“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
Hermann Hesse book Narcissus and Goldmund
Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)
Quotes For Mother
A collection of quotes on the topic of family, for parents, for mother, mother's day.
Best quotes for mother
“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.
“There is no time for grief; there never is.”
Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden
Source: The Red Dice
“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
“No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
“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
“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
“The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children.”
Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer
“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 (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”
William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair
Vol. II, ch. 2.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”
Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer
Gail Tsukiyama (1957) American writer
Source: Dreaming Water
“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.
“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
“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)
“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.
“There's no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.”
Jill Churchill (1943) American writer of historical, mystery, and romantic novels under several names
“There is no instinct like that of the heart.”
George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement
“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
“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at de sun."”
Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road
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.
Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer
Source: Firefly Lane
“Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.”
James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
“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
“A dog is like a person—he needs a job and a family to be what he’s meant to be.”
Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer
“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
“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?”
Milton Berle (1908–2002) American comedian and actor
“Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author
The Minister's Wooing (1859) Ch. 21 The Bruised Flax-Flower
“Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”
Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel
Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 9
“Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?”
John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent
Source: The Winter of Our Discontent
“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.”
Roger A. Caras (1928–2001) American photographer
“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
“There's nothing like your mother's sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears.”
Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic
Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic
“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”
Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever
Source: The Truth About Forever
“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
“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
“A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.”
Amy Tan book The Bonesetter's Daughter
Source: The Bonesetter's Daughter
“Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.”
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst
“Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.”
Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist
Source: Homeland and Other Stories
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)
“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/. <br class="br">Misattributed
“Men are what their mothers made them.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)
“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
“Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.”
Alphonse de Lamartine L'Isolement
"L'Isolement", Méditations Poétiques (1820)
“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)
“Children are the anchors of a mother's life.”
Sophocles (-496–-406 BC) ancient Greek tragedian
Fragment 685.
Phædra
“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]