114 Mother Quotes

Mothers hold a special place in our hearts, offering boundless love, unyielding support, and unwavering strength. Whether you're looking to celebrate your own mom, honor a maternal figure in your life, or simply find the right words to express your feelings, our curated collection of the top 114 mother quotes is here to inspire. Each quote has been thoughtfully selected to capture the profound bond between mother and child, celebrating the unique, sometimes complicated, but always irreplaceable relationship that shapes us all. Dive in and discover words that resonate, uplift, and pay tribute to the incredible moms who make the world a brighter place.

1. “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.” - Calvin Trillin

2. “When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.” - C.S. Forester

3. “All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” - Abraham Lincoln

4. “How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline."I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave.""Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline."Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.” - Neil Gaiman

5. “No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.” - Erma Bombeck

6. “Is Lisa going to the prom?"I shelved my worries for the moment. "I don't know, Mom. We don't talk about the You-Know-What. We made a pact.""You could go together, if you didn't want to mess with dates and things.""I don't want to mess with the prom at all, Mom."She ignored me, placidly eating popcorn, piece by piece. "Some girls in my high school class did that and had a wonderful time. They weren't lesbians or anything. Not that it would matter if they were.""That's nice, Mom. I'm glad you're so open-minded." I grabbed my Coke and the popcorn bowl and headed for the stairs, because I could go my whole life without ever hearing my mother talk about lesbians again."Maybe you could take Justin to the prom," she called after me, laughter in her voice. "He is such a hottie."Shoot me now.” - Rosemary Clement-Moore

7. “You are doing God's work. You are doing it wonderfully well. He is blessing you, and He will bless you, --even--no, -especially--when your days and your nights may be most challenging. Like the woman who anonymously, meekly, perhaps even with hesitation and some embarrassment, fought her way through the crowd just to touch the hem of the Master's garment, so Christ will say to the women who worry and wonder and weep over their responsibility as mothers, `Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.' And it will make your children whole as well.” - Jeffrey R. Holland

8. “The mother memories that are closest to my heart are the small gentle ones that I have carried over from the days of my childhood. They are not profound, but they have stayed with me through life, and when I am very old, they will still be near . . . Memories of mother drying my tears, reading aloud, cutting cookies and singing as she did, listening to prayers I said as I knelt with my forehead pressed against her knee, tucking me in bed and turning down the light. They have carried me through the years and given my life such a firm foundation that it does not rock beneath flood or tempest.” - Margaret Sanger

9. “Bertie stared at his mother. She spoils things, he thought. All she ever does is spoil things. He had not started this conversation, and it was not his fault that they were now talking about Grey Owl. He sounded rather a nice man to Bertie. Any why should he not dress up in feathers and live in the forests if that was what he wanted to do? It was typical of his mother to try to spoil Grey Owl's fun. ” - Alexander McCall Smith

10. “Womanhood is a wonderful thing. In womankind we find the mothers of the race.There is no man so great, nor none sunk so low, but once he lay a helpless, innocent babe in a woman's arms and was dependent on her love and care for his existence. It is woman who rocks the cradle of the world and holds the first affections of mankind. She possesses a power beyond that of a king on his throne....Womanhood stands for all that is pure and clean and noble. She who does not make the world better for having lived in it has failed to be all that a woman should be.” - Mabel Hale

11. “Doomed to Hell. Every last one of you.” - June Ahern

12. “Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.” - Milan Kundera

13. “There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.” - Stephen King

14. “My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.” - Vladimir Nabokov

15. “And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth, where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors (Hanif's dream, which horrifies his dream-invading mother, who believes the cinema to be an extension of the brothel business), where life has been transmuted into grotesquery by the irruption into it of history, eventually in the murkiness of the underworld he cannot help himself, he finds his eyes straying upwards, up along delicate sandals and baggy pajamas and past loose kurta and above the dupatta, the cloth of modesty, until eyes meet eyes, and then” - Salman Rushdie

16. “I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father," she whispers. Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don't you think?” - Jodi Picoult

17. “Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power ... that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.” - Marcel Proust

18. “Mothers see the angel in us because the angel is there. If it's shown to the mother, the son has got an angel to show, hasn't he? When a son cuts somebody's throat the mother only sees it's possible for a misguided angel to act like a devil - and she's entirely right about that!” - Booth Tarkington

19. “Don't you know, you idiot, that that is what every fool of a woman says about her child?Miss Bulstrode's thoughts.” - Agatha Christie

20. “The ideal-worker standard and norm of work devotion push mothers to the margins of economic life. And a society that marginalizes its mothers impoverishes its children. That is why the paradigmatic poor family in the United States is a single mother and her child.” - Joan C. Williams

21. “Girls," their mother interjected, "you must both stop being strange - it is unattractive. And don't forget your hats. It would be absolutely the end for me if you two came down with freckles at a time like this.” - Anna Godbersen

22. “But mothers lie. It's in the job description.” - John Green

23. “When a destitute mother starts earning an income, her dreams of success invariably center around her children. A woman's second priority is the household. She wants to buy utensils, build a stronger roof, or find a bed for herself and her family. A man has an entirely different set of priorities. When a destitute father earns extra income, he focuses more attention on himself. Thus money entering a household through a woman brings more benefits to the family as a whole.” - Muhammad Yunus

24. “That's your mom, right?" Pathik smiled. "She looks nicer than she did when she was dragging you away the other night.” - Teri Hall

25. “I think all mothers are alike, regardless of cultural background, when it comes to illogical cleaning.” - Neal Shusterman

26. “Well then," Roen said briskly, "are you sleeping?""Yes.""Come now. A mother can tell when her son lies. Are you eating?""No," Brigan said gravely. "I've not eaten in two months. It's a hunger strike to protest the spring flooding in the south.""Gracious," Roen said, reaching for the fruit bowl. "Have an apple, dear.” - Kristin Cashore

27. “Imagine that the world had created a new 'dream product' to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it.” - Frank Oski

28. “A good mother is irreplaceable.” - Adriana Trigiani

29. “Mothers were the only ones you could depend on to tell the whole, unvarnished truth.” - Margaret Dilloway

30. “What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? (Just to give you an idea, Proust's reply was 'To be separated from Mama.') I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child.” - Christopher Hitchens

31. “If my mother's intention in whole or in part was to ensure that I never had to suffer any indignity or embarrassment for being a Jew, then she succeeded well enough. And in any case there were enough intermarriages and 'conversions' on both sides of her line to make me one of those many mischling hybrids who are to be found distributed all over the known world. And, as someone who doesn't really believe that the human species is subdivided by 'race,' let alone that a nation or nationality can be defined by its religion, why should I not let the whole question slide away from me? Why—and then I'll stop asking rhetorical questions—did I at some point resolve that, in whatever tone of voice I was asked 'Are you a Jew?' I would never hear myself deny it?” - Christopher Hitchens

32. “His master plan to get them all out the door early met its first check of the day when he opened his closet door to discover that Zap the Cat, having penetrated the security of Vorkosigan House through Miles's quisling cook, had made a nest on the floor among his boots and fallen clothing to have kittens. Six of them.Zap ignored his threats about the dire consequences of attacking an Imperial Auditor, and purred and growled from the dimness in her usual schizophrenic fashion. Miles gathered his nerve and rescued his best boots and House uniform, at a cost of some high Vor blood, and sent them downstairs for a hasty cleaning by the overworked Armsman Pym. The Countess, delighted as ever to find her biological empire increasing, came in thoughtfully bearing a cat-gourmet tray prepared by Ma Kosti that Miles would have had no hesitation in eating for his own breakfast. In the general chaos of the morning, however, he had to go down to the kitchen and scrounge his meal. The Countess sat on the floor and cooed into his closet for a good half-hour, and not only escaped laceration, but managed to pick up, sex, and name the whole batch of little squirming furballs before tearing herself away to hurry and dress.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

33. “Does your ma know you're this silly?" she demanded tartly.He nodded, comically sad. "The few gray hairs she has on her head are my doing. But" — with an exaggerated change of mood — "I send her plenty of money, so she can pay to have them dyed!""I hope she beat you as a child," Onua grumbled.” - Tamora Pierce

34. “God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.” - David C. Gross

35. “So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know.” - Michael Levenson

36. “In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic sentiment, there is hardly one of his female figures that is so,—the latter being mostly representative of woman in her part as mother, or sufferer, or prophetess or poetess, or in old age, or in any aspect of strength or tenderness, except that which associates itself especially with romantic love. Yet the cleanliness and dignity of Michel Angelo's male figures are incontestable, and bear striking witness to that nobility of the sentiment in him, which we have already seen illustrated in his sonnets.” - Edward Carpenter

37. “In its various forms, so far as we know them, Love seems always to have a deep significance and a most practical importance to us little mortals. In one form, as the mere semi-conscious Sex-love, which runs through creation and is common to the lowest animals and plants, it appears as a kind of organic basis for the unity of all creatures; in another, as the love of the mother for her offspring—which may also be termed a passion—it seems to pledge itself to the care and guardianship of the future race; in another, as the marriage of man and woman, it becomes the very foundation of human society. And so we can hardly believe that in its homogenic form, with which we are here concerned, it has not also a deep significance, and social uses and functions which will become clearer to us, the more we study it.” - Edward Carpenter

38. “Before becoming a mother I had a hundred theories on how to bring up children. Now I have seven children and only one theory: love them, especially when they least deserve to be loved.” - Kate Samperi

39. “She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another form behind, more and more, until his looks, his character, his soul would have eroded away . . . I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into someone quite mundane, mortally wounded with tiresome habits and irritating imperfections.” - Amy Tan

40. “As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She is the beating of my heart. I cannot now imagine a life without her.” - Kristin Hannah

41. “She still remembered sitting for hours as a little girl and pretending to be a hassock. A foot stool. Because if she could just stay very small, and very quiet, her mother would forget she was there, and then she wouldn't scream about people and places and things that had gone wrong.” - Eloisa James

42. “For we think back through our mothers if we are women.” - Virginia Woolf

43. “I was always mortified.Didn't they know they were tying thier mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners?” - Janet Fitch

44. “Mothers are inscrutable beings to their sons, always. ("The Higgler")” - A.E. Coppard

45. “It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones. Under the pepper tree in the yard Pa was sorting, counting, the empty bottles he would sell back: the bottles going clink clink as Pa stuck them in the sack. The fowls were fluffing in the dust and sun: that crook-neck white pullet Mumma said she would hit on the head if only she had the courage to; but she hadn't.” - Patrick White

46. “When God Created Mothers" When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said. "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." And God said, "Have you read the specs on this order?" She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands." The angel shook her head slowly and said. "Six pairs of hands.... no way." It's not the hands that are causing me problems," God remarked, "it's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have." That's on the standard model?" asked the angel. God nodded. One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word." God," said the angel touching his sleeve gently, "Get some rest tomorrow...." I can't," said God, "I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick...can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger...and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower." The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed. But tough!" said God excitedly. "You can imagine what this mother can do or endure." Can it think?" Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator. Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You that You were trying to put too much into this model." It's not a leak," said the Lord, "It's a tear." What's it for?" It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride." You are a genius, " said the angel. Somberly, God said, "I didn't put it there.” - Erma Bombeck

47. “I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.” - Jodi Picoult

48. “Right, except I'm not going to lie to my mom, because what kind of bastard lies to his own mother?” - John Green

49. “The clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlid here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter.” - Louisa May Alcott

50. “My mother belonged to that group of low IQ individuals who find everything alarming and believe that raising your voice is the most effective form of communication.” - Dr Annabelle RC

51. “Anna: Ash, I don't have anything planned with my Mother... She's dead.Ashley: What?Anna: She died when I was seven. She drowned. It's just my Dad and me. I didn't tell you before because I just wanted a fresh start here, because before I moved, everybody knew about it and... I'm sorry.Ashley: ....... You're like a Disney Princess!” - Jessi Kirby

52. “I think this power of living in our children is one of the sweetest things in the world…” - Louisa May Alcott

53. “…she rejoiced as only mothers can in the good fortunes of their children.” - Louisa May Alcott

54. “Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.” - Louisa May Alcott

55. “Dan clung to her in speechless gratitude, feeling the blessedness of mother love, — that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it.” - Louisa May Alcott

56. “MY MOTHER GETS DRESSEDIt is impossible for my mother to do eventhe simplest things for herself anymoreso we do it together,get her dressed.I choose the clothes withoutzippers or buckles or straps,clothes that are simplebut elegant, and easy to get into.Otherwise, it's just like every other day.After bathing, getting dressed.The stockings go on first.This time, it's the new ones,the special ones with opaque black trianglesthat she's never worn before,bought just two weeks agoat her favorite department store.We start with the heavy, careful stuff of the right toesinto the stocking tipthen a smooth yank past the knob of her ankleand over her cool, smooth calfthen the other toecool ankle, smooth calfup the legsand the pantyhose is coaxed to her waist.You're doing great, Mom,I tell heras we ease her bodyagainst mine, rest her whole weight against meto slide her black dresswith the black empire collarover her headstruggle her fingers through the dark tunnel of the sleeve.I reach from the outsidedeep into the dark for her hand,grasp where I can't see for her touch.You've got to help me a little here, MomI tell herthen her fingertips touch mineand we work her fingers through the sleeve's mouthtogether, then we rest, her weight against mebefore threading the other fingers, wrist, forearm, elbow, bicepand now over the head.I gentle the black dress over her breasts,thighs, bring her makeup to her,put some color on her skin.Green for her eyes.Coral for her lips.I get her black hat.She's ready for her company.I tell the two women in simple, elegant suitswaiting outside the bedroom, come in.They tell me, She's beautiful.Yes, she is, I tell them.I leave as they carefullyzip her intothe black body bag.Three days later,I dream a large, greensuitcase arrives.When I unzip it,my mother is inside.Her dress matchesher eyeshadow, which matchesthe suitcaseperfectly. She's wearingcoral lipstick."I'm here," she says, smiling delightedly, wavingand I wake up.Four days later, she comes homein a plastic black boxthat is heavier than it looks.In the middle of a meadow,I learn a nakedmore than naked.I learn a new way to hugas I tighten my fistaround her body,my hand filled with her ashesand the small stones of bones.I squeeze her tightthen open my handand release herinto the smallest, hottest sun,a dandelion screaming yellow at the sky.” - Daphne Gottlieb

57. “Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us. We idolize them and take them for granted. We hate them and blame them and exalt them more thoroughly than anyone else in our lives. We sift through the evidence of their love, reassure ourselves of their affection and its biological genesis. We can steal and lie and leave and they will love us.” - Megan Mayhew Bergman

58. “I am thinking about the way that life can be so slippery; the way that a twelve-year-old girl looking into the mirror to count freckles reaches out toward herself and that reflection has turned into that of a woman on her wedding day, righting her veil. And how, when that bride blinks, she reopens her eyes to see a frazzled young mother trying to get lipstick on straight for the parent/teacher conference that starts in three minutes. And how after that young woman bends down to retrieve the wild-haired doll her daughter has left on the bathroom floor, she rises up to a forty-seven-year-old, looking into the mirror to count age spots.” - Elizabeth Berg

59. “We all have the best laid plans for our children, and they go and ruin it all by growing up any way they want to. What the hell was it all for, then? (Real Life and Liars)” - Kristina Riggle

60. “I hope someday she meets just the right man and has babies - a whole passel of babies, more than I could have - so she understands how it kills me now that she won't let me hug her when she's in obvious distress. (The Life You've Imagined)” - Kristina Riggle

61. “The best love in the world, is the love of a man. The love of a man who came from your womb, the love of your son! I don't have a daughter, but maybe the love of a daughter is the best, too. I am first and foremost me, but right after that, I am a mother. The best thing that I can ever be, is me. But the best gift that I will ever have, is being a mother.” - C. JoyBell C.

62. “Gilbert put his arm about them. 'Oh, you mothers!' he said. 'You mothers! God knew what He was about when He made you.” - L.M. Montgomery

63. “The past is a presence between us. In all my mother does and says, the past continually discloses itself in the smallest ways. She sees it directly; I see its shadow. Still, it pulses in my fingertips, feeds on my consciousness. It is a backdrop for each act, each drama of our lives. I have absorbed a sense of what she has suffered, what she has lost, even what her mother endured and handed down. It is my emotional gene map.” - Fern Schumer Chapman

64. “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

65. “أسوأ ما تتوقعه الأم أن يكون جواب سؤالها عن طبخة اليوم "كما تريدين" أو "مش مهم" أو "نأكل أي شيء".” - مريد البرغوثي

66. “To think but nobly of my grandmother: Good wombs have borne bad sons.” - William Shakespeare

67. “Some women just aren’t cut out to be mothers, and unfortunately it had taken Susanna three kids to realize she was one of them.” - Kelley Armstrong

68. “Because it is the lot of mothers to remember what no one else cares to, Mrs. Dutta thinks. To tell them over and over until they are lodged, perforce, in family lore. We are the keepers of the heart's dusty corners.” - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

69. “Pitiful and pitied by no one, why have I come to the ignominy of this detestable old age, who was ruler of two kingdoms, mother of two kings? My guts are torn from me, my family is carried off and removed from me. The young king [crown prince Henry, †1183] and the count of Britanny [prince Geoffrey, †1186] sleep in dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to be irremediably tormented by the memory of the dead. Two sons remain to my solace, who today survive to punish me, miserable and condemned. King Richard [the Lionheart] is held in chains [in captivity with Emperor Henry VI of Germany]. His brother, John, depletes his kingdom with iron [the sword] and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord has turned cruel to me and attacked me with the harshness of his hand. Truly his wrath battles against me: my sons fight amongst themselves, if it is a fight where where one is restrained in chains, the other, adding sorrow to sorrow, undertakes to usurp the kingdom of the exile by cruel tyranny. Good Jesus, who will grant that you protect me in hell and hide me until your fury passes, until the arrows which are in me cease, by which my whole spirit is sucked out?"[Third letter to Pope Celestine (1193)]” - Eleanor of Aquitaine

70. “Because she did not look behind, September did not see the smoky-glass casket close itself primly up again. She did not see it bend in half until it cracked, and Death hop up again, quite well, quite awake, and quite small once more. She certainly did not see Death stand on her tiptoes and blow a kiss after her, a kiss that rushed through all the frosted leaves of the autumnal forest, but could not quite catch a child running as fast as she could. As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.” - Catherynne M. Valente

71. “I'm a mother," said her mother, in her foodless flat where the dust did not dare to settle, "and I know what I know.” - Neil Gaiman

72. “I have a theory about how she might have managed to pull off such a feat. It comes in the form of an equation: Love + Fear = Herculean Strength. It’s how mothers come to fling runaway motorcars from their children.” - Franny Billingsley

73. “You count the hours you could have spent with your mother, it's a lifetime in itself.” - Mitch Albom

74. “Why would you family think about it?""Oh, my mother's the only one that counts, and she likes you very much from what she's seen of you.""So you had me inspected?""No-dash it all, I seem to be saying all the wrong things today. I was absolutely stunned that first day in court, and I rushed off to my mater, who's an absolute dear, and the kind of person who really understands things, and I said, 'Look here! here's the absolutely one and only woman, and she's being put through a simply ghastly awful business and for God's sake come and hold my hand!' You simply don't know how foul it was.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

75. “*marissa tries to get her single, working mother's attention by suggesting something outrageous, to which mom replies:*'You're a smart girl. Use your head and avoid any guy who reminds you of your father.” - Camille Noe Pagan

76. “Very early on in writing the series, I remember a female journalist saying to me that Mrs Weasley, 'Well, you know, she’s just a mother.' And I was absolutely incensed by that comment. Now, I consider myself to be a feminist, and I’d always wanted to show that just because a woman has made a choice, a free choice to say, 'Well, I’m going to raise my family and that’s going to be my choice. I may go back to a career, I may have a career part time, but that’s my choice.' Doesn’t mean that that’s all she can do. And as we proved there in that little battle, Molly Weasley comes out and proves herself the equal of any warrior on that battlefield.” - J.K. Rowling

77. “I do not understand what makes mothers think they are walking-talking thermometers.But I think somewhere during the process of giving birth and changing diapers, they actually begin to belive they have this supernatural sense.” - Melody Carlson

78. “When Jordan was a baby he sat on top of me much as a fly rests on a hill of dung. And I nourished him as a hill of dung nourishes a fly, and when he had eaten his fill he left me.Jordan...I should have named him after a stagnant pond and then I could have kept him, but I named him after a river and in the flood-tide he slipped away.” - Jeanette Winterson

79. “Mothers are like dungeons. Some really stink and you'll do anything to avoid them. And some are lush sanctuaries filled with gold, jewels, and butterscotch schnapps-spiked Nestle Nesquik.” - Shelly Mazzanoble

80. “Mom, mom, mom, mom! A yowl rose from my gut, my bowels, my womb, raw as a birth cry but with no hope in it, a maddening howl, a roar, the water a wailing wall shattering around me. Unsyllabled, thoughtless, the cry rose from the oldest cells in my body. I hadn't known grief could be so primal, so crude. The violence shook me. When it stopped, I fell to my knees in the shower, and the water called to the water in me; I wanted to melt, to run down the drain and under the city to the creek and then to the river thirty miles away. Mom, mom, mom, mom!” - Lorna Crozier

81. “You will like her," he persisted. "Egad, she's after your own heart, maman! She shot me in the arm.""Voyons, do you think that is what I like?” - Georgette Heyer Devil's Club

82. “I just want to make sure Mama. Sometimes I don’t even know what I want. A lot of times I’m just tired.” Mama reached up and smoothed Liza’s curls away from her face. “Well darlin’, that’s the sign of a life being lived. I think we’re all tired when we’re giving it our best.” - Gwenn Wright

83. “Yes it's true, you wake the child inside of you up because you're a Mom!” - Sandra C. Kassis

84. “Billy covered his head with his blanket. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward - always got much sicker until she went away. It wasn’t that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education.She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t really like life at all.” - Kurt Vonnegut

85. “At the end of the day, can you look back and say to yourself, "Today, my mother would be proud of me because I gave it all I had"? If you can, you will have had a very good day. And if you can do this every day, you will have a very good life.” - Patrick Henry Hughes

86. “Mothers were much too sharp. They were like dogs. Buster always sensed when anything was out of the ordinary, and so did mothers. Mothers and dogs both had a kind of second sight that made them see into people's minds and know when anything unusual was going on.” - Enid Blyton

87. “Not that she means anything by it, he knows. This is simply her lifelong habit of moderation at work, her need to tamp everything down to the routine, the modest, the tepid everyday. He understands the whole concept of boundaries, but there’s a point where this mania for normalizing turns toxic.” - Ben Fountain

88. “Madlen came to sit beside her on the bed. "Lady Queen," she said with her own particular brand of rough gentleness. "It is not the job of the child to protect her mother. It's the mother's job to protect the child. By allowing your mother to protect you, you gave her a gift. Do you understand me?” - Kristin Cashore

89. “Clarity and focus doesn’t always come from God or inspirational quotes. Usually, it takes your mother to slap the reality back into you.” - Shannon Alder

90. “She was a monster, but she was my monster.” - Jeanette Winterson

91. “But when we make choices that are different than what our friends are doing, it might seem to them that we are questioning their choices - even if it has nothing to do with them.... And what is the sense in feeling guilty about making different choices than our mothers and the other women before us? Our mothers did the best they could with what they had available to them. Our choices, if different from theirs, are not a denouncement of theirs.” - Jennetta Billhimer

92. “A mother's love is everything, Jared. It is what brings a child into this world. It is what molds their entire being. When a mother sees her child in danger, she is literally capable of anything. Mother have lifted cars off of their children, and destroyed entire dynasties. A mother's love is the strongest energy known to man. You must that love, and it's power.” - Jamie McGuire

93. “There is a distinct difference between the ability to create life and the innate need to protect it; to cherish it. The life you've created is the one being you love most in the universe, and that intense love evolves into something that goes far beyond a sense of duty. It is instinct; pure and undeniable. As a direct result, one must neglect all else to preserve it. Even those we have claimed to love before.” - Jamie McGuire

94. “But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.” - Mitch Albom

95. “He was looking forward eagerly to seeing her again. He had coped perfectly well on his own, of course, but it was very reassuring to have someone in your life who was always ready to fight for you, and he had missed that comforting feeling,” - Ken Follett

96. “Always respect Mother Nature. Especially when she weighs 400 pounds and is guarding her baby.” - James Rollins

97. “But deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, "I choose not to," or "it all sounds a bit vile, tbh." We call these women "selfish" The inference of the word "childless" is negative: one of lack, and loss. We think of nonmothers as rangy lone wolves--rattling around, as dangerous as teenage boys or men. We make women feel that their narrative has ground to a halt in their thirities if they don't "finish things" properly and have children.” - Caitlin Moran

98. “My mother was widely loved, and rightly so – and widely regarded as too sweet for words. Well, she had them buffaloed. Any woman who could out-stubborn a dachshund deserved to be accorded the wary and respectful affection the dachshund gave her.” - Markham Shaw Pyle

99. “The daughter prays; the mother listens.” - Amanda Downum

100. “Mother! what a world of affection is comprised in that single word; how little do we in the giddy round of youthful pleasure and folly heed her wise counsels. How lightly do we look upon that zealous care with which she guides our otherwise erring feet, watches with feelings which none but a mother can know the gradual expansion of our youth to the riper yours of discretion. We may not think of it then, but it will be recalled to our minds in after years, when the gloomy grave or a fearful living separation has placed her far beyond our reach, and her sweet voice of sympathy and consolation for the various ills attendant upon us sounds in our ears no more. How deeply then we regret a thousand deeds that we have done contrary to her gentle admonitions! How we sign for those days once more, that we may retrieve what we have done amiss and make her kind heart glad with happiness! Alas! once gone they can never be recalled, and we grow mournfully sad with the bitter reflection.” - Fanny Kelly

101. “...take down your baby bump photos from Facebook, take down pictures of your kids too. It is your job to protect your children and not parade them around like little circus freaks or glorified mini-you’s.” - Brandon Kelly

102. “My mother once told me, when you have to make a decision, imagine the person you want to become someday. Ask yourself, what would that person do?” - Barry Deutsch

103. “Even her pink bunny slippers seem to prick up their ears.Diary of a Penguin-napper (p. 15)” - Sally Harris

104. “Hideo," said my mother, in the terrifying way women have of passing without interval from one subject to another because they have them all present in their mind at once, "you haven't found any kind of relationship?” - Ursula K. Le Guin

105. “Mothers possess a power beyond that of a king on his throne.” - Mabel Hale

106. “Never underestimate the fury of an angry mother, Caspar. They're the most vicious creatures in the world.” - Elizabeth Hunter

107. “I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful.” - Benjamin Alire Saenz

108. “It's like she thinks my job is to please her, and that should be my dearest wish, and when I don't please her - I get shut out.” - John Green

109. “God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.” - Will Leamon

110. “Motherhood is when eating chicken soup; the kids get the chicken and you get the soup and you would still feel happily stuffed.” - Sandra Chami Kassis

111. “A good mother loves fiercely but ultimately brings up her children to thrive without her. They must be the most important thing in her life, but if she is the most important thing in theirs, she has failed.” - Erin Kelly

112. “Am I alone in this mother-food connection or does being with your mom trigger the sudden and voracious need for large amounts of mac & cheese, rice pudding, and the scraps along the side of a bowl of cookie dough?” - April Paine

113. “I'm sorry you don't like coming back here," her mother often said, to cap whatever petty dust-up they'd had. How could Emily explain: it wasn't her mother or Kersey she'd disowned, but her earlier self, that strange, ungrateful girl who strove to be first at everything and threw tantrums when she failed.” - Stewart O'Nan

114. “But mostly I remember every morning before school. How she'd say "Hey, honey!" just I was walking out the apartment door. And me stopping and turning around and saying "What?" And her saying "I love you." And me rolling my eyes like I just wanted to hurry up so I didn't miss the bus. I'd start going again and she'd say "Hey, honey!" and I'd pretend I was so annoyed 'cause she was wasting time and I had to go catch the bus. And how secretly it was my favorite part of every day.” - Matt de la Pena