Quotes about mothers

"Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well."

Alcott, Amos Bronson on mothers
3 fans of this quote   

"What do girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?"

Alcott, Louisa May on mothers
4 fans of this quote   

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"A mother who is really a mother is never free."

Balzac, Honore De on mothers
7 fans of this quote   

"The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom."

Beecher, Henry Ward on mothers
10 fans of this quote   

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"The best thing that could happen to motherhood already has. Fewer women are going into it."

Billings, Victoria on mothers   

"When a woman is twenty, a child deforms her; when she is thirty, he preserves her; and when forty, he makes her young again."

Blum, Leon on mothers   

"Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons."

Bonaparte, Napoleon on mothers   

"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."

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on mothers   

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

Buck, Pearl S. on mothers
9 fans of this quote   

"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."

Carter, Angela on mothers   

"The kind of power mothers have is enormous. Take the skyline of Istanbul -- enormous breasts, pathetic little willies, a final revenge on Islam. I was so scared I had to crouch in the bottom of the boat when I saw it."

Carter, Angela on mothers   

"Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother. Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can't even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers."

Douglas, Norman on mothers   

"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."

Duras, Marguerite on mothers
5 fans of this quote   

"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."

Duras, Marguerite on mothers   

"The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity."

Dworkin, Andrea on mothers   

"No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children."

Ehrenreich, Barbara on mothers   

"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."

Ehrenreich, Barbara on mothers   

"A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man."

Eliot, George on mothers
4 fans of this quote   

"But 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 debased, degraded man."

Eliot, George on mothers   

"The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint."

Fenton, James on mothers
3 fans of this quote   

"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."

Gillman, Charlotte P. on mothers   

"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?"

Goldman, Emma on mothers   

"All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat; psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysis and to foist their problems on to the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defense. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health."

Greer, Germaine on mothers   

"A man never sees all that his mother has been to him until it's too late to let her know he sees it."

Howells, William Dean on mothers
5 fans of this quote   

"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not."

Joyce, James on mothers
4 fans of this quote   

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"The watchful mother tarries nigh, though sleep has closed her infants eyes."

Keble, John on mothers
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"Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother."

Lin Yu-tang on mothers
5 fans of this quote   

"Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother."

Maugham, W. Somerset on mothers   

"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."

Mcginley, Phyllis on mothers   

"Anyone who doesn't miss the past never had a mother."

Nunn, Gregory on mothers
8 fans of this quote   

"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."

Oakley, Ann on mothers   

"Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up."

Paglia, Camille on mothers   

"A mother's heart is always with her children."

Proverb on mothers
14 fans of this quote   

"He that would the daughter win must with the mother first begin."

Proverb, English on mothers
3 fans of this quote   

"A mother understands what a child does not say."

Proverb, Jewish on mothers
10 fans of this quote   

"God couldn't be everywhere, so he created mothers"

Proverb, Jewish on mothers
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"A busy mother makes slothful daughters."

Proverb, Portuguese on mothers   

"An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy."

Proverb, Spanish on mothers   

"Maternity is on the face of it an unsociable experience. The selfishness that a woman has learned to stifle or to dissemble where she alone is concerned, blooms freely and unashamed on behalf of her offspring."

Putnam, Emily James on mothers   

"The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown."

Rich, Adrienne on mothers