stages of life on Masculinity

A few years ago I led a two-day retreat for some Christian men. …We agreed that we don’t want to be a bunch of dudes , allowing American cultural images of masculinity to shape our hearts. Nei...

What a boy can use, and too often doesn't have, are the heart of his father and the fellowship of men. A boy needs at least one man who pays attention to him, spends time with him, and admires him...

The really great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

“Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don't misunderstand me, both are needed- but an emphasis on fathering is ne...

Not everyone instinctively warms to the idea that God is a Father. There are many for whom their own experiences of overbearing, indifferent or abusive fathers make their very guts squirm when they he...

A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

In his excellent book, The Magnificent Story , James Bryan Smith shares a true story from Japanese culture that illustrates just how demanding strict disciplinarian fathers can be. The Japanese...

There is no better exercise for strengthening the heart than reaching down and lifting people up. Think about it; most of your best friends are those who encourage you. You don’t have many strong rela...

Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating...too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.

Adolescence is society's permission slip for combining physical maturity with psychological irresponsibility.

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

Psychoanalysis . . . daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down.

“In the end, everyone can do without fathers.”

The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.

One day a father decided to take his son to play at the local park. The boy quickly gravitated to the sandbox and found himself mesmerized by the colors and textures surrounding him. After a short tim...

I want to give my kids the world, but I also want them to appreciate everything, to succeed, to be good people, to enjoy life. This is my most important role. If I fail at this, I fail at everything.

In his post-apocalyptic novel The Road, McCarthy tells a story about a father and son traveling in search of civilization,. In a bleak, desolate world devoid of any human civilization, McCarthy descri...

The salmon nearly leaped onto their hooks! That was a far cry from the previous day, when the four anglers couldn’t even snag their lines in the rocks. Disappointed but not discouraged, they had clim...

God is the archetypal Father; all other fatherhood is a more or less imperfect copy of his perfect fatherhood.

“When you're a dad, there's no one above you. If I don't do something that has to be done, who is going to do it?”

“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual i...

Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades.

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.

A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society.

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, t...

I like to compare the job of a father to that of a long-distance runner. Fathering isn’t a sprint—it’s a marathon. It’s a long and often trying journey. And, like a marathon runner, we must have disci...

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

A few weeks ago, when I was out surfing, there was no one else in the water. In fact, there was no one around at all, except a guy the size of Goliath doing tae kwon do on the beach. After I’d been ou...

I suspect that this is the most important thing I’ve said in all my interviews and talks as well as in this book. It’s a truth that applies to more than writing. It applies to anything that is importa...