Dad Acrostic Dictums: An acrostic is generally a poem or phrase in which the first letters spell out a word. It will soon be 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. 

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

Divisions About Daddies
There are three stages of a man’s life: He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus. – Author Unknown

Directly After a Deity
Directly after God in Heaven comes a Papa. – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 

Delectation At Detecting
Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father! – Lydia M. Child

Docious And Ductile
A truly great man never puts away the simplicity of a child. – Confucius

Display A Demeanor
Father of fathers, make me one,
A fit example for a son.
– Douglas Mallooch 

Desires About Devices
The child had every toy his father wanted. – Robert C. Whitten

Destiny Always Descends
Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal,
with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope. – John Ciardi

Details About Development
I didn’t know the full facts of life until I was 17.
My father never talked about his work. – Martin Freud, son of Sigmund Freud

Did And Didn’t
Fathers send their sons to college either because they went to college, or because they didn’t. – L.L. Hendren

Duty At Death
In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons. – Croesus

Duplicate After Development
Middle age at forty-five, what next, what next?
At every corner, I meet my father, my age, still alive. – Robert Lowell

Division Across Decades
His father watched him across the gulf of years and pathos which always must divide a father from his son. – John Marquand

Defect After Design
The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them. – Bertrand Russell

Discern A Double
A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father. – Gabriel García Márquez

Duty As Defender
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection. – Sigmund Freud

Difference At Daylight
All fathers are invisible in daytime; daytime is ruled by mothers, and fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to fathers than meets the eye. – Margaret Atwood

Describe Any Dependence
Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son. – Evelyn Waugh

Desire A Duplicate
A man’s desire for a son is usually nothing but the wish to duplicate himself in order that such a remarkable pattern may not be lost to the world. – Helen Rowland

Dispel Any Doubts
My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person; he believed in me. – Jim Valvano

Down-to-earth And Dependable
My best training came from my father. – Woodrow Wilson

Deserving And Delighting
Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young,
Who loved thee so fondly as he?
He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue,
And joined in thy innocent glee.
– Margaret Courtney

Don’t Allow Discouragement
None of you can ever be proud enough of being the child of such a father who has not his equal in this world – so great, so good, so faultless. Try, all of you, to follow in his footsteps and don’t be discouraged, for to be really in everything like him, none of you, I am sure, will ever be. Try, therefore, to be like him in some points, and you will have acquired a great deal. – Queen Victoria

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Image courtesy of Adobe.