Trollope well understood how easy it is for arguments to come between parents and children.

• 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.

  Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite

• In no condition of life can justice be more imperatively due than from a father to his son.

  Phineas Finn

• 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!

  Doctor Thorne

• I am glad you are to have a child. One wants some one to exercise unlimited authority over, as one gets old and cross.

  Letter, 5 October 1852

• 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 Last Chronicle of Barset

• '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.'

  The Last Chronicle of Barset