quotations about mothers
It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the background, that mothers have a self larger than their maternity, and that when their sons have become taller than themselves, and are gone from them to college or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which are not filled with praying for their boys, reading old letters, and envying yet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
The biggest surprise my family could give me on Mother's Day would be to remember it.
KATHY LETTE
attributed, Just Like Mum Says: A Book of Mum's Wit
when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.
MITCH ALBOM
For One More Day
How vastly important is it, then, for mothers to have a higher regard for their duties--to feel deeply the immense responsibilities that rest upon them! It is through their ministrations that the world grows worse or better.
TIMOTHY SHAY ARTHUR
The Mother's Rule; or, The Right Way and the Wrong Way
Who can lean over a crib at night, marveling upon that infinite innocence and candor swathed in the silk cocoon of childish sleep, without guessing the throb of fierce gentleness that runs in maternal blood? The earth is none too rich in compassion these days: let us be grateful to the mothers for what remains. It was not they who filled the world with spies and quakings. It was not a cabal of mothers that met to decree blood and anguish for the races of men. They know that life is built at too dear a price to be so lathered in corruption and woe. Those who create life, who know its humility, its tender fabric and its infinite price, who have cherished and warmed and fed it, do not lightly cast it into the pit.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Our Mothers", Mince Pie: Adventures on the Sunny Side of Grub Street
Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again, just for to-night!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep--
Rock me to sleep, mother--rock me to sleep!
ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN
"Rock Me to Sleep"
Lose possession of your child once and the fear it'll happen again becomes your resident hair-trigger insomniac. Once a bad mother, always a bad mother. It's like being an alcoholic: you only ever haven't fallen of the wagon yet.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
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, SR.
"The Professor at the Breakfast Table", Atlantic Monthly, May 1859
My mom smiled at me. Her smile kind of hugged me.
R. J. PALACIO
Wonder
A man's mother is so tissued and woven into his life and brain that he can no more describe her than describe the air and sunlight that bless his days.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Our Mothers", Mince Pie: Adventures on the Sunny Side of Grub Street
Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Have Space Suit--Will Travel
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 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.
ANONYMOUS
"Mother, Home and Heaven", The Speaker's Garland and Literary Bouquet, 1876
In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.
N. K. JEMISIN
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Mothers with marriageable daughters ought to look out for men of this stamp, men with brains to act as protecting divinity, with worldly wisdom to diagnose like a surgeon, and with experience to take a mother's place in warding off evil.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Mother love is the most powerful, the most irrational force on earth, even more powerful than sexual love. However, one does lead to the other, so best not to spurn the former.
RITA MAE BROWN
Full Cry
When you feel neglected, think of the female salmon, who lays 3,000,000 eggs but no one remembers her on Mother's Day.
SAM EWING
attributed, Just Like Mum Says: A Book of Mum's Wit
When I feel like I'm not doing what I am supposed to as a mother, I will torture myself. I don't know how to deal with it. I find some consolation in the fact that all mommies feel it. If there was a way to cure mommy guilt, I would bottle it and be a bazillionaire.
ANGIE HARMON
Good Housekeeping, Jul. 2011
We mothers are a testing ground for our children.
RUBY GWIN
A Day That Would End Tearing At Your Heart
A mother's body remembers her babies -- the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
The Poisonwood Bible