Unbounded courage and compassion join'd, Tempering each other in the victor's mind, Alternately proclaim him good and great, And make the hero and the man complete.
Joseph AddisonRead
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A father's love for his daughter is unique and profound, surpassing other familial affections.
This quote by Joseph Addison suggests that the bond between a father and daughter is the highest form of affection, characterized by a deep and indescribable emotional connection. Unlike love for wives, which involves desire, or love for sons, which often entails ambition, a father's love for his daughter is pure, selfless, and transcends verbal expression.
Themes
FatherDaughterLoveAffectionFamily
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at a wedding, a father can share this quote to express his feelings towards his daughter.
More from Joseph Addison
All quotes →Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
Joseph AddisonRead
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
Joseph AddisonRead
Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.
Joseph AddisonRead
It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights.
Joseph AddisonRead
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
Joseph AddisonRead
Similar quotes
My mother taught us to play baseball, to bake a cake, to play fair - she beat the living daylights out of us sometimes, and she loved us with all her heart; she taught her favorite poets, and there is no child care in the world that will ever be a substitute for what that lady was in our life.
Janet RenoRead
The innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life.
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Before I was married to Martin and became a King, I was a proud Scott, shaped by my mother's discernment and my father's strength.
Coretta Scott KingRead
She yearned to see her mother again, and Robb and Bran and Rickon… but it was Jon Snow she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her “little sister.” She’d tell him, “I missed you,” and he’d say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything.
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I love my mother, but there has been, ever since my boyhood, a sort of coldness of intercourse between us, such as is apt to come between people of strong feelings.
Nathaniel HawthorneRead
Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.
Hermann HesseRead