push her away. A child is not yours to own but to raise. She may not be what you will have her to be, but she will be what she has to be. Remember what they say, that 'Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.	daughter family parenthood parenting	Jane Yolen
464c266	"It's a strange thing, having a child," he said. It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything - anything - to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It's quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of worth of your own life is changed so much." Tatsu."	parenthood parents-and-children sacrifice-for-others value-of-life	Barry Eisler
038377a	"Incidentally, I have also learned a bit about the importance of avoiding feminine embarrassment ('Daddy,' wrote Sophia when she enrolled at the New School where I teach, 'people will ask "why is old Christopher Hitchens kissing that girl?"') and shall now cease and desist."	fatherhood fathers-and-daughters kisses parenthood the-new-school women	Christopher Hitchens
5db31f4	Excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself.	cheerfulness curiosity enthusiasm parenthood personality	Doris Kearns Goodwin
27b8bfd	Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? And could you in any way protect your son from Sansara? How could you? By means of teachings, prayer, admonition? My dear, have you entirely forgotten that story, that story containing so many lessons, that story about Siddhartha, a Brahman's son, which you once told me here on this very spot? Who has kept the Samana Siddhartha safe from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from foolishness? Were his father's religious devotion, his teachers warnings, his own knowledge, his own search able to keep him safe? Which father, which teacher had been able to protect him from living his life for himself, from soiling himself with life, from burdening himself with guilt, from drinking the bitter drink for himself, from finding his path for himself? Would you think, my dear, anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path? That perhaps your little son would be spared, because you love him, because you would like to keep him from suffering and pain and disappointment? But even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself.	life parenthood	Hermann Hesse
85b71e0	"But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger, turn it upside down, and you'll find I've copied out all the fine words they said of you: "careful observer," "strong nervous English," "rising philosopher." Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne's bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up, and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the review which speak about you, lad!"	parenthood son	Elizabeth Gaskell
5ef9799	A love for his child was so profound, it spilled over to all humanity.	image-of-god maturation parenthood	John Howard Griffin
5074daf	Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on this shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind.	frederick learning parenthood transferring-personality-traits wisdom	Orson Scott Card
6ed9bbd	My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought.	heritage leadership legacy mortality parenthood	Frank Herbert
284a4c6	We are now parents. The love for our offspring has opened up fresh fountains of love for each other. Edwin Stanton to his wife.	parenthood	Doris Kearns Goodwin
2047c67	Nobody works harder at learning than a curious kid.	parenthood passion	Thomas L. Friedman
460b589	In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the time of the First World War.	parenthood victorian-era	Bill Bryson
331a9cb	I was too old for my father to (be protective), too young to be flattered.	parenthood	Catherine Marshall
827c58f	We no longer get work out of our children; today we get meaning.	parenthood	Esther Perel
a6c163c	More than Captain America your kids need Amelia Earhart - more than Ant Man, they need Abraham Lincoln - more than Green Arrow they need Gandhi - more than Iron Man they need Isaac Newton.	child-psychology children fairy-tales fiction-fantasy parenthood parenting parenting-101 parenting-advice parenting-children parenting-teenagers parents parents-advice parents-and-children parents-and-responsibility parents-and-teenagers parents-quotes parents-responsibility raising-kids	Abhijit Naskar
a124dc5	Your blanks have been filled in far differently from those of a child grown up in the filth and poverty	conventional-wisdom culture parenthood	John Howard Griffin
3644ee8	As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that threaded their sound through all the fibers of the house, his occupation of the room down the hall was no more uncomfortable than the persistence of Rabbit's own childhood in an annex of his brain; but when the stuff with hormones and girls and cars and beers began, Harry wanted out of fatherhood.	frustration growing-up nelson-angstrom parenthood rabbit-angstrom	John Updike
a202347	But the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody's mother were black magic. There is no adventure I would trade them for; there is no place I would rather have seen. -Thanksgiving in Mongolia, The New Yorker, November 18, 2013 Issue	loss love miscarriage motherhood parenthood	Ariel Levy
08d9a93	It wasn't right that you could only understand your parents' pain once you'd experienced the things they had, and by then they were gone.	growing-up knowledge life-lessons maturity old-age pain parenthood parenting wisdom	J. Courtney Sullivan
afa12d1	The Mother Thing makes our world.	education maturation parenthood perspective	Robert A. Heinlein
720460f	After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling him. Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine.	love parenthood	Hermann Hesse
2ce6523	A Nobel Prize winner was asked how he became a scientist. He said that every day after school, his mother would ask him not what he learned but whether he asked a good question today. That, he said, was how he became a scientist.	openness parenthood questioning	Thomas L. Friedman
0fe420f	"Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?" Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?" "Like what things?" "Jobs, I guess. Friends. Trips. Hobbies."	childless-people parenthood	Emma Donoghue
40db674	Drawing from 1.7 million Gallup surveys collected between 2008 and 2012, researchers Angus Deaton and Arthur Stone found that parents with children at home age fifteen or younger experience more highs, as well as more lows, than those without children... And when researchers bother to ask questions of a more existential nature, they find that parents report greater feelings of meaning and reward -- which to many parents is what the entire shebang is about.	parenthood parenting reward rewarding	Jennifer Senior
ddb69c5	"Theodore Roosevelt's father wrote him, "I fear for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time."	parenthood social-conscience	Doris Kearns Goodwin
4dfdda2	Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur plays for them, encourage pursuit of special interests, prompted them to write essays on their readings, and urge them to recite poetry.	fatherhood parenthood	Doris Kearns Goodwin
f80c234	Stories were heirlooms in these parts.	inspiration leadership legacy motivation narrative parenthood storytelling	Robert Kurson
c9436d8	Being a father, having an heir, seem to add an extra dimension to David. He had always been of vivid, animating presence in any room he entered. But now he would come from visiting the boy crackling with even greater energy and force. He had been engaged listener, ready to learn what any man might have to offer in discussion, but now there was an additional depth to his questions, a more far-reaching vision behind his decisions. He thought now beyond the span of years, and into a future that glistened ahead into centuries. It's one thing, I suppose, to have a prophet tell you that you will found a dynasty. Now, it seemed, he allowed himself to truly believe it.	parenthood	Geraldine Brooks
0579b2b	Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason - for insurance against later regret. I think people have children for all manner of reasons - sometimes out of a pure desire to nurture and witness life, sometimes out of an absence of choice, sometimes in order to hold on to a partner or create an heir, sometimes without thinking about it in any particular way. Not all the reasons to have children are the same, and not all of them are necessarily unselfish. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Nor are all those reasons necessarily selfish.	life parenthood	Elizabeth Gilbert
4fe10b1	Lee was a born pedagogue, never happier than when his children were learning to do something the right way. It is a testament to Lee's affection and patience that his children did not rebel. In fact, they appear to have thrived.	encouragement parenthood	Michael Korda
6935f5b	If my children think I'm genuine, no one else's opinion matters to me.	family parenthood sincerity testimony	Beth Moore
6c9576d	Mothers burning inside the risen suns of their children.	future parenthood	Karen Russell
a589507	We can't surrender to the culture. We've minimized the role of fathers, so we've created a generation of barbarians, children who become men without growing up. They stay in boyhood through their 20s and 30s, sometimes their whole lives. They think of themselves first, indulge in pornography, do what they feel like, leave their wives, and culture, and churches to raise their children.	heritage parenthood	Randy Alcorn
3302d4c	In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained.	parenthood teenagers	Anne Lamott
9f033fe	It was too late for he and his father to have an adventure, and NOTHING seemed to have any color anymore.	maturation mission parenthood risk	Robert Kurson
1e65441	"Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, "armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father."	fatherhood parenthood	Doris Kearns Goodwin
afb0050	Each of Nora's children had arrived on this earth as him or herself, the more she knew them, the more she felt it to be true. They were so different from one another, and from her.	growing-up individuality mother motherhood parenthood parenting parents personality	J. Courtney Sullivan
acc5c4b	"Good God," cries the Mother. Everything inside her suddenly begins to cower and shrink, a thinning of bones. Perhaps this is a soldier's readiness, but it has the whiff of death and defeat. It feels like a heart attack, a failure of will and courage, a power failure: a failure of everything. Her face, when she glimpses it in a mirror, is cold and bloated with shock, her eyes scarlet and shrunk. She has already started to wear sunglasses indoors, like a celebrity widow. From where will her own strength come? From some philosophy? From some frigid little philosophy? She is neither stalwart nor realistic and has trouble with basic concepts, such as the one that says events move in one direction only and do not jump up, turn around, and take themselves back. The Husband begins too many of his sentences with "What if." He is trying to piece everything together like a train wreck. He is trying to get the train to town."	parenthood	Lorrie Moore
d1db9ef	But he was sixty-two when I was, born, and the novelty of daughters had worn away long before.	fathers-and-daughters late-in-life-children parenthood	Jane Smiley
d0bf86e	My mind was curiously blank. It was the blankness of obedience. With the unerring instinct of children, I had surmised what my parents wanted from me. They wanted me to stay the way I was. [434]	parenthood	Jeffrey Eugenides
35b006d	Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' out things.	childhood children knowledge learning motherhood parenthood parenting	Frances Hodgson Burnett
5c72f89	As parents one of the biggest jobs we have, is teaching our children how to resolve problems effectively. We live in an era where everyone is quick to act the fool over simple issues. As we used to say when I was on the streets, 'everybody wants to cut a movie'.	conflict-resolution conflicts cut-a-movie letting-go parenthood parenting parents peace-maker resolving-problems simple-issues street-violence walking-away youth-violence	Drexel Deal
dd9600e	I wanted you to know that the world in its entirety could never be found in the schools, alone, nor the streets, alone, nor in the trophy case. I wanted you to claim the whole world, as it is.	parenthood ta-nehisi-coates-quote	Ta-Nehisi Coates
41729e3	Parents need to see that every situation that their kids find themselves in is a teaching situation, and they need to take the time to explore cost and effect. So talking to your children, explaining things to children as to why things happen in the world. Getting them to see cost and relationships between events is the best way to increase comprehension skills. Daynette Gardiner, the best School Psychologist in The Bahamas.	cost-and-effects cost-and-relationships learning-opportunities parenthood teachable-moments teaching-situation time	Drexel Deal
6b5dbbf	"I suppose you're going to say that I'm not a good mother.'	parenthood	W. Somerset Maugham

0812cc5

I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.

childhood children fatherhood growing-up inspirational inspirational-life inspirational-quotes inspiring kids life life-and-living living motherhood parenthood parenting parenting-children

C. JoyBell C.

9da1f37

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.

child faith parental-love parenthood parents

Richard Dawkins

b7593d6

He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that's for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I'll be bound - you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters?

parenthood

Gustave Flaubert

31a8df1

Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.

encouragement leadership mentoring parenthood teaching

Pat Conroy

2078aff

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.

parenthood

George Eliot

a77ab7e

...my father, [was] a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee. At worst? He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks, at a time, making the air humid, hard to breathe, my father stalking around with his lower jaw jutting out, giving him the look of a wounded, vengeful boxer, grinding his teeth so loud you could hear it across the room ... I'm sure he told himself: 'I never hit her'. I'm sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun.

abusive abusive-parents anger broken-home childhood childhood-memories communication divorce emotional-abuse family father fight fighting fights fury heartbreak heartbroken love love-lost malice mental-abuse mother parenthood parents parents-and-children rage scared sexism silence terror

Gillian Flynn

aaaa1fb

Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.

parenthood

Jodi Picoult

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It's the silliness--the profligacy, and the silliness--that's so dizzying: a seven-year-old will run downstairs, kiss you hard, and then run back upstairs again, all in less than 30 seconds. It's as urgent an item on their daily agenda as eating or singing. It's like being mugged by Cupid.

parenthood

Caitlin Moran

1c887e4

"It is not true that "love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." Love alters all the time; it is fluid, in perceptual flux, an evolving business across a lifetime."

parenthood

Andrew Solomon

97f44f6

I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were entirely transactional: 'We're out of milk again.' (I'll get some today.) 'I need this ironed properly.' (I'll do that today.) 'How hard is it to buy milk?' (Silence.) 'You forgot to call the plumber.' (Sigh.) 'Goddammit, put on your coat, right now, and go out and get some goddamn milk. Now.' These messages and orders brought to you by my father, a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee.

abusive abusive-relationship abusive-relationships bad-parenting broken-home childhood childhood-memories communication depression divorce family father fight fighting fights heartbreak love love-lost mother parenthood parents parents-and-children relationship sexism silence

Gillian Flynn

10a09d2

I guess you just have to trust your kids, trust that their innate interest in life will win out in the end, don't you think?

life love parenthood parenting

George Saunders

c4dcbf1

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.

childhood development parenthood

Pat Conroy

bff0bb4

Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

karma parenthood wrath

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

0473522

"Before they had kids, if asked to conjure images of parenthood they would have said things like "Reading in bed," and "Giving a bath," and "Running while holding the seat of a bicycle." Parenthood contains such moments of warmth and intimacy, but isn't them. It's cleaning up. The great bulk of family life involves no exchange of love, and no meaning, only fulfillment. Not the fulfillment of feeling fulfilled, but of fulfilling that which now falls to you."

meaning parenthood

Jonathan Safran Foer

528d838

The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.

life parenthood

John Updike

f091e65

Originality must compound with inheritance.

grace-of-god heritage identity innovation legacy parenthood

Harold Bloom

39aa9ff

It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly lost and bewildered amid an assortment of cardboard boxes and suitcases in a spartan room not unlike a prison cell that it really hit home that he was vanishing out of our lives and into his own.

growing-up love parenthood

Bill Bryson

7a19a77

A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write because that was exactly how it felt.

family fatherhood love motherhood parenthood

Jonathan Safran Foer

576b474

"Why do men like me want sons?" he wondered. "It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone."

expectation failed-ambition fatherhood parenthood

John Steinbeck

d005c7f

When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who'd lost children wrote to me. ''I lost one, too,'' they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn't lost any children. I'm just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword)

imagination parenthood

John Irving

ae76f92

Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That's what love is supposed to be like, right? But in fact, if you think about it, that's kind of a strange belief. Given what we know about the way people really are. Selfish and shortsighted and egotistical and needy. Why should being a parent, in and of itself, somehow confer superior-personhood on everybody who tries it? Obviously it doesn't.

franzen love neediness parenthood selfishness

Jonathan Franzen

5d95f6b

Memories particularly of when they weren't being what parents are nine-tenths of the time, the taskmasters, the examples, the moral authorities, the nags of pick-that-up and you're-going-to-be-late, keepers of the diary of her duties and routines, memories, rather, of when they found one another afresh, beyond the tensions between parental mastery and inept childish uncertainty, of those moments of respite in a family's life when they could reach one another in calm

parenthood

Philip Roth

124c0db

it's my responsibility to cultivate the man in my son. I can't be passive about that.

maturity parenthood

Randy Alcorn

c8e4de5

Do not expect too much from your child and she will grow in your love... But if you push her too much, you will push her away. A child is not yours to own but to raise. She may not be what you will have her to be, but she will be what she has to be. Remember what they say, that 'Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.

daughter family parenthood parenting

Jane Yolen

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"It's a strange thing, having a child," he said. It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything - anything - to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It's quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of worth of your own life is changed so much." Tatsu."

parenthood parents-and-children sacrifice-for-others value-of-life

Barry Eisler

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"Incidentally, I have also learned a bit about the importance of avoiding feminine embarrassment ('Daddy,' wrote Sophia when she enrolled at the New School where I teach, 'people will ask "why is old Christopher Hitchens kissing that girl?"') and shall now cease and desist."

fatherhood fathers-and-daughters kisses parenthood the-new-school women

Christopher Hitchens

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Excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself.

cheerfulness curiosity enthusiasm parenthood personality

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? And could you in any way protect your son from Sansara? How could you? By means of teachings, prayer, admonition? My dear, have you entirely forgotten that story, that story containing so many lessons, that story about Siddhartha, a Brahman's son, which you once told me here on this very spot? Who has kept the Samana Siddhartha safe from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from foolishness? Were his father's religious devotion, his teachers warnings, his own knowledge, his own search able to keep him safe? Which father, which teacher had been able to protect him from living his life for himself, from soiling himself with life, from burdening himself with guilt, from drinking the bitter drink for himself, from finding his path for himself? Would you think, my dear, anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path? That perhaps your little son would be spared, because you love him, because you would like to keep him from suffering and pain and disappointment? But even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself.

life parenthood

Hermann Hesse

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"But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger, turn it upside down, and you'll find I've copied out all the fine words they said of you: "careful observer," "strong nervous English," "rising philosopher." Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne's bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up, and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the review which speak about you, lad!"

parenthood son

Elizabeth Gaskell

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A love for his child was so profound, it spilled over to all humanity.

image-of-god maturation parenthood

John Howard Griffin

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Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on this shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind.

frederick learning parenthood transferring-personality-traits wisdom

Orson Scott Card

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My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought.

heritage leadership legacy mortality parenthood

Frank Herbert

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We are now parents. The love for our offspring has opened up fresh fountains of love for each other. Edwin Stanton to his wife.

parenthood

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Nobody works harder at learning than a curious kid.

parenthood passion

Thomas L. Friedman

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In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the time of the First World War.

parenthood victorian-era

Bill Bryson

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I was too old for my father to (be protective), too young to be flattered.

parenthood

Catherine Marshall

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We no longer get work out of our children; today we get meaning.

parenthood

Esther Perel

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More than Captain America your kids need Amelia Earhart - more than Ant Man, they need Abraham Lincoln - more than Green Arrow they need Gandhi - more than Iron Man they need Isaac Newton.

child-psychology children fairy-tales fiction-fantasy parenthood parenting parenting-101 parenting-advice parenting-children parenting-teenagers parents parents-advice parents-and-children parents-and-responsibility parents-and-teenagers parents-quotes parents-responsibility raising-kids

Abhijit Naskar

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Your blanks have been filled in far differently from those of a child grown up in the filth and poverty

conventional-wisdom culture parenthood

John Howard Griffin

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As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that threaded their sound through all the fibers of the house, his occupation of the room down the hall was no more uncomfortable than the persistence of Rabbit's own childhood in an annex of his brain; but when the stuff with hormones and girls and cars and beers began, Harry wanted out of fatherhood.

frustration growing-up nelson-angstrom parenthood rabbit-angstrom

John Updike

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But the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody's mother were black magic. There is no adventure I would trade them for; there is no place I would rather have seen. -Thanksgiving in Mongolia, The New Yorker, November 18, 2013 Issue

loss love miscarriage motherhood parenthood

Ariel Levy

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It wasn't right that you could only understand your parents' pain once you'd experienced the things they had, and by then they were gone.

growing-up knowledge life-lessons maturity old-age pain parenthood parenting wisdom

J. Courtney Sullivan

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The Mother Thing makes our world.

education maturation parenthood perspective

Robert A. Heinlein

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After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling him. Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine.

love parenthood

Hermann Hesse

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A Nobel Prize winner was asked how he became a scientist. He said that every day after school, his mother would ask him not what he learned but whether he asked a good question today. That, he said, was how he became a scientist.

openness parenthood questioning

Thomas L. Friedman

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"Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?" Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?" "Like what things?" "Jobs, I guess. Friends. Trips. Hobbies."

childless-people parenthood

Emma Donoghue

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Drawing from 1.7 million Gallup surveys collected between 2008 and 2012, researchers Angus Deaton and Arthur Stone found that parents with children at home age fifteen or younger experience more highs, as well as more lows, than those without children... And when researchers bother to ask questions of a more existential nature, they find that parents report greater feelings of meaning and reward -- which to many parents is what the entire shebang is about.

parenthood parenting reward rewarding

Jennifer Senior

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"Theodore Roosevelt's father wrote him, "I fear for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time."

parenthood social-conscience

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur plays for them, encourage pursuit of special interests, prompted them to write essays on their readings, and urge them to recite poetry.

fatherhood parenthood

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Stories were heirlooms in these parts.

inspiration leadership legacy motivation narrative parenthood storytelling

Robert Kurson

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Being a father, having an heir, seem to add an extra dimension to David. He had always been of vivid, animating presence in any room he entered. But now he would come from visiting the boy crackling with even greater energy and force. He had been engaged listener, ready to learn what any man might have to offer in discussion, but now there was an additional depth to his questions, a more far-reaching vision behind his decisions. He thought now beyond the span of years, and into a future that glistened ahead into centuries. It's one thing, I suppose, to have a prophet tell you that you will found a dynasty. Now, it seemed, he allowed himself to truly believe it.

parenthood

Geraldine  Brooks

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Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason - for insurance against later regret. I think people have children for all manner of reasons - sometimes out of a pure desire to nurture and witness life, sometimes out of an absence of choice, sometimes in order to hold on to a partner or create an heir, sometimes without thinking about it in any particular way. Not all the reasons to have children are the same, and not all of them are necessarily unselfish. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Nor are all those reasons necessarily selfish.

life parenthood

Elizabeth Gilbert

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Lee was a born pedagogue, never happier than when his children were learning to do something the right way. It is a testament to Lee's affection and patience that his children did not rebel. In fact, they appear to have thrived.

encouragement parenthood

Michael Korda

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If my children think I'm genuine, no one else's opinion matters to me.

family parenthood sincerity testimony

Beth Moore

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Mothers burning inside the risen suns of their children.

future parenthood

Karen Russell

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We can't surrender to the culture. We've minimized the role of fathers, so we've created a generation of barbarians, children who become men without growing up. They stay in boyhood through their 20s and 30s, sometimes their whole lives. They think of themselves first, indulge in pornography, do what they feel like, leave their wives, and culture, and churches to raise their children.

heritage parenthood

Randy Alcorn

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In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained.

parenthood teenagers

Anne Lamott

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It was too late for he and his father to have an adventure, and NOTHING seemed to have any color anymore.

maturation mission parenthood risk

Robert Kurson

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"Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, "armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father."

fatherhood parenthood

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Each of Nora's children had arrived on this earth as him or herself, the more she knew them, the more she felt it to be true. They were so different from one another, and from her.

growing-up individuality mother motherhood parenthood parenting parents personality

J. Courtney Sullivan

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"Good God," cries the Mother. Everything inside her suddenly begins to cower and shrink, a thinning of bones. Perhaps this is a soldier's readiness, but it has the whiff of death and defeat. It feels like a heart attack, a failure of will and courage, a power failure: a failure of everything. Her face, when she glimpses it in a mirror, is cold and bloated with shock, her eyes scarlet and shrunk. She has already started to wear sunglasses indoors, like a celebrity widow. From where will her own strength come? From some philosophy? From some frigid little philosophy? She is neither stalwart nor realistic and has trouble with basic concepts, such as the one that says events move in one direction only and do not jump up, turn around, and take themselves back. The Husband begins too many of his sentences with "What if." He is trying to piece everything together like a train wreck. He is trying to get the train to town."

parenthood

Lorrie Moore

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But he was sixty-two when I was, born, and the novelty of daughters had worn away long before.

fathers-and-daughters late-in-life-children parenthood

Jane Smiley

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My mind was curiously blank. It was the blankness of obedience. With the unerring instinct of children, I had surmised what my parents wanted from me. They wanted me to stay the way I was. [434]

parenthood

Jeffrey Eugenides

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Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' out things.

childhood children knowledge learning motherhood parenthood parenting

Frances Hodgson Burnett

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As parents one of the biggest jobs we have, is teaching our children how to resolve problems effectively. We live in an era where everyone is quick to act the fool over simple issues. As we used to say when I was on the streets, 'everybody wants to cut a movie'.

conflict-resolution conflicts cut-a-movie letting-go parenthood parenting parents peace-maker resolving-problems simple-issues street-violence walking-away youth-violence

Drexel Deal

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I wanted you to know that the world in its entirety could never be found in the schools, alone, nor the streets, alone, nor in the trophy case. I wanted you to claim the whole world, as it is.

parenthood ta-nehisi-coates-quote

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Parents need to see that every situation that their kids find themselves in is a teaching situation, and they need to take the time to explore cost and effect. So talking to your children, explaining things to children as to why things happen in the world. Getting them to see cost and relationships between events is the best way to increase comprehension skills. Daynette Gardiner, the best School Psychologist in The Bahamas.

cost-and-effects cost-and-relationships learning-opportunities parenthood teachable-moments teaching-situation time

Drexel Deal

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"I suppose you're going to say that I'm not a good mother.'

parenthood

W. Somerset Maugham