Motherly Quotes & Sayings

Every woman is beautiful. Every woman is amazing because every woman's heart is filled with the motherly instinct of unconditional love. — Debasish Mridha

I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again. — Cheryl Strayed

He wanted to stay there forever, letting her soothe him, pretending he was just a kid and his mom could make everything okay. — Suzanne Collins

Erotic love begins with separateness, and ends in oneness. Motherly love begins with oneness, and leads to separateness. — Erich Fromm

[F]or in this queer world of ours, fatherly and motherly hearts often beat warm and wise in the breasts of bachelor uncles and maiden aunts; and it is my private opinion that these worthy creatures are a beautiful provision of nature for the cherishing of other people's children. They certainly get great comfort out of it, and receive much innocent affection that otherwise would be lost. — Louisa May Alcott

All women like men to be strong and decided and following out their careers. A woman wants to be motherly to a man and protect his weak side, but he must have a strong side too, which she can respect ... If you ever care for a woman, I don't advise you to let her see that you've got no ambition. Otherwise she'll get to despise you. — Christopher Isherwood

Mother, just like the last fifty-five thousand times you've mentioned it, I have no intention of getting married and having a family. You're just going to have to content yourself with the grandchildren you already have. ...
...
His mother narrowed her eyes at him. He could see her mind working on how to get him to come around. She was never going to give up, and she would be fit and healthy enough to badger him about it for years and years.
...
Lance had heard humans talk about the tenacity of Jewish mothers. He didn't know any, but he'd be surprised if they could hold a candle to the relentless herding instinct of a quickened mother who was descended on both sides from border collies. — Eli Easton

Cork-born Mother Jones was renowned as a dramatic orator who relished props, curses, and all kinds of attention-getting tactics--sound at all Irish to you? She exaggerated her age, referring to strikers not too much younger than herself as "my boys" and donning frumpish costumes to emphasize her "motherly appearance. — Rashers Tierney

Every woman is distinctly beautiful because every woman has a motherly instinct. — Debasish Mridha

In today's world, both men and woman need motherhood, the nurturing motherly feeling, the feminine energy. By receiving this energy, it will make them independent and free. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Salvation Creek flows till date, endless tears of motherly love and manly regret. — Adhish Mazumder

You retain your health only so long as you are willing to forgive your stresses, shrug off adversity and adapt to new situations. Resistance to change always impedes the workings of your immunity. An old Sanskrit proverb tells us kshama chajanani: the essence of motherly love is forgiveness. Damage to the ahamkara-mother predisposes us to disease by weakening our innate forgiveness. — Robert E. Svoboda

Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and 'tis Injustice to infringe her Laws. — Michel De Montaigne

Bread is for us a kind of successor to the motherly breast, and it has been over the centuries responsible for billions of sighs of satisfaction. — Margaret Visser

I think people perceive me completely differently than how I perceive myself. I see myself as a sweet, cosy, motherly type. We all want people to be more glamorous and daring and adventurous than they actually are. — Jade Jagger

I love you forever, my baby you'll be — Robert Munsch

But I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil. Sucking up minerals and motherly love. So that each March I may gleam into leaf. — Sylvia Plath

Mrs. Loontwill's face, that of a pretty woman who had aged without realizing it, screwed itself up into a grimace Alexia supposed was meant to simulate motherly concern. Instead she looked like a Pekingese with digestive complaints. — Gail Carriger

Even while living in the world, the heart of Mary was so filled with motherly tenderness and compassion for men that no-one ever suffered so much for their own pains, as Mary suffered for the pains of her children. — St. Jerome

I was painfully shy when I was younger but at some point you've gotta grow up. I think the genius in the man-boy thing is you tap into a woman's motherly instincts. — Bill Burr

Motherly love is not much use if it expresses itself only as a warm gush of emotion, delicately tinged with pink. It must also be strong, guiding and unselfish. The sweetly sung lullaby; the cool hand on the feverd brow, the Mother's Day smiles and flowers are only a small part of the picture. True mothers have to be made of steel to withstand the difficulties that are sure to beset their children. — Rachel Billington

Over all life broods Poesy, like the calm blue sky with its motherly, rebuking face. She is the great reformer, and where the love of her is strong and healthy, wickedness and wrong cannot long prevail. — James Russell Lowell

And now, in looking back upon it, and reviewing the part of my life intervening between her death and the present time, I think I can distinctly see how it has worked for ultimate good. I humbly believe the Lord intended it so. We lost the benefit of her motherly care and instruction, but we gained the benefit of tuition in the school of affliction; and eternity alone will reveal how important that discipline was. — John Lafayette Girardeau

I love Alice more than life itself, but I can't keep her hidden forever. — Kellyn Roth

Mr. Italia sat belching under a pair of oval-framed photographs of parents hairier, if possible, than himself. His wife was dead, but there was a picture of her, too, in her casket, gazing out at us with an eerie simulacrum of motherly love. Dark-complected Mr. Italia was indeed, with handle-bar mustaches of a size that might have made him topple forward out of his chair were it not for the posture seemingly aimed at correcting the leverage in his favor. He drank beer after thrusting into my hand a bottle of soda pop of marked but unidentifiable flavor, pale yellow in color, and lukewarm. — Peter De Vries

Such heaped up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst
Heaven bless the mark! — Washington Irving

In erotic love, two people who were separate become one. In motherly love, two people who were one become separate. The mother must not only tolerate, she must wish and support the child's separation. — Erich Fromm

She has a strange, not unpleasant sense of disconnection from everyone, as if she is floating somewhere high above her head and operating her body by remote control. Stretch lips to smile. Fold palms of hands around pram handle. Tip head towards child in motherly fashion. — Liane Moriarty

Any more motherly attention and I could end up strapped to a table in Ward B singing 'I Gotta Be Me. — Kristin Hannah

I feel like a part of my role being a musician and part of why I want to be a musician is to show women an alternative to sort of the cultural norms, the stereotypes of what we're supposed to be, demure and quiet and motherly. — Janet Weiss

Your daddy and me named you Otha. It means 'wealth'. You were your daddy's treasure from the time you were born until he died. He used to say there were rubies buried deep inside of you. Remember, baby, don't never let a man mine you for your riches. Don't let him take a pickax to that treasure in your soul. Remember, they can't get it until you give it to them. — Cynthia Bond

Marian consecration basically means giving Mary our full permission (or as such permission as we can) to complete her motherly task in us, which is to form us into other Christs. Thus, by consecrating ourselves to Mary, each of us is saying to her: Mary, I want to be a saint. I know that you also want me to be a saint and that it's your God-given mission to form me into one. So, Mary, at this moment, on this day, I freely choose to give you my full permission to do your work in me, with your Spouse, the Holy Spirit. — Michael Gaitley

Philippa Somerville, standing back a little, did not withdraw her arm. In her white face, a shadow of motherly irritation appeared. 'Has no one here any sense? Be quiet and sit down. The world will look after itself for a night, without your hand on the rim. — Dorothy Dunnett

The elder brother compares himself with the younger one and becomes jealous. But the father loves them both so much that it didn't even occur to him to delay the party in order to prevent the elder son from feeling rejected. I am convinced that many of my emotional problems would melt as snow in the sun if I could let the truth of God's motherly non-comparing love permeate my heart. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Gay guys like a certain kind of woman. They like a flamboyant woman that's broken. They like a balls-to-the-wall woman, motherly but not; sexual but not. Gay guys are like this: they either love you or they don't even know you're on the planet. Once you have them, you have them. — Cher

My sister was always very motherly, babysitting and stuff. — Zooey Deschanel

Show me you care about our common tongue. Bring to your [writing] passion, deeply informed by knowledge of your subject. Stay me, not with apples and flagons, but with wit and grace, humor and intense caring about your discipline. Don't slack, don't give it a lick and a promise, don't make it evident that you posted what was 'good enough for government work,' don't try and fake it. Give it your best, your all, not for pence, but for the love of the craft.
Do these things, as these writers and scores I have not named do, bring to your work your self, your heart, your voice, motherly or youthful, lawyerly or priestly, conservative or liberal, it matters not. Do this and I and hundreds of others will return again and again to your work, not merely because we may have a burning need for a new printer or an abiding interest in college newspapers or what have you, but because we wish to spend time with your mind and voice. — Markham Shaw Pyle

My Cape women are generally true to type - big hearted, motherly women who love the sea. My other characters, with the exception of the Portuguese, who I occasionally mention as Cape dwellers, are obviously drawn from the city types one sees in everyday life. — Joseph C. Lincoln

In every form of womanly love something of motherly love also comes to light. — Friedrich Nietzsche

He had performed this ritual before, getting into trouble and then coming to his mother, uneasy and uncertain, not sure precisely what sort of trouble he was in. With uncanny regularity, she had seemed to jump onto a higher plane of reasoning and identify his problems, laying them out for him so they became unavoidable. This was not a service that made him love her any more, but it did make her invaluable to him. — Greg Bear

I used to believe in so many things - elves and leprechauns, virgins riding unicorns. I trusted that the world was made up of people who were generally good, though they may have lost their way temporarily. The faith my mother gave me - the words she whispered when she said good night, the idea that gave me hope for the two of us even when we fought bitterly over trivial things, as mothers and daughters do, I guess - was her belief in love, a love so unconditional we could barely scratch at the edges of comprehending it. — Elissa Janine Hoole

Tis not in battles that from youth we train The Governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of the brain Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood. — William Wordsworth

Her motherly instinct told her that there was too much of something in Natasha, and that it would prevent her from being happy. — Leo Tolstoy

Motherly love - putting the care of children before every other consideration - is the ultimate intelligence of nature. — Marianne Williamson

My mother looks at me with love and understanding, and I realize: she knows what my father did. She knows what I want. She knows and even though she would not destroy a tissue sample or love someone who is not her Match, she still loves us, even though we have done those things. — Ally Condie

think her motherly instincts are slipping. — Renata Suerth

I arrived in Dallas two days before the party and planned on leaving the day after. I hated the city as much as I thought I would. All anyone could talk about were the Cowboys and their chances in the playoffs. Charlene was happy. Joe was not, or so it seemed to me, in spite of the fact that he had finally gotten exactly what he thought he wanted from a wife: she gave him an adorable boy, she did everything in their home including laundry, and most important, she did not embarrass him. Whenever I was alone with Joe during the two days I was there, Charlene would send her son into the room with us. The first time I carried him, Charlene made sure to mention how surprised she was that I had motherly instincts. She probably used the pronoun we more in one day than I have in my whole life. I did not blame her. Most plain women stake their claims clumsily. — Rabih Alameddine

In those first moments it was easier to conceal a confusion of feeling behind a motherly tone — Ian McEwan

I stepped from the air-conditioned compartment onto the station platform, and the motherly breath of the suburbs enfolded me. It smelt of lawn sprinklers and station wagons and tennis rackets and dogs and babies. — Sylvia Plath

Easier is not always better." -Emzara — C.D. Sutherland

You've got that motherly concern in your eyes, Jean. I must look like I'm hammered as shit," said Locke.
"Actually you look like you were executed last week. — Scott Lynch

The church is the gathering of God's children, where they can be helped and fed like babies and then guided by her motherly care, grow up to manhood in maturity of faith. — John Calvin

And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won't be the end of things, only a way of being born again, a bathing and a slumbering where the old and the withered sink down, where the young and new begin to breathe. Then, with other thoughts, I will walk along streets like these, and listen to streams, and overhear what the sky says in the evening, over and over and over. — Hermann Hesse

The language of poetry is not stuck in place. Nothing can own language. I think, however, the genre of poetry itself is very feminine and motherly. — Kim Hyesoon

Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters "woman's peculiar sphere," her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives. — Anna Garlin Spencer

wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She — Cheryl Strayed

She had that motherly no-bullshit way of using her hands as a second communication device and I always fell for it. — Devon Monk

As I come to understand the many talents and characteristics of women, I realize how needed their strengths are in this dispensation. We must remember that we are daughters of God here to provide nurturing care for one another, family and friends--loving care to soften the changes of life felt by all.

What a great opportunity we have to fill our God-given role. He has given us the privilege to shape the lives of those entrusted to our care. Even those of us who have not been blessed to have children of our own can still be influential as trainers and nurturers. It does not matter where we live, whether we are rich or poor, whether our family is large or small. Each of us can share that Christ-like love in our "motherly ministry. — Barbara W. Winder

Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal. — George Orwell

To be motherly is a totally different phenomenon. It is something absolutely human; it transcends animality. It has nothing to do with biology. It is love, pure love, unconditional love. When a mother loves unconditionally - and only a mother can love unconditionally - the child learns the joy of unconditional love. The child becomes capable of loving unconditionally. And to be able to love unconditionally is to be religious. And it is the easiest thing for a woman to do. It is easy for her because naturally she is ready for it. — Rajneesh

Erica's despair has nothing to do with lack of motherly love. She loved Maja fiercely and sincerely. At the same time she felt as if she'd been invaded by an alien parasite that sucked all joy out of her and forced her into a shadow existence that had nothing in common with the life she'd lived before. — Camilla Lackberg

I beg of you, you who could and should be bearing and rearing a family: Wives, come home from the typewriter, the laundry, the nursing, come home from the factory, the cafe. No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother
cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one's precious husband and children. Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home, wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and, unembarrassed, help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously await. — Spencer W. Kimball

Marilla felt more embarrassed than ever. She had intended to teach Anne the childish classic, "Now I lay me down to sleep." But she had, as I have told you, the glimmerings of a sense of humor
which is simply another name for a sense of the fitness of things; and it suddenly occurred to her that simple little prayer, sacred to the white-robed childhood lisping at motherly knees, was entirely unsuited to this freckled witch of a girl who knew and cared nothing about God's love, since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of human love. — L.M. Montgomery

We must be tolerant with ourselves and allow ourselves some deviations from the straight line we set up to follow. Even more we must allow others the same prerogative. — Jill Lepore

I constantly looked for motherly protection. — Michael Reagan

Does she know you're in love with her?"
This time I can't help but smile. If this had been last week, or even two days ago, I would've frowned and denied it. Never again. "She knows."
"And she loves you?" Mrs. Jones asks in a motherly tone.
"She does. We're going to give us a try and see where it goes."
"It better go to church for the wedding," she mumbles as she walks by me with the papers in hand. — L.P. Dover

When I was a child, next to my own mother, no woman that ever lived took as much interest in me, gave me as much motherly advice or seemed to love me more than did Sister Snow. I loved her with all my heart, and loved her hymn, 'O My Father.' — Heber J. Grant

Other people look at me and think: That poor woman; she has a child with a disability. But all I see when I look at you is that girl who had memorized all the words to Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by the time she was three, the girl who crawls into bed with me whenever there's a thunderstorm - not because you're afraid but because I am, the girl whose laugh has always vibrated inside my own body like a tuning fork. I would never have wished for an able-bodied child, because that child would have been someone who wasn't you. — Jodi Picoult

Young men!" he snorted to Erak. "They think a pretty face can cure every ill."
"Some of us can remember back that far. Halt," Erak told him with a grin. "I suppose that's all far behind an old hack like you. Svengal told me you were settling down. Some plump, motherly widow seizing her last chance with a broken-down old gray bear, is she?"
Erak, of course, had been told by Svengal that Halt had recently married a great beauty. But he enjoyed getting a reaction from the smaller man. Halt's one-eyed stare locked onto the Oberjarl.
"When we get back, I'd advise you not to refer to Pauline as a 'plump, motherly widow' in her hearing. She's very good with that dagger she carries and you need your ears to keep that ridiculous helmet of yours in place. — John Flanagan

For twenty years or more, nothing but loving words, and gentle moralities, and motherly loving kindness, had come from that chair;
headaches and heartaches innumerable had been cured there,
difficulties spritual and temporal solved there,
all by one good, loving woman, God bless her! — Harriet Beecher Stowe

It was a boyish thing to do and it caught the hesitating girl in the depths of her heart, as the boy element in a man ever appeals to a motherly woman. — Gene Stratton-Porter

When you are in hard labor, remember that the length of labor is usually proportional to the number of people around. Avoid the presence of anybody who might release adrenaline. The best situation I know for an easy birth is when there is nobody else around than an experienced, motherly and silent midwife who does not behave like a guide or an observer. — Michel Odent

If an apple blossom or a ripe apple could tell its own story, it would be, still more than its own, the story of the sunshine that smiled upon it, of the winds that whispered to it, of the birds that sang around it, of the storms that visited it, and of the motherly tree that held it and fed it until its petals were unfolded and its form developed. — Lucy Larcom

But Mrs. Meany, see, the women went on, leaning forward, despite how her heart was broken, pulled herself together, anyway, to put on a good face for the rest of the family at home. And she went back, Sunday after Sunday, right up until the Sunday before she died. Mrs. Meany put her beautiful love - a mother's love - against the terrible scenes that brewed like sewage in that poor girl's troubled mind. She persevered, she baked her cakes, she hauled herself (the goiter swinging) on and off the ferry, and she sat, brokenhearted, holding her daughter's hand, even as Lucy shouted her terrible words, proving to anyone with eyes to see that a mother's love was a beautiful, light, relentless thing that the devil could not diminish. — Alice McDermott

I am becoming the woman I've wanted,
grey at the temples,
soft body, delighted,
cracked up by life
with a laugh that's known bitter
but, past it, got better,
knows she's a survivor--
that whatever comes,
she can outlast it.
I am becoming a deep
weathered basket.

I am becoming the woman I've longed for,
the motherly lover
with arms strong and tender,
the growing up daughter
who blushes surprises.
I am becoming full moons
and sunrises.

I find her becoming,
this woman I've wanted,
who knows she'll encompass,
who knows she's sufficient,
knows where she's going
and travels with passion.
Who remembers she's precious,
but knows she's not scarce--
who knows she is plenty,
plenty to share. — Jayne Brown

[Dona Queta] says that her motherly advice is always the same: 'Only whores, thieves, and cops go out at night. Which one are you, asshole?' p. 157 — Daniel Hernandez

They always looked back before turning the corner, for their mother was always at the window to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them. Somehow it seemed as if they couldn't have got through the day without that, for whatever their mood might be, the last glimpse of that motherly face was sure to affect them like sunshine. — Louisa May Alcott

What is this thing called a kiss? French, tongue, soul, chaste, motherly, fatherly, brotherly, sisterly, ass, genital, Judas, trembling, rough, hesitant, sweet, soft, wet, dying, fevered, good-night, farewell, burning, and chocolate. — Gilbert Sorrentino