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Some Reflections on Father
Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English author. Samuel Butler's Notebooks (1951, p. 100).
As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773), English statesman, man of letters. Letter, 15 July 1751 (1774; repr. in The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son, vol. 2, no. 264, ed. by Charles Strachey, 1901).
If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.
Bill Cosby (b. 1937), U.S. comedian, actor. Fatherhood, ch. 5 (1986).
To be a successful father . . . there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), U.S. author. Quoted in: A. E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, pt. 2, ch. 5 (1966).
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author. Lord Goring, in An Ideal Husband, act 4.
None of you can ever be proud enough of being the child of SUCH a Father who has not his equal in this world-so great, so good, so faultless. Try, all of you, to follow in his footsteps and don't be discouraged, for to be really in everything like him none of you, I am sure, will ever be. Try, therefore, to be like him in some points, and you will have acquired a great deal.
Victoria (1819-1901), Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Letter, 26 Aug. 1857, to the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.
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Independence
In the word of no master am I bound to believe.
Horace (65-8 B.C.), Roman poet. Epistles, bk. 1, Epistle 1 (22-8 B.C.), hence nullius in verba-the motto of the Royal Society of London.
It's easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing-that's the Lord's test.
Mahalia Jackson (1911-72), U.S. gospel singer. Movin' On Up, ch. 1 (1966; written with Evan McLoud Wylie).
Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, "Go to sleep by yourselves." And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.
Margaret Mead (1901-78), U.S. anthropologist. Quoted in: Family Circle (New York, 26 July 1977).
Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97), English feminist writer. A Vindication of the Rights of Women, "Dedication" (1792).
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.
Walt Whitman (1819-92), U.S. poet. Song of the Broad Axe, sct. 3.
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