“
Haven’t you ever wondered why Father is so strict about our subservience? It’s because disobedience is creation,” a shivering breath, “create with me, Michael, and let’s call it sin.
”
”
Rafael Nicolás (Angels Before Man)
“
Who was your first kiss?” Heat rushed into my face. I flattered myself by thinking maybe he wanted to kiss me. I wished he wanted to kiss me. “I haven’t …” Squeezing my eyes closed, I began again. “I haven’t been kissed. Yet.” “Why?” I rolled my eyes at his innocence.
“You obviously know I’m not like other girls. I’m shy and I don’t spend time with boys. My father is strict and—” “That’s not why.” He thought he knew me so well.
“Fine. You tell me why I haven’t been kissed.”
I regretted the words and my tone instantly. What if he told me what I already knew? That I was lacking. Not interesting or pretty enough. “You were waiting.
”
”
Gwen Hayes (Falling Under (Falling Under, #1))
“
There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad. Strict fathers, soft fathers, nice moderate fathers — one's as bad as another. They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they've never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they've never had the courage to live by — they'd like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it!
”
”
Yukio Mishima (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea)
“
I keep what I know about Sarah Lynn and Lawrence to myself. I also remind myself that even if Sarah Lynn does have a scary strict father, that doesn't release her from the responsibility of treating others with respect. Abuse of power is wrong, no matter the context, no matter the history.
What is "power" anyway? Power is an ego trip. Power is a way to rise yourself up by lowering others, and I want nothing of it.
”
”
Lauren Myracle (Bliss (Crestview Academy, #1))
“
Not so on Man; him through their malice fall'n,
Father of Mercy and Grace, thou didst not doom
So strictly, but much more to pity incline:
No sooner did thy dear and only Son
Perceive thee purpos'd not to doom frail Man
So strictly, but much more to pity inclin'd,
He to appease thy wrath, and end the strife
Of mercy and Justice in thy face discern'd,
Regardless of the Bliss wherein hee sat
Second to thee, offer'd himself to die
For man's offence. O unexampl'd love,
Love nowhere to be found less than Divine!
Hail Son of God, Saviour of Men, thy Name
Shall be the copious matter of my Song
Henceforth, and never shall my Harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin.
”
”
John Milton (Paradise Lost)
“
...The life of the parents is the only thing that makes good children. Parents should be very patient and ‘saintlike’ to their children. They should truly love their children. And the children will share this love! For the bad attitude of the children, says father Porphyrios, the ones who are usually responsible for it are their parents themselves. The parents don’t help their children by lecturing them and repeating to them ‘advices’, or by making them obeying strict rules in order to impose discipline. If the parents do not become ‘saints’ and truly love their children and if they don’t struggle for it, then they make a huge mistake. With their wrong and/or negative attitude the parents convey to their children their negative feelings. Then their children become reactive and insecure not only to their home, but to the society as well...
”
”
Elder Porphyrios
“
Walking and overcoming by faith is not easy. For one thing, the dimension of time constantly constrains our perspective. Likewise, the world steadily tempts us. No wonder we are given instructive words from Jesus about the narrowness and the straightness of the only path available to return home: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). And then he said, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Jesus laid down strict conditions.
”
”
Neal A. Maxwell
“
We've also evolved the ability to simply 'pay it forward': I help you, somebody else will help me. I remember hearing a parable when I was younger, about a father who lifts his young son onto his back to carry him across a flooding river. 'When I am older,' said the boy to his father, 'I will carry you across this river as you now do for me.' 'No, you won't,' said the father stoically. 'When you are older you will have your own concerns. All I expect is that one day you will carry your own son across this river as I no do for you.' Cultivating this attitude is an important part of Humanism--to realize that life without God can be much more than a series of strict tit-for-tat transactions where you pay me and I pay you back. Learning to pay it forward can add a tremendous sense of meaning and dignity to our lives. Simply put, it feels good to give to others, whether we get back or not.
”
”
Greg M. Epstein (Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe)
“
Other mothers lose children without losing their husbands, too.” “You didn’t lose me, Laurel. I’m still yours. I’ll always be yours.” “Well, that’s not strictly true, is it?” He sighs again. “Where it counts,” he says. “As the father of your children, as a friend, as someone who shared a journey with you and as someone who loves you and cares about you. I don’t need to be married to you to be all those things. Those things are deeper than marriage. Those things are forever.
”
”
Lisa Jewell (Then She Was Gone)
“
The misrepresentation of God as strictly male has wounded women in every area of their lives.
Women are raped, abused, molested, trafficked and prostituted because the desires of men (AKA God) are prioritized over the emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual needs of women and girls. The misrepresentation of God as male ensures that women and girls will always be considered last.
The images of God as “Father” and "Savior" are the foundations that patriarchy and misogyny are built upon.
”
”
Trista Hendren
“
Deeply embedded in conservative and liberal politics are different models of the family. Conservatism, as we shall see, is based on a Strict Father model, while liberalism is centered around a Nurturant Parent model. These two models of the family give rise to different moral systems and different discourse forms, that is, different choices of words and different modes of reasoning. Once
”
”
George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)
“
Western philosophy, then, is not an extended debate about knowledge, ethics, and reality, but a succession of conceptual metaphors. Descartes's philosophy is based on KNOWING IS SEEING, Locke's on the MIND IS A CONTAINER, Kant's on MORALITY IS A STRICT FATHER, and so on.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature)
“
Shabbat comes with its own holiness; we enter not simply a day, but an atmosphere. My father cites the Zohar: the Sabbath is the name of God. We are within the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being within us. For my father, the question is how to perceive that holiness: not how much to observe, but how to observe. Strict adherence to the laws regulating Sabbath observance doesn’t suffice; the goal is creating the Sabbath as a foretaste of paradise. The Sabbath is a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God’s presence; in our prayers, we anticipate a messianic era that will be a Sabbath, and each Shabbat prepares us for that experience: “Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” It was on the seventh day that God gave the world a soul, and “[the world’s] survival depends upon the holiness of the seventh day.” The task, he writes, becomes how to convert time into eternity, how to fill our time with spirit: “Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.
”
”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (The Sabbath (FSG Classics))
“
...‘Beetles, black beetles’ – his father had a really passionate feeling about the clergy. Mumbo-jumbery was another of his favourite words. An atheist and an anti-clerical of the strict old school he was.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Antic Hay)
“
Some fathers exasperate their children by being overly strict and controlling. They need to remember that rearing children is like holding a wet bar of soap — too firm a grasp and it shoots from your hand, too loose a grip and it slides away. A gentle but firm hold keeps you in control.
”
”
R. Kent Hughes (Disciplines of a Godly Man)
“
Political ideologies, too, cannot be defined in terms of assumptions or values, but only as rival versions of the metaphor that SOCIETY IS A FAMILY. The political right likens society to a family commanded by a strict father, the political left to a family cared for by a nurturant parent.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature)
“
Instead of glimpsing anonymous individuals hurrying by, I see different archetypal products of bad parenting. That meek old man with the blank stare was probably beaten senseless by his father; the sad-looking obese guy in an undersized T-shirt may have grown up with a mom who expressed love only through her cooking; the uptight businessman was likely raised by strict parents who never allowed him to be imperfect. Suddenly there seem to be very few adults in the world, just suffering children and overcompensating adolescents.
”
”
Neil Strauss (The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships)
“
Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One would think that extreme wariness and caution would be the order of the day, but in fact childish trust and impetuosity are far more common. The journalistic encounter seems to have the same regressive effect on a subject as the psychoanalytic encounter. The subject becomes a kind of child of the writer, regarding him as a permissive, all-accepting, all-forgiving mother, and expecting that the book will be written by her. Of course, the book is written by the strict, all-noticing, unforgiving father.
”
”
Janet Malcolm (The Journalist and the Murderer)
“
Where was Bewcastle?
But then he was there, standing on the terrace some distance away, and such was the power of his presence that everyone seemed to sense it an fell back away from Alleyne even as they stopped talking. There was still all sorts of noise, of course - horses, carriage wheels, voices, the water spouting out of the fountain - but it seemed to Alleyne as if complete silence fell.
Bewcastle had already seen him. His gaze was steady and silver-eyed and inscrutable. His hand reached for the gold-handled, jewel-studded quizzing glass he always wore with formal attire and raised it halfway to his eyes in a characteristic gesture. Then he came striding along the terrace with uncharacteristic speed and did not stop coming until he had caught Alleyne up in a tight, wordless embrace that lasted perhaps a whole minute while Alleyne dipped his forehead to his brother's shoulder and felt at last that he was safe.
It was an extraordinary moment. He had been little more than a child when his father died, but Wulfric himself had been only seventeen. Alleyne had never thought of him as a father figure. Indeed, he had often resented the authority his brother wielded over them with such unwavering strictness, and often with apparant impersonality and lack of humor. He had always thought of his eldest brother as aloof, unfeeling, totally self sufficient. A cold fish. And yet it was in Wulfric's arm that he felt his homecoming most acutely. He felt finally and completely and unconditionally loved.
An extraordinary moment indeed.
”
”
Mary Balogh (Slightly Sinful (Bedwyn Saga, #5))
“
I always wanted a father. Any kind. A strict one, a funny one, one who bought me pink dresses, one who wished I was a boy. One who traveled, one who never got up out of his Morris chair. Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. I wanted shaving cream in the sink and whistling on the stairs. I wanted pants hung by their cuffs from a dresser drawer. I wanted change jingling in a pocket and the sound of ice cracking in a cocktail glass at five thirty. I wanted to hear my mother laugh behind a closed door.
”
”
Judy Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied)
“
1. Why should poor conservatives vote against their financial interests? Because they are voting their moral identities, not their pocketbooks. They are voting for people who believe in what they believe, and they want to see a world in which their moral principles are upheld 2. Why do Tea Party members of Congress obstruct even the workings of an overwhelmingly conservative Congress? Because they believe that compromising with progressive positions is immoral on the grounds that it weakens and undermines the authority of conservatism. It would be like a strict father giving in and compromising his authority in the family. ·
”
”
George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)
“
In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined.
Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue.
Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use.
”
”
Alison Weir (Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life (World Leaders Past & Present))
“
The phrase 'Founding Fathers' is a proper noun. It refers to a specific group: the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were other important players not in attendance, but these fifty-five made up the core. Among the delegates were twenty-eight Episcopalians, eight Presbyterians, seven Congregationalists, two Lutherans, two Dutch Reformed, two Methodists, two Roman Catholics, one unknown, and only three deists- Williamson, Wilson, and Franklin. This took place at a time when church membership usually entailed "sworn adherence to strict doctrinal creeds." This tally proves that 51 of 55 -a full 93 percent- of the members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political underpinnings of our nation were Christians, not deists.
”
”
Gregory Koukl (Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions)
“
I must have taken that book down from my father’s shelf more times than he considered strictly polite, because at one point I pulled it out and found he had printed his name on the inside cover: Property of Michael Henry Frayne, on long lease to his daughter Leah.
”
”
Julia Armfield (Our Wives Under the Sea)
“
His skin like grey bark, his eyes pale as a winter pool, time and age had worn my father to the bone. In our youth, he’d been a strict master lording over my lessons while tender with the flower of his heart, my sister Anabine. Ana, the lovely, blooming jewel. Zyndel, she of clever wit.
”
”
Jamie Wyman (When the Hero Comes Home: Volume 2)
“
We’ve seen that the major moral divisions in our politics derive from two opposed models of the family: a progressive (nurturant parent) morality and a conservative (strict father) morality. That is no accident, since your family life has a profound effect on how you understand yourself as a person.
”
”
George Lakoff (The All New Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate)
“
But the strict rules of precedence produced much odder situations: fathers taking their daughters in to dinner since the girls were the highest-ranking women there; young boys called down from the schoolroom to sit at the head of the table; a general yielding place to his aide-de-camp because the latter was a lord.
”
”
Carol Wallace (To Marry an English Lord)
“
My whole life is mapped out, and that map doesn’t include any detours for things like poetry readings, literary accolades, or publications.”
“Can’t you do both?”
He snorts. “You obviously haven’t met my father.”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t yet had the pleasure.”
“He’s a strict man with very rigid ideas about what sorts of things are worthy uses of time.
”
”
Jessica S. Olson (A Forgery of Roses)
“
God is a man like my father. He is distant. He is God the father. He is strict. He does not laugh. He has no meaning in my life. He is somewhere else.
”
”
Patricia Lynn Reilly (A God Who Looks Like Me)
“
Young Vince used football as an aggressive response to his father's strictness.
”
”
Fritz Knapp (The Book of Sports Virtues: Portraits from the Field of Play)
“
In the Strict Father model, it is the duty of the strict father to protect his family above all else. By the Nation As Family metaphor, this implies that the major function of the government is, above all else, to protect the nation. That is why conservatives see the funding of the military as moral, while the funding of social programs is seen as immoral. There
”
”
George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)
“
Like all women who have not succeeded in loving, she wanted something, without herself knowing what. Strictly speaking, she wanted nothing; but it seemed to her that she wanted everything.
”
”
Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons)
“
Religion, with its metaphysical error of absolute guilt, dominated the broadest, the cosmic realm. From there, it infiltrated the subordinate realms of biological, social and moral existence with its errors of the absolute and inherited guilt. Humanity, split up into millions of factions, groups, nations and states, lacerated itself with mutual accusations. "The Greeks are to blame," the Romans said, and "The Romans are to blame," the Greeks said. So they warred against one another. "The ancient Jewish priests are to blame," the early Christians shouted. "The Christians have preached the wrong Messiah," the Jews shouted and crucified the harmless Jesus. "The Muslims and Turks and Huns are guilty," the crusaders screamed. "The witches and heretics are to blame," the later Christians howled for centuries, murdering, hanging, torturing and burning heretics. It remains to investigate the sources from which the Jesus legend derives its grandeur, emotional power and perseverance.
Let us continue to stay outside this St. Vitus dance. The longer we look around, the crazier it seems. Hundreds of minor patriarchs, self-proclaimed kings and princes, accused one another of this or that sin and made war, scorched the land, brought famine and epidemics to the populations. Later, this became known as "history." And the historians did not doubt the rationality of this history.
Gradually the common people appeared on the scene. "The Queen is to blame," the people's representatives shouted, and beheaded the Queen. Howling, the populace danced around the guillotine. From the ranks of the people arose Napoleon. "The Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians are to blame," it was now said. "Napoleon is to blame," came the reply. "The machines are to blame!" the weavers screamed, and "The lumpenproletariat is to blame," sounded back. "The Monarchy is to blame, long live the Constitution!" the burgers shouted. "The middle classes and the Constitution are to blame; wipe them out; long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," the proletarian dictators shout, and "The Russians are to blame," is hurled back. "Germany is to blame," the Japanese and the Italians shouted in 1915. "England is to blame," the fathers of the proletarians shouted in 1939. And "Germany is to blame," the self-same fathers shouted in 1942. "Italy, Germany and Japan are to blame," it was said in 1940.
It is only by keeping strictly outside this inferno that one can be amazed that the human animal continues to shriek "Guilty!" without doubting its own sanity, without even once asking about the origin of this guilt. Such mass psychoses have an origin and a function. Only human beings who are forced to hide something catastrophic are capable of erring so consistently and punishing so relentlessly any attempt at clarifying such errors.
”
”
Wilhelm Reich (Ether, God and Devil: Cosmic Superimposition)
“
For him, information was not merely discrete or continuous, not strictly linear or even circular, not matter or energy, but something altogether new, extended in space and time—and very often alive. In
”
”
Flo Conway (Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, The Father of Cybernetics)
“
You must realize...that the men of the Valley have built their houses and brought up their families without help from others, without a word from the Government. Their lives have been ordered from birth by the Bible. From it they took their instructions. They had no other guidance, and no other law. If it has produced hypocrites and pharisees, the fault is in the human race. We are not all angels. Our fathers upheld good conduct and rightful dealing by strictness, but it is in Man Adam to be slippery, and many are as slimy as the adder. The wonder is to me that the men of the Valley are as they are, and not barbarians at all.I was sorry for Meillyn Lewis, too. But that session of the deacons was helpful as a preventative. It was cruel, but it is more cruel to allow misconduct to flourish without check.
”
”
Richard Llewellyn (How Green Was My Valley)
“
When you are angry with your mother, you forget all the wonderful things she has done for you. And when you are happy with your father, you forget all the strict discipline he has imposed upon you. Right?
”
”
Devdutt Pattanaik (Fun in Devlok: Shiva Plays Dumb Charades)
“
The engineer’s ready capitulation, however, did not hide from the poet’s mother the sad realization that the adventure into which she had plunged so impulsively--and which had seemed so intoxicatingly beautiful--had no turned out to be the great, mutually fulfilling love she was convinced she had a full right to expect. Her father was the owner of two prosperous Prague pharmacies, and her morality was based on strict give-and-take. For her part, she had invested everything in love (she had even been willing to sacrifice her parents and their peaceful existence); in turn, she had expected her partner to invest an equal amount of capital of feelings in the common account. To redress the imbalance, she gradually withdrew her emotional deposit and after the wedding presented a proud, severe face to her husband.
”
”
Milan Kundera (Life is Elsewhere)
“
Catherine had to treat the church hierarchy carefully. She had always exercised a rational flexibility in matters of religious dogma and policy. Brought up in an atmosphere of strict Lutheranism, she had as a child expressed enough skepticism about religion to worry her deeply conventional father. As a fourteen-year-old in Russia, she had been required to change her religion to Orthodoxy. In public, she scrupulously observed all forms of this faith, attending church services, observing religious holidays, and making pilgrimages. Throughout her reign, she never underestimated the importance of religion. She knew that the name of the autocrat and the power of the throne were embodied in the daily prayers of the faithful, and that the views of the clergy and the piety of the masses were a power to be reckoned with. She understood that the sovereign, whatever his or her private views of religion, must find a way to make this work. When Voltaire was asked how he, who denied God, could take Holy Communion, he replied that he “breakfasted according to the custom of the country.” Having observed the disastrous effect of her husband’s contemptuous public rejection of the Orthodox Church, Catherine chose to emulate Voltaire.
”
”
Robert K. Massie (Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman)
“
With President Trump, however, the masculine archetype seems to have regressed. Trump is less the strict father than the petulant child: a boyish figure who rejects advice, shirks discipline and refuses to be beholden to behavioral norms. He is rarely even seen as the patriarch of his own family; as Melania Trump said after he was caught boasting about assaults on tape, “Sometimes I say I have two boys at home.
”
”
Amanda Hess
“
Mothers and fathers must be gentle at least some of the time. Mothers and fathers must also be strict at least some of the time. Most of the time, though, most mothers and fathers must be mostly strict and gentle together.
”
”
Connie Kerbs (Paths of Fear: An Anthology of Overcoming Through Courage, Inspiration, and the Miracle of Love (Pebbled Lane Books Book 1))
“
This woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor might be (not having so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us both), yet this she had for her part: The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of Piety; which her father had left her when he died. In these two books I would sometimes read with her, wherein I also found some things that were somewhat pleasing to me (but all this while I met with no conviction). She also would be often telling of me what a godly man her father was, and how he would reprove and correct vice, both in his house, and among his neighbours; what a strict and holy life he lived in his days, both in word and deed.
”
”
John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners)
“
As his father and others knew when they drew up the strict contract for his commission, Leonardo at twenty-nine was more easily distracted by the future than he was focused on the present. He was a genius undisciplined by diligence.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Leonardo da Vinci)
“
There is still another reason for conservatives to be against what they see as a “negative” history. If conservative politics rests on Strict Father morality, the national family must be seen as a moral family and the rules by which the national family operates must be seen as moral. Otherwise, the legitimacy of all forms of governmental authority is called into question. The very foundation of Strict Father morality is the legitimacy of parental authority. To someone raised with Strict Father morality, a “negative” history might call into question that authority. Strict Father morality cannot tolerate the questioning of legitimate authority by children. Children are supposed to venerate and idolize legitimate authorities, so that they can develop character by following the rules laid down by that authority. “Negative” history, conservatives believe, would lead to questioning authority and would threaten that process. Of
”
”
George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)
“
We can now suggest an answer to the questions asked above. If conservatism is based on Strict Father morality, conservatives have the general metaphors of the Moral Order in their conceptual systems, with at least a couple of clauses, namely, God above human beings; human beings above animals and the natural world; adults above children; men above women. The Moral Order hierarchy used to have all the bigoted clauses in it; now it has many open slots available for such clauses. Let
”
”
George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)
“
Now, Mr. Earnshaw did not understand jokes from his children: he had always been strict and grave with them; and Catherine, on her part, had no idea why her father should be crosser and less patient in his ailing condition than he was in his prime.
”
”
Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)
“
At a lunchtime reception for the diplomatic corps in Washington, given the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, I was approached by a good-looking man who extended his hand. 'We once met many years ago,' he said. 'And you knew and befriended my father.' My mind emptied, as so often happens on such occasions. I had to inform him that he had the advantage of me. 'My name is Hector Timerman. I am the ambassador of Argentina.'
In my above album of things that seem to make life pointful and worthwhile, and that even occasionally suggest, in Dr. King’s phrase as often cited by President Obama, that there could be a long arc in the moral universe that slowly, eventually bends toward justice, this would constitute an exceptional entry. It was also something more than a nudge to my memory. There was a time when the name of Jacobo Timerman, the kidnapped and tortured editor of the newspaper La Opinion in Buenos Aires, was a talismanic one. The mere mention of it was enough to elicit moans of obscene pleasure from every fascist south of the Rio Grande: finally in Argentina there was a strict ‘New Order’ that would stamp hard upon the international Communist-Jewish collusion. A little later, the mention of Timerman’s case was enough to derail the nomination of Ronald Reagan’s first nominee as undersecretary for human rights; a man who didn’t seem to have grasped the point that neo-Nazism was a problem for American values. And Timerman’s memoir, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, was the book above all that clothed in living, hurting flesh the necessarily abstract idea of the desaparecido: the disappeared one or, to invest it with the more sinister and grisly past participle with which it came into the world, the one who has been ‘disappeared.’ In the nuances of that past participle, many, many people vanished into a void that is still unimaginable. It became one of the keywords, along with escuadrone de la muerte or ‘death squads,’ of another arc, this time of radical evil, that spanned a whole subcontinent. Do you know why General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina was eventually sentenced? Well, do you? Because he sold the children of the tortured rape victims who were held in his private prison. I could italicize every second word in that last sentence without making it any more heart-stopping. And this subhuman character was boasted of, as a personal friend and genial host, even after he had been removed from the office he had defiled, by none other than Henry Kissinger. So there was an almost hygienic effect in meeting, in a new Washington, as an envoy of an elected government, the son of the brave man who had both survived and exposed the Videla tyranny.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
Straining to see the world through triangle-shaped lenses, Pythagoreans argued that in heredity too a triangular harmony was at work. The mother and the father were two independent sides and the child was the third—the biological hypotenuse to the parents’ two lines. And just as a triangle’s third side could arithmetically be derived from the two other sides using a strict mathematical formula, so was a child derived from the parents’ individual contributions: nature from father and nurture from mother. A
”
”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene: An Intimate History)
“
By the Wyrd!” Dorian laughed. “He’s trained you well already!” He nudged Chaol with his elbow. “From the way you two are blatantly ignoring me, I’d say she could pass for your sister! Though you don’t really look like each other—it would be hard to pass off someone so pretty as your sister.” Celaena was unable to keep a hint of a smile from her lips. Both she and the prince had grown up under strict, unforgiving fathers—well, father figure in her case. Arobynn had never replaced the father she’d lost, nor had he ever tried to. But at least Arobynn had an excuse for being equal parts tyrannical and doting. Why had the King of Adarlan let his son become anything but an identical copy of himself? “There!” Dorian said. “A reaction—thank the gods I’ve amused her.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1))
“
Why do you think it is stupid to go to windows instead of to doors?”
“Because you advertise what you’re trying to hide, silly. If I have a secret, I don’t put tape over my mouth and let everyone know I have a secret. I talk just as much as usual, only about something else. Didn’t you ever read any of the sayings of Salvor Hardin? He was our first Mayor, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, he used to say that only a lie that wasn’t ashamed of itself could possibly succeed. He also said that nothing had to be true, but everything had to sound true. Well, when you come in through a window, it’s a lie that’s ashamed of itself and it doesn’t sound true.”
“Then what would you have done?”
“If I had wanted to see my father on top secret business, I would have made his acquaintance openly and seen him about all sorts of strictly legitimate things. And then when everyone knew all about you and connected you with my father as a matter of course, you could be as top secret as you wanted and nobody would ever think of questioning it.
”
”
Isaac Asimov (Second Foundation (Foundation, #3))
“
Ode to Joy
Joy, beautiful spark of Divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly one, thy sanctuary!
Thy magic binds again
What custom strictly divided;*
All people become brothers,*
Where thy gentle wing abides.
Whoever has succeeded in the great attempt,
To be a friend's friend,
Whoever has won a lovely woman,
Add his to the jubilation!
Yes, and also whoever has just one soul
To call his own in this world!
And he who never managed it should slink
Weeping from this union!
All creatures drink of joy
At nature's breasts.
All the Just, all the Evil
Follow her trail of roses.
Kisses she gave us and grapevines,
A friend, proven in death.
Salaciousness was given to the worm
And the cherub stands before God.
Gladly, as His suns fly
through the heavens' grand plan
Go on, brothers, your way,
Joyful, like a hero to victory.
Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss to all the world!
Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving Father.
Are you collapsing, millions?
Do you sense the creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy!
Above stars must He dwell.
”
”
Friedrich Schiller
“
...do we realize that this cheap grace has turned back upon us like a boomerang? The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized Church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard. Where were those truths which impelled the early Church to institute the catechumenate, which enabled a strict watch to be kept over the frontier between the Church and the world, and afforded adequate protection for costly grace? What had happened to all those warnings of Luther's against preaching the gospel in such a manner as to make men rest secure in their ungodly living? Was there ever a more terrible or disastrous instance of the Christianizing of the world than this? What are those three thousand Saxons put to death by Charlemagne compared with the millions of spiritual corpses in our country today? With us it has been abundantly proved that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. Cheap grace has turned out to be utterly merciless to our Evangelical church.
”
”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“
Lord Hartley has strict requirements for his heir’s prospective wife, particularly that she have “a striking appearance and a presentable wit.” One only hopes that the heir apparent recognizes what his father does not—that a woman with a presentable appearance and a striking wit is far more interesting. L
”
”
Sabrina Jeffries (The Dangerous Lord (Lord Trilogy, #3))
“
Do you see yon woods? Do you see yon trees? W shall cut them down and build new houses and live as our fathers did. We will dance when our laws command us to dance, we will feast when our hearts command us to feast. Do we ask the white man "Do as the Indian does"? No, we do not. Why then do you ask us "Do as the white man does"? It is a strict law that bids us dance. It is a strict law that bids us distribute our property among our friends and neighbors. It is a good law. Let the white man observe his law, we shall observe ours. And now if you are come to forbid us, begone, if not, you will be welcome to us.
- Kwakiutl chief
”
”
Veda Boyd Jones
“
We should note that almost every technological transformation of consequence has taken place under Western auspices—if not Western in the strict geographical sense, then Western in the notion of a cultural landscape shaped by free thought and the chance for profit. Even non-Western innovations, like stirrups and gunpowder, have been quickly modified and improved by Western militaries. Jet fighters, GPS-guided bombs, and laser-guided munitions are all products of Western expertise. Even the jihadists’ most innovative and lethal weapons—improvised explosive devices and suicide belts—are cobbled together from Western-designed explosives and electronics.
”
”
Victor Davis Hanson (The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern)
“
The idea of spending money, of buying myself something lovely but unnecessary, has always burdened me. Is it because my father would scrupulously count out his coins, and rub his fingers over every bill before giving me one in case there was another stuck to it? Who hated eating out, who wouldn't order even a cup of tea in a coffee bar because a box of tea bags in the supermarket cost the same? Was it my parents' strict tutelage that prompts me to always choose the least-expensive dress, greeting card, dish on the menu? To look at the tag before the item on the rack, the way people look at the descriptions of paintings in a museum before lifting their eyes to the work?
”
”
Jhumpa Lahiri (Whereabouts)
“
As you might expect, the geographical location of the capital of Fairyland is fickle and has a rather short temper. I'm afraid the whole thing moves around according to the needs of narrative.'
September put her persimmon down in the long grass. 'What in the world does that mean?'
'I ... I SUSPECT it means that if we ACT like the kind of folk who would find a Fairy city whilst on various adventures involving tricksters, magical shoes, and hooliganism, it will come to us.'
September blinked. 'Is that how things are done here?'
'Isn't that how they're done in your world?'
September thought for a long moment. She thought of how children who acted politely were often treated as good and trustworthy, even if they pulled your hair and made fun of your name when grownups weren't around. She thought of how her father acted like a soldier, strict and plain and organized -- and how the army came for him. She thought of how her mother acted strong and happy even when she was sad, and so no one offered to help her, to make casseroles or watch September after school or come over for gin rummy and tea. And she thought of how she had acted just like a child in a story about Fairyland, discontent and complaining, and how the Green Wind had come for her, too.
'I suppose that is how things are done in my world. It's hard to see it, though, on the other side.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1))
“
Mark Baker, Mary’s father, was a man of very strict views, his head being as hard as his fist. “You could not move him any more than you could move old Kearsarge,” his neighbors were wont to say of him — Kearsarge being a nearby mountain. This obstinacy, this indomitable will, was certainly handed down to Mary, the seventh child, born July 16, 1821.
”
”
Stefan Zweig (Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud)
“
You didn't lose me, Laurel. I'm still yours. I'll always be yours.'
'Well that's not strictly true, is it?'
He sighs again.
'Where it counts. As the father of your children, as a friend, as someone who has shared a journey with you, and as someone who loves you and cares about you. I don't need to be married to you to be all those things. Those things are deeper than marriage. Those things are forever.
”
”
Lisa Jewell (Then She Was Gone)
“
We had a strict routine that nothing could change: we'd get up at six, and it would be my job or Meinhard's to get milk from the farm door. When w were a little older and starting to play sports, exercises were added to the chores, and we had to earn our breakfast by doing sit-ups. In the afternoon, we'd finish our homework and chores, and my father would make us practice soccer no matter how bad the weather was.
”
”
Arnold Schwarzenegger (Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story)
“
His mind remained freakishly pin-point sharp until his last days, but his body had shut-down a good six months before. He surprised his hospice doctor and nurses by clinging to life long after he should have expired. It was a fear of dying, driven by guilt over something he did early on. He was afraid of judgment day. His strict Catholic upbringing wreaked havoc in his brain and kept his will from preventing his body to die.
”
”
Stephen Joseph Mitskavich (Crossing a Bridge through Time; Conversations with my Father before it's too Late)
“
3.18 On the responsibilities of a father towards his child, Chanakya says that for the first five years, he must be brought up with love and affection. For the next ten years, he must be brought up with strict discipline, because this is the period for the development of his personality. This period is like the foundation on which will rest the rest of his life. From the age of sixteen, he should be treated like a friend; guide him like a friend; settle his problems like a friend.
”
”
R.P. Jain (Complete Chanakya Neeti)
“
He said, One of the Fathers has told us that joy always depends on pain. Pain is part of joy. We are hungry and then think how we enjoy our food at last. We are thirsty...He stopped suddenly, with his eyes glancing away into the shadows, expecting the cruel laugh that did not come. He said, We deny ourselves so that we can enjoy. You have heard of rich men in the north who eat salted foods, so that they can be thirsty—for what they call the cocktail. Before the marriage, too, there is the long betrothal... Again he stopped. He felt his own unworthiness like a weight at the back of the tongue. There was a smell of hot wax from where a candle drooped in the nocturnal heat; people shifted on the hard floor in the shadows. The smell of unwashed human beings warred with the wax. He cried out stubbornly in a voice of authority, That is why I tell you that heaven is here: this is a part of heaven just as pain is a part of pleasure. He said, Pray that you will suffer more and more and more. Never get tired of suffering. The police watching you, the soldiers gathering taxes, the beating you always get from the jefe because you are too poor to pay, smallpox and fever, hunger...that is all part of heaven—the preparation. Perhaps without them, who can tell, you wouldn't enjoy heaven so much. Heaven would not be complete. And heaven. What is heaven? Literary phrases form what seemed now to be another life altogether—the strict quiet life of the seminary—became confused on his tongue: the names of precious stones: Jerusalem the Golden. But these people had never seen gold.
”
”
Graham Greene (The Power and the Glory)
“
I believe we can find God in many ways. I believe our heavenly parents seek us out wherever we live, whether that be strictly in the mind, in despair and joy, in an office, or in nature. It is sometimes hard to recognize them or their efforts because we have already written their parts, made up our minds about what a spiritual life looks like. I know for sure, though, that when I stop and enter that space where my children are most comfortable--a space of play, imagination, and possibility--calmness enters in as I believe again that many things are possible.
”
”
Ashley Mae Hoiland (One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly: The Art of Seeking God)
“
The father himself didn't follow his own criticisms and rules too strictly, and this very lack of logic appears to the son, on looking back, as a sign of unruly zest for life and unbreakable will-power. 'You had worked yourself up to such a position by your own strength, that you had unlimited confidence in your own opinion...From your armchair you ruled the world. Your opinion was right, everybody else was mad, eccentric, meshuggah, not normal. At the same time your self-confidence was so great that there was no need for you to be consistent, and yet you were always right...
”
”
Max Brod (Franz Kafka)
“
Tell me," replied Faria, "what has hindered you from knocking down your father with a piece of wood torn from your bedstead, dressing yourself in his clothes, and endeavoring to escape?"
"Simply the fact that the idea never occurred to me," answered Dantes.
"Because," said the old man, "the natural repugnance to the commission of such a crime prevented you from thinking of it; and so it ever is because in simple and allowable things our natural instincts keep us from deviating from the strict line of duty. The tiger, whose nature teaches him to delight in shedding blood, needs but the sense of smell to show him when his prey is within his reach, and by following this instinct he is enabled to measure the leap necessary to permit him to spring on his victim; but man, on the contrary, loathes the idea of blood - it is not alone that the laws of social life inspire him with a shrinking dread of taking life; his natural construction and physiological formation" - Dantes was confused and silent at this explanation of the thoughts which had unconsciously been working in his mind, or rather soul; for there are two distinct sorts of ideas, those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.
”
”
Alexandre Dumas
“
Various defense mechanisms can be used to reach a com- promise between the necessity of sparing the feelings of one’s parents and the need to express one’s own feelings. A patient of mine with a strict religious upbringing, for example, was able to spare her parents by directing her newly awakened rage against God. In God, whom her parents believed in, Inge hoped to have found the strong father who would be able to endure her feelings, who was not insecure, easily offended, and ailing like her own father. She wanted to feel free to direct her disappointment, despair, and resentment at God without having to fear that this would kill Him.
”
”
Alice Miller
“
The only townsfolk who were not scared of the Burgundys were the Haggleworths. They were the only other prominent family in Haggleworth and because of their last name they felt they owned the whole town. It was nonsense of course. Shell Oil owned Haggleworth. (That’s why there was no real government or police or any order whatsoever. It was the reason why my father, a strict Darwinist, loved the town.) But the Haggleworths erected a museum in honor of their founding father. Some of them still practiced their pious religion of penis worship, but for the most part they were an uncultured, rangy bunch of derelicts who ate cat food and lived in caves.
”
”
Ron Burgundy (Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Life and Other Musings)
“
And so there are some, as we have said, enriched with great gifts, who, while they are ardent for the studies of contemplation only, shrink from serving to their neighbour’s benefit by preaching; they love a secret place of quiet, they long for a retreat for speculation. With respect to which conduct, they are, if strictly judged, undoubtedly guilty in proportion to the greatness of the gifts whereby they might have been publicly useful. For with what disposition of mind does one who might be conspicuous in profiting his neighbours prefer his own privacy to the advantage of others, when the Only-begotten of the supreme Father Himself came forth from the bosom of the Father into the midst of us all, that He might profit many?
”
”
Pope Gregory I (The Book of Pastoral Rule (Illustrated))
“
One such coming shock is the National Identity Card. A central register of the American people is strictly forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. The United States is not a country, but 50 different countries. Centralization was recognized by the Founding Fathers as a deadly danger to freedom and was not only roundly condemned, but forbidden. The framers knew that individual freedom would be delivered a mortal blow by centralizing government. Thus a central bank, a central police force and a central population register are totally forbidden by the Constitution. But the enemies of freedom have insidiously introduced a central bank and a central police force. They are now seeking to impose a central citizen registration system. The
”
”
John Coleman (The Conspirator's Hierarchy: The Committee of 300)
“
To win the good-will of the people thou governest there are two things, among others, that thou must do; one is to be civil to all (this, however, I told thee before), and the other to take care that food be abundant, for there is nothing that vexes the heart of the poor more than hunger and high prices. Make not many proclamations; but those thou makest take care that they be good ones, and above all that they be observed and carried out; for proclamations that are not observed are the same as if they did not exist; nay, they encourage the idea that the prince who had the wisdom and authority to make them had not the power to enforce them; and laws that threaten and are not enforced come to be like the log, the king of the frogs, that frightened them at first, but that in time they despised and mounted upon. Be a father to virtue and a stepfather to vice. Be not always strict, nor yet always lenient, but observe a mean between these two extremes, for in that is the aim of wisdom. Visit the gaols, the slaughter-houses, and the market-places; for the presence of the governor is of great importance in such places; it comforts the prisoners who are in hopes of a speedy release, it is the bugbear of the butchers who have then to give just weight, and it is the terror of the market-women for the same reason. Let it not be seen that thou art (even if perchance thou art, which I do not believe) covetous, a follower of women, or a glutton; for when the people and those that have dealings with thee become aware of thy special weakness they will bring their batteries to bear upon thee in that quarter, till they have brought thee down to the depths of perdition.
”
”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
“
Is the missing object a lover’s token you shouldn’t have?” “Gracious!” She sat back, looking dismayed but not insulted. “Investigating must call for a vivid imagination, Mr. Hazlit.” “Hardly. Human nature seems to draw most people into the same predictable peccadilloes over and over. So which misstep have you taken? Do you need to locate the child’s father? Pay off his wife to keep her mouth shut? Those aren’t strictly investigatory matters, but I can see where the need for discretion… What?” “I should slap you.” The words weren’t offered with any particular animosity, more a tired acceptance. “You are a man, though, and allowances must be made.” “I beg your pardon.” “And well you should.” She sipped her tea then tipped her head back to regard him. “Despite the foul implications of your questions, Mr. Hazlit—questions I doubt you would have put to any of my sisters—I still need your help, and I still intend to retain you. I have committed no indiscretion; I have no ill-conceived child on the way; I need not go for a tour of the Continent to eschew my dependence on laudanum.” “So
”
”
Grace Burrowes (Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal (The Duke's Daughters, #2; Windham, #5))
“
Jesus explains this unity in another way (Matthew xviii. 19): “If two or three of you shall agree as touching anything that ye shall ask, it shall be done for you of my father.” The expressions “ask” and “vouchsafe” are relative strictly to a unification in respect of objects (πράγματα [things]); it was only for a unification of this kind that the matter-of-fact language of the Jews had words. But here the object in question can be nothing but the reflected unity (the σνμϕωνία τὠν δνοἰν ὴ τριὠν [agreement of two or three]); regarded as an object, this is a beautiful relationship, but subjectively it is unification; spirits cannot be on in objects proper. The beautiful relationship, a unity of two or three of you, is repeated in the harmony of the whole, is a sound, a concord with the same harmony and is produced thereby. It is because it is in the harmony, because it is something divine. In this association with the divine, those who are at one are also in association with Jesus. Where two or three are united in my spirit (είς τό ὂνομα μοΰ [into my name], cf. Matthew x. 41), in that respect in which being and eternal life fall into my lot, in which I am, then I am in the midst of them, and so is my spirit.
”
”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
“
Barnaby Fanning was the lone offspring of a marriage between two of New Orleans’ finest families. Growing up in a Garden District mansion so iconic it was a stop on all the tours, the future heir to sugar and cotton fortunes both, his adolescence spent at debutante balls during the season and trips abroad during the summer: it was the stuff of true Southern gentlemen. But Bucky always refused the first table at a restaurant. He carried a pocket calculator so he could tip a strict twelve percent. When his father nudged him out of the nest after graduating Vanderbilt (straight Cs), Bucky fluttered only as far as the carriage house because no other address would suit. He sported head-to-toe Prada bought on quarterly pilgrimages to Neiman Marcus in Dallas, paid for by Granny Charbonneau. At the slightest perceived insult, Bucky would fly into rages, becoming so red-faced and spitty in the process that even those on the receiving end of his invective grew concerned for his health. During the holidays, Bucky would stand over the trash and drop in Christmas cards unopened while keeping mental score of who’d sent them. He never accepted a dinner invitation without first asking who else would be there. Bucky Fanning had never been known to write a thank-you note.
”
”
Maria Semple (Today Will Be Different)
“
POEM – MY AMAZING
TRAVELS
[My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures]
My very first trip I still cannot believe
Was planned and executed with such great ease.
My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man,
He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan.
I got my first long vacation while working as a banker
One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner.
She visited my father and discussed the matter
Arrangements were made without any flutter.
We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany,
In each of those places, there was somebody,
To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places,
It was a dream come true at our young ages.
We even visited Holland, which was across the Border.
To drive across from Germany was quite in order.
Memories of great times continue to linger,
I thank God for an understanding father.
That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more,
I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe.
Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo,
Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando.
I was accompanied by my husband on many trips.
Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit.
Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah,
Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla.
We sailed aboard the Creole Queen
On the Mississippi in New Orleans
We traversed the Rockies in Colorado
And walked the streets in Cozumel, Mexico.
We were thrilled to visit the Vatican in Rome,
The Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum.
To explore the countryside in Florence,
And to sail on a Gondola in Venice.
My fridge is decorated with magnets
Souvenirs of all my visits
London, Madrid, Bahamas, Coco Cay, Barcelona.
And the Leaning Tower of Pisa
How can I forget the Spanish Steps in Rome?
Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare was born.
CN Tower in Toronto so very high
I thought the elevator would take me to the sky.
Then there was El Poble and Toledo
Noted for Spanish Gold
We travelled on the Euro star.
The scenery was beautiful to behold!
I must not omit Cartagena in Columbia,
Anaheim, Las Vegas, and Catalina,
Key West, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Pembroke Pines,
Places I love to lime.
Of course, I would like to make special mention,
Of two exciting cruises with Royal Caribbean.
Majesty of the Seas and Liberty of the Seas
Two ships which grace the Seas.
Last but not least and best of all
We visited Paris in the fall.
Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Berlin
Amazing places, which made my head, spin.
Copyright@BrendaMohammed
”
”
Brenda C. Mohammed (Travel Memoirs with Pictures)
“
He: "I mean, are you happy and are you fully alive?"
I laughed: ''As you can see, you wove witty jokes into the lecture to please your listeners. You heaped up learned expressions to impress them. You were restless and hasty, as if still compelled to snatch up all knowledge. You are not in yourself"
Although these words at first seemed laughable to me, they still made an impression on me, and reluctantly I had to / credit the old man, since he was right.
Then he said: "Dear Ammonius, I have delightful tidings for you: God has become flesh in his son and has brought us all salvation." ""What are you saying," I called, "you probably mean Osiris, who shall appear in the mortal body?"
"No," he replied, "this man lived in Judea and was born from a virgin."
I laughed and answered: "I already know about this; a Jewish trader has brought tidings of our virgin queen to Judea, whose image appears on the walls of one of our temples, and reported it as a fairy tale."
"No," the old man insisted, "he was the Son of God."
"Then you mean Horus the son of Osiris, don't you?" I answered.
"No,hewasnotHorus,butarealman,andhewashung from a cross."
"Oh, but this must be Seth, surely; whose punishments our old ones have often described."
But the old man stood by his conviction and said: "He died and rose up on the third day."
"Well, then he must be Osiris," I replied impatiently. "No," he cried, "he is called Jesus the anointed one." ''Ah, you really mean this Jewish God, whom the poor
honor at the harbor, and whose unclean mysteries they celebrate in cellars."
"He was a man and yet the Son of God," said the old man staring at me intently.
"That's nonsense, dear old man," I said, and showed him to the door. But like an echo from distant rock faces the words returned to me: a man and yet the Son of God. It seemed significant to me, and this phrase was what brought me to Christianity.
I: "But don't you think that Christianity could ultimately be a
transformation ofyour Egyptian teachings?"
A: "If you say that our old teachings were less adequate
expressions of Christianity, then I'm more likely to agree with you." I: "Yes, but do you then assume that the history of religions is
aimed at a final goal?"
A: "My father once bought a black slave at the market from the
region of the source of the Nile. He came from a country that had heard ofneither Osiris nor the other Gods; he told me many things in a more simple language that said the same as we believed about Osiris and the other Gods. I learned to understand that those uneducated Negroes unknowingly already possessed most of what the religions of the cultured peoples had developed into complete doctrines. Those able to read that language correctly could thus recognize in it not only the pagan doctrines but also the doctrine of Jesus. And it's with this that I now occupy myself I read the gospels and seek their meaning which is yet to come.We know their meaning as it lies before us, but not their hidden meaning which points to the future. It's erroneous to believe that religions differ in their innermost essence. Strictly speaking, it's always one and the same religion. Every subsequent form of religion is the meaning of the antecedent."
I: "Have you found out the meaning which is yet to come?" A: "No, not yet; it's very difficult, but I hope I'll succeed. Sometimes it seems to me that I need the stimulation of others,
but I realize that those are temptations of Satan."
I: "Don't you believe that you'd succeed ifyou were nearer men?"
A: "maybeyoureright."
He looks at me suddenly as if doubtful and suspicious. "But, I love the desert, do you understand? This yellow, sun-glowing desert. Here you can see the countenance of the sun every day; you are alone, you can see glorious Helios-no, that is
- pagan-what's wrong with me? I'm confused-you are Satan- I recognize you-give way; adversary!" He jumps up incensed and wants to lunge at me. But I am far away in the twentieth century.
”
”
C.G. Jung
“
Belle is planning to host a series of salons," said Lio, appearing out of nowhere to fill her silence. It had been his first promise to her, in those wild days right after they broke the curse, when they talked feverishly about their most cherished dreams and whispered their deepest fears to each other. Back then, Belle's only fear had been her own ignorance. She had told him of her wish to travel to Paris and attend a salon herself, perhaps one that counted some of her favorite philosophes and encyclopédistes among its members. He had said her dream was toon small and that she herself should host one.
The Mademoiselle de Vignerot smiled politely. "What will the subject be?"
"Oh, everything," said Belle. Her enthusiasm elicited laughter, but she was entirely serious.
The comte de Chamfort cleared his throat, his lips curling into a sneer. "That is very broad, madame. Surely you have a more specific interest? My parents used to attend the famous Bout-du-Banc literary salon in Paris, but that was a very long time ago."
Belle gave him her best patient smile. "I don't wish to be limited, monsieur. My salons will invite scientists, philosophers, inventors, novelists, really anyone in possession of a good idea."
The comte guffawed. "Why on earth would you do such a thing?"
"To learn from them, monsieur. I would have thought the reason obvious."
Marguerite snorted into her glass. Belle sipped her drink as Lio placed his hand on the small of her back. She didn't know if it was meant to calm her down or encourage her.
"Whatever for?" the comte asked with the menacing air of a man discovering he was the butt of a joke. "Everything that is worth learning is already taught."
"To whom?" Belle felt the heat rising in her cheeks. "Strictly the wealthy sons of wealthier fathers?" Some of Bastien's guests gasped, they themselves being the children of France's aristocracy, but Belle was heartened when she saw Marguerite smile encouragingly. "I believe that education is a right, monsieur, and one that has long been reserved exclusively for the most privileged among us. My salons will reflect the true reality."
"Which is what, madame?" Marguerite prompted eagerly.
Belle's heart rattled in her chest. "That scholarship is the province of any who would pursue it.
”
”
Emma Theriault (Rebel Rose (The Queen's Council, #1))
“
As the most perfect subject for painting I have already specified inwardly satisfied [reconciled and peaceful] love, the object of which is not a purely spiritual ‘beyond’ but is present, so that we can see love itself before us in what is loved. The supreme and unique form of this love is Mary’s love for the Christ-child, the love of the one mother who has borne the Saviour of the world and carries him in her arms. This is the most beautiful subject to which Christian art in general, and especially painting in its religious sphere, has risen. The love of God, and in particular the love of Christ who sits at’ the right hand of God, is of a purely spiritual kind. The object of this love is visible only to the eye of the soul, so that here there is strictly no question of that duality which love implies, nor is any natural bond established between the lovers or any linking them together from the start. On the other hand, any other love is accidental in the inclination of one lover for another, or,’ alternatively, the lovers, e.g. brothers and sisters or a father in his love for his children, have outside this relation other conceI1l8 with an essential claim on them. Fathers or brothers have to apply themselves to the world, to the state, business, war, or, in short, to general purposes, while sisters become wives, mothers, and so forth. But in the case of maternal love it is generally true that a mother’s love for her child is neither something accidental just a single feature in her life, but, on the contrary, it is her supreme vocation on earth, and her natural character and most sacred calling directly coincide. But while other loving mothers see and feel in their child their husband and their inmost union with him, in Mary’s relation to her child this aspect is always absent. For her feeling has nothing in common with a wife’s love for her husband; on the contrary, her relation to Joseph is more like a sister’s to a brother, while on Joseph’s side there is a secret awe of the child who is God’s and Mary’s. Thus religious love in its fullest and most intimate human form we contemplate not in the suffering and risen Christ or in his lingering amongst his friends but in the person of Mary with her womanly feeling. Her whole heart and being is human love for the child that she calls her own, and at the same time adoration, worship, and love of God with whom she feels herself at one. She is humble in God’s sight and yet has an infinite sense of being the one woman who is blessed above all other virgins. She is not self-subsistent on her own account, but is perfect only in her child, in God, but in him she is satisfied and blessed, whether. at the manger or as the Queen of Heaven, without passion or longing, without any further need, without any aim other than to have and to hold what she has.
In its religious subject-matter the portrayal of this love has a wide series of events, including, for example, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth, the Flight into Egypt, etc. And then there are, added to this, other subjects from the later life of Christ, i.e. the Disciples and the women who follow him and in whom the love of God becomes more or less a personal relation of love for a living and present Saviour who walks amongst them as an actual man; there is also the love of the angels who hover over the birth of Christ and many other scenes in his life, in serious worship or innocent joy. In all these subjects it is painting especially which presents the peace and full satisfaction of love.
But nevertheless this peace is followed by the deepest suffering.
Mary sees Christ carry his cross, she sees him suffer and die on the cross, taken down from the cross and buried, and no grief of others is so profound as hers. Mary’s grief is of a totally different kind. She is emotional, she feels the thrust of the dagger into the centre of her soul, her heart breaks, but she does not turn into stone.
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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Why did our fathers impose such strict rules on us, recommending that mortification of the flesh be practiced unceasingly? It is because man is by nature a bad creature who takes damning pleasure out of giving in to temptations, especially the temptations of disobedience, possessiveness, and licentiousness. Two lusts breed in the soul of man: the lust for aggression, and the lust for telling lies. If one will not allow himself to wrong others, he will wrong himself. If he doesn’t come across anyone to lie to, he will lie to himself in his own thoughts. Sweet to man is the bread of untruths, says the Book of Proverbs, and then with sand his mouth is filled up.
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Ryszard Kapuściński (The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat)
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A variation on lifetime monogamy is serial-monogamy, which refers to forming a pair-bond long enough to raise a few offspring (typically, for one breeding season) and then forming a new pairbond later. Evolutionary psychologists such as Buss (2005) have argued that serial monogamy is the typical mating pattern among humans, with strict life-long monogamy enforced in some cultures through religious norms. Not surprisingly, the typical human pair-bond lasts roughly 5 years, about the same length of time that women in traditional cultures need to raise one child through pregnancy, breast-feeding, and toddler-hood (Fisher, 2004; Jankowiak & Fisher, 1992). Temporary pairbonding is probably an adaptation to keep fathers close to home, where they can offer protection and
resources to their partner and vulnerable offspring.
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Jon A. Sefcek
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The great intellectual plague on the Muslim World was the continuing belief that as a civilization our fortunes had declined because we had strayed from the Word of God. It was the call to Make Islam Great Again, to return to the strict religiosity that had reigned in the seventh and eighth centuries, that had made my father pack us up and leave the country of our birth. That radical Islamists and “America First” nationalists had essentially the same worldview and the same desire to recapture a nostalgia-gilded past glory was proof, in my opinion, that God’s sense of irony was simply divine.
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Syed M. Masood (The Bad Muslim Discount)
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The poles were crude copies of his father’s totem pole out there near the point: grizzly bear, owl, wolf, beaver, all signifying descent and brave deeds of old. If you held to the old ways, the figures on a person’s totem pole were strictly his own. They were property as real as canoes and weapons and hunting grounds.
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Hubert Evans (Mountain dog)
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After selecting a brush, she moistened the cakes of watercolor in her traveling palette with some of the water from her cup and, with careful strokes, began to record the almond flowers in painstaking detail. Her father had successfully cultivated them at Trebithick, but she had never seen them growing in the wild before.
More often than not, Elizabeth would collect plant samples to study carefully indoors, and would sketch them out before taking up her brush, spending hours ensuring she captured each detail precisely. But recently she had begun to experiment with a more free-form style of painting. It wasn't strictly the style of illustration she had learned, nor did she think her father would approve, but she loved the immediacy of it. The trick was to get the lighting just right--- a strong source helped to create shade and give the work a three-dimensional effect. The afternoon light was perfect, and she also used a dry brush, rubbed over the paint cakes, to add detail and depth to the watercolors.
Daisy wandered off to the shade of a wide-spreading tree a few yards away. 'It's a canela tree, I think," Elizabeth called out, pausing for a moment from her work. 'False cinnamon,' she explained.
'I can smell it,' replied Daisy, sniffing appreciatively. 'Like Cook's apple pie.
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Kayte Nunn (The Botanist's Daughter)
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Despite having limited financial resources, the community took pride in working together and accomplishing what they could. Consequently, I don't remember people from the community intentionally damaging school property. This is because they would also be harming something that they helped build, and would have to fix it again. Additionally, they were related to someone who would be affected by the damage. The community strongly disapproved of acts of vandalism or any other inappropriate behaviour within the school premises, and they consistently enforced strict consequences once the offender was recognized.
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Salatiso Lonwabo Mdeni
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All six children disappointed their father [Edward White Benson]. Martin, the eldest, was a paragon: brilliant at school, quiet, pious - his father's dream, He stuttered, which may reflect the strain of such perfection under such parents. His death at age seventeen tore a hole in his father that never healed. Nellie tried to be the perfect daughter - working with the poor, caring for her parents, gentle, but always willing to go for a hard gallop with her father for morning exercise. Her death at a young age, unmarried, was for the whole family an afterthought to the awfulness of Martin's loss. Arthur, Fred, and Hugh all found the Anglican religion of their father impossible. Arthur went to church, appreciated the music, the ceremony and its role in social order, but struggled with belief, even when he called out to God in the despair of his blackest depression. Fred was flippant and disengaged, and his first novel, Dodo, the hit of the season in 1893, outraged his father's sense of seriousness. Fred represented Britain at figure skating - a hobby that was as far as he could get from his father's ideals of social and religious commitment, the epitome of a 'waste of time.' Hugh's turn to the Roman Catholic Church was after his father's death - but like all the children, the fight with paternal authority never ceased. While his father was alive, Hugh muffed exams, wanted to go into the Indian Civil Service against his father's wished - he failed those exams too 0 and argued with everyone in the family petulantly. Maggie, too, was 'difficult': 'her friendships were seldom leisurely or refreshing things,' commented Arthur; Nellie more acerbic, added, 'If Maggie would only have an intimate relationship even with a cat, it would be a relief.' Her Oxford tutors found her 'remorseless.' At age twenty-five, still single, she did not know the facts of life. Over the years, her jealousy of her mother's companion Lucy Tait became more and more pronounced, as did her adoption of her father's expressions of strict disapproval. Her depressions turned to madness and violence, leading to her eventual hospitalization.
There is another dramatic narrative, then, of the six children, all differently and profoundly scarred by their home life, which they wrote about and thought about repeatedly. Cross-currents of competition between the children, marked by a desperate need for intimacy, in tension with a restraint born of fear of violent emotion and profound distrust (at best) of sexual feeling, produced a fervid and damaging family dynamic. There is a story her of what it is like to grow up with a hugely successful, domineering, morally certain father, a mother who embodied the joys of intimacy but with other women - and of what the costs of public success from such a complex background are.
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Goldhill, Simon
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The first case is one in which the father behaves in an excessively patriarchal way, withholding affection and strictly enforcing rules and standards. He often controls his children by making them feel shame and guilt. To his children, such a father looms large, like a mountain that cannot be crossed. Even as adults, his children do not feel comfortable around him, having spent their childhood afraid of him, and cannot bring themselves to open up and have an honest conversation with him.
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Haemin Sunim (Love for Imperfect Things: A Buddhist monk's guide to mindfulness and resisting the urge to strive for perfectionism)
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I Miss My Father
***
I was nine when my father
Passed away, I remember
When he was alive
He always kissed me
Every morning before
He went to his business work
He was the simple
And civilised man
Having the strict principles
I was a wayward child
In the sense of disobedient
No, listen to the parents
I often got warnings
But that did not work
I cried and cried for things
I beat my chest
I tore my new dresses
I broke the house doors
Until I got what I wanted
I grew up with complicated feelings
Not having a father
I always sat alone in the room
Studying books, trying to write
Some lines, sentences
I did not play much outside
I mostly stayed at home
I missed my father; no one knew
My sensitiveness feels
The pain and grief of everyone
Until now, I bear everyone’s pain
Now I am myself, father
But I still miss my father
That’s why my heart showers love
For the entire humanity.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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Like many writers, I lived inside of books as a child. Inside books I could get away from the impossible things I had to deal with. When I read I was never lonely or tormented or scared. I read everything I could get my hands on, and my parents indulged and encouraged me. They were strict about things like television and grades, but they never censored my reading material or questioned my love of Sweet Valley. We moved around a lot for my father's job, but Sweet Valley never moved and the people never changed. The kids in Sweet Valley were a constant, and in a small, poignant way, they were my friends.
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Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist)
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I don’t know what it is about lute-players. I might, perhaps, exempt those who are the personal musicians of our great men, but the itinerant lutenists wander from inn to inn, frequently offering to play in exchange for food, drink and shelter for the night. As a result, they eat and drink lustily, to put it mildly, and that’s not the only thing they do lustily. If I were the father of daughters, I should counsel them strictly to have nothing to do with anyone with a lute.
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Graham Brack (Untrue till Death (Master Mercurius Mysteries, #2))
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If I was truly honest with myself, which is not as easy as it sounds, I had to admit that I didn’t really enjoy fatherhood. I simply endured it, because it was part of the disguise that hid Dexter the Wolf from the world of sheep I lived in. And as far as I could tell, the kids merely endured me, too. I was not a good father. I tried, but it was strictly pro forma. My heart was never in it, and I was just no good at it.
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Jeff Lindsay (Dexter Is Dead (Dexter, #8))
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After this quarrel, Harilal composed the long letter that he then had printed. The letter rehearsed their decade of disagreement, the son saying that the father had ‘oppressed’ him, and paid him ‘no attention at all’. ‘Whenever we tried to put across our views on any subject to you,’ said Harilal, ‘you have lost your temper quickly and told us, “You are stupid, you are in a fallen state, you lack comprehension.” Harilal also accused Gandhi of bullying Kasturba, writing: ‘It is beyond my capacity to describe the hardships that my mother had to undergo.’
Gandhi had disapproved of Harilal’s marriage, since he fell in love and chose his bride, rather than, as was the custom, have his parents choose a wife for him. Harilal’s relationship with his wife, Chanchi, was intensely romantic; this wasn’t to Gandhi’s liking either, since he believed sex was strictly for procreation and a true satyagrahi should be celibate. Harilal emphatically disagreed. ‘No one can
be made an ascetic,’ he told his father. ‘A person becomes an ascetic on his own volition... I cannot believe a salt-free diet, or abstinence from ghee or milk [all of which Gandhi preached and practised] indicates strength of character and morality.’
Harilal claimed he spoke on behalf of his younger brothers as well. Gandhi had imposed his will on his four sons, without ever giving them a hearing. ‘My entire letter stresses one point,’ remarked Harilal. ‘You have never considered our rights and capabilities, you have never seen the person in us'.
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Ramachandra Guha (Gandhi 1915-1948: The Years That Changed the World)
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It is evident that one who would merely aim at avoiding mortal sin would not be living according to the standard .of moral conduct outlined in the Gospel. Our Lord proposes to us as the ideal ot holiness the very perfection of Our Heavenly Father: "Be ye therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. " Hence, all having God for their Father must approach this divine perfection.... Fundamentally, the whole Sermon on the Mount is nothing but a commentary on and the development of this ideal. The path to follow is the path of renunciation, the path of imitation of Christ and of the love of God: "Any man come to me, and hate not" (that is to say does not renounce) "his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. " We are bound, then, on certain occasions to choose God and His will rather than the love of parents, of wife, of children, of self, and to sacrifice all to follow Christ. This suppose heroic courage, which will be found wanting in the time of need, unless God in His mercy give a special grace and unless one be prepared by sacrifices that are not of strict obligation. (355)
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Adolphe Tanquerey (The Spiritual Life: A Treatise On Ascetical And Mystical Theology)
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In addition”—his gaze locked with mine—“we want Conner to know that he has family on both sides of this table.” Well, I’ll be damned. I hadn’t expected that. Italians were notorious for their strict delineation between Italians and outsiders. I was illegitimate with no clue who my father was and raised among the Irish, so the last thing I had expected was for the Genoveses to call me one of their own. My birth mother wanting to meet me was entirely different from these men accepting me into the family.
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Jill Ramsower (Silent Vows (The Byrne Brothers, #1))
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Prior to his military service, Holden studied chemistry at Pasadena Junior College. He worked with his father, William Beedle, a chemical analyst, who was head of George W. Gooch Laboratories in Los Angeles. In the summertime, Holden made deliveries and picked up supplies on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Holden’s knowledge of chemistry proved useful when he moved to Switzerland at the height of the Cold War in 1959. Although the Swiss government observed strict neutrality, they favored the West in economic, political and cultural matters.
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Howard Johns (Drowning Sorrows: A True Story of Love, Passion and Betrayal)
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He narrowed his eyes. “How could you possibly be the black sheep?” “Easy, I never follow the rules like I should. My mom is a devout Catholic, and my father is a strict disciplinarian. Whatever I do is never what they think I should be doing.
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Jill Ramsower (Impossible Odds (The Five Families, #4))
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Holy shit, I had a brother. I’d thought the mafia secret was life-changing, but this somehow seemed even bigger. This wasn’t just my father’s job. A secret baby meant I didn’t know my mother half as well as I’d thought. The strict Catholic woman who always strove for perfection and was hyper aware of appearances had gotten knocked up as a teen.
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Jill Ramsower (Perfect Enemies (The Five Families, #6))
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Much of the academic world and academic institutions are run according to this metaphor, which is based on Strict Father morality. Intellectuals who accept this view of the academic world may be political liberals, but they are intimately acquainted with Strict Father morality and practice it in their everyday professional lives. Feminisms
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George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)
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There are good reasons to choose liberalism. If I were to be asked to list those reasons and the bases for them very briefly at the outset, each in one or two sentences, here is what that list would be: Reason 1. The Nurturant Parent model is superior as a method of childrearing. Reason 2. Strict Father morality requires a view of human thought that is at odds with what we know about the way the mind works. Reason 3. Strict Father morality often finds morality in harm; Nurturant Parent morality does not. There
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George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)
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In short, conservative family values, which are the basis for conservative morality and political thought, are not supported by either research in child development or the mainstream childrearing experts in the country. That is another reason why the conservative family agenda has been left to fundamentalist Christians. Since there is no significant body of mainstream experts who support the Strict Father model, conservatives can rely only on fundamentalist Christians, who have the only well thought out approach to childrearing that supports the Strict Family model. The
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George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)
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The Strict Father (or “authoritarian”) model is supposed to make a child strong and better able to function socially. It is supposed to make children into effective leaders. But, in fact, it has the opposite effect.
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George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)
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This overall picture is quite damning for the Strict Father model. That model seems to be a myth. If this research is right, a Strict Father upbringing does not produce the kind of child it claims to produce. Incidentally, this picture is not from one study or from studies by one researcher. This is the overall picture gathered from many studies by many different researchers (see References,
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George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think)