Karl Kraus Quotes

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them. We all feel instinctively, that our children's success reflect glory upon ourselves, while their failures make us feel shame. Unfortunately, the successes which cause us to swell with pride are often of an undesirable kind.... Neither happiness nor virtue, but worldly success, is what the average father desires for his children.

I mean, her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was the suffering wife of a man who she could never predict what he would do, where he would be, who he would be. And it's sort of interesting because Eleanor Roosevelt never writes about her mother's agony. She only writes about her father's agony. But her whole life is dedicated to making it better for people in the kind of need and pain and anguish that her mother was in.

My parents were very pleased that I was in the army. The fact that I hated it somehow pleased them even more.

Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.

Now that I'm a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

If at any moment of the day I ever think I'm remotely cool at all, which is hardly ever, I have two daughters who make sure that never happens.

I'm glad to say my father never felt ashamed of me, but my mother probably did.

I called up and said, 'Dad, I won a MacArthur.' My father goes: 'I always thought your sister would win that,' and I said, 'Dad, just say congratulations and keep your private thoughts private.' At that point he laughed, then burst into tears, and it was obvious that he was so happy and proud.

In any kid's relationship with their parents, there's always an influence there. You always want to do them proud.

I liked the fact that my father had a lot of expectations from my brother. I probably wanted to be that person who he could be proud of.

For 20 years, my mother, my sister and I had seldom spoken of my father. If he happened to come up in conversation, pain and embarrassment entered the room and stayed until he disappeared back into the silence with which we all felt more at ease.

No one likes a pushy parent, and, 'pride' being one of the seven deadly sins, I needed to tread very carefully when creating a show about my eldest son, Tom, better known as Peter Parker and even better known as Marvel's new 'Spider-Man.'

I've got two very sophisticated daughters who'd rather die than see their dad in a technicoloured knitted jacket.

I think that it's a natural thing for parents to look for reflections of themselves in their children and feel a certain pride there. So if your child is very, very different, or perhaps if he's very, very similar, it makes you uncomfortable.

[My father] loved me tenderly and shyly from a distance, and later on took a naive pride in seeing my name in print.

The last thing I ever want to do is disappoint my parents. If something ever happened to one of my parents, I'd want them to go knowing I made them proud.

Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes.

When I consider how little of a rarity children are -- that every street and blind alley swarms with them -- that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance -- that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains -- how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. -- I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.

It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.

I try to forgive her for my father's sake. But to be honest, I'm not the forgiving type.

As a father of seven kids, and been a kid myself at one point, I realize you don't always make the best decisions every time out. And life is a learning experience.

My father always had doubts about the Booker prize, although they evaporated on the announcement that he had won it.

Although I am good at enumerating my father’s flaws, it’s hard for me to sustain much anger at him. I expect this is partly because he’s dead, and partly because the bar is lower for fathers than it is for mothers.

I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can't.