Mother Quotes

No language can express the power, and beauty, and heroism, and majesty of a mother’s love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over wastes of worldly fortunes sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star. - Edwin Hubbell Chapin


A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. - Tenneva Jordan


Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs in my field, since the payment is pure love. - Mildred B. Vermont


A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. - Peter De Vries


The phrase "working mother" is redundant. - Jane Sellman


The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. - Rajneesh


If the whole world were put into one scale, and my mother in the other, the whole world would kick the beam. - Lord Langdale (Henry Bickersteth)


I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. - Abraham Lincoln


Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together. - Pearl S. Buck





A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother. - Author Unknown


Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly. - Ambrose Bierce


Women’s Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It’s the men who are discriminated against. They can’t bear children. And no one’s likely to do anything about that. - Golda Meir


The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men — from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms. - Oliver Wendell Holmes


The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. - Honoré de Balzac


All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his. - Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895




He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men’s mothers. - Harry Emerson Fosdick


She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn’t take them along. - Margaret Culkin Banning


An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. - Spanish Proverb


Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
- William Shakespeare


When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child. - Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty


If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands? - Milton Berle


Motherhood is priced
Of God, at price no man may dare
To lessen or misunderstand.
- Helen Hunt Jackson


What is it about being at your mom's house that lets you completely relax? - Jana & Mitch Hunter, The Middle, "Mother's Day" (season 1, episode 22), original airdate 2010 May 5th, spoken by the character Frankie Heck


Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own. - Aristotle


Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort. - John Lancaster Spalding


Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials. - Meryl Streep


The sweetest sounds to mortals given
Are heard in Mother, Home, and Heaven.
- William Goldsmith Brown


Call your mother. Tell her you love her. Remember, you're the only person who knows what her heart sounds like from the inside. - Rachel Wolchin


What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love, fixed in permanent outline forever? - Thomas Wentworth Higginson


The formative period for building character for eternity is in the nursery. The mother is queen of that realm and sways a scepter more potent than that of kings or priests. - Author Unknown


Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. - Marion C. Garretty, quoted in A Little Spoonful of Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul


[A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled. - Emily Dickinson


A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. - Washington Irving


Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease. - Lisa Alther


Don’t ever tell the mother of a newborn that her baby’s smile is just gas. - Jill Woodhull


Now, as always, the most automated appliance in a household is the mother. - Beverly Jones


That best academy, a mother’s knee. - James Russell Lowell


A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them. - Victor Hugo


Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing. - Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987


The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones. - Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960





Mommies are just big little girls. - Author Unknown


A mom’s hug lasts long after she lets go. - Author Unknown


Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn,
Hundreds of bees in the purple clover,
Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn,
But only one mother the wide world over.
- George Cooper


A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories. - Honoré de Balzac


A mother’s heart is a patchwork of love. - Author Unknown


A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all. - Washington Irving





My mother is a poem
I’ll never be able to write,
though everything I write
is a poem to my mother.
- Sharon Doubiago


You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool mom. - Author Unknown


With what price we pay for the glory of motherhood. - Isadora Duncan


One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. - George Herbert


Being a mother means that your heart is no longer yours; it wanders wherever your children do. - Author Unknown


There’s nothing like a mama-hug. - Terri Guillemets


Who fed me from her gentle breast
And hushed me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?
My Mother.
- Anne Taylor


Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. - Erich Fromm





Mother is a verb, not a noun. - Proverb


Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My mother.
- Ann Taylor


Mother — that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries. - T. DeWitt Talmage


Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had, and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed. - Linda Wooten


Mother is a name held sacred
By most mortals of the earth;
It means great love and sacrifice
From the very day of birth,
A love that's so full of beauty,
So tender, so very true!
Something, seemingly, from Heaven
That has come to me and you.
There's no love so understanding
And so faithful to the end
As a Mother's love—God bless her!—
That to us our Lord did send.
- Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "Mother" (1940s)


The precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face. - D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 1971


The mother of boys work son-up to son-down. - Author Unknown


Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. - William Makepeace Thackeray


A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy, the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first born babe, and assures it of a mother’s love. - Thomas C. Haliburton


A daughter is a mother’s gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of her self. And mothers are their daughters’ role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships. - Victoria Secunda


Mother’s love grows by giving. - Charles Lamb


I miss thee, my Mother! Thy image is still
The deepest impressed on my heart.
- Eliza Cook


The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated. - Washington Irving





Nothin' ever seems the same
When Mother goes away!
The sun don't shine so brightly;
The day seems long and gray!
The dishes all get dirty;
There's no one who is gay
And full of fun and laughter
When Mother is away!
- Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "When Mother Goes Away" (1940s)


I cannot forget my mother. [S]he is my bridge. When I needed to get across, she steadied herself long enough for me to run across safely. - Renita Weems


A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, "where mother is." - Keith L. Brooks


Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all. - Oliver Wendell Holmes





Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends — but only one mother in the whole world. - Kate Douglas Wiggin


If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
- Rudyard Kipling, The Light that Failed, "Dedication"


[S]he beamed upon them with such maternal tenderness and pride that her homely face grew beautiful...- Louisa May Alcott, "Through the Mist," Work: A Story of Experience, 1873


Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not. - James Joyce


My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart — a heart so large that everybody’s joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation. - Mark Twain


My Mother's hands, so thin and work-worn,
Were loved by me as jewels, rare,
For they had rocked me in my cradle,
And, lovingly, they'd stroked my hair.
They worked for me, both night and morning;
They helped to smooth away my fears,
For never were these dear hands idle;
I think of them with love and tears!
My Mother's hands to me were precious:
I thought their beauty was sublime;
I felt no harm on earth could touch me
If they were near me all the time!
- Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "My Mother's Hands" (1940s)


My mom is a neverending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words, but I always remember the tune. - Terri Guillemets


It’s not easy being a mother. If it were easy, fathers would do it. - From the television show The Golden Girls


The mother’s heart is the child’s school-room. - Henry Ward Beecher


Women know
The way to rear up children (to be just)
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning


I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine — she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights. - Terri Guillemets


Mother, the ribbons of your love are woven around my heart. - Author Unknown


How beautifully everything is arranged by Nature; as soon as a child enters the world, it finds a mother ready to take care of it. - Jules Michelet


The desolation and terror of, for the first time, realizing that the mother can lose you, or you her, and your own abysmal loneliness and helplessness without her. - Francis Thompson


My mom is literally a part of me. You can’t say that about many people except relatives, and organ donors. - Carrie Latet, 2006


Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother. - Moorish Proverb


All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. - Abraham Lincoln


No painter’s brush, nor poet’s pen
In justice to her fame
Has ever reached half high enough
To write a mother’s name.
- Author Unknown


Women who miscalculate are called mothers. - Abigail Van Buren


A man’s work is from sun to sun, but a mother’s work is never done. - Author Unknown


Mirror, mirror on the wall,
I am my mother after all.
- Author Unknown


One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands — bare hands — and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands — a kind of mad courage. - Robert Fulghum


One lamp — thy mother’s love — amid the stars
Shall lift its pure flame changeless, and before
The throne of God, burn through eternity -
Holy — as it was lit and lent thee here.
- Nathaniel Parker Willis


No one in the world can take the place of your mother. Right or wrong, from her viewpoint you are always right. She may scold you for little things, but never for the big ones. - Harry Truman


God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers. - Jewish Proverb





Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate.
And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.
- Phyllis McGinley


All mothers are working mothers. - Author Unknown


Because I feel that in the heavens above
The angels, whispering one to another,
Can find among their burning tears of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore, by that dear name I have long called you,
You who are more than mother unto me.
- Edgar Allan Poe


Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. - Oprah Winfrey


A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest. - Irish Proverb