Arnold Parents Quotes

Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach.

The parents are making threatening noises, turning dinner into performance art, with dad doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation and mom playing Glenn Close in one of her psycho roles. I am the Victim. Mom: [creepy smile] “Thought you could put one over us, did you, Melinda? Big high school students now, don’t need to show your homework to your parents, don’t need to show any failing test grades?” Dad: [bangs table, silverware jumps] “Cut the crap. She knows what’s up. The interim reports came today. Listen to me, young lady. I’m only going to say this to you once. You get those grades up or your name is mud. Hear me? Get them up!” [Attacks baked potato.]

I held on to the hope that one day I would grow up and have all the answers, just like my parents. As I look over at Arnold and then at Father Mike, I realize that adults are just as fucked as the rest of us. No one really grows up. No one unravels all of life's many mysteries. They just grow older and become better liars.

A child's conduct will reflect the ways of his parents.

Progress is hardly ever dramatic; in fact, it is usually very slow. As every parent and teacher knows, education is never a matter of ten-step plans or quick formulas, but of faithful commitment to the mundane challenges of daily life: getting up from the sofa to spend time with our children, loving them and disciplining them, becoming involved in their lives at school and, most important, making sure they have a wholesome family life to return to at home. Maybe that is why Jesus teaches us to ask for strength little by little, on a daily basis - "Give us this day our daily bread" - and why he stresses the significance of even the smallest, humblest beginnings: "Wherever two of you agree about anything you ask for, it shall be done for you... For where two or three come together in my name, I shall be with them" (Mt. 18:19-20).

Mr. Arnold Waite—husband, parent, man of his word—invariably leaned back in his chair after his second cup of breakfast coffee and looked with some disbelief at his wife and two children.

My parents always reminded me to count my blessings and be grateful for the things that were good in my life and that it could always be worse. I was raised not to focus on the negative, but be thankful for the positive.

Our researches have thus yielded us twenty societies, most of them related as parent or offspring to one or more of the others: namely the Western, the Orthodox, the Iranic, the Arabic (these last two being now united in the Islamic), the Hindu, the Far Eastern, the Hellenic, the Syriac, the Indic, the Sinic, the Minoan, the Indus Culture, the Sumeric, the Hittite, the Babylonic, the Egyptiac, the Andean, the Mexic, the Yucatec and the Mayan.......Indeed it is probably desirable to divide the Orthodox Christian Society into an Orthodox-Byzantine and an Orthodox-Russian society, and the Far Eastern into a Chinese and a Korean-Japanese Society. This would raise our numbers to twenty-two; and since this book was written, a twenty third has come to light: the Shang culture that preceded the Sinic civilization, in the Yellow River Valley.

Cindy Haden continued visiting Richard every chance she got. She’d come mostly on weekends, when Doreen was visiting, too. The two women began seeing each other at the jail. Doreen felt Cindy was a “low-down, hypocritical bitch” who could have hung the jury. Whenever Doreen saw Cindy at the jail, she would narrow her eyes and regard her with utter disdain. When Doreen asked Richard why the hell he would allow that Benedict Arnold to visit, he said she was a juror and might be of help if he chose to appeal his conviction. After a few months of Cindy driving all the way to San Francisco every weekend, she began thinking she would move north permanently so she could be close to Richard. She was in love with him and had pictures of him in frames on her night table and on the wall opposite her bed. Cindy had told her parents about her relationship with Richard and had actually brought her mom and dad to the jail so they could meet him. When Richard first sat across from them in the visiting booth, Cindy said, “Mom, Dad, this is Richard,” as Richard smiled shyly. “I know you’ve heard some bad things about him, but he’s got a lot of good points, too.” Richard sheepishly said hello, waved, and began talking to Cindy’s father, who, like his father, had worked for a railroad. They had “something in common,” as Cindy later put it. Cindy agreed to do several national talk shows—“Donahue” once and “Geraldo” twice—and told the world, in a very passionate voice, that Richard Ramirez had had improper counsel and his convictions should be overturned.

Something I learned quite quickly after the night I turned up at his flat, drunk and sobbing, wanting him to love me, was that I wasn't getting the Good Arnold. I'd had a chance with the Good Arnold. The one who would take you to a nice restaurant. The one who would ask about your parents. I had failed my audition somehow, and instead I'd landed the consolation prize: the Bad Arnold. The one who wanted to get indecently drunk. The one who wasn't afraid to ask for weird sex stuff. Though it was still Arnold, and I was happy, sort of.

Though many pet parents believe that their dogs experience guilt, there is no evidence that this is true. In order for our dogs to feel guilty about doing something that we people perceive as wrong, they must have a clear understanding of our human code of conduct and an awareness of the precise actions they took that violated that code. That requires complex cognitive processes experts believe are beyond the range of dogs.

As valedictorians matured from high school they began to change their views of success from stereotypical ideals such as material wealth or emulating their parents’ lifestyle to an idea created on their own. They now sought balance between money, career and family as opposed to, say, only wealth. Academically and careerwise most of them were traditionally successful.

He was afraid to pick up the baby. If he touched it, it might bond with him or something. Or he might leave fingerprints all over it.

Of course, when a parent's strong approval is won only for performing or behaving well, it fails to nurture the child anyway, because she senses she is not loved for who she is but for what she does.

Sixteen years old is a crucial time in anybody's life, whether they realize it or not, and happy is the young person who has parents smart enough to plan character building activities and require respect and obedience.

Her parents are sitting across from us, eyeing me like I'm a shit stain on the bottom of their shoes that just won’t scrub off, no matter how hard they try.

So far all is plain, but further search brings us up against complications. The first is that the predecessor of the Islamic society (not yet identified) proves to be the parent not of a single offspring but of twins, in this respect resembling the parental achievement of the Hellenic society. The conduct of the pairs of twins has been, however, strikingly dissimilar; for, whereas the Western and the Orthodox Society have survived for over a thousand years side by side, one of the offspring of the parent society which we are seeking to identify swallowed up and incorporated the other. We shall call these twin societies the Iranic and the Arabic.

Later in life, it would occur to me that despite his actions, my father really did want what was best for his family. As to how he would accomplish that? He had no idea. Later in life, it would occur to me that this was the ultimate dichotomy: for a person to want what's best but draw from their worst. Dad did just that...His methods weren't just ineffective, they were insane. Such were the fates of good men once succumbed to the madness of the world.

He’d thought he was being a good parent. By giving Sean room to learn about life on his own, when Julie rode him about taking on adult responsibilities. By cutting Rachel slack when Julie nitpicked her over her attitude and schoolwork. He’d even told himself Ben had been unaffected by the atmosphere in their home. He’d prided himself on his patience. His ability to wait and “hang in there” and approach life from a slower pace, and let Julie wear all the “bad guy” hats of discipline and planning and the tasks that came with running a household. Yet he now saw patience was simply the label he had used to cover the truth. He’d never been engaged with his family. Never been active and intentional. Before Ben he’d coasted because life had been easy, and after Ben he’d just maintained the fringes, justifying his inaction with Julie’s behavior. He’d lived reacting.