The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty. From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American Feminist, Writer
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 (1835–1910) American Humorist
Men never think, at least seldom think, what a hard task it is for us women to go through this very often. God’s will be done, and if He decrees that we are to have a great number of children why we must try to bring them up as useful and exemplary members of society.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
A mother understands what a child does not say.
—Hebrew Proverb
A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.
—Irish Proverb
A father may turn his back on his child; brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies; husbands may desert their wives, and wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all; in. good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world’s condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
That best academy, a mother’s knee.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of their fathers.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
There was never a great man who had not a great mother.
—Olive Schreiner (1855–1920) South African Writer, Feminist
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
—Unknown
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
A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men’s mothers.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American Baptist Minister
A man’s work is from sun to sun, but a mother’s work is never done.
—Unknown
What do girls do who haven’t any mothers to help them through their troubles?
—Louisa May Alcott (1832–88) American Novelist
Morality and its victim, the mother—what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940) Lithuanian-American Anarchist, Feminist
There is a point where you aren’t as much mom and daughter as you are adults and friends. It doesn’t happen for everyone—but it did for Mom and me.
—Jamie Lee Curtis (b.1958) American Film Actress, Children’s Books Writer
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.
—Unknown
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.
—Spanish Proverb
A mother’s heart is always with her children.
—Common Proverb
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
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
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 (1806–61) English Poet
Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
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.
—Unknown
A man never sees all that his mother has been to him till it’s too late to let her know that he sees it.
—William Dean Howells (1837–1920) American Novelist, Critic
My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.
—George Washington (1732–99) American Head of State, Military Leader
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 (1809–49) American Poet
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 (1931–2019) American Novelist, Editor, Academic
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 (1806–67) American Poet, Playwright, Essayist
God could not be everywhere, and therefore He made mothers.
—Hebrew Proverb
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
It’s easy to pick children whose mothers are good housekeepers; they are usually found in other yards.
—Anonymous
Women who miscalculate are called mothers.
—Pauline Phillips (Abigail van Buren) (b.1918) American Columnist
All mothers are physically handicapped. They have only two hands.
—Anonymous
Some 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 (1892–1973) American Novelist, Human Rights Activist
I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhood and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.
—Marguerite Duras (1914–96) French Novelist, Playwright
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.
—Sri Rajneesh (Osho) (1931–90) Indian Spiritual Teacher
Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) American Abolitionist, Author
The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.
—James Fenton
All mothers are working mothers.
—Unknown
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
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
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
Only in America do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedal pushers and mink stoles—and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn’t their fault they were given a gift like speech—look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate.
And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist