Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.
—Ann Oakley (b.1944) English Sociologist, Writer, Feminist
Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
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 (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Mother – that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.
—Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian Clergyman, Religious Leader
There was never a great man who had not a great mother.
—Olive Schreiner (1855–1920) South African Writer, Feminist
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 (b.1937) American Unitarian Universalist Author, Essayist, Clergyman
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
For that’s what a woman, a mother wants—to teach her children to take an interest in life. She knows it’s safer for them to be interested in other people’s happiness than to believe in their own.
—Marguerite Duras (1914–96) French Novelist, Playwright
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The Enemy, who wears her mother’s usual face and confidential tone, has access; doubtless stares into her writing case and listens on the phone.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?
—Milton Berle (1908–2002) American Comedian, Actor
There are lots of things that you can brush under the carpet about yourself until you’re faced with somebody whose needs won’t be put off.
—Angela Carter (1940–92) English Novelist
Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love, fixed in permanent outline forever?
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911) American Social Reformer, Clergyman
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 S. Truman (1884–1972) American Head of State
Women who miscalculate are called mothers.
—Pauline Phillips (Abigail van Buren) (b.1918) American Columnist
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
—Unknown
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 (1898–1978) Israeli Head of State
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 (b.1934) Italian Actor
With what price we pay for the glory of motherhood.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
The mother’s yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the base, degraded man.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.
—John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) American Catholic Clergyman, Educator, Essayist, Biographer
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 (1859–1907) English Poet, Ascetic
That best academy, a mother’s knee.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
—Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist
Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.
—Meryl Streep (b.1949) American Actor