Father Quotes (page 31)
I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody.
They may be teaching that still.
Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’
I told him that was one...
Kurt Vonnegut
In the big house opposite someone was playing the piano at Dolzhikov's. It was beginning to get dark, and stars were twinkling in the sky. Here my father, in an old top-hat with wide upturned brim, walked slowly by with my sister on his arm, bowing in response to greetings."Look up," he said to my sister, pointing to the sky with the same umbrella with which he had beaten me that afternoon. "Look up at the sky! Even the tiniest stars are all worlds! How insignificant is man in comparison with...
Anton Chekhov
The conventional explanation for Jewish success, of course, is that Jews come from a literate, intellectual culture. They are famously "the people of the book." There is surely something to that. But it wasn't just the children of rabbis who went to law school. It was the children of garment workers. And their critical advantage in climbing the professional ladder wasn't the intellectual rigor you get from studying the Talmud. It was the practical intelligence and savvy you get from watching...
Malcolm Gladwell
...I know that in your heart you miss all those wonderful moments you spent with my father --watching him gnaw on the furniture, listening to his insane gibbering, and enjoying all those playful blows to the stomach and kicks to the head with which he demonstrated his affection for his wives.--King Urgit
David Eddings
Miss Polly actually stamped her foot in irritation. "There you go like the rest," she shouted. "What game?" At last Nancy told her all about the story of how the crutches arrived instead of a doll, and how Pollyanna's father had taught her that there was always something to be glad about. Miss Polly couldn't believe it. "how can someone ever be glad of crutches?" she demanded to know. "Simple" said Nancy. "In Pollyanna's case, she could be glad she didn't need them!
Eleanor Porter
Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.
Neil Gaiman
[The Devil] A new method, sir: when you've completely lost faith in me, then you'll immediately start convincing me to my face that I am not a dream but a reality--I know you now; and then my goal will be achieved. And it is a noble goal. I will sow just a tiny seed of faith in you, and from it an oak will grow--and such an oak that you, sitting in that oak, will want to join 'the desert fathers and the blameless women'; because secretly you want that very ver-ry much, you will dine on...
Fyodor Dostoevsky