D-A-D Acrostic Dictums: An acrostic is generally a poem or phrase in which the first letters spell out a word. It is Father’s Day. How many of these old sayings apply to you? How many apply to your dad? Acrostics below were created by Don Mathis; axioms were written by children and fathers across history.
Deft and Difficult
To become a father is not hard; to be a father is, however. – Wilhelm Busch
Doesn’t And Does
A child does not need to be parented. He needs to be mothered and fathered. – Zan Thompson
Double A Delight
To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child’s delight added to your own so that there is now a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness. – J. B. Priestley
Deific And Delectated
No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, what anything means, until he has a child and loves it. Then the whole universe changes and nothing will ever again seem exactly as it seemed before. – Lafcadio Hearn
Duel All Day
Raising kids is part joy and part guerrilla warfare. – Ed Asner
Delight At Dancing
A little child, a limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself, Makes such a vision to the sight, As fills a father’s eyes with light. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Declare A Disagreement
My father taught me to be independent and cocky and freethinking, but he could not stand it if I disagreed with him. – Sara Maitland
Delight At Dimples
A child is a curly dimpled lunatic. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Differences Are Dandy
My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, “You’re tearing up the grass.” “We’re not raising grass,” Dad would reply. “We’re raising boys.” – Harmon Killebrew
Don’t Ask Dad
He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. – Clarence Budington Kelland
Daily Activities Duplicated
Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you have to do it again tomorrow. – Reed Markham
Difficulty About Defining
I felt something impossible for me to explain in words. Then, when they took her away, it hit me. I got scared all over again and began to feel giddy. Then it came to me… I was a father. – Nat King Cole
Definitely A Deity
Father! – to God himself we cannot give a holier name. – William Wordsworth
Debts Are Destroyed
Henry James once defined life as that predicament which precedes death, and certainly nobody owes you a debt of honor or gratitude for getting him into that predicament. But a child does owe his father a debt, if Dad, having gotten him into this peck of trouble, takes off his coat and buckles down to the job of showing his son how best to crash through it. – Clarence Budington Kelland
Destitute And Delighted
A father carries pictures where his money used to be. – Author Unknown
Dear And Departed
My father, when he went, made my childhood a gift of a half a century. – Antonio Porchia
Dad As Director
Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever. – Author Unknown
Define A Daddy
My daddy, he was somewhere between God and John Wayne. – Hank Williams, Jr.
Dearer After Death
Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes. – Gloria Naylor
Deliver Alternative Dialogue
Fathers represent another way of looking at life – the possibility of an alternative dialogue. – Louise J. Kaplan
Duel Any Duration
There must always be a struggle between a father and son; one aims at power and the other at independence. – Samuel Johnson
Do And Don’t
It’s no use saying do this, do that, don’t do that … it’s very easy when children want something to say no immediately. I think it’s quite important not to give an unequivocal answer at once. Much better to think it over. Then, if you eventually say no, I think they really accept it. – Prince Philip
Daughters Are Different
There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. – John Gregory Brown