Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe, aren't even aware of.
Ellen GoodmanRead
Parents remain our touchstones, fellow travelers, even after death. They are both missing and present.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Parents have a lasting influence on our lives, even after they pass away.
This quote highlights the enduring impact that parents have on their children, suggesting that their guidance and love continue to shape our lives even in their absence. It reflects the complex emotions of loss, presence, and the connection that persists beyond death, emphasizing that our parents remain integral to our identity and journey through life.
Themes
ParentsLossMemoryLoveFamily
In practice
Example use cases
During a memorial service, this quote can be shared to express the lasting influence of the departed.
More from Ellen Goodman
All quotes βThis packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.
Ellen GoodmanRead
The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.
Ellen GoodmanRead
What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.
Ellen GoodmanRead
My father used to say that if a man fools you once, he's a jerk. If he fools you twice, you're a jerk. Only he didn't use the word "jerk."
Ellen GoodmanRead
There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over - and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives.
Ellen GoodmanRead
Similar quotes
We must work tirelessly to make sure that every boy and girl in America who is up for adoption has a family waiting to reach him or her...This is a season of miracles, and perhaps there is no greater miracle than finding a loving home for a child who needs one.
William J. ClintonRead
There's a line I have that our family was designed more for public than for private. But there are definitely some things that are only mine. I am someone who dreams at night, and you don't know what I'm dreaming.
Carrie FisherRead
I know how sobering and exhausting parenthood is. But the reality is that our children's future depends on us as parents. Because we know that the first years truly last forever.
Rob ReinerRead
The child in me could not die as it should have died, because according too legends it must find its father again. The old legends knew, perhaps, that in absence the father becomes glorified, deified, eroticized, and this outrage against God the Father has to be atoned for. The human father has to be confronted and recognized as human, as man who created a child and then, by his absence, left the child fatherless and then Godless.
Anais NinRead
As parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts we need to start getting out into nature with the young people in our lives. Families play a key role in getting kids outside.
David SuzukiRead
My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel.
Sherman AlexieRead