50+ Great Quotes on Motherhood
I’ve spent decades collecting notable quotes on a variety of topics — and today I’m sharing 50+ of my favorite quotes about motherhood. Enjoy! And if you know of any good ones I’ve missed, drop them in the comment section below!
50+ of My Favorite Quotes on Motherhood:
“If you have a mom, there is nowhere you are likely to go where a prayer has not already been.”
– Robert Brault
“One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.”
– George Herbert
If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?
– Milton Berle
“A mother’s arms are made of tenderness, and children sleep soundly in them.”
– Victor Hugo
“No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother’s love.”
– Edwin Chapin
“The formative period for building character for eternity is in the nursery. The mother is queen of that realm and sways a scepter more potent than that of kings or priests. “
“A mother’s hug lasts long after she lets go.”
– Leonardo DiCaprio
“A mom forgives us all our faults, not to mention one or two we don’t even have.”
– Robert Brault
“An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.”
– Spanish Proverb
“Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired; it need not be deserved.”
– Erich Fromm
“When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.”
– Sophia Loren
“Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.’”
– Proverbs 31:28-29
“Over the years, I learned so much from mom. She taught me about the importance of home and history and family and tradition. She also taught me that aging need not mean narrowing the scope of your activities and interests or a diminution of the great pleasures to be had in the everyday.”
– Martha Stewart
“Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
“A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”
– Dorothy Canfield Fisher
“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.”
– Honoré de Balzac
”Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had, and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.”
-Linda Wooten
“A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.”
– Peter De Vries
“Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
“It takes courage to raise children.”
– John Steinbeck
“The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that — a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.”
– Unknown
“Successful mothers are not the ones who have never struggled. They are the ones who never give up, despite their struggles.”
– Sharon Jaynes
“Motherhood is a choice you make every day, to put someone else’s happiness and well-being ahead of your own… and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.”
– Donna Ball
My Mother
Who fed me from her gentle breast,
And hushed me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?
My Mother.
When pain and sickness made me cry,
Who gazed upon my heavy eye,
And wept, for fear that I should die?
My Mother.
Who dressed my doll in clothes so gay,
And fondly taught me how to play,
And minded all I had to say?
My Mother.
Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My Mother.
And can I ever cease to be
Affectionate and kind to thee,
Who was so very kind to me?
My Mother.
– Anne Taylor
“Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.”
– Oprah Winfrey
“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.”
– Rajneesh
“The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant.”
– Jane Sellman
“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
– Exodus 20:12
“A mother understands what a child does not say.”
– Jewish proverb
“That best academy, a mother’s knee.”
– James Russell Lowell
“There is an instinct in a woman to love most her own child—and an instinct to make any child who needs her love, her own.”
– Robert Brault
“The mother of boys work son-up to son-down.”
– Author Unknown
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”
– Isaiah 49:15
”A mother’s love grows by giving.”
– Charles Lamb
“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 should be curiosity.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
“You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool mom.”
– Author Unknown
A man’s work is from sun to sun, but a mother’s work is never done.
“There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?” it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.
– Erma Bombeck
The Reading Mother
I had a Mother who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea,
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth,
” Blackbirds ” stowed in the hold beneath
I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days;
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.
I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Gêlert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness blent with his final breath.
I had a Mother who read me the things
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings —
Stories that stir with an upward touch,
Oh, that each mother of boys were such!
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be —
I had a Mother who read to me.
– Strickland W. Gillilan
“My son, keep your father’s command and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.”
– Proverbs 6:20
“My mother had a slender, small body, but a heart so large that everybody’s joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.”
– Mark Twain
“There is only one most beautiful child in the world, and every mother has it.”
– Chinese Proverb
“Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.”
– Erma Bombeck
“Mother – that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.”
– T. DeWitt Talmage
“Sooner or later, we all quote our mothers.”
– Bernard Williams
“How beautifully everything is arranged by Nature; as soon as a child enters the world, it finds a mother ready to take care of it.”
– Jules Michelet
“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.”
– George Washington
“Motherhood is a choice you make every day, to put someone else’s happiness and well-being ahead of your own… and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.”
– Donna Ball
“He makes the barren woman abide in the house As a joyful mother of children. Praise the LORD!”
– Psalm 113:9
“Mothers and their children are in a category all their own. There’s no bond so strong in the entire world, no love so instantaneous and forgiving.”
– Gail Tsukiyama
”All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
– Psalm 139:13
“There is no velvet so soft as a mother’s lap, no rose as lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps.”
– Archibald Thompson
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother ‘(which is the first commandment with a promise) that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on the earth.”
– Ephesians 6:2-3
