Father & Son (photo by Mary R. Vogt, courtesy of morguefile.com)

"Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!" -Lydia M. Child, Philothea: A Romance, 1836

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." -Mark Twain, 'Old Times on the Mississippi', Atlantic Monthly, 1874

"One father is more than a hundred Schoolemasters." -George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs, 1640

"Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes." -Gloria Naylor