Mother quotes
11.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside mother — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Words of encouragement fan the spark of genius into the flame of achievement. Legend tells us that Lincoln's dying mother called her small son to her bedside and whispered, 'Be somebody, Abe'."
"And because I love this life I know I shall love death as well The child cries out when From the right breast the mother Takes it away, in the very next moment To find in the left one Its consolation."
"And when children begin to use their reason, fathers and mothers should take great pains to fill their hearts with the fear of God. This the good Queen Blanche did most earnestly by St. Louis, her son: witness her oft-repeated words, "My son, I would sooner see you die than guilty of a mortal sin;" words which sank so deeply into the saintly monarch's heart, that he himself said there was no day on which they did not recur to his mind, and strengthen him in treading God's ways."
"Many great persons have been of opinion that love is no other thing than complacency itself, in which they have had much appearance of reason. For not only does the movement of love take its origin from the complacency which the heart feels at the first approach of good, and find its end in a second complacency which returns to the heart by union with the thing beloved--but further, it depends for its preservation on this complacency, and can only subsist through it as through its mother and nurse; so that as soon as the complacency ceases, love ceases."
"I guess I always knew there was something wrong with me, but I thought it was because of my father, or my mother, and the pain they bequeathed to me like a family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation. - Tobias Eaton"
"As for myself, I look upon all women as my Mother. This is a very pure attitude of mind. There is no risk or danger in it. To look upon a woman as one's sister is also not bad. But the other attitudes are very difficult and dangerous. It is almost impossible to keep to the purity of the ideal."
"Without self awareness we are as babies in the cradles."
"She was not, herself, hugely in favour of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn't exactly difficult. Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they'd been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said "mother," everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said "child"."
"My mother was the making of me."
"I think of myself as Rebecca Wells from Lodi Plantation, in Central Louisiana, a girl who was lucky enough to be born into a family that encouraged creativity and didn't call me lazy or nuts when I dressed up in my mother's peignoirs and played the piano, having painted a small sign decorated in glitter that read 'The Piano Fairy Girl."
"It makes me unhappy when brothers make babies and leave a young mother to be a pappy."
"Virtue is the nursing-mother of all human pleasures, who, in rendering them just, renders them also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them in breath and appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses, whets our desires to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberal mother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if not to lassitude."
"I suppose, mother-in-laws are frightening figures. Especially, more so for mother-in-laws to be."
"Nature loves you ten times more than a mother loves her newborn."
"No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology."
"Yes, the words of the Mother can be heard as clearly as we hear one another. But one requires a fine nerve to hear Mother's words."
"I think the single biggest thing that money gave me-and obviously I came from a place where I was a single mother and it really was hand to mouth at one point. It was literally as poor as you can get in Britain without being homeless at one point. If you've ever been there you will never, ever take for granted that you don't need to worry. Never."
"More than mother and son, they were accomplices in solitude."
"I had a good, sound upbringing with sensible people around me. I was brought up by intelligent parents. My mother always said to me, "You've got to work at your career and you've got to be good at it. Okay, you've had a bit of success but that's not longevity. You've got to really work for a long time.""
"I see a huge paradox in me - the intense need to be loved and the search for approval juxtaposed with the need to nurture other people, to be the mother I never had."
