Bible Mother Quotes & Sayings

Mother Teresa once said, "Holy living consists in doing God's work with a smile." ... The last thing many believers need is to go to another Bible study. — Rick Warren

Faith for her was habit and family loyalty, a reverence for the Bible which was also literary, admiration for her mother and father. And then that thrilling quiet of which she had never felt any need to speak. — Marilynne Robinson

Try to imagine this formless, liquid abyss of many waters and surfaces. With and within this awesome, abysmal substance, God Mother creates universes. We are made from this stuff, literally! And we literally live, move, and have our being in this fathomless, multi-dimensional matrix. — Stefan Emunds

Whoa," Becky said, because the baby kicked her hard in the bladder.

Felix startled, backing up and nearly falling over a chair.

"Sorry, I was whoa-ing because right when you came in, the baby kicked, not because you're Felix Callahan. Oh, you know what it reminded me of ? When Elisabeth's baby kicks just as Mary greets her? Isn't that funny? As if I had some spiritual sign when I saw you."

Annette smiled, her eyebrows raised. Felix glared handsomely. Becky stamped down a desire to squirm.

"No, it's not terribly funny," Felix said, "particularly as I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Elisabeth, wife of Zacharias, cousin to Mary, mother of Jesus? No? Nothing?"

Felix looked at her with a careful lack of amusement.

"Oh, maybe you don't have the Bible in England. See, there's this guy named Jesus and his mother is named Mary, and well, it's a really interesting read if you don't mind parables. — Shannon Hale

My mother introduced me to more academic-minded writers, Cornel West and Skip Gates. In her library, I came across, when I was very young, Harold Cruse's 'The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual,' which is like a bible of Negro intellectuals from Frederick Douglass to Amiri Baraka. — Rashid Johnson

My father was from a secular Jewish family and my mother from a nominally Christian (Episcopalian) one. They were not religious as adults. They did, however, believe in educating their children about the Bible. They viewed this as an essential part of any education. — Mike Berenstain

go on hating myself forever for all the terrible things I'd done. I sank down on the toilet, sharp mental pictures of other temper fits filling my mind. I saw my anger, clenched my fists against my rage. I wouldn't be any good for anything if I couldn't change. My poor mother, I thought. She believes in me. Not even she knows how bad I am. Misery engulfed me in darkness. "If you don't do this for me, God, I've got no place else to go." At one point I'd slipped out of the bathroom long enough to grab a Bible. Now I opened it and began — Ben Carson

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. — Anonymous

Among all the characters mentioned in the Bible, none is more mysterious than Melchisedec; said to be without father, mother, or earthly kin, and holding the dual office of king and priest. — Max Heindel

They brought the Bible and syphilis, they made people believe that life was easy, mother, that everything is gotten with money, that blacks carry a contagion, they tried to convince our soldiers that the nation is a business and that the sense of honor is a brother invented by the government so that soldiers would fight for free — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The habit of grown-ups reading living books and retaining the power to digest them will be lost if we refuse to give a little time for Mother Culture. A wise mother, an admired mother and wife, when asked how, with her weak physical health and many demands on her time, she managed to read so much said, "Besides my Bible, I always keep three books going that are just for me - a stiff book, a moderately easy book, and a novel or one of poetry. I always take up the one I feel fit for. That is the secret: always have something 'going' to grow by. — Karen Andreola

My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. — Mary Mother Of Jesus

My mother's influence in molding my character was conspicuous. She forced me to learn daily long chapters of the Bible by heart. To that discipline and patient, accurate resolve I owe not only much of my general power of taking pains, but of the best part of my taste for literature. — John Ruskin

I feel that heterosexual marriage is the more excellent way, and it surely is approved holy by the Holy Bible, and it holds so many more possibilities: the possibilities of having children of both the mother and father, the male and the female. — Robert H. Schuller

Kids, she says. When they're little, they believe everything you tell them about the world. As a mother, you're the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together. But after they hit some magic age, it's just the opposite. After that, you're either a liar or a fool or a villain. — Chuck Palahniuk

I've known a lot of religious people. My mother is very religious, but she also is very private about it. When I was growing up, she never went to church. She just prayed and read her Bible and kept it to herself. I'm not from a background of flamboyant believers. It's much more a personal issue. — Michael Shannon

The cover was pebbled black leather, the pages onionskin, and he opened it carefully. It was his first Bible, the one his mother had given him, the one that had taken its time showing him what he was supposed to do with his life, his size, that voice of his. It was the one used for his ordination, and when he had buried his mother on a autumn hillside in Tennesee five years ago. King James. He didn't care about the scholars or the accuracy or the bringing of his church into whatever century they claimed it was these days; he cared about the poetry, and about the comfort it brought to those who needed to hear it. — Charles L. Grant

These bible people remind me of another calamity similar to this missionary scheme, when our people, or any christian power would go to Africa for the pious purpose of kidnapping negroes, the mother would cry out to her children "run, run, the christians are coming," so when ever you hear "bibles," run for your life, if you do not want your pockets picked, or to be insulted and slandered as I was ... and if you hear "hopeful conversions" or the "gospel," don't stop to look behind you. — Anne Royall

Because who knows? Who knows anything? Who knows who's pulling the strings? Or what is? Or how? Who knows if destiny is just how you tell yourself the story of your life? Another son might not have heard his mother's last words as a prophecy but as drug-induced gibberish, forgotten soon after. Another girl might not have told herself a love story about a drawing her brother made. Who knows if Grandma really thought the first daffodils of spring were lucky or if she just wanted to go on walks with me through the woods? Who knows if she even believed in her bible at all or if she just preferred a world where hope and creativity and faith trump reason? who knows if there are ghosts (sorry, Grandma) or just the living, breathing memories of your loved ones, inside you, speaking to you, trying to get your attention by any means necessary? Who knows where the hell Ralph is? (Sorry, Oscar.) No one knows.
SO we grapple with the mysteries, each in our own way. — Jandy Nelson

My mother was a Bible student, and when I was a youngster, both my mother and father would say, 'If people would only live by the Golden Rule, there wouldn't be the problems that there are.' In other words, 'treat people the way you want to be treated.' If somebody mistreats you, two wrongs won't make a right. — Monte Irvin

The only authority my mother recognized was God's. God is love and the Bible is truth--everything else was up for debate. She taught me to challenge authority and question the system. The only way it backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her. — Trevor Noah

Boys, tell your mother to shut her lying whore mouth before I shove the nearest apple down her throat. — Jason Aaron

The Bible was the only book he read. He didn't read it often but when he did he wore his mother's glasses. They tired his eyes so that after a short time he was always obliged to stop. — Flannery O'Connor

Here's a joke about discernment: A woman asks her local priest for advice. "Father," she says, "I have a little boy who is six months old. And I'm curious to know what he will be when he grows up." The priest says, "Place before him three things: a bottle of whiskey, a dollar bill, and a Bible. If he picks the bottle of whiskey, he'll be a bartender. If he picks the dollar bill, a business man. And if he picks the Bible, a priest." So the mother thanks him and goes home. The next week she returns. "Well," said the priest, "which one did he pick: the whiskey, the dollar bill, or the Bible?" She says, "He picked all three!" "Ah," says the priest, "a Jesuit! — James Martin

As a mother, you're the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together. — Chuck Palahniuk

After all, there is no advice which I can give you which you will not find plainly set down in the Book your mother taught you to reverence and love; and I therefore commend you to God, and to the word of His grace. — George E. Sargent

Whatever merit there is in anything that I have written is simply due to the fact that when I was a child my mother daily read me a part of the Bible and daily made me learn a part of it by heart. — John Ruskin

Bible say, Honor father and mother no matter what. Then after while every tune I got mad, or start to feels mad. I got sick. Felt like throwing up.Terrible feeling. Then I start to feel Nothing at all.
Sofia Frown. Nothing at all?
Well, sometime Mr._ git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband I shrug my shoulders.This life soon be over.I say.Heaven last all ways — Alice Walker

As I write, I am reminded of that passage from the Bible - the one that is read at every wedding: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child." Now, I understand as an adult. Maybe for the first time in my life. This article would break my mother's heart, and perhaps even worse, her spirit. That didn't matter to me a week ago; in fact, I wanted to hurt her then. My only excuse: then I was a child. — Kristin Hannah

The Gita is not only my Bible and my Koran, it is more than that, it is my mother. — Mahatma Gandhi

The available divorce data show that marital breakdown is now considerably more common in the Bible Belt than in the secular Northeast ... The percentages of broken families and unwed mothers remained higher in places like Arkansas and Oklahoma than in New York and Massachusetts. — Joe Conason

My mother read me biblical stories at night. — Malcolm Gladwell

The Bible looks the way it does because "God lets his children tell the story," so to speak. Children see the world from their limited gaze. A second grader might give a class presentation on what mom does all day. She will talk about her mom from her point of view, rooted in love and devotion. She'll filter - unconsciously and in an age-appropriate manner - her mother's day through how she perceives her family and her role in the family. She'll get some things more or less correct, but she will also misunderstand other things, and get still other things plain wrong. — Peter Enns

The word "wilderness" occurs approximately three hundred times in the Bible, and all its meanings are derogatory. — Rene Dubos

The only thing I can say that is wonderful about my mother is she forced me to learn three verses of the Bible every day of my life, and I've read the Bible now five times and it taught me the English language. — Bryce Courtenay

When a mere girl, my mother offered me a dollar if I would read the Bible through; ... despairing of reconciling many of its absurd statements with even my childish philosophy, ... I became a sceptic, doubter, and unbeliever, long ere the 'Good Book' was ended. — Elmina Drake Slenker

Even though prayers are not offered only to get a desired result, there is little doubt that most miracles are the result of prayer. God wants us to pray to him and ask him for things, just as any loving father and mother want their children to come to them with whatever is on their minds. But if our focus is solely on getting the outcome we want, the prayer will fail, precisely because our belief is placed in the wrong place. It's a great irony. If all we care about is the result, then we are effectively making that result our God, rather than God himself. So if we are praying to our "God" - the God of results - rather than to God himself, then we are praying to a "God" who is not God, and who is therefore powerless to help us. — Eric Metaxas

Once again the Scriptures are a lodestar, a benchmark, the plumb line steadies us and steers us clear of what is happening in the world and gives us a glimpse of history and politics, economics and daily experiences from God's point of view. Going back to this mother lode of wisdom and knowledge, inspired by God, brings grace and further insight not found in other devotional materials. — Megan McKenna

Faith should be a tool to set us free, not a means to fuel a fascist agenda seeking to impede the civil liberties of the "us"s. The first shall be last and the last shall be first ... therefore, those who stand for their Pius self-righteousness in order to trample those they deem inferior will be the 'last' and the poor and oppressed shall be 'first.' If the self-righteous want a lesson on morality, then actually take a lesson from Jesus whose best friend was a former hooker and whose mother was a single parent. — Cristina Marrero

My mother is my pastor
She teaches me the Bible
I love her as my mentor
She tells me to be humble! — Israelmore Ayivor

Many Christians, including BioLogos, like to throw out the "you can't take the Bible literally" argument. They think it is the ultimate zinger that will end any debate in their favor. But if we shouldn't take the Bible literally, why should we believe God is real in the literal sense? Perhaps God is a metaphor also. Maybe God is really a metaphor for nature or chance. Heaven forbid! However, BioLogos insists on having it both ways: God is literally true but the Bible is not. That's like saying Mother Goose is literally true but her nursery rhymes are not. — G.M. Jackson

God picked a junior high girl [to be Jesus' mother]. Jesus was raised by a woman who today, we wouldn't even let her lead a bible study at a high school. But she could raise God. — Mark Driscoll

Whatever evil might come upon us, because we all came about out of love and care and the Bible and Mother Goose. What can stand against that? — Richard Kennedy

I'm a mean mother-hmmnhmmnh man of God," she informed me. "Except that I'm a woman, of course."
"You just quoted something, didn't you?" I asked.
"Yes, I did," Molly agreed. She seemed calm but her heart was beating fat. "From Dusk Till Dawn. Its a vampire movie with George Clooney."
"Is it too late to get a different priest?" Choo wondered. "Like maybe one who quotes The Bible? — Elliott James

It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother taught me, that which cost me the most to learn, and which was to my childish mind the most repulsive - Psalm 119 - has now become of all the most precious to me in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God. — John Ruskin

The Bible is unfortunately unclear on a long list of moral and social questions and sex is one of them. On the one hand, there are expressions of admiration for the reportedly virgin mother of Jesus, but other portions of scripture speak quite accommodatingly of polygamy. — Steve Allen

Jesus Christ will be the leader of an intergalactic earth evacuation. We're getting some earth leaders up there to check the mother ship. The Bible says that the sky will be glorious and Christ will come back to us all. — Nina Hagen

The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible. — Nikola Tesla

Mami had no choice but to tell Carlito and me the real story that same night.

In a way, I always knew something like that had happened. It was the only way to explain why my older brother got such special treatment his whole life - everyone scared to demand that he go to school, that he study, that he have better manners, that he stop pushing me around.

El Pobrecito is what everyone called him, and I always wondered why.

I was two years younger and nobody, and I mean nadie, paid me any mind, which is why, when our mother told me the story of our father trying to kill his son like we were people out of the Bible, part of me wished our papi had thrown me off that bridge instead. — Patricia Engel

My mother loved the Bible. — Goldie Hawn

Mother calls up the stairs to ask what in the world I'm typing up there all day and I holler down, 'Just typing up some notes from the Bible study. Just writing down all the things I love about Jesus. — Kathryn Stockett

Ladies, [motherhood] is a full-time job. Do not kid yourself that you can be a dental receptionist and a mother; that you can be a typist and a mom; that you can be a Vice President and a mom. One of the two things will win. Now look at your Bible and ask what you have to do. — Alistair Begg

I don't think He bargains."
"Oh yes He does. I may not be religious but I know my Bible. My mother saw to that. He bargains all right. But He's supposed to he just. If He wants belief He'd better provide some evidence.'
"That He exists?"
"That He cares. — P.D. James

The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner. — William Cameron Townsend

Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since. — Abigail Adams

In the beginnings, God Mother separates the earth from the heavens. — Stefan Emunds

I sank down on the toilet, sharp mental pictures of other temper fits filling my mind. I saw my anger, clenched my fists against my rage. I wouldn't be any good for anything if I couldn't change. My poor mother, I thought. She believes in me. Not even she knows how bad I am. Misery engulfed me in darkness. "If you don't do this for me, God, I've got no place else to go." At one point I'd slipped out of the bathroom long enough to grab a Bible. Now I opened it and — Ben Carson

We got Arbitron diaries at my house in the 1980s, when the family was down to just my mother and me, and we tried for a couple of days to fill it out (I of course treated it like we'd been asked to write a new book of the Bible), but we got really bored with it and gave it up. — Hank Stuever

No. I tell you, it is Holy Church which instructs Christians how to live, not the Bible. Christians could be pure in their faith even if the Bible had never been written. Doctrine has passed orally from one generation to the next, through Holy Mother Church, God's instrument on earth. 'Quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus.' 'What has been believed always, everywhere, and by all.' Tradition. Founded by the Apostles and continuing, unbroken, to the present day. Christ founded a church. He did not write a book! — Barbara Kyle

I think this is science, not God. I don't know much about God. I'm agnostic. My mother is a Catholic and she has never once done a single thing from the Bible, ever. I have seen her walk past starving people on the streets and not even bat an eyelash. To me Christians seem like the most selfish people on the planet. They're so worried about getting into Heaven, they don't think about the fact that their actions are what get them there. Not how many times they say sorry to God. To me anyway. Sorry, are you a Christian? — A.E. Watson

Men have jobs, while women have Roles: Mother, Wife, Goddess, Temptress, etc. That's probably why it's so hard for women to rewrite the rules. You're not just changing a job description, but an ancient myth. You're revising the Bible, Poetry, Legend and Psychoanalytic Scripture. — Caryl Rivers

Why had I failed to realize the depth of Mary's faith despite all those
letters? She'd certainly done her best to share it. The answer came to me in
the midst of my own faith journey, one that seemed to begin the night my
mother died and was jump-started when I lost David seventeen months later.
Why hadn't I seen it?
Simple. I wasn't looking.
According to Jeremiah 29:13 in the Bible, "You will seek me and find
me when you seek me with all your heart" (NIV). It wasn't about Mary at all. It was about me. It wasn't until my mother's death that I began actively
seeking God. I didn't see Mary's Christian example because I hadn't yet
developed spiritually. I wasn't "there" yet. I didn't recognize true faith
because I didn't have my own. — Mary Potter Kenyon

In my mother's church, everybody read the Bible and it was mostly about music. My mother had the most beautiful voice I have ever heard in my life. She could sing anything - classical, jazz, blues, opera. And people came from long distances to that little church she went to - African Methodist Episcopal, the AME church she belonged to - just hear her. — Toni Morrison

Many parents lack a biblical view of discipline. They tend to think of discipline as revenge - getting even with the children for what they did. Hebrews 12 makes it clear that discipline is not punitive, but corrective. Hebrews 12 calls discipline a word of encouragement that addresses sons. It says discipline is a sign of God's identification with us as our Father. God disciplines us for our good that we might share in his holiness. It says that while discipline is not pleasant, but painful, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace. Rather than being something to balance love, it is the deepest expression of love. — Tedd Tripp

Look around. The hantavirus is waiting for you. Ebola and the tropical rainforest is cooking up all kinds of brews to make sure that the population is kept in control. All these things are necessary. Why is there an increase in sexual deviance right now? Because it goes against procreative sex. Mother Nature does not want more children. This is not a time of birth. It is not a time to give birth, it's a time to die. The Bible says all things under heaven and that includes death as well as life. You out there, you comfortable ones, you point the finger. You say the junkie is the problem, you say the sexual deviant, serial killer, racist, and the man who hates his fellow man is the problem. But they ain't the problem. You're the problem. The sexual deviant, the murderer, the serial killer, the taker of human life is the cure, you're the problem. — Joe Coleman

If the bible myth of Jonah in the whale and the Mother Goose myth of Jack and the Beanstalk were switched at birth so that Jack in the Beanstalk were in the bible, do you think any child would notice? — Bill Maher

I read to him from his mother's Bible the first line of Genesis: 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' It says nothing about hell, Tom. That came later with the membership drive. — Poe Ballantine

Roman Catholics have always been able to appeal to the traditions of holy Mother the Church. But the Church of England, as such, has nothing to appeal to. How can we [Anglicans] pretend to appeal to Church traditions, when we have cut ourselves off from the main stream of it and any exposition of it must needs be a raking up of old dead documents, instead of obedience to a living voice? And how can we pretend to appeal to the Bible, when the Bible is for everyman's private interpretation, and not expounded by authority? — Ronald Knox