Quotes For Mother

A collection of quotes on the topic of family, for parents, for mother, mother's day.

Best quotes for mother

Hermann Hesse photo

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”

Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)

Libba Bray photo

“To live is to love, to love is to live.”

Source: Going Bovine

W.B. Yeats photo
Paul Éluard photo

“There is another world, but it is in this one.”

Paul Éluard (1895–1952) French poet

Il y a assurément un autre monde, mais il est dans celui-ci...
Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, Gallimard, 1968.

Colette photo

“Time spent with a cat is never wasted.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

“There is no time for grief; there never is.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“As you were, I was. As I am, you will be.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Abraham Lincoln photo

“No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Abraham Lincoln photo

“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed in The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866) by Josiah G. Holland, p. 23; also in The Real Life of Abraham Lincoln (1867) by George Alfred Townsend, p. 6; according to Townsend, Lincoln made this remark to his law partner, William Herndon. It is disputed whether this quote refers to Lincoln's natural mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who died when he was nine years old, or to his stepmother, Sarah Bush (Johnston) Lincoln.
Posthumous attributions

Orhan Pamuk photo

“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

Source: My Name is Red

Quotes For Mother

Roald Dahl photo
Eckhart Tolle photo

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Eleanor Roosevelt photo
Michael Jordan photo
Marcel Proust photo
William Makepeace Thackeray photo
George Washington photo
Maria Shriver photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: The best way to make children good is to make them happy.

Bertrand Russell photo

“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Attributed to Reverend Theodore Hesburgh in Sol Gordon Let's Make Sex a Household Word: A Guide for Parents and Children (John Day Company, 1975), p. 79
Misattributed

P. J. O'Rourke photo

“Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Anthony de Mello photo

“These are images of what love is about.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

"How Happiness Happpens", p. 61
Awareness (1992)
Context: Is it possible for the rose to say, "I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad?" Or is it possible for the lamp to say, "I will give my light to the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people"? Or can a tree say, "I'll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but I will withhold it from the bad"? These are images of what love is about.

Louisa May Alcott photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo

“I like it when my mother smiles. And I especially like it when I make her smile.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: Viola in Reel Life

Zora Neale Hurston photo

“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at de sun."”

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Ch.2 : My Folks, p. 13.
Context: Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at de sun." We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

Agatha Christie photo
James Joyce photo
Joanne Harris photo
Mitch Albom photo

“But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.”

Variant: Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.
Source: For One More Day

Andrew Vachss photo
Gillian Flynn photo
Calvin Trillin photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Ambrose Bierce photo

“n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Harriet Beecher Stowe photo

“Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

The Minister's Wooing (1859) Ch. 21 The Bruised Flax-Flower

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 9

John Steinbeck photo
Jean Cocteau photo

“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker
Cormac McCarthy photo
Barbara Kingsolver photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Sophie Kinsella photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Alice Hoffman photo
Mitch Albom photo

“I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.”

Variant: When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth.
Source: For One More Day

Gretchen Rubin photo

“The days are long, but the years are short.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Mitch Albom photo
Erich Fromm photo
Barbara Kingsolver photo

“Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Source: Homeland and Other Stories

Nicholas Sparks photo
Maya Angelou photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

La joie d’une mère est une lumière qui jaillit jusque sur l’avenir et le lui éclaire, mais qui se reflète sur le passé pour lui donner le charme des souvenirs.
Part I, ch. XXXI.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

“Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

Also quoted in Every Day Is Father's Day: The Best Things Ever Said About Dear Old Dad (1989), p. 150
The Business of Life (1949)

Sigmund Freud photo

“Time spent with cats is never wasted.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Frequently attributed to Freud, but there is no evidence Freud ever said it http://www.freud.org.uk/about/faq/.
Misattributed

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Men are what their mothers made them.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo

“If you bungle raising your children I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Interview with NBC News Correspondent Sander Vanocur (1 October 1960) https://web.archive.org/web/20140127091759/http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/joint/joint011060_nbctv03.html

Alphonse de Lamartine photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

The Three Graves
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Sophocles photo

“Children are the anchors of a mother's life.”

Sophocles (-496–-406 BC) ancient Greek tragedian

Fragment 685.
Phædra

Peter Kay photo

“If it's not one thing, it's your mother.”

Peter Kay (1973) English writer, producer, actor and comedian

Mum Wants A Bungalow Tour [2003]