#fathers

Reading Aloud to My Father I chose the book haphazard from the shelf, but with Nabokov's first sentence I knew it wasn't the thing to read to a dying man: The cradle rocks above an abyss, it began, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. The words disturbed both of us immediately, and I stopped. With music it was the same -- Chopin's Piano Concerto — he asked me to turn it off. He ceased eating, and drank little, while the tumors briskly appropriated what was left of him. But to return to the cradle rocking. I think Nabokov had it wrong. This is the abyss. That's why babies howl at birth, and why the dying so often reach for something only they can apprehend. At the end they don't want their hands to be under the covers, and if you should put your hand on theirs in a tentative gesture of solidarity, they'll pull the hand free; and you must honor that desire, and let them pull it free. ↗

— Jane Kenyon

#daughters #dying #fathers #grief #music

I hate parties. And a wedding is the biggest party of all. All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower. He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them. Then I have to greet them. A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day. I always thought there would be more interesting people at my wedding. ↗

— Sarah Ruhl

#frustration #play #relationships #weddings #relationship

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children. ↗

— John James Audubon

#children #fathers #given #his #knows

The spirit of Ubuntu, that once led Haiti to emerge as the first independent black nation in 1804, helped Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador attain liberty, and inspired our forefathers to shed their blood for the United States' independence, cannot die. Today, this spirit of solidarity must and will empower all of us to rebuild Haiti. ↗

— Jean-Bertrand Aristide

#black #blood #cannot #colombia #die

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. ↗

— Charles A. Beard

#best #citizen #dangerous #days #fathers

I was plunged into what was known as the debutante social whirl. This was one of the ways fathers justified their own hard work and sacrifices. ↗

— Gene Tierney

#hard #hard work #i #into #justified

I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I’m a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child’s life, and in a child’s level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad. ↗

— Dan Pearce

#arguing #break #child #children #dads

The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to bare the secrets of government and inform the people. ↗

— Hugo Black

#fathers #founding #founding fathers #free #free press

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think. ↗

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

#done #fathers #larger #most #neighbors

The fathers, if they got me alone, would try to kiss and fondle me. I hated it. ↗

— Christine Keeler

#fathers #fondle #got #hated #i