Quotes about Daughters

35/10

Brushing out my daughter's dark
silken hair before the mirror
I see the grey gleaming on my head,
the silver-haired servant behind her. Why is it
just as we begin to go
they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck
clarifying as the fine bones of her
hips sharpen? As my skin shows
its dry pitting, she opens like a small
pale flower on the tip of a cactus;
as my last chances to bear a child
are falling through my body, the duds among them,
her full purse of eggs, round and
firm as hard-boiled yolks, is about
to snap its clasp. I brush her tangled
fragrant hair at bedtime. It's an old
story – the oldest we have on our planet –
the story of replacement.

For My Daughter

That night will come. Somewhere someone will be
entering you, his body riding
under your white body, dividing
your blood from your skin, your dark, liquid
eyes open or closed, the slipping
silken hair of your head fine
as water poured at night, the delicate
threads between your legs curled
like stitches broken. The center of your body
will tear open, as a woman will rip the
seam of her skirt so she can run. It will happen,
and when it happens I will be right here
in bed with your father, as when you learned to read
you would go off and read in your room
as I read in mine, versions of the story
that changes in the telling, the story of the river.

Offspring

I tried to tell her:
    This way the twig is bent.
    Born of my trunk and strengthened by my roots,
    You must stretch newgrown branches
    Closer to the sun
    Than I can reach.

I wanted to say:
    Extend my self to that far atmosphere
    Only my dreams allow.

But the twig broke,
And yesterday I saw her
Walking down an unfamiliar street,
    Feet confident
    Face slanted upward toward a threatening sky,
And
    She was smiling
    And she was
    Her very free,
    Her very individual,
    Unpliable
    Own

"We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters. "

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!

They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!

1. A big black bug bit a big brown bear. 2. Bring a bit of buttered brown bran bread. 3. Just which one he wants I don't know. 4. His daughter was going to New York to study law. 5. That's the question that really troubles him. 6. Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 7. Thou wouldst not play false yet wouldst wrongly win. 8. Amidst the mists and coldest frosts, With stoutest wrists and loudest boasts, He hits his fists against the posts, And still insists he sees the ghosts. 9. An Austrian army awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besiege Belgrade; Cossack commanders cannonading come, Deal devastation's dire destructive doom; Ev'ry endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for freedom, fight, fierce, furious fray. Gen'rals 'gainst gen'rals grapple,-gracious God! How honors Heav'n heroic hardihood! Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill, Just Jesus, instant innocence instill! Kinsmen kill kinsmen, kindred kindred kill. Labor low levels longest, loftiest lines; Men march 'midst mounds, motes, mountains, murd'rous mines. Now noisy, noxious numbers notice nought, Of outward obstacle o'ercoming ought; Poor patriots perish, persecution's pest! Quite quiet Quakers "Quarter, quarter" quest; Reason returns, religion, religion, right, redounds, Suwarrow stop such sanguinary sounds! Truce to thee, Turkey, terror to thy train! Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine! Vanish vile vengeance, vanish victory vain! Why wish we warfare, wherefore welcome won Xerxes, Xantippus, Xavier, Xenophon? Yield, ye young Yaghier yeomen, yield your yell! Zimmerman's, Zoroaster's zeal Again attract; art against arms appeal. All, all ambitious aims, avaunt, away! Et caetera, et caetera, et caeterä.1 10. I am the very model of a model major-general, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical; I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical; About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot of news- With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse; . . . I'm very good at integral and differential calculus; I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral I'm the very model of a modern major-general.2 1 Anonymous, "Alliteration, or the Siege of Belgrade" Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 2 The Pirates of Penzance

Fhairshon had a son, Who married Noah's daughter, And nearly spoiled to Flood, By trinking up ta water: Which he would have done, I at least believe it, Had the mixture peen Only half Glenlivet.

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest, And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe; And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers.

You know, I got a daughter, she lives in Michigan. When she was six years old we took her to the circus, one minute she's laughing at the clowns, you know, getting out of the Volkswagen. The next minute she's telling me that her stomach hurts. Soon she's crying, then she's screaming. We drove her right to the emergency room, and she's got a fever, it's too high. The doctors poke and prod, and still they can't find anything wrong. Now her vital signs weaken, and they put her on an I.V. and they still can't find anything wrong. Not anything. One day I walked into her room, and the nurse was trying to put in a new I.V. and she couldn't find the spot. Her little veins were weak, and [she] starts getting afraid of the needle, and she looked up at me and said 'Daddy, make it better.' I can't tell you how I felt, when she looked up at me and said that, I couldn't make it better. There was nothing I could do. She was my daughter and I was so powerless. I felt so powerless.

One of the greatest mysteries of life is how the idiot that your daughter married can be the father of the smartest grandchildren in the whole wide world.

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.

But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.

Have you not heard these many years ago Jeptha was judge of Israel? He had one only daughter and no mo, The which he loved passing well; And as by lott, God wot, It so came to pass, As God's will was.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power, Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour The bad affright, afflict the best!

Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.

. . . this oligarchy of sex, which makes fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every house of the nation.

I have read and heard a good many statements by eminent writers and speakers to the effect that our liberty of which we are justly proud is an achievement, and not a gift. In the sense that it had to be worked for, fought for, and preserved with vigilance these statements are true. But let it never be forgotten that our concept of liberty is a gift. No human is the author of that concept. Many great men have so recognized it as did Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence and declared that "men are endowed with certain inalienable rights." Why are these rights inalienable? Because men did not create the right to liberty! In the exercise of his free agency he may surrender his privileges, and his property, and he may become the slave of others or of the state, but his free agency is as native to him as the air he breathes. It is part and parcel of his eternal constitution, and Jefferson was "righter than I think he himself knew" when he declared it an endowment which cannot be alienated. The message which we bear affirms that God is the Author of our inalienable liberty; that men, all men are of noble lineage, sons and daughters of the Eternal Father; and that liberty is their birthright. I thank God that . . . noble men were blessed with this lofty concept of man's inherent right to liberty and that they were prompted to incorporate these divine principles in the organic law and history of our favored land.

If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it.

Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

Happy is the man who loves the woods and waters, Brother to the grass and well beloved of Pan; The earth shall be his, and all her laughing daughters. Happy the man.

The daughter of debate*, that eke discord doth sow. * Mary, Queen of Scots

Too often technology is perceived as the problem rather than the solution; as something to be avoided rather than embraced. This is about as logical as my daughter's observing, while our family was driving through an unfamiliar city, "Trying to read a map while driving causes all the traffic lights to turn green."

. . . Our God is a God of love. He waits with open arms, and the unfolding of His merciful plan of salvation is not only therefore the mark of divine power but also the mark of God's relentless, redeeming love. It is a point well worth pondering because, among other reasons, it will help us to understand better why God, through the prophets, denounces sin and corruption in such scalding terms. He loves all of us, His spirit sons and daughters, but hates our vices. His denunciation of those vices may, if we are not careful, seem to obscure the enormous and perfect love He has for us.

Our daughters and sons have burst from the marionette show leaving a tangle of strings and gone into the unlit audience.

America experiences a new birth of freedom in her sons and daughters; she incarnates the spirit of her martyred chief. Their loyalty is repledged; their devotion renewed to the work He left unfinished. My heart throbs anew in the hope that inspired by the example of Lincoln, imbued with the spirit of Christ, they will cast down the last barrier to perfect freedom. And I with my brother of blackest hue possessing at last my rightful heritage and holding my head erect, may stand beside the Saxon - a Negro - and yet a man!

Daughters of God know that it is the nurturing nature of women that can bring everlasting blessings, and they live to cultivate this divine attribute.

One day I was speeding along at the typwriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!"

Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart.