Poems About Father

Lessons My Father Taught Me
I watched you today, as you watched
your grandchildren, my children- and wondered
how you endured the pain, fear, joy and elation
that transforms us into parents.
I remembered the patience, the laughter, the tears.
Do I have the strength to endure it all?

It is with great anticipation that I take these
baby steps as guardian, guide and parent, filled with
a fear of flying and failing- hoping that I might find
as you have- the child within myself, the magic of youth.
To encourage the spirit and to nurture the imagination
as well as the soul.

I will move slowly, delicately, yet boldly-
armed with the wisdom of your life, your love,
with full awareness of my shortcomings, yet pride
in my strength, thankful that it was you
that brought me to this place, this time, this love.
I watched you today as you watched your grandchildren.

My Father

When I was:

Four years old: My daddy can do anything.
Five years old: My daddy knows a whole lot.
Six years old: My dad is smarter than your dad.
Eight years old: My dad doesn't know exactly everything.
Ten years old: In the olden days, when my dad grew up, things were sure different.
Twelve years old: Oh, well, naturally, Dad doesn't know anything about that. He is too old to remember his childhood.
Fourteen years old: Don't pay any attention to my dad. He is so old-fashioned.
Twenty-one years old: Him? My Lord, he's hopelessly out of date.
Twenty-five years old: Dad knows about it, but then he should, because he has been around so long.
Thirty years old: Maybe we should ask Dad what he thinks. After all, he's had a lot of experience.
Thirty-five years old: I'm not doing a single thing until I talk to Dad.
Forty years old: I wonder how Dad would have handled it. He was so wise.
Fifty years old: I'd give anything if Dad were here now so I could talk this over with him. Too bad I didn't appreciate how smart he was. I could have learned a lot from him.

Poems For Father's Day

Father

Fathers are wonderful people
Too little understood,
And we do not sing their praises
As often as we should...

For, somehow,
Father seems to be
The man who pays the bills,
While Mother binds up little hurts
And nurses all our ills...

And Father struggles daily To live up to "his image"
As protector and provider
And "hero of the scrimmage"...

And perhaps that is the reason
We sometimes get the notion,
That Fathers are not subject
To the thing we call emotion,

But if you look inside Dad's heart,
Where no one else can see
You'll find he's sentimental
And as "soft" as he can be...

But he's so busy every day
In the gruelling race of life,
He leaves the sentimental stuff
To his partner and his wife...

But Fathers are just wonderful
In a million different ways,
And they merit loving compliments
And accolades of praise,

For the only reason Dad aspires
To fortune and success
Is to make the family proud of him
And to bring them happiness...

And like Our Heavenly Father,
He's a guardian and a guide,
Someone that we can count on
To be always on our side.

Poems For Father

My Hero
As I ponder the love that I saw in his eyes,
A Godly love, given without compromise....
I recall many times that he stood by my side,
And prodded me on with great vigor and pride.
His voice ever confident, firm and yet fair,
Always speaking with patience, tenderness and care.
The power and might of his hands was so sure,
I knew there was nothing we couldn't endure.
It's true, a few others provided insight,
Yet, he laid the foundation that kept me upright.
He's the grandest of men to have lived on this earth,
Although he's not royal by stature or birth.
He's a man of great dignity, honor and strength.
His merits are noble, and of admirable length.
He's far greater than all other men that I know,
He's my Dad, he's my mentor, my friend and hero.

It Takes More Than Blood
It takes more than blood to be a dad.
Oh this is surely a proven fact.
I've seen men give his heart to a child ...
Never once think of taking it back.

A Dad is the one who is always there;
He protects a child from all harm.
He gives a child the assurance that he
will be their anchor in any storm.

A real Dad is a man that teaches his child
all the things in life he needs to know.
He's the tower of strength a child leans on.
The source of love that helps them grow.

There are men that children call Daddy.
Oh, he is their shelter when it rains.
He showers them with unconditional love.
As if it were his blood in their veins.

Whenever you meet a Dad that redefines the word,
honor him with all the respect that is due.
Understand that he proudly wears this banner ...
Because his heart is big enough for you.

It's sad but true that not all men understand
it takes more than blood to be a dad.
Someday if they wake up to their empty life ...
They shall miss what they could have had.

To those men who will never be a dad ...
No matter what they say or do.
It takes more than blood to possess that title ...
And it's only found in a man like you.

Fatherhood Quotes

For thousands of years, father and son have stretched wistful hands across the canyon of time, each eager to help the other to his side, but neither quite able to desert the loyalties of his contemporaries. The relationship is always changing and hence always fragile; nothing endures except the sense of difference. -- Alan Valentine

"A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again." -- Enid Bagnold

"It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all." -- Alice Walker

"That is the thankless position of the father in the family-the provider for all, and the enemy of all." -- J. August Strindberg

"It is a wise father that knows his own child." -- William Shakespeare

"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." -- Anne Sexton

"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

"A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father." -- Gabriel García Márquez

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

"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." Anne Sexton

"Jarrell was not so much a father . . . as an affectionate encyclopedia." Mary Jarrell

To My Father

It matters not that Time has shed
His thawless snow upon your head,
For he maintains, with wondrous art,
Perpetual summer in your heart.
- William Hamilton Hayne

"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud

"I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example." -- Mario Cuomo

"Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young,
Who loved thee so fondly as he?
He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue,
And joined in thy innocent glee."
-- Margaret Courtney

"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

"I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week." Mario Cuomo, former governor of N.Y.

"It's only when you grow up, and step back from him, or leave him for your own career and your own home—it's only then that you can measure his greatness and fully appreciate it. Pride reinforces love." -Margaret Truman

"When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes,
I was your son, high on your horse,
My mind a top whipped by the lashes
Of your rhetoric, windy of course." -Sir Stephen Spender

"I just owe almost everything to my father [and] it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election." -Margaret Thatcher

"People see Archie Bunker everywhere. Particularly girls; poor girls, rich girls, all kinds of girls are always coming up to me and telling me that Archie is just like their dad." - Carroll O'Connor

"A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma." - Marlene Dietrich

"My father died many years ago,
and yet when something special happens to me,
I talk to him secretly not really knowing whether he hears,
but it makes me feel better to half believe it." - Natasha Josefowitz

Quotations For Father's Day

"When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course. " -- Sir Stephen Spender

"All the feeling which my father could not put into words was in his hand--any dog, child or horse would recognize the kindness of it." -- Freya Stark

"It's clear that most American children suffer too much mother and too little father." -- Gloria Steinem

"Children learn to smile from their parents." -- Shinichi Suzuki

"Cultivate your own capabilities, your own style. Appreciate the members of your family for who they are, even though their outlook or style may be miles different from yours. Rabbits don't fly. Eagles don't swim. Ducks look funny trying to climb. Squirrels don't have feathers. Stop comparing. There's plenty of room in the forest." -- Chuck Swindoll

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. " -- Mark Twain

"Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them . . . work, family, health, friends and spirit, and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls . . . family, health, friends and spirit . . . are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same." -- Unknown

"A simple friend doesn't know your parents' first names. A real friend has their phone numbers in his address book." -- Unknown

"My parents really hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio." -- Unknown

"Good parents give their children Roots and Wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what's been taught them." -- Jonas Salk

"Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible--the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family." -- Virginia Satir

"The commandment to honor parents was given to ensure that the elderly, although they may not feel wanted by family or society, are still given their appropriate reward." -- Dr. Laura Schlessinger

"I've been very blessed. My parents always told me I could be anything I wanted. When you grow up in a household like that, you learn to believe in yourself." -- Rick Schroeder

"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. " -- Anne Sexton

"It is a wise father that knows his own child." -- William Shakespeare

"My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately " -- George Bernard Shaw

"It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping." -- John Sinor

"The family--that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to." -- Dodie Smith

Quotations About Death & Sympathy

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. ~From a headstone in Ireland


In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. ~Robert Ingersoll


When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran



We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. ~Kenji Miyazawa



He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery


Life is eternal, and love is immortal,
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
~Rossiter Worthington Raymond


Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains. ~Kahlil Gibran



It is the will of God and Nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life; 'tis rather an embrio state, a preparation for living; a man is not completely born until he be dead: Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals? ~Benjamin Franklin, 22 February 1756


With what a deep devotedness of woe
I wept thy absence - o'er and o'er again
Thinking of thee, still thee, till thought grew pain,
And memory, like a drop that, night and day,
Falls cold and ceaseless, wore my heart away!
~Thomas Moore


And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.
~John Henry Newman


Love here on earth
Love beyond the grave
There are no roads
My love for you can't pave.
~T. Sachs


The angels are always near to those who are grieving, to whisper to them that their loved ones are safe in the hand of God. ~Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994


When he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heav'n so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Quotations About Death II

God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled.


All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live. ~Mark Twain


I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life. ~Jean Giraudoux, Amphitryon, 1929


There is always death and taxes; however, death doesn't get worse every year. ~Author Unknown


All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing. ~Maurice Maeterlinck


To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. ~Samuel Butler



The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. ~Mark Twain


We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death. ~David Sarnoff


Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other. ~Francis Bacon, "Of Death"


If you spend all your time worrying about dying, living isn't going to be much fun. ~From the television show Roseanne


Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. ~Henry Van Dyke


He who doesn't fear death dies only once. ~Giovanni Falcone


People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad. ~Marcel Proust


Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality
~Emily Dickinson


A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man. ~Percival Arland Ussher


The idea is to die young as late as possible. ~Ashley Montagu


'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it. ~Lord Byron


Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody. ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1945


While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. ~Leonardo Da Vinci


Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it. ~Alice Walker


I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived. ~Willa Cather


Death is a distant rumor to the young. ~Andrew A. Rooney


A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own. ~Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain


There are so many little dyings that it doesn't matter which of them is death. ~Kenneth Patchen


If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death. ~Charles Sanders Peirce

Quotations About Death I

Death, the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage


God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath. ~John Donne



Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life. ~Albert Einstein


Death may be the greatest of all human blessings. ~Socrates


In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight....
Not people die but worlds die in them.
~Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "People"


Death never takes the wise man by surprise; He is always ready to go. ~Jean de La Fontaine


Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. ~Attributed to George Carlin


Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death. ~Erik H. Erikson


Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men. ~Herodotus


We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance. ~Marcel Proust


We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love. ~Madame de Stael


Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. ~Norman Cousins


The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive - perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Death is a debt we all must pay. ~Euripides

People living deeply have no fear of death. ~Anaiïs Nin, Diary, 1967


To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Expeditions of an Untimely Man


Death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in. ~George Bernard Shaw


I knew a man who once said, "death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back." ~From the movie Gladiator


Our birth is nothing but our death begun. ~Edward Young, Night Thoughts


No one knows whether death is really the greatest blessing a man can have, but they fear it is the greatest curse, as if they knew well. ~Plato


For what is it to die,
But to stand in the sun and melt into the wind?
~Kahlil Gibran, from "The Prophet"


Life and death are balanced on the edge of a razor. ~Homer, Iliad


Death is the surest calculation that can be made. ~Ludwig B�chner, Force and Matter


The goal of all life is death. ~Sigmund Freud


Death is a release from the impressions of sense, and from impulses that make us their puppets, from the vagaries of the mind, and the hard service of the flesh. ~Marcus Aurelius, Meditations


And they die an equal death - the idler and the man of mighty deeds. ~Homer, Iliad



As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death. ~Leonardo da Vinci


There is only one ultimate and effectual preventive for the maladies to which flesh is heir, and that is death. ~Harvey Cushing


A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist. ~Stewart Alsop


Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees. ~J.J. Furnas

Quotations About Grief

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. ~From a headstone in Ireland


When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran


It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ~Colette


Sorrow you can hold, however desolating, if nobody speaks to you. If they speak, you break down. ~Bede Jarrett


While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it. ~Samuel Johnson


Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. ~William Shakespeare


Man, when he does not grieve, hardly exists. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


No one can keep his griefs in their prime; they use themselves up. ~E.M. Cioran


Grief is a species of idleness. ~Samuel Johnson


Grief is itself a medicine. ~William Cowper, Charity


In my Lucia's absence
Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden;
I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear,
And grief, and rage and love rise up at once,
And with variety of pain distract me.
~Joseph Addison


Time is a physician that heals every grief. ~Diphilus


The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost. ~Arthur Schopenhauer


There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out. ~Lou Reed, "Magic and Loss"



If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble. ~Moliere



The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep. ~Henry Maudsley



She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts. ~George Eliot


While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil. ~John Taylor

Quotations About Marriage IV

A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short. ~Andre Maurois


Marriage: A legal or religious ceremony by which two persons of the opposite sex solemnly agree to harass and spy on each other for ninety-nine years, or until death do them join. ~Elbert Hubbard


When a girl marries she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one. ~Helen Rowland


In the long run wives are to be paid in a peculiar coin - consideration for their feelings. As it usually turns out this is an enormous, unthinkable inflation few men will remit, or if they will, only with a sense of being overcharged. ~Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal, 1974


Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won't even lay down his newspaper to talk to you. ~Helen Rowland


Marriage changes passion - suddenly you're in bed with a relative. ~Author Unknown


Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything: routine. ~Honore de Balzac


Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too. ~H.L. Mencken


In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again.... We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring. ~Enid Bagnold, Autobiography, 1969


Many marriages are simply working partnerships between businessmen and housekeepers. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


A fellow ought to save a few of the long evenings he spends with his girl till after they're married. ~Kin Hubbard


Marriage is a meal where the soup is better than the dessert. ~Austin O'Malley


Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate. ~Barnett R. Brickner


Never get married in the morning, because you never know who you'll meet that night. ~Paul Hornung


More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse. ~Doug Larson


Marriage, n. A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911


Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open. ~George Bernard Shaw


A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year. ~Paul Sweeney

Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate. ~Barnett R. Brickner

Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose. ~Beverley Nichols

Wedding rings: the world's smallest handcuffs. ~Author Unknown