“A mother, who is really a mother, is never free.”
Une vraie mère n’est pas libre.
Part I, ch. XLV.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)
Original
Une vraie mère n’est pas libre.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)
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Honoré de Balzac 157
French writer 1799–1850Related quotes

“Injustice…is a mother who is never barren, and bears children worthy of her.”
L'injustice…est une mère qui n'est jamais sterile, et qui produit des enfants dignes d'elle.
Causeries du lundi (Paris: Garnier, 1857) vol. 1, p. 148; E. J. Trechmann (trans.) Causeries du Lundi (London: George Routledge, 1909) vol. 1, p. 117.
Sainte-Beuve was here merely reporting words spoken by Adolphe Thiers, but many French quotation websites (e.g. Dico-Citations http://www.dico-citations.com/l-injustice-est-une-m-re-qui-n-est-jamais-st-rile-et-qui-produit-des-enfants-dignes-d-elle-sainte-beuve-charles-augustin/) attribute them to Sainte-Beuve himself.
Misattributed

“I really learned it all from mothers.”
Time magazine (8 April 1985)

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 18

“…a bride who is bullied by her mother-in-law will herself become a bad mother-in-law.”
about Ralph Kronig's criticism on Samuel Goudsmit's proposal of a self-rotating electron, inflicting the same reaction to Goudsmit as Kronig had been incurred from Wolfgang Pauli [Tomonaga, Sin-Itiro, translated by Takeshi Oka, The Story of Spin, University of Chicago Press, 1997, 0-226-80794-0, 217]

The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (1912)

“The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children.”