Quotes about mother (2665 quotes, page 21)

“I have pleaded for the rights of woman, for the rights of wives, and what is more, for the rights of little children. I have said that they could be governed by affection, by love, and that my heart went out to all the children of poverty and of crime; to the children that live in the narrow streets and in the sub-cellars; to the children that run and hide when they hear the footsteps of a brutal father, the children that grow pale when they hear their names pronounced even by a mother; to all the little children, the flotsam and jetsam upon the wide, rude sea of life. I have said that my heart goes out to them one and all; I have asked fathers and mothers to cease beating their own flesh and blood. I have said to them, When your child does wrong, put your arms around him; let him feel your heart beat against his. It is easier to control your child with a kiss than with a club.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Love , Life , Children , Feeling

“Abraham … was sunk in Ur of the Chaldees among foolish idolaters. His father and mother and all the people worshipped the stars. … He knew that all were mistaken and that what caused them to err was worship of the images which drove the Truth out of their minds. … It was proper to destroy and smash the idols so that the people should not err by them like those who think there is no god save images.”

Maimónides book Mishneh Torah

Treatise 4: “Idolatry,” H. Russell, trans. (1983), p. 73
Mishneh Torah (c. 1180)

God , People , Truth , Star

“The most sensational of all the sick literary lives was that of Maupassant, who died mad at forty-three and whose hatred of God, man and nature - manifested in literary productions which give us immense pleasure: how is that to be explained? - spring from a kind of mother fixation as well as a terror of the cold. He was a bull of a man much given to boats and riparian dalliance, but he had bad circulation. He had other things too, including a Chinese-style priapism which enabled him to copulate, usually in public, six times in a row, the secret being his failure to detumesce. This, of course, like acne and the common cold, can be a symptom of tertiary syphilis, which Maupassant certainly had.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

God , Pleasure , Secret , Spring

“I resent when they talk about families like mine that I grew up in. I resent the fact that they think we're talking about envy: it's job envy, it's wealthy envy; that we don't dream. My mother believed and my father believed that if I wanted to be president of the United States, that I could be, I could be vice president! My mother and father believed that if my brother or sister wanted to be a millionaire, they could be a millionaire! My mother and father dreamed as much as any rich guy dreams! They don't get us! They don't get who we are!”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Criticizing Mitt Romney and the Republican Party, campaign speech http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/joe-biden-lays-into-romney-gop-they-dont-get-who-we-are/ in Youngstown, Ohio (May 16, 2012)
2010s

Family , Dreams , Guy , Thinking

“The healer must love the sufferer as his [surrogate] mother and be loved in return by the sufferer as his [surrogate] mother. For the ultimate healing is knowing the Love of one's own mother… However, only when the surrogate role is kept firmly in mind can the Love be true, be altruistic.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: Facets of a Diamond: Reflections of a Healer (2002), p. 269

Love , Suffering

“If a young mother has a job as a secretary in a company trying to cut expenses, where they start giving her the work of two secretaries and making extra demands on her, she will do all she can to please her employers. In fact, they are causing her to worry, hurry to work and rush home late to her expectant family. Thus, pressure and demands in a business setting lead to anxiety and tension at home. This is what begins to happen in our civilization when we put profit before people, and getting work done before the feelings of those we work with.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All shall be well (2014)

People , Family , Feeling , Home

“They have had numerous extraterrestrial signals. They were apparently searching in a spectrum or in an area… where they hit the mother lode. The signals were so numerous that they began to have their systems externally jammed by some sort of human agency that did not want them to continue receiving those signals… [I received this information from a source in SETI. ] This person, if I were to say who he is, almost every one your listeners would probably know the name.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

July 30, 2006
Greer on a Coast to Coast AM radio show that was hosted by Art Bell
2006
Source: [Vance, Ashlee, SETI urged to fess up over alien signals, The Register, July 31, 2006, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/31/signals_seti/, 2007-02-21]
Source: SETI & ET Signals, Coast to Coast AM, July 30, 2006, 2007-05-11 http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2006/07/30.html,

Search , Personality

“The Islamic community today is faced with a new version of an old struggle. My late mother used to say it doesn't matter whether you came to this country on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, through Ellis Island or the Rio Grande. We're all in the same boat now.”

Carol Moseley Braun (1947) American politician and lawyer

40th Cconvention of the Islamic Society of North America Speech http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2920, (September 6 2004)

Communication , Country

“I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cloud

St. 1
The Cloud (1820)

Dreams , Flowers , Light , Sun

“It takes a heap o’ children to make a home that’s true,
And home can be a palace grand, or just a plain, old shoe;
But if it has a mother dear, and a good old dad or two,
Why, that’s the sort of good old home for good old me and you.”

Louis Untermeyer (1885–1977) American poet

Mother Goose Up-to-date
Other

Children , Shoe , Home

“My mother told me I said to her, at age three, 'I'm going to go to Italy and get my father in a tractor.' 'You've never seen quite so fierce a little boy as you were,' she told me. She tried to explain that I couldn't get my father in a tractor. Apparently I looked at her and narrowed my eyes and said 'In that case, I'm going in a double-decker bus,' and stomped off. Which is kind of funny, but it's very sad, as well.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

In an interview in Rolling Stones Magazine, September 30, 2010, talking about his father who was killed in WWII.
Miscellaneous

Age , Sadness , Boy

“Although the Protestant Church is accused of much disastrous bigotry, one claim to immortal fame must be granted it: by permitting freedom of inquiry in the Christian faith and by liberating the minds of men from the yoke of authority, it enabled freedom of inquiry in general to take root in Germany, and made it possible for science to develop independently. German philosophy, though it now puts itself on an equal basis with the Protestant Church or even above it, is nonetheless only its daughter; as such it always owes the mother a forbearing reverence.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Wenn man auch der protestantischen Kirche manche fatale Engsinnigkeit vorwirft, so muß man doch zu ihrem unsterblichen Ruhme bekennen: indem durch sie die freie Forschung in der christlichen Religion erlaubt und die Geister vom Joche der Autorität befreit wurden, hat die freie Forschung überhaupt in Deutschland Wurzel schlagen und die Wissenschaft sich selbständig entwickeln können. Die deutsche Philosophie, obgleich sie sich jetzt neben die protestantische Kirche stellt, ja sich über sie heben will, ist doch immer nur ihre Tochter; als solche ist sie immer in betreff der Mutter zu einer schonenden Pietät verpflichtet.
Source: The Romantic School (1836), p. 24

Men , Faith , Freedom , Science

“You can't bomb for a humane reason. What we should do is just Mother Teresa them to death with love. It's that old hippie nonsense but it's still the best stuff there is.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Trip of a Lifetime (1999)

Love , Death

“There was this one crime I read about that was so heinous, I didn't have any words for it. This guy had killed a girl, her mother, and her grandmother. I mean, I am so pissed off reading this, steam's coming out of my ears. This guy was put on trial and was found guilty and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers. Then, about a week before the execution, a group of people stood up on his behalf, ON HIS BEHALF, to say, "We can't kill him. He's too crazy to know we're killing him!"…So what are we arguing about? If he doesn't know the difference and it makes me sleep better at night…”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

Death , People , Guy , Girl

“Already complaints are multiplying on every hand that that most gracious quality of all that adorns the age of childhood — the quality of reverence — is fast fading from our schools and households; that the oldtime respect for father and mother is diminished, and grown rarer and more uncertain.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876)

Age , School , Childhood

“Tomkinson: What are these?
Mother: Shoe trees, dear…”

Michael Palin (1943) British comedian, actor, writer and television presenter

"Tomkinson's Schooldays"
Ripping Yarns (1976 - 1979)

Shoe , Tree

“Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call.
Wanted to sail upon your waters
Since I was three feet tall.
You've seen it all, you've seen it all.Watched the men who rode you,
Switch from sails to steam.
And in your belly you hold the treasure
That few have ever seen.
Most of them dreams,
Most of them dreams.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

A Pirate Looks at Forty
Song lyrics, A1A (1974)

Men , Dreams , Water

“A large proportion of allegedly feeble-minded children are actually attempted abortion cases... However many billions America spends yearly on institutions for the insane and jails for the criminals are spent primarily because of attempted abortions done by some sex-blocked mother to whom children are a curse, not a blessing of God... All these things are scientific facts, tested and rechecked and tested again.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Dianetics : The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950)

God , Children , Sex

“When my mother gets a prompt 'Do you want to download this?' she's going to say yes. It's disingenuous for Microsoft to give you all of these tools [in Internet Explorer] with which to hang yourself, and when you do, then say it's your fault.”

Bruce Schneier (1963) American computer scientist

Politics and societal issues of the digital age

“Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Attributed inBright Words for Dark Days: Meditations for Women Who Get the Blues (1994) by Caroline Adams Miller, p. 10
1990s

People , Law , Study

“It is as well to be born in the first chapter as elsewhere, and though I have only secondary evidence as to the fact, believe it happened as related to me afterwards by my mother, who said the doctor found me in an old hollow log and, as our house happened to be nearest to the log in question, he wrapped me up in his cloak, carried me to the house and left me with mother.”

Terence V. Powderly (1849–1924) American mayor

[Powderly, Terence, 'The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly, 1940, Columbia University Press, 9781163178164, https://archive.org/stream/pathitrodautobio00powdrich, 8]

Question , Housing

“In our Father, God Almighty, we have our being; and in our Mother of Mercy we have our reforming and restoring: in whom our Parts are oned and all made perfect Man; and by yielding and giving in Grace of the Holy Ghost, we are fulfilled.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 58

God , Parting , Perfection

“Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

The New Colossus http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus

Sea

“Love for all means coldness to something or someone. Even Jesus, let us recall, was unnecessarily rude to his mother at Cana.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

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

Love

“I'm going to say to you what the angels said to every character in the Bible that they encountered, except for Mary, the mother of Jesus. They said "Don't be afraid." We've got a little while to go yet in this life, and it's a scary thing, but don't be afraid. Be of good cheer. He has overcome the world. And He has chosen to dwell within us. And we ain't all that big a deal, but our Savior is. He will walk with us through this life, and when it's over, He will raise us up again, and take us to be where He is. Not because of what we've done, but because of who He is. Because of the love He has for us.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Anderson, Indiana http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/anderson-indiana-nov1695.html (November 16, 1995)
In Concert

Love , Life , World , Angels

“The leading lady of this film (Yeti) happened to be Antonella Interlenghi, the daughter of Antonella Lualdi. The girl very obviously inherited her mother's beauty, but she had the silliest pseudonym I've ever heard. She called herself "Phoenix Grant". I mean, what kind of a name is this? It's just as if I called myself, say, Hyde Park Corner Montgomery. Or Hamburg Rommel, how about that?”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Beauty , Girl , Daughters

“Mother, where are the angels? I'm scared of the changes.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Whispered in a childlike voice.
Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)

Angels , Change

“Lord Peter Wimsey: Your mother, Bunter? Oh, I never knew you had one. I always thought you just sort of came along already-made, so it were.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Clouds of Witness

Clouds of Witness (1926)

“And they walk into these great big places, and there's excitement, and there's hope, and there's a sense of sin. 'Mother wouldn't want me to be here. What if Louise knew that I was here?' A lot of men, you know, would write home and talk about what was going on as if they hadn't seen it. I've been told what goes on in these gambling halls.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

The West (1996)

Men , Hope , Home , Sense

“Religion brought forth Prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.”

Cotton Mather book Magnalia Christi Americana

Magnalia Christi Americana http://books.google.com/books?id=49JdS7NoSawC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Magnalia+Christi+Americana#PPA63,M1 (The Ecclesiastical History of New England), s. 63 (1702). Mather, commenting on the spiritual condition of the colonies, cited an old saying in Latin: Religio peperit Divitias, et filia devoravit matrem.

Religion , Daughters

“Mother held no influence over [my father]; though he bestowed much reverence and attention upon Adela. When she swept his chamber, it was to him a great and momentous ceremony, one that he never omitted to witness, following Adela’s every movement with a mixture of fear and a shudder of delight. He ascribed to her every action some deeper, symbolic meaning, and when the girl pushed a long-handled brush across the floor, with youthful and bold thrusts, it was almost beyond his endurance.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“The Birds” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/birds.htm
His father, Adela (the domestic servant)

Youth , Fear , Girl

“Most mothers want more of dad in their children’s lives, not less.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 186.

Children

“When o'er the green undeluged earth
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine,
How came the world's grey fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign.

And when its yellow lustre smiled
O'er mountains yet untrod,
Each mother held aloft her child
To bless the bow of God.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Theodric : A Domestic Tale; and Other Poems (1825), To the Rainbow

God , World , Smile , Mountain

“For the first [his very first time in Paris], I went to a little hotel, where I spent the night in a sort of nightmare, in which I saw my home, full of melancholy, with my mother, grandmother, and sister spinning in the evening, weeping and thinking of me, praying that I should escape the perdition of Paris. Then the evil demon drove me on before wonderful pictures, which seemed so beautiful, so brilliant, that it appeared to me they took fire and vanished in a heavenly cloud... Finally, without knowing how, I found myself [during one of his his first days in Paris] on the Pont Neuf, from which I saw a magnificent building which I thought must be the Louvre, from the descriptions I had heard of it. I went to it, and mounted the great stairway with a beating heart. At last one great object of my life was attained. I had imagined correctly what I should see. It seemed to me that I was in a world of friends [the paintings of the old masters], in a family where all that I beheld was the reality of my dreams.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Source: Jean-Francois Millet – Peasant and Painter, 1881, p. 46-49

Life , World , Family , Beauty

“In the middle of the floor lay a skeleton, every vestige of flesh gone from the bones to which still clung the mildewed and moldered remnants of what had once been clothing. Upon the bed lay a similar gruesome thing, but smaller, while in a tiny cradle near-by was a third, a wee mite of a skeleton.
To none of these evidences of a fearful tragedy of a long dead day did little Tarzan give but passing heed. His wild jungle life had inured him to the sight of dead and dying animals, and had he known that he was looking upon the remains of his own father and mother he would have been no more greatly moved.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 6 : Jungle Battles

Life , Fear , Animals , Clothes

“Grip your gun like a man, brother!
Let's have a crack at Holy Russia,
Mother
Russia
with her big, fat arse!
Freedom, freedom! Down with the cross!”

Alexander Blok The Twelve

The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 146.

Freedom

“The principle being accepted that all Species of one Genus have arisen from one mother through different fathers, it must be assumed
# That in the beginning the Creator created of each natural Order only one plant with reproductive power.
# That by their various mixings different plants have arisen which belong to the mother's natural order as they are similar to the mother with regard to their fructifications, and are, as it were, species of the order, i. e., genera.
# We may assume that plants have arisen within the orders, i. e. by genera of one order, may mix with each other. In this was there will arise species that should be referred to the mother's genus as her daughters.”

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist

Praelectiones (Lectures, 1744) quoted in Larson (1967:317)

Quotes , Nature , Daughters

“No matter how old we become, we can still call them 'Holy Mother' or 'Father' and put a child-like trust in them (or their agents, who often adopt similar titles for themselves).”

Desmond Morris (1928) English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter

Cited in: Daniel Rancour-Laferriere (1985), Signs of the flesh: an essay on the evolution of hominid sexuality, p. 112

“The only engine big enough to impact Mother Nature is Father Greed.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

Off to the Races, New York Times, December 19, 2009, December 22, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20friedman.html,

Nature

““Promise me,” he said, “that you’ll say nothing, and if something happens to me, you’ll always honor our parents.” I swallowed. He was scaring me. “Look,” he continued, “I’ve met a lot of rich kids and their parents at the Academy, and I’ll tell you, there are no parents that I’m prouder to have as my father and mother than ours. They rose up with nothing, Mundo, except guts and faith and love. Do you understand?” I shook my head. “No, I don’t,” I said. He licked his lips. He seemed to be licking his lips all the time now. “You will,” he said. “You just pay close attention, and you will.””

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Love , Faith , Understanding , Parent

“Either you can subscribe to the American creed which says that God endowed us with our rights, or you can subscribe to the abortion creed which says that those rights are the consequences of our mother's will.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Southern Methodist University, 24 February 1997.
1997

God

“I went vegetarian when I was about… 8 years old. One day I cut this piece of meat open and blood came out of it, and I realized, I asked my mother, “Where did this come from?,” and she said, “From animals,” and that was it.”

Geezer Butler (1949) English musician, bassist and lyricist of Black Sabbath

“ Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler,” interview with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (5 May 2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5ASHXylc-g.

Animals

“But why do you not cease to call Mary the mother of God, if Isaiah nowhere says that he that is born of the virgin is the "only begotten Son of God" and "the firstborn of all creation?"”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Against the Galileans (c. 361) as translated in The Works of the Emperor Julian, http://books.google.com/books?id=ZGliAAAAMAAJ&q=%22But+why+do+you+not+cease+to+call+Mary+the+mother+of+God%22&dq=%22But+why+do+you+not+cease+to+call+Mary+the+mother+of+God%22&lr=&pgis=1 edited by Wilmer Cave Wright, London, W. Heinemann; New York, The Macmillan co., (1913 - 1923), volume 3, p. 399, ISBN 0674990145 ISBN 9780674990142 .
General sources

God

“The male is just a bundle of conditioned reflexes, is incapable of a mentally free response, is tied to his early conditioning, is determined completely by his past experiences. His earliest experiences are with his mother, and he is throughout his life tied to her. It never becomes completely clear to the male that he is not part of his mother, that he is him and she is her.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 5.

Life , Past , Parting

“He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995)

Truth

“The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Article "Abortion", The Sunday Times, 21 May 1972

Love , Bird , Singing

“Suspicion is the mother of invention
And a fishin' expedition
Needs no repetition
For the end is never new: you need a friend
and you.”

Walt Kelly (1913–1973) American cartoonist

The Jack Acid Society Black Book (1960)

“I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Speech in Toronto (1930); as quoted in "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996) by James A. Haught
As quoted in Jesus: Myth Or Reality? (2006) by Ian Curtis
Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either.
As quoted in The New York Times (19 April 1936)
Variant: I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose.

God

“My father was able to acquire a copy of the first printed edition of the Granth Saheb of Sri Garibdas soon after it was published from Baroda. He would frequently read it out to my mother and myself with his own running commentary on the lives of saints and bhaktas as they were mentioned in the sakhis and the ragas. I also sat sometimes turning the pages of this work. I hardly had the mental equipment to understand the mystic messages. But the stories of some great saints like Kabir, Nanak, Ravidas, Dadu, Namdev, Chippa, Pipa and Dhanna were very strongly impressed on my mind, as also the stories of renowned Muslim sufis like Rabiya, Mansur, Adham Sultan, Junaid, Bayazid and Shams Tabriz. These stories were to flower into an abiding satsanga (holy company) in years to come.”

Garib Das (1717–1778) Hindu Yogi

Goel, S. R. (2007). How I became a Hindu.

Flowers , Understanding , Reading

“"You kids think you invented sex," my mother was fond of saying. But hadn't we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn't we all come away feeling we'd discovered something unspeakably modern? What produced in others a feeling of exhilaration left Jason and me with a mortifying feeling of guilt. We fled the room as if, in our fumblings, we had uncapped some virus we still might escape if we ran fast enough. Had one of the counselors not caught me scaling the fence, I felt certain I could have made it back to Raleigh by morning, skittering across the surface of the ocean like one of those lizards often featured on television wildlife programs.”

David Sedaris Naked

Essay: "I like guys". (p.106-107) [Page numbers per the 2006 Abacus paperback edition.]
Naked (1997)

Feeling , Sex , Training , Thinking

“I have not done anything to merit being thrown out. I don't understand why I am being attacked and held personally responsible. I am more loyal to my mother-in-law than even to my mother.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On being driven away by her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, as quoted in "Son's Widow Quits Gandhi Household" http://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/31/world/son-s-widow-quits-gandhi-household.html, The New York Times (31 March 1982)
1981-1990

Law , Understanding , Personality

“I remember my father didn't say very much – he was a very laconic man. When he'd go to a party, he would become very animated. My mother would say – 'Look at him. He never says a word at home and look at him now.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

This is how we all are.
John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

Home , Animals

“Awake
Hindus:
Mother! The flowers of our worship have crowned thee! Parsees:
Mother! The flame of our hope shall surround you Mussulmans:
Mother! The sword of our love shall defend thee Christians:
Mother! The song of thy faith shall attend thee All creeds:
Shall not our dauntless devotion avail thee?
Harken! O Queen O! goddess, we hail thee!”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Her poem in "The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian Poetry, 1828-1965", p=161
Poetry

Love , Faith , Hope , Flowers

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.”

Albert Camus book The Stranger

Aujourd'hui maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.
First sentences of the book; some translations retain the original Maman.
The Stranger (1942)

“In the dark womb where I began
My mother's life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her.”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

Ballads and Poems (1910), " C. L. M. http://theotherpages.org/poems/masef01.html"

Life , Death , Beauty , Birth

“As a little girl my mother used to take me with her to her fittings with her very expensive seamstress. I was dazzled by the beauty of the fabrics and the whole procedure. I still remember the feel of expensive taffeta.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On the beauty of fabrics
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

Beauty , Feeling , Girl

“The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually, but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money, or joked [about] because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice and scheming are considered feminine virtues, as long as man is the only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented, and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness!

Although individual women from pre-historic times have accomplished much, as a class they have been set aside to minister to men's comfort. But when once the higher has been tried, civilization repudiates the lower. Men have come to see that no advance can be made with one half-humanity set apart merely for the functions of sex; that children are quite liable to inherit from the mother, and should have opportunities to inherit the accumulated ability and culture and character that is produced only by intellectual and civil activity. The world has tried to move with men for dynamos, and "clinging" women impeding every step of progress, in arts, science, industry, professions, they have been a thousand years behind men because forced into seclusion. They have been over-sexed. They have naturally not been impressed with their duties to society, in its myriad needs, or with their own value as individuals.

The new woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works.”

Winnifred Harper Cooley (1874–1967) American author and lecturer

The New Womanhood (New York, 1904) 31f.

Women , Men , Money , Children

“In Paragon we met Mrs. Foley and Mrs. Dowdeswell with her yellow shawl airing out, and at the bottom of Kingsdown Hill we met a gentleman in a buggy, who, on minute examination, turned out to be Dr. Hall — and Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1799-06-17) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Dead

“Think about it, I say. How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not.”

Ayelet Waldman (1964) American- Israeli writer

Salon.com column http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/waldman/2005/03/28/gay_marriage/index1.html

Men , People , Thinking

“I don't have a bank account because I don't know my mother's maiden name and apparently that's the key to the whole thing right there. I go in every few weeks and guess.”

Paula Poundstone (1959) American comedian

" Women of the Night http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0295037/", HBO, 1988.

“Every time a Black Freedom Fighter is murdered or captured, the pigs try to create the impression that they have quashed the movement, destroyed our forces, and put down the Black Revolution. The pigs also try to give the impression that five or ten guerrillas are responsible for every revolutionary action carried out in amerika. That is nonsense. That is absurd. Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quentin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us. Many jobless Black veterans and welfare mothers are joining our ranks. Brothers and sisters from all walks of life, who are tired of suffering passively, make up the BLA.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Life , Sister , Freedom , Suffering

“Death came like a friend to restore thee
To those who had died before thee:
Father, mother,
Sister, brother—
There were none of these to mourn o’er thee.
But now that Death has found thee,
Thy kindred and friends are round thee;
In their rest they are laid
In the dark yew shade,
And cold sleep like their own has bound thee.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(18th August 1827) Euthanasia
The London Literary Gazette, 1827

Death , Sister , Sleep

“My father was a violinist, my mother a pianist. I was born into a world of music... The practicing of my father's pupils accompanied every thought and action of my childish life.... Then when I was thirty [c. 1906], my career as musician was brought to an end by Vollard [art-dealer in Paris] who bought all the pictures I possessed, pictures which I had painted over several years with unbounded enthusiasm during such hours of freedom as I was able to spare between [music]-lessons to my pupils.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 27

Life , World , Art , Music

“"I wish there were no more exams ever," said Kestrel.
"I wish nothing bad happens to Kess," said Bowman.
"I wish my darling children to be safe and happy for ever," said their mother. She always wished like that when she was worried.
"I wish the wind singer would sing again," said their father.”

William Nicholson (1948) British screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Source: The "Wind on Fire" Trilogy (2000-2003), The Wind Singer (Book 1), p. 42

Children , Singing , Happiness

“There is no question that the adult caregivers play an important role in the baby's life. It is from these older people that babies learn their first language, have their first experiences in forming and maintaining relationships, and get their first lessons in following rules. But the socialization researchers go on to draw other conclusions: that what children learn in the early years about relationships and rules sets the pattern for later relationships and later rule-following, and hence determines the entire course of their lives. I used to think so too. I still believe that children need to learn about relationships and rules in their early years; it is also important that they acquire a language. But I no longer believe that this early learning, which in our society generally takes place within the home, sets the pattern for what is to follow. Although the learning itself serves a purpose, the content of what children learn may be irrelevant to the world outside their home. They may cast it off when they step outside as easily as the dorky sweater their mother made them wear.”

Judith Rich Harris book The Nurture Assumption

The Nurture Assumption, chapter 1. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/harris-nurture.html

Life , Children , People , World

“The promise had not failed her.... She had won everything from life, for she had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselves in her ear.... "Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind."”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIII "The Last Stage"

Life , God , World , Hope

“Between the ages of five and nine I was almost perpetually at war with the educational system. …As soon as I learned from my mother that there was there was a place called school that I must attend willy-nilly—a place where you were obliged to think about matters prescribed by a 'teacher,' not about matters decided by yourself—I was appalled.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

The Small World of Fred Hoyle: an Autobiography (1986)

War , Age , Education , School

“Dear Hawkesworth, Mother Goose came to a rehearsal before Christmas day, having arrived on Saturday for the knife... Many thanks for the brace of pheasants and hares—by the same train—indeed, I think it fortunate, for with all the strife and strike of pokers and stokers for the railroads - their commons every day growing worse - in shareholders and directors squabbling about the winding up the last Bill, to come to some end for those lines known or supposed to be in difficulty... I am sorry to say my health is much on the wain. I cannot bear the same fatigue, or have the same bearing against it, I formerly had - but time and tide stop not - but I must stop writing for today..”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote from Turner's letter to Mr. Hawkesworth, 24 December, 1849; as quoted in The life of J.M.W. Turner, Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, pp. 90-91
1821 - 1851

Health , Thinking , Time , Christmas

“When I was a few years, often approached the door of the room where my mother exactly practicing, listened to sounds and imagined this music.”

Łukasz Pawlikowski (1997) Polish cellist

Kiedy miałem kilka lat, często podchodziłem do drzwi pokoju, w którym akurat ćwiczyła mama, wsłuchiwałem się w dźwięki i wyobrażałem sobie tę muzykę.
A little cellist from Krakow conquers the world, warszawa.naszemiasto.pl, 2008-04-02, Polish http://warszawa.naszemiasto.pl/archiwum/1664386,maly-wiolonczelista-z-krakowa-podbija-swiat,id,t.html,

Music , Imagination

“"Air! Air!" croaked Kralefsky, "Give me air!"
"Interesting," said Colonel Ribbindane. "Saw a pygmy like that once in the Congo… been trapped in an elephant’s stomach. The elephant is the largest African quadruped.."
"Do get him out," said Mother agitatedly. "Get some brandy."
"Fan him! Blow on him!" shrilled Margo, and burst into tears. "He’s dying, he’s dying, and he never finished his trick."”

Gerald Durrell book Fauna and Family

On a magic trick shown by family friends
The Garden of the Gods (1978)

Tear

“Yes, so it is that knowledge itself must die in order to blossom forth again in death as will; the freedom of thought, belief, and conscience, these wonderful flowers of three centuries will sink back into the lap of mother earth so that a new freedom, the freedom will, will be nourished with its most noble juices.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 19

Death , Flowers , Knowledge , Freedom

“My mother taught me a Spanish saying,” he remarked, “that it takes four men to make a salad: a spendthrift for the oil, a philosopher for the seasonings, a miser for the vinegar, and a madman for the tossing.”

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

Section 1 “Marque and Reprisal”, Chapter V (pp. 37-38)
The Star Fox (1965)

Men , Season

“If plants, and live stock as well, require space and air, sunlight and love, children need them even more. The only real wealth of our country lies in the men and women of the next generation. A farmer would rather produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts. How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds. In a home where there are too many children in proportion to the living space, the air and sunlight, the children are usually overcrowded and underfed. They are a constant burden on their mother's overtaxed strength and the father's earning capacity. Such homes cannot be gardens in any sense of the word.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Radio WFAB Syracuse, , transcripted in "The Meaning of Radio Birth Control", April 1924, p. 111
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Love , Women , Men , Children

“On their date, my father said to Renee, "Tomorrow I'm going to come by your parents' house, pick you up, and we're going to go hunt for apartments. The three of us will live together and be a little family." It was really romantic at the drive-in, so this was all fabulous. He dropped her off at my grandparents' house. The next day, my mother waited and waited. He never came. He never called. Finally, she called her friend, Janet, who had recently married Nicolas' brother Gabriel. She asked if Janet had seen my father. "Oh honey, he's moved to California. He left this morning," Janet said.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

pg. 39-40
Pretty Mess book (2018)

Family , Parent , Waiting , Housing

“Did not shame restrain him and awe of the mother by his side.”
Ni pudor et junctae teneat reverentia matris.

Statius book Achilleid

Source: Achilleid, Book I, Line 312

“That was the only time my mother saw me on stage. At one point in the play I am strangled and my mother jumped from her seat and screamed: 'No. You will not get away with murder. You cannot do this to my daughter.' Friends explained to her that this was not for real — that we were acting. But she made such a fuss. Everyone was so embarrassed. On stage my heart sank.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

As quoted in Nkrumah, Gamal (1–7 November 2001)
Al-Ahram Weekly interview (2001)

Time , Heart , Daughters

“Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers!”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Alice's Restaurant Massacree

People

“Great works of art can be produced in barbarous societies — in fact the very narrowness of primitive society gives their ornamental art a peculiar concentration and vitality. At some time in the ninth century one could have looked down the Seine and seen the prow of a Viking ship coming up the river. Looked at today in the British Museum, it is a powerful work of art; but to the mother of a family trying to settle down in her little hut, it would have seemed less agreeable — as menacing to her civilisation as the periscope of a nuclear submarine.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 1: The Skin of Our Teeth

Family , Art , Time

“My dad was great. He was very droll, very dry. The first time that he came to London when I was in the theatre and my name was in lights for the very first time and we had the same name, and he passed the theatre with me on the way, he was going to see a matinee and me, and my mother and he passed the theatre, and I said, 'Look,' and he looked up at my name in lights, and stood there for five minutes, and I'm going, 'I want to have lunch and get back for the matinee,' and I'm with my mother, and he still stood there and so, I went back to get him and he just said, 'I never thought that I'd see my name in lights.”

Albert Finney (1936–2019) English actor

Interview with Paul Fischer at Dark Horizons (2 December 2003).

Way , Light , Time

“My mother always told me the best way to learn to deal with a man was to learn to ride a mule. She said they have about equal brains most of the time. Sometimes the mule is smarter.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Egwene al'Vere
(15 November 1990)

Way , Learning , Time

“Babies sleeping in their mothers' arms were startled by the hiss, and their anxious mothers waking in alarm hugged them closer to their breasts.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV. Homeward Bound, Lines 136–138

Sleep , Baby

“I come from a world of conservative Christian thought. I've absorbed Christianity with my mother's milk. So it must be obvious that certain… archetypes, aren't they called? — stick in one's mind, and that certain lines, certain courses of events, certain ways of behaving, become adequate symbols for what goes on in the Christian system of ideas. … I keep myself supplied with my own angels and demons…”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Torsten Manns interview.
Bergman on Bergman (1970)

World , Angels , Way , Idea

“She wanted to tell me. Maybe she even tried. But she couldn't. It wasn't because I was only twelve. It was because I was her child, created by her and Father because they wanted to be in bed together and nothing else would do, nobody else would do. You see? … Because to the child, he was not created by his mother's and his father's passion or capacity for it. He couldn't have been because he was there first, he came first, before the passion; he created the passion, not only it but the man and the woman who served it; his father is not his father but his son-in-law, his mother not his mother but his daughter-in-law if he is a girl. … and if a boy or a girl really is his father's and her mother's father-in-law or mother-in-law, which would make the girl her brother's mother no matter how much younger she was, then a girl with just one brother and him a twin at that, would maybe be his wife and mother too.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 19; Charles Mallinson's mother, Maggie, and his uncle, Gavin Stevens, besides being their parents' only children, are twins.
The Town (1957)

Law , Girl , Boy , Passion

“The mother tongue is propaganda.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

The University of Windsor review, Volumes 1-2, 1965, p. 10
1960s

“But I would adore that thief who is my mother.”

Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal (1949)

“The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she'll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college — and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child … and it is still moral behavior even when it fails.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

Family , Dogs , Behavior , Cats

“[Final lines] mother, mother, save your unhappy son! Let a tear fall on his aching head! See how they torture him! Press the poor orphan to your bosom! He has no rest in this world; they hunt him from place to place.

Mother, mother, have pity on your sick child! And do you know that the Bey of Algiers has a wart under his nose?”

Nikolai Gogol book Diary of a Madman

Diary of a Madman (1835)

World , Tear

“Whatever good deeds have been done by me, those the people accept and those they follow. Therefore they have progressed and will continue to progress by being respectful to mother and father, respectful to elders, by courtesy to the aged and proper behavior towards Brahmans and ascetics, towards the poor and distressed, and even towards servants and employees.”

Ashoka (-304–-232 BC) Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty

Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)

People , Age , Behavior

“How the mother is to be pitied who hath handsome daughters! Locks, bolts, bars, and lectures of morality are nothing to them: they break through them all. They have as much pleasure in cheating a father and mother, as in cheating at cards.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Mrs. Peachum, Act I, sc. viii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Pleasure , Cheating , Daughters

“I never had a stage mother, which is probably one of the reasons why I’m still doing this.”

Michelle Trachtenberg (1985) American actress

Interview by Nicki Gostin, Newsweek, Updated: 10:46 a.m. ET March 11, 2005

“MOTHERS! / Can you afford to have a large family? / Do you want any more children? / If not, why do you have them? / DO NOT KILL, / DO NOT TAKE LIFE / BUT PREVENT / Safe, Harmless Information can be obtained of trained nurses at / 46 AMBOY STREET.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

(Handbill advertising Sanger's first clinic, Brooklyn, New York, October 1916) https://sangerpapers.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/sanger_flyer.jpg
published in "Birthright: What's next for Planned Parenthood." Jill Lepore. The New Yorker, Nov. 14 2011 - page 48.

Life , Children , Family , Training

“Male mastery in marriage is a social illusion, nurtured by women exhorting their creations to play and walk. At the emotional heart of every marriage is a pietà of mother and son.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 53

Women , Marriage , Heart

“He wrote his mother that he had begun to hate the sight of his typewriter.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 9, Epiphany, p. 131

Hate

“In all the Romish [Catholic] countries of Europe, France, Italy, Germany, etc., the God Christ, as well as his mother, are described in their old pictures and statues to be black. The infant God in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself perfectly black. If the reader doubts my word he may go to the Cathedral at Moulins—to the famous Chapel of the Virgin at Loretto—to the Church of the Annunciata—the Church at St. Lazaro or the Church of St. Stephen at Genoa—to St. Francisco at Pisa—to the Church at Brixen in Tyrol and to that at Padua—to the Church of St. Theodore at Munich—to a church and to the Cathedral at Augsburg, where a black virgin and child as large as life—to Rome and the Borghese chapel of Maria Maggiore—to the Pantheon—to a small chapel of St. Peters on the right hand side on entering, near the door; and in fact, to almost innumerable other churches in countries professing the Romish religion.”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Vol. I., p. 138.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

Life , God , Religion , Christ

“Rodriguez: When my mother read Hunger of Memory, she was horrified by it and she asked me, as an accusation, "Why did you hold these things in all of your years against me, why didn't you tell me? If I offended you by talking about how dark you were in the summer why didn't you tell me that? And tell me to stop? Why do you hold that for another 25 years and then spill it all out?"”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Good question, Mama. Good question.
Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez (1999)

Hunger , Question , Memory , Reading

“Georgie Pringle: The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother: And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Pringle, "the class comic", has been asked to choose the bible reading for a secondary school class. He has a reputation for knowing "all the dirty bits in the bible off by heart," according to Nigel Barton's narration. The quote is from Ezekiel, chapter 23, verses 1-3.
Stand up, Nigel Barton (1965)

Women , Youth , Daughters