In celebration of mother’s day, we at Nebraska Children and Families Foundation have collected some of our favorite quotes about motherhood.
Everyday, we meet all kinds of moms – young moms, not-so-young moms, single moms, married moms, divorced moms, working moms, stay-at-home-moms, birth moms, adoptive moms, foster moms, stand-in moms, grandmothers reprising the mom role – and they all have one thing in common: They’ve taken the responsibility of caring for a child, and making choices to make that child’s life the best it can be.
This is for you, moms!
“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
“Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate.” — Charlotte Gray
“Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.”
― Marguerite Duras
“When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?” it’s a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.” – Erma Bombeck
“A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie”. -Tenneva Jordan
“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” – Abraham Lincoln
“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
“And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see — or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.” -Alice Walker
“Be a Mother who is committed to loving her children into standing on higher ground than the enviroment surrounding them. Mothers are endowed with a love that is unlike any other love on the face of the earth.” – Mary Pay Hinckley
“Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs in my field, since the payment is pure love.” -Mildred B. Vermont
“The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant.” -Jane Sellman
“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.” -Honoré de Balzac
“It is the custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.” – JM Barrie
“Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” -Meryl Streep
“Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.” – Stevie Wonder
“Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark . . . to have been loved so deeply . . . will give us some protection forever” – Albus Dumbledore in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
“In all my efforts to learn to read, my mother shared fully my ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way she could. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.” -Booker T. Washington
“ Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” – Elizabeth Stone
“Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.” -Lisa Alther
“Those helpless bundles of power and promise that come into our world show us our true selves – who we are, who we are not, and who we wish we could be.” – Hillary Rodham Clinton
“Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.” -James Joyce
“Motherhood is still the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It’s huge and scary – an act of infinite optimism.” – Gilda Radner
“My mother is a walking miracle” – Leonardo DiCaprio
“Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.” -Oprah Winfrey
“The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother’s side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.” -Erich Fromm
“There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one.” -Jill Churchill
“A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.” – Victor Hugo
“Mothers are all slightly insane.” -J.D. Salinger
“A mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s.” -Diana, Princess of Wales
“Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of children.” -William Makepeace Thackeray
“You transition as a mother from literally just pulling a booger out of a person’s nose whenever you see one, until at some point they assert: ‘No, I’m a person. You can’t fix my underpants on the subway. ‘” – Tina Fey
“Sleep is out…tired is the new black.” – Amy Poehler
Nebraska Children's mission is to maximize the potential of Nebraska’s children, youth, and families through collaboration and community-centered impact.
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