Parents and children
Trollope well understood how easy it is for arguments to come between parents and children.
The father, anxious only for his son's good, looks into that son's future with other eyes than those of his son himself--and so there is a quarrel. They come very easily these quarrels, but the quittance from them is sometimes terribly difficult.
The hold of a child upon the father is so much stronger than that of the father on the child! Our eyes are set in our face, and are always turned forward. The glances that we cast back are but occasional.
Fathers ... hardly ever give sufficient credit to the remorse which young men feel when they gradually go astray.
In no condition of life can justice be more imperatively due than from a father to his son.
A grown-up son must be the greatest comfort a man can have, if he be his father's best friend; but otherwise he can hardly be a comfort.
How many a miserable father reviles with bitterness of spirit the low tastes of his son, who has done nothing to provide his child with higher pleasures!
'My father is very clever,' he said to himself, 'very clever. But he isn't so clever but one can see how clever he is.'
