Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father! ~Lydia M. Child, Philothea: A Romance, 1836
We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. ~Robert Louis Stevenson, "Virginibus Puerisque II," Virginibus Puerisque, 1881
Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. ~Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age. ~Lucille Ball
Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle. ~Bob Hope
There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. ~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994
Are we not like two volumes of one book? ~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. ~Clarence Budington Kelland
One father is more than a hundred Schoolemasters. ~George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs, 1640
Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician. ~Author Unknown
It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it. ~Mark Twain
Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever. ~Don Marquis
