A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child.

Knights of Pythagoras

The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Bertrand Russell

A father is a man who expects his children to be as good as he meant to be.

Carolyn Coats

You save an old man and you save a unit, but save a boy, and you save a multiplication table.

Gypsy Smith

Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

Black Elk

How little is the promise of the child fulfilled in the man.

Ovid

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

Gloria Steinem

The most important thing that a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

Reverend Theordore Hesburgh

Our little ones, whom you so often recommend to my care and instruction, shall not be deficient in virtue or probity, if the precepts of a mother have their desired effect; but they would be doubly enforced, could they be indulged with the example of a father alternately before them. I often point them to their sire, -----"engaged in a corrupted state, Wrestling with vice and faction."

Abigail Adams

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon." Said the old man, "I do that too." The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants." "I do that too," laughed the old man." Said the little boy, "I often cry." The old man nodded, "So do I." "But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems Grown-ups don't pay attention to me." And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand. "I know what you mean," said the old man.

Shel Silverstein

Old Man: You get old and you can't do anybody any good any more.
Boy: You do me some good, Grandpa. You tell me things.

Robert Penn Warren

The following is from the diary of Giovanni Morelli wherein he reproaches humself after pledging to raise his own son better than the neglectful way he himself had been raised:

You loved him but never used your love to make him happy; you treated him more like a stranger than a son; you never gave him an hour of rest; you never looked approvingly at him; you never kissed him when he wanted it; you wore him out at school and with many harsh blows.

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

Peter Ustinov, Quotable Ustinov (1995)

The woman is the home. That's where she used to be, and that's where she still is. You might ask me, What if a man tries to be part of the home -- will the woman let him? I answer yes. Because then he becomes one of the children.

Marguerite Duras

Be a father. Your son has friends his own age; no boy needs a forty-four year old "pal".

Ann Landers

The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.

Euripides (485 BC - 406 BC), Phrixus

For rarely are sons similar to their fathers: most are worse, and a few are better than their fathers.

Homer, The Odyssey