Quotes & Sayings About How Great Mothers Are

Today there are people trying to take away rights that our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for: our right to vote, our right to choose, affordable quality education, equal pay, access to health care. We the people can't let that happen. — Kerry Washington

Mothers and daughters
it's a comedy, but also a tragedy. We fill our daughters with all the chutzpah we wish for ourselves. We want them to be free as we were not. And then we resent them for being so free. We resent them for being what we have made! With granddaughters, it's so much easier. And great-granddaughters. — Erica Jong

The transept belfry and the two towers were to him three great cages, the birds in which, taught by him, would sing for him alone. Yet it was these same bells which had made him deaf; but mothers are often fondest of the child who has made them suffer most. — Victor Hugo

Recently I reviewed the history of many missionaries and found a powerful correlation between exceptional missionaries and mothers who chose to remain home, often at great financial and personal sacrifice ... They reflect honor to mothers who sacrificed to remain home for their children's benefit. — Richard G. Scott

The one who re-creates from that which has died is always a double-sided archetype. The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

It wasn't until the 1920s that a bare majority of children grew up in families where the father's labor purchased the family's provisions, while their mother did unpaid child care, elder care, and housework.

The Great Depression and World War II disrupted this family form, but it roared back in the 1950s, when the percentage of wives and mothers who were supported entirely by their husbands' wages reached a high that has never been equaled, before or since. — Stephanie Coontz

Of those who really love their sons, few know how to do it. Some spoil them when they are young, and then quarrel with them when they are grown up, for having been spoiled; some love them like mothers, and attend only to the bodily health and strength of the hopes of their family, solemnize his birthday, and rejoice, like the subjects of the Great Mogul, at the increase of his bulk: while others, minding, as they think, only essentials, take pains and pleasure to see in their heir, all their favourite weaknesses and imperfections. — Lord Chesterfield

Did any great genius ever enter the world in the wake of commonplace pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire? The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have been virtuous, none have been commonplace, and few have been happy. — Gertrude Atherton

My father was a great example of a strong and good man and Christian man, and my mother taught all my six sisters how to be young ladies and mothers and how to take care of your family. And so I think they were - they still are - great examples for all of us to their kids and to the world, too. — Magic Johnson

There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women - of free mothers. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Well, Betsy," he said, "your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith's trunk for a desk. That's fine. You need a desk. I've often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can't understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. "
"Bob!" said Mrs. Ray. "You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry."
"Cry, eh?" said Mr. Ray, grinning. "In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you're going to be a writer."
Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed.
"But if you're going to be a writer," he went on, "you've got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics. — Maud Hart Lovelace

We could see that our mothers blackmailed us with self-sacrifice, even if we did not know whether or not they might have been great opera stars or toasts of the town if they had not borne us. In our intractable moments we pointed out that we had not asked to be born, or even to go to an expensive school. We knew that they must have had motives of their own for what they did with us and to us. The notion of our parents' self-sacrifice filled us not with gratitude but with confusion and guilt. We wanted them to be happy yet they were sad and deprived and it was our fault. — Germaine Greer

But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition.
They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide hipped mother, auwesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, mothers who would fight for us, who would kill for us, and die for us. — Janet Fitch

Whosoever does not believe in the existence of a sixth sense has clearly not regarded their own mother. How it is they know all they know about you, even those secrets you locked away so tightly in the most hidden compartments of your heart, remains one of the great mysteries of the world. And they don't just know - they know instantly. — Narissa Doumani

The Truth: Doing it all is a misconception the enemy wants mothers to believe. Learn how to fully embrace the beauty of each season of your life. It is a gift from God. God's Word: Colossians 3:23-24-'Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.' Take a deep breath busy mom. You are doing a great job! — Tamara L. Chilver

I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. "The thing is," I said finally, "he won the Nobel Prize." "Well," she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, "I'm not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat. — Alan Bennett

But more often there are regular people in the pool. Beautiful women seniors doing water aerobics - mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers - their massive breasts and guts reminding you how it is that women carry worlds. When I swim by them I watch their legs and bodies underwater, and feel a strange kinship with a maternal lineage. — Lidia Yuknavitch

That was 1986. That year I felt myself to be drowning in the news reports of murder. I was aware that these murders very often did not land upon the intended targets but fell upon great-aunts, PTA mothers, overtime uncles, and joyful children - fell upon them random and relentless, like great sheets of rain. I knew this in theory but could not understand it as fact until the boy with the small eyes stood across from me holding my entire body in his small hands. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

If you knew how great is a mother's love, you would have no fear. — J.M. Barrie

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. — Saint Francis De Sales

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this. — Jamie Lee Curtis

I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't entirely approve of people who get advanced degrees and then decide to stay at home. I think if society gives you the gift of one of those educations and you take a spot in a very competitive institution, then you should do something with that education to help others ... But I also don't approve of working parents who look down on stay-at-home mothers and think they smother their children. Working parents are every bit as capable of spoiling children as ones who don't work - maybe even more so when they indulge their kids out of guilt. The best think anyone can teach their children is the obligation we all have toward each other - and no one has a monopoly on teaching that. — Will Schwalbe

Nowadays it is seen as a shame, to marry a girl who is a mother, who has never been married. I want to get rid of that prejudice. — Frederick The Great

He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For every one of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men
it isn't their fault if life disappoints them later. — Boris Pasternak

When I was a deacon, the ominous signs of the Great Depression began to appear. Tens of thousands lost their jobs. Money was scarce. Families had to do without. Some young people did not ask their mothers, 'What's for dinner?' because they knew all too well that their cupboards held very little. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

When mothers know who they are and who God is and have made covenants with Him, they will have great power and influence for good on their children, — Julie B. Beck

It is the obscene horror, the dry, fucked-out aspect of things which makes this crazy civilization look like a crater. It is this great yawning gulf of nothingness which the creative spirits and mothers of the race carry between their legs. — Henry Miller

Good mothers and good fathers and good families don't always have great children. — Cissy Houston

We fall into the great continuing circle of dancers. Some leave the floor, tired but giddy; others have only just arrived. They are eager to wear their new status as ladies, to be paraded about and lauded until they see themselves with new eyes. The fathers beam at their daughters, thinking them perfect flowers in need of their protection, while the mothers watch from the margins, certain this moment is their doing. We create illusions we need to go on. And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty. The light is liberating. Necessary. Terrifying. We stand naked and emptied before it. Adn when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to shield us from its relentless truth.
But the girls! Their eyes glow with the fever dream of all they might become. They tell themselves this is the beginning of everything. And who am I to say it isn't? — Libba Bray

All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them. — Boris Pasternak

To think that you dared - to think that my - my noble boy - "
"He wasn't very noble. Mothers don't ever really know their sons, I think."
"Shameless girl!" cried Mrs. Morrison, so loud, so completely beside herself, that Priscilla hastily rang her bell ... "Open the door for this lady," she said to Annalise, who appeared with a marvellous promptitude; and as Mrs. Morrison still stood her ground and refused to see either Annalise or the door Priscilla ended the interview by walking out herself, with great dignity, into the bathroom. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

No sin is so great but the satisfaction of Christ and His mercies are greater; it is beyond comparison. Fathers and mothers in tenderest affections are but beams and trains to lead us upwards to the infinite mercy of God in Christ. — Richard Sibbes

I have a word to say to my sisters. When I reflect upon the duties and responsibilities devolving upon our mothers and sisters, and the influence they wield, I look upon them as the mainspring and soul of our being here. It is true that man is first. Father Adam was placed here as king of the earth, to bring it into subjection. But when Mother Eve came she had a splendid influence over him. A great many have thought it was not very good; I think it was excellent (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 199).). — Brigham Young

Some people aren't great with babies, or they're not great with a smaller child - it's not that they're bad mothers. — Cara Buono

Over and over and with the least provocation, they pulled from their stock of stories tales about the old folks, their grands and great-grands; their fathers and mothers. Dangerous confrontations, clever manoeuvres. Testimonies to endurance, wit, skill and strength. Tales of luck and outrage. But why were there no stories to tell of themselves? About their own lives they shut up. Had nothing to say, pass on. As though past heroism was enough of a future to live by. As though, rather than children, they wanted duplicates. — Toni Morrison

Rike gave him a look as if he'd gone mad. Fat Burlow covered a chuckle. "I have spoken about that, Makin," I said. "I will break the cycle." I drew my sword and laid it across my knees. "You know how to break the cycle of hatred?" I asked. "Love," said Gomst, all quiet-like. "The way to break the cycle is to kill every single one of the bastards that fucked you over," I said. "Every last one of them. Kill them all. Kill their mothers, kill their brothers, kill their children, kill their dog." I ran my thumb along the blade of my sword and watched the blood bead crimson on the wound. "People think I hate the Count, but in truth I'm a great advocate of his methods. He has only two failings. Firstly, he goes far, but not far enough. Secondly, he isn't me. He taught me valuable lessons though. And when we meet, I will thank him for it, with a quick death. — Mark Lawrence

All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra - (applause) - as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer. (Applause.) — Barack Obama

The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure she was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart. — Zelda Fitzgerald

I think that we approach the problem of romantic love all wrong when we start with the questions: why do so many relationships fail? I think that the interesting question is why do some succeed? Because if you consider how most of us were raised, how most of us were brought up, how few of us had decent role models in terms of our fathers or mothers, how inadequately we were prepared or educated for love as adults; it seems to me that the great miracle is that some people through their own independence, or their own perseverance, or their own creativity, make it. — Nathaniel Branden

It is important to note that research has shown that men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who have abusive fathers do; the disrespect that abusive men show their female partners and their daughters is often absorbed by their sons.
So while a small number of abusive men do hate women, the great majority exhibit a more subtle-though often quite pervasive-sense of superiority or contempt toward females, and some don't show any obvious signs of problems with women at all until they are in a serious relationship. — Lundy Bancroft

How, for example, after liberating themselves from servitude to the religion of God, the creator of the world and of Adam, which alone could hold them within duty and, therefore, within society, did the impious life of those first men from whom the gentile nations arose bring them to disperse in a ferine wandering through the great forest of the earth, grown dense through saturation by the waters of the Flood? And how, constrained to seek food and water and, even more, to save themselves from the wild animals in which the great forest must unfortunately have abounded, with men frequently abandoning their women and mothers their children, and with no way of reuniting, did their descendants gradually come to forget the language of Adam and, without language or any thought other than that of satisfying their hunger, thirst and the foment of their lust, deaden all sense of humanity? — Giambattista Vico

No matter what you read or hear, no matter what the difference of circumstances you observe in the lives of women about you, it is important for you Latter-day Saint women to understand that the Lord holds motherhood and mothers sacred and in the highest esteem. He has entrusted to his daughters the great responsibility of bearing and nurturing children ... There is divinity in each new life. — Spencer W. Kimball