I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) American Abolitionist, Author
Mother – that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.
—Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian Clergyman, Religious Leader
What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love, fixed in permanent outline forever?
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911) American Social Reformer, Clergyman
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.
—John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) American Catholic Clergyman, Educator, Essayist, Biographer
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
—Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist
I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of their fathers.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands – bare hands – and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands – a kind of mad courage.
—Robert Fulghum (b.1937) American Unitarian Universalist Author, Essayist, Clergyman
That best academy, a mother’s knee.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.
—Lisa Alther (b.1944) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
The desolation and terror of, for the first time, realizing that the mother can lose you, or you her, and your own abysmal loneliness and helplessness without her.
—Francis Thompson (1859–1907) English Poet, Ascetic
There are lots of things that you can brush under the carpet about yourself until you’re faced with somebody whose needs won’t be put off.
—Angela Carter (1940–92) English Novelist
The Enemy, who wears her mother’s usual face and confidential tone, has access; doubtless stares into her writing case and listens on the phone.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.
—Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American Novelist, Editor, Academic
Women know
The way to rear up children (to be just)
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet
How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.
—Alice Walker (b.1944) American Novelist, Activist
Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.
—Meryl Streep (b.1949) American Actor
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate.
And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
A man never sees all that his mother has been to him till it’s too late to let her know that he sees it.
—William Dean Howells (1837–1920) American Novelist, Short story Author, Editor
A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
There is a point where you aren’t as much mom and daughter as you are adults and friends. It doesn’t happen for everyone–but it did for Mom and me.
—Jamie Lee Curtis (b.1958) American Film Actress, Children’s Books Writer
All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat; psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysis and to foist their problems on to the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defense. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
With what price we pay for the glory of motherhood.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men’s mothers.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American Baptist Minister
The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.
—Sri Rajneesh (Osho) (1931–90) Indian Spiritual Teacher
A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends, who rejoiced with us in our sunshine desert us; when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Men never think, at least seldom think, what a hard task it is for us women to go through this very often. God’s will be done, and if He decrees that we are to have a great number of children why we must try to bring them up as useful and exemplary members of society.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
—Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist
Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same — and most mothers kiss and scold together.
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American Novelist, Human Rights Activist
The watchful mother tarries nigh, though sleep has closed her infants eyes.
—John Keble (1792–1866) English Religious Leader
Motherhood is priced
Of God, at price no man may dare
To lessen or misunderstand.
—Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–85) American Novelist, Civil Rights Activist
The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty. From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American Sociologist, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Poet, Feminist
One lamp – thy mother’s love – amid the stars
Shall lift its pure flame changeless, and before
The throne of God, burn through eternity –
Holy – as it was lit and lent thee here.
—Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–67) American Poet, Playwright, Essayist