75 father-daughter quotes about the bond between dads and their girls

There's something special about the love between a father and a daughter. He's the first guy she'll ever love, and to him, she's the brightest star in the universe.

To celebrate their unique relationship, we've gathered our favorite father-daughter quotes to use however you see fit.

Whether you're on the hunt for a short-but-sweet quote that sums up the unbreakable bond between a dad and his little girl, a funny message to inspire a chuckle, or an emotional saying to post in honor of Father's Day, you'll find what you're looking for in the collection below.

Even better, these father-daughter quotes can be used for any and all kinds of dads, including grandfathers, stepdads, husbands or other important people in your life.

Written or spoken by luminaries such as Maya Angelou, Jane Austen and George Bernard Shaw, these meaningful messages can be written in greeting cards, used as captions for Instagram, or sent as a text to let someone know that they're in your thoughts.

Whatever you choose is sure the warm the heart of the person or people you share one of these quotes with, especially if it's your dad.

So, read on and get ready to celebrate the one-of-a-kind love between fathers and their daughters with one these memorable passages.

Short father-daughter quotes

• “A man’s daughter is his heart. Just with feet, walking out in the world.” — Mat Johnson

• “No one in this world can love a girl more than her father.” — Michael Ratnadeepak

• “He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.” — Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice”

• “I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father’s equal, and I never loved any other man as much.” — Hedy Lamarr

• “When my father didn’t have my hand, he had my back.” — Linda Poindexter

• “We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.” — Henry Ward Beecher

• “He taught me that there is no shame in breaking something, only in not being able to fix it.” — Hope Jahren

• “Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world, you had to earn it.” — Ann Brashares

• “It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” — Anne Sexton

• “My mother gave me my drive, but my father gave me my dreams.” — Liza Minnelli

• “Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.” —Gloria Naylor

• “Being a daddy’s girl is like having permanent armor for the rest of your life.” — Marinela Reka

• “The most important thing in the world is family and love.” — John Wooden

• “It was my father who taught me to value myself.” — Dawn French

• “A good father will leave his imprint on his daughter for the rest of her life.” — Dr. James Dobson, “Solid Answers”

• “No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us.” — Brad Meltzer

• “A girl’s first true love is her father.” — Marisol Santiago

• “Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.” — Lionel Hampton

• “Dads are most ordinary men turned into heroes, adventurers, storytellers and singers of song.” — Pam Brown

• “Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad, and that’s why I call you dad, because you are so special to me.” — Wade Boggs

• “My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” — Clarence B. Kelland

• “Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.” — Frank Pittman

• “It is much easier to become a father than to be one.” — Kent Nerburn

• “I sustain myself with the love of family.” — Maya Angelou

• “A happy family is but an earlier heaven.” — George Bernard Shaw

Funny father-daughter quotes

• “Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.” — Jim Bishop

• “It is admirable for a man to take his son fishing, but there is a special place in heaven for the father who takes his daughter shopping.” — John Sinor

• “Any astronomer can predict with absolute accuracy just where every star in the universe will be at 11:30 tonight. He can make no such prediction about his teenage daughter.” — James T. Adams

• “The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.” — Steven Wright

• “My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.” — Quentin Crisp

• “No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent.” — Marcelene Cox

• “Don’t try and make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.” — Russell Baker

• “If you ever want to torture my dad, tie him up and right in front of him, refold a map incorrectly.” — Cathy Ladman

• “Having one child makes you a parent. Having two kids makes you a referee.” — David Frost

• “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” — Jim Carrey

• “Some family trees bear an enormous crop of nuts.”— Wayne Huizenga

• “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” — George Burns

• “Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.” — Erma Bombeck

• “You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.” — Franklin P. Jones

Emotional father-daughter quotes

• “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person: He believed in me.” — Jim Valvano

• “A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.” — Sarah Ruhl

• “Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives, there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.” — Joseph Addison

• “A father’s tears and fears are unseen, his love is unexpressed, but his care and protection remains as a pillar of strength throughout our lives.” — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

• “If I could give you one thought, it would be to lift someone up. Lift a stranger up — lift her up. I would ask you, mother and father, brother and sister, lovers, mother and daughter, father and son, lift someone. The very idea of lifting someone up will lift you, as well.” — Maya Angelou

• “I’m inspired by my own children, how full they make my heart. They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. And they make me want to be a better man.” — Barack Obama

• “When his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, ‘Daddy, I need to ask you something,’ he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.” — Garrison Keillor

• “There will always be a few people who have the courage to love what is untamed inside us. One of those men is my father.” — Alison Lohman, “Flicka”

• “No one loves me like you do / No one knows me just like you do / No one can compare to the way my eyes fit in yours” — Chrisette Michele, “Your Joy”

• “Always a partner, a playmate and a teacher / Ready with a joke when times were sad” — Nancy Sinatra, “It’s for My Dad”

• “Your children are not your children / They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself / They came through you but not from you / And they are with you yet they belong not to you.” — Kahlil Gibran, “On Children”

• “It is a wise father that knows his own child.” — William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”

• “One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” — George Herbert

• “Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.” — former President Barack Obama

• “Daddies don’t just love their children every now and then, it’s a love without end.” — George Strait, “Love Without End, Amen”

• “A father carries pictures where his money used to be.” — Steve Martin

Father-daughter bond quotes

• “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, “Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery”

• “Go on, take on this whole world / But to me you know you’ll always be / My little girl.” — Tim McGraw, “My Little Girl”

• “To a father growing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter.” — Euripides

• “She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father.” — Harper Lee, “Go Set a Watchman”

• “I’d always thought the father/daughter thing was overstated. But I can tell you, sometimes, she looks at me and I just become a puddle.” — Randy Pausch

• “When a father gives his daughter an emotional visa to strike out on her own, he is always with her. Such a daughter has her encouraging, understanding daddy in her head, cheering her on — not simply as a woman but as a whole, unique human being with unlimited possibilities.” — Victoria Secunda

• “It’s only when you grow up and step back from him — or leave him for your own home — it’s only then that you can measure his greatness and fully appreciate it.” — Margaret Truman

• “He adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a protector.” — Tom Wolfe

• “In conversation, father can do many wondrous things; he’s built upon a wiser plan than presidents or kings.” — Edgar Guest, “Father”

• “They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him / They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love.” — Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric”

• “I’m gonna watch you shine / Gonna watch you grow / Gonna paint a sign / So you’ll always know / As long as one and one is two / There could never be a father / Who loved his daughter more than I love you” — Paul Simon, “Father and Daughter”

• “There is no such thing as being the perfect parent. So just be a real one.” — Sue Atkins

• “Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.”  — Charles R. Swindoll

• “Live so that when your children think of fairness caring, and integrity, they think of you.” — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

• “If the day ever came when we were able to accept ourselves and our children exactly as we and they are, then I believe we would have come very close to an ultimate understanding of what ‘good’ parenting means.” — Fred Rogers

• “You are my angel; you remind me of the goodness in this world and inspire me to be the greatest version of myself.” — Steve Maraboli

• “I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.” — Ian McEwan

• “My dad tells me to make decisions out of love and not fear. It’s OK to do something and not know that you’re going to nail it and execute it with full, perfect preparedness.” — Rashida Jones

• “Fathers can seem powerful and overwhelming to their daughters. Let her see your soft side. Express your feelings and reactions. Tell her where you came from and how you got there. Let her see that you have had fears, failures, anxious times, hurts, just like hers, even though you may look flawless to her.” — Stella Chess

• “Fathering makes a man, whatever his standing in the eyes of the world, feel strong and good and important, just as he makes his child feel loved and valued.” — Frank Pittman

This article was originally published on TODAY.com