Greatest Quotations on Mothers and Motherhood

— compiled by Michael Josephson —

1. All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. ~ Abraham Lincoln
2. 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
3. An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. ~ Spanish Proverb
4. The mother’s heart is the child’s school-room. ~ Henry Ward Beecher
5. One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. ~ George Herbert
6. 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
7. God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers. ~ Jewish Proverb
8. 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
9. Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~ Elizabeth Stone
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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
13. The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. ~ Honoré de Balzac
14. 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
15. Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. ~ Marion C. Garretty,
16. [A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled. ~ Emily Dickinson
17. 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
18. 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
19. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool mom.  ~ Author Unknown
20. A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, “where mother is.”  ~ Keith L. Brooks
21. Mother, the ribbons of your love are woven around my heart. ~ Author Unknown
22. A man’s work is from sun to sun, but a mother’s work is never done. ~ Author Unknown
23. If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much. ~ Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
24. Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother. ~ Lin Yutang, Chinese writer
25. Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Liberation was meant to expand women’s opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering. ~ Elaine Heffner
26. No gift to your mother can ever equal her gift to you – life. ~ Anonymous quotes
27. If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. ~ Ferrell Sims
28. There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one. ~ Jill Churchill
29. A mother’s love is patient and forgiving when all others are forsaking, it never fails or falters, even though the heart is breaking. ~ Helen Rice
30. Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of children. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Humorous

31. I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them. ~ Phyllis Diller
32. 32.Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children. ~ Sam Levenson
33. If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands? ~ Milton Berle
34. Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all. ~ Author Unknown
35. Sweater, n.:  garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly. ~ Ambrose Bierce
36. My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it. ~ Mark Twain
37. When a national magazine described her Nobel Prize-winning son as “the world’s smartest man,” Lucille Feynman told a reporter, “If that’s the world’s smartest man, God help us.”

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You may also want to see my favorite quotes on fathers and fatherhood and on children and parents.