quotations about mothers
We mothers are a testing ground for our children.
RUBY GWIN
A Day That Would End Tearing At Your Heart
In those days my mother was given to the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
My happiest childhood memories are of times in our backyard. My mother had an old clothesline that hung out in front. It seemed like it stretched a mile long, and I loved sitting in the sun while she hung clothes.
TRACI LORDS
Underneath It All
Among the impulses whose object is a preservation of existence must also be put the love of offspring. So much has been said and written about parental love, about mothers' love especially, that it may seem to the reader doubtful whether this impulse belongs here among the lower animal impulses. But a moment's reflection will convince him that the love of offspring is in its lowest forms a purely animal instinct; seen in the cat's care for her kitten, the hen's for her chickens, the cow's for her calf in every farm-yard; seen also, alas! as a mere blind semi-sensual instinct, in many a home, where the father or mother cannot bear to inflict pain, or thwart a desire, or permit a disappointment, or allow a burden, and so the child grows up, coddled and tended, to be weak and wayward and willful, and often worse. This parental instinct, guided and inspired by the higher nature, is the child's guardian from present evil, and guide into future manhood; but unguided and uninspired, it protects only from pain, which is God's method of discipline, and seeking only happiness, guides often into destruction and misery. It is, too, quite evident that it is necessary for the protection of existence; for the infant, whether of man or animal, is rarely able at first to protect himself; the higher his rank in the scale of being the greater the necessity for protection; and if there were no parental instinct, if there was nothing but a general and distributed sentiment of pity, he would certainly surfer greatly, and would generally die for want of the power in himself of self-protection. The parental instinct endows him with all the faculties and powers of his parent, especially with those of his mother--for in both brutes and men this instinct is almost invariably the strongest in the female--until his own powers have attained sufficient growth to make him able to protect himself.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.
JOHN STEINBECK
East of Eden
You, mother, are not responsible to set the whole world right; you are responsible only to make one pure, sacred, and divine household.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Mothers are a biological necessity; fathers are a social invention.
MARGARET MEAD
attributed, Just Like Mum Says: A Book of Mum's Wit
But all mothers are a part of Mother Nature, and though the infant life may break from its individual parent, it never escapes the shrouding protection of a natural environment.
NORTHROP FRYE
Northrop Frye's Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake
In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.
N. K. JEMISIN
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
A mother's body remembers her babies -- the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
The Poisonwood Bible
A mother's love, in a degree, sanctifies the most worthless offspring.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
I ask you, what good is a big picture window and the lavish appointments and a priceless decor in a home if there is no mother there?
SPENCER W. KIMBALL
The Miracle of Forgiveness
All mothers are like the Mother Goddess.... Protector, kisser of wounds, disciplinarian. The divine mother is the abode of dharma, or righteousness.
ALEXANDRA GRAY
The Yoga Teacher
The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love--that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Vanity Fair
Woo her not till thou hast seen her mother, for a score of years worketh wonders.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
In the presence of a mother, we feel that our childhood has not all departed.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust