Mothers Quotes

Doomed to Hell. Every last one of you.

~ June Ahern

Whatever it is that you think you have discovered. You must forget it.


~ Diane Samuels

She had long been a cold and calculating person, and yet she had never given in to the darkness entirely. She would remember her mother's touch or the voice of a lost friend, and the tiniest bit of hope would return.

~ Patrick Carman

When a destitute mother starts earning an income, her dreams of success invariably center around her children. A woman's second priority is the household. She wants to buy utensils, build a stronger roof, or find a bed for herself and her family. A man has an entirely different set of priorities. When a destitute father earns extra income, he focuses more attention on himself. Thus money entering a household through a woman brings more benefits to the family as a whole.

~ Muhammad Yunus

I doubt you would recognize an adventure of any sort if it came right up and bit you on the a---Mother!I was going to say arm.

~ Victoria Alexander

The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

~ Terry Pratchett

I get a letter once a week from my mama. She say everything fine at home.. I write her back too, when I can, but what I'm gonna tell her that won't start her bawling again? So I just say we is having a nice time and everybody treating us fine.

~ Winston Groom

If you want to be with somebody who gets you, you prefer collusion to desire, safety to excitement (sometimes good things to prefer but not always the things most wanted). The wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults, to the grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers of the hook for their not meeting our every need. Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be, among many other things our most violent form of nostalgia.

~ Adam Phillips

But can I say, now that she is dead, long dead that I only half believed in her. I wanted, I needed her to revolt. I know, revolutions take vast energy like volcanic eruptions. I know. And the sick must husband their resources even as they are resourceful for their husbands. But I couldn't help wanting for her, couldn't help the feeling that she'd given in, that she had measured out with coffee spoons what it was that she might ask of life and having found it lacking, tragically, gapingly lacking, had decided none-the-less to accept her modest share. I wanted her ignoble, irresponsible, unreasonable, petty, grasping, fucking greedy for the lot of it, jostling and spitting and clawing for every grain of life.

~ Claire Messud

you wereand always will bethat first ever touchto have fertilizedthe groundbeneath my life’s treesthat first ever roseto have fragrancedthe rest of my memories.

~ Sanober Khan

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.

~ Benjamin Alire Sáenz

If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.

~ Jeannette Walls

I hope someday she meets just the right man and has babies - a whole passel of babies, more than I could have - so she understands how it kills me now that she won't let me hug her when she's in obvious distress. (The Life You've Imagined)

~ Kristina Riggle

*marissa tries to get her single, working mother's attention by suggesting something outrageous, to which mom replies:*'You're a smart girl. Use your head and avoid any guy who reminds you of your father.

~ Camille Pagán

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked; as I never was when I was not one.

~ Margaret Atwood

People say a mother is only as happy as her least happy child. But what if the state of that child's happiness has become a mystery? What if that child is no longer a child but a young man who has removed himself to a great distance and encased himself in silence?

~ Jan Ellison

My rugrats give me gifts that say #1 Mom on them and I'm like, bwhahahahaha, joke's on you, I'm more like the #1,297,279 Mom. But they truly think I'm the best mom on earth. And that's all that matters.

~ Karen Alpert

I thank my mother (Ma, you're only second cause you got the dedication), who used to make me write essays whenever I got into trouble, explaining exactly what I'd done and why I'd done it.

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I abandoned her. It's the one capital crime of fatherhood. Mothers can fail a thousand different ways. A father's only job is: do not abandon this child.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

I had thought a good mother would not elicit such comments, but now I see that a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day.

~ Kelly Corrigan

I never thought to ascribe my mother's emotional and physical exhaustion to the lack of a husband and father; rather, I ascribed it to my existence. In other words, I grew up learning the exact opposite of what Eisenhower was taught. I learned that if I didn't exist, the family would be better off. I grew up believing that if I had never been born, things would be easier for the people I loved. (page 35)

~ Donald Miller

A good mother loves fiercely but ultimately brings up her children to thrive without her. They must be the most important thing in her life, but if she is the most important thing in theirs, she has failed.

~ Erin Kelly

Yes it's true, you wake the child inside of you up because you're a Mom!

~ Sandra Chami Kassis

Am I alone in this mother-food connection or does being with your mom trigger the sudden and voracious need for large amounts of mac & cheese, rice pudding, and the scraps along the side of a bowl of cookie dough?

~ April Paine

If the Pentateuch is inspired, the civilization of of our day is a mistake and crime. There should be no political liberty. Heresy should be trodden out beneath the bigot's brutal feet. Husbands should divorce their wives at will, and make the mothers of their children houseless and weeping wanderers. Polygamy ought to be practiced; women should become slaves; we should buy the sons and daughters of the heathen and make them bondmen and bondwomen forever. We should sell our own flesh and blood, and have the right to kill our slaves. Men and women should be stoned to death for laboring on the seventh day. 'Mediums,' such as have familiar spirits, should be burned with fire. Every vestige of mental liberty should be destroyed, and reason's holy torch extinguished in the martyr's blood.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

I know a womanwho keeps buying puzzleschinesepuzzlesblockswirespieces that finally fitinto some order.she works it outmathmaticallyshe solves all herpuzzleslives down by the seaputs sugar out for the antsand believesultimatelyin a better world.her hair is whiteshe seldom combs ither teeth are snaggledand she wears loose shapelesscoveralls over a body mostwomen would wish they had.for many years she irritated mewith what I considered hereccentricities-like soaking eggshells in water(to feed the plants so thatthey'd get calcium).but finally when I think of herlifeand compare it to other livesmore dazzling, originaland beautifulI realize that she has hurt fewerpeople than anybody I know(and by hurt I simply mean hurt).she has had some terrible times,times when maybe I should havehelped her morefor she is the mother of my onlychildand we were once great lovers,but she has come throughlike I saidshe has hurt fewer people thananybody I know,and if you look at it like that,well,she has created a better world.she has won.Frances, this poem is foryou.

~ Charles Bukowski

Good wombs have borne bad sons.-- (Miranda, I:2)

~ William Shakespeare

But when we make choices that are different than what our friends are doing, it might seem to them that we are questioning their choices - even if it has nothing to do with them.... And what is the sense in feeling guilty about making different choices than our mothers and the other women before us? Our mothers did the best they could with what they had available to them. Our choices, if different from theirs, are not a denouncement of theirs.

~ Jennetta Billhimer

In truth, it was also by design: as much as I loved my mother, she wasn't often the person I sought for comfort in hard times. She disapproved tacitly of crying.

~ Alena Graedon

Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.

~ Alice Hoffman

Mother! what a world of affection is comprised in that single word; how little do we in the giddy round of youthful pleasure and folly heed her wise counsels. How lightly do we look upon that zealous care with which she guides our otherwise erring feet, watches with feelings which none but a mother can know the gradual expansion of our youth to the riper yours of discretion. We may not think of it then, but it will be recalled to our minds in after years, when the gloomy grave or a fearful living separation has placed her far beyond our reach, and her sweet voice of sympathy and consolation for the various ills attendant upon us sounds in our ears no more. How deeply then we regret a thousand deeds that we have done contrary to her gentle admonitions! How we sign for those days once more, that we may retrieve what we have done amiss and make her kind heart glad with happiness! Alas! once gone they can never be recalled, and we grow mournfully sad with the bitter reflection.

~ Fanny Kelly

Her son would be incomparably handsome, good and powerful. He would be the expected Messiah; it is fortunate for humanity that all mothers have this pathetic faith, without it mankind would not have the ever-renascent strength to go on living.

~ Émile Zola

By noon, silence arrives one last time, flowing into every space of her room. And before long, silence swallows sound and color and seconds and equations and entire stanzas of old poetry, leaving new words. The sheets are breathless. The room is bruised.My mother is still warm.

~ Brenda Sutton Rose

There is no greater heaven than the heart of a loving motherShe takes care of you when you are still in her womb.She nurtures you after you are born.She hurts when you fall,She celebrates when you make your first steps.She is the only person who genuinely cares about you.She loves you as she loves herself.Her heart is your true paradise.I love you mama.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

If my mother will not go to heaven, I renounce the privilege

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it.

~ Buddy Hackett

In one way or another,you owe your life to Mother.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

One of the strongest loves I’ve ever witnessed is the love a mother has for her child.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

You breathe.You feel.You seeand hearand smelland tasteand thinkand moveand laughand weepand healand danceand singand love.Thank your mother.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

What a mother wants is to hold her babies when they’re small and to be held by them once they’ve grown tall. It’s empty arms a mother dreads.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich