Son From Mother Quotes & Sayings

Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so, so, then: - softly, softly! That's it - that's it! long and strong. Give way there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull, can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes don't ye pull? - pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out! Here," whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; "every mother's son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. That's it - that's it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start her - start her, my silverspoons! Start her, marling-spikes!" Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in inculcating the religion of rowing. — Herman Melville

Gargantua, at the age of four hundred four score and forty- four years begat his son Pantagruel, from his wife, named Badebec, daughter of the King of the Amaurotes in Utopia, who died in child-birth: because he was marvelously huge and so heavy that he could not come to light without suffocating his mother. — Francois Rabelais

I had loved her as a mother, and though she had put forth her best effort to love me as a son, a difference existed after she learned the truth from Delia. Yet I did not hold her responsible; how could I blame her for an inability to love the part of me that I, too, loathed? — Kathleen Grissom

You are your mother's trueborn son of Lannister."
"Am I?" the dwarf replied, sardonic. "Do tell my lord father. My mother died birthing me, and he's never been sure."
"I don't even know who my mother was," Jon said.
"Some woman, no doubt. Most of them are." He favored Jon with a rueful grin. "Remember this, boy. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs."
And with that he turned and sauntered back into the feast, whistling a tune.
When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king. — George R R Martin

Jun Do had dealt with this his whole life, the ways it was impossible for people from normal families to conceive of a man in so much hurt that he couldn't acknowledge his own son, that there was nothing worse than a mother leaving her children, though it happened all the time, that "take" was a word people used for those who had so little to give as to be immeasurable. — Adam Johnson

My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Pericles, he reflected, was a sad case. He'd been a postman all his life, a solid, reliable worker, until one Christmas when he had stolen all the gifts he was meant to deliver: wind-chimes, scented candles, Belgian chocolates, cowbells from the Bernese Oberland. Most of the haul had been lavished on his elderly mother; the rest he had stashed in his bedroom, which the old lady, being too frail to climb the stairs, no longer cleaned. — Alison Fell

There you are," Hale told his mother when he found her.
"Oh, darling, do you know Michael Calloway? His mother is the event chair. We've just been arguing over whether he is going to let me outbid him for this gorgeous antique clock," Mrs. Hale said, but her son didn't care.
"Sorry," Hale told the man in the tux with the small bits of sweat gathering at his brow. "I need her," he said, pulling his mother from the table and toward the bank of elevators on the far sie of the room, the ones that appeared to be operational.
"Mom, I need you to come with me,"
"But, darling," the woman protested, "its Swiss!"
The elevator dinged and Hale pushed her inside it. "Sorry, Dad will meet you downstairs. — Ally Carter

It is not difficult for an unwise mother quite unintentionally to centre the heterosexual feelings of a young son upon herself, and it is true that, if this is done, the evil consequences pointed out by Freud will probably ensue. This is, however, much less likely to occur if the mother's sexual life is satisfying to her, for in that case she will not look to her child for a type of emotional satisfaction which ought to be sought only from adults. The parental impulse in its purity is an impulse to care for the young, not to demand affection from them, and if a woman is happy in her sexual life she will abstain spontaneously from all improper demands for emotional response from her child. — Bertrand Russell

I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: My son did this to me. I begged her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: I forgive my son. Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand. — Mother Teresa

People want it to be red, like blood. It's kind of funny. When I used to throw meat into the audience, I'd get letters from kids' mothers saying, "What's the best way to get blood stains out of my son's shirt?" — Ozzy Osbourne

Ah, never," Nicholas said, rubbing his hands together. "Such an interesting word."
"You know, Your Majesty, the only reason I'm not swearing at you right now is because I was taught to be kind to old men."
Nicholas laughed merrily. "Cheeky whelp."
"Does that mean you won't slay me for telling you that you're a thoroughly obnoxious, interefering, exasperating ... " Runach took a deep breath. "Good breeding prevents me from saying more."
Nicholas smiled. "Runach, my dearest boy, you are truly your mother's son. — Lynn Kurland

One other thing this skinny Arab knew: the power of hating the Jew. He could quote from the Holy Book chapter and verse the perfidy of Jews. He could show the dagger of Israel stuck in the soul of Jerusalem where Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. And this son of Islam's most holy places could wrap it all up in a tidy little conspiracy, the Jews in New York controlling America, the Great Satan, launching their crusades against Muslims everywhere. See, we Muslims are nursed on the mother's milk of conspiracies. And unless you have a conspiracy to explain everything in one neat package, we simply won't believe you. — Ken Ballen

As the son of a feminist mother, I grew up with the idea that work was a sort of salvation for women as it would give them freedom from the domestic grind. Now it seems work is a form of slavery, undertaken out of apparent compulsion rather than choice. — Tom Hodgkinson

People think blood red, but blood don't got no colour. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin' call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her. — Marlon James

Happy is that mother whose ability to help her children continues on from babyhood and manhood into maturity. Blessed is the son who need not leave his mother at the threshold of the world's activities, but may always and everywhere have her blessing and her help. Thrice blessed are the son and the mother between whom there exists an association not only physical and affectional, but spiritual and intellectual, and broad and wise as is the scope of each being. — Lydia Hoyt Farmer

Once [a soul] is condemned by God, then God's friends agree in God's judgment and condemnation. For all eternity they will not have a kind thought for this wretch. Rather they will be satisfied to see him in the flames as a victim of God's justice. ("The just shall rejoice when he shall see the revenge ... " Psalm 57:11) They will abhor him. A mother will look from paradise upon her own condemned son without being moved, as though she had never known him. — Anthony Mary Claret

When a mother extends outstretched arms to a son who has failed in sports, or school, or socially, or been deemed not smart enough, 'manly enough,' or just plain not good enough, he begins to understand what love is all about. The moment a mother extends her grace, he begins to understand that goodness in being a man isn't all about his performance. It isn't about his successes or his failures. It is about being able to accept love from another and then return that love."1 — Vicki Courtney

Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. The rain dripped from the thatch, and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure. — Josephine Tey

In choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight, whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely. What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his mother's heart he knew not yet. — John Galsworthy

Rojer!" his mother cried, stumbling towards the washing trough before falling to her knees. Screaming in pain, she reached back and got a firm grip on one of the coreling's horns.
"You ... can't ... have ... my ... son!" she screamed, and threw herself forward, pulling on the horn with all her strength. Torn from its perch, the demon took ribbons of flesh with it, as Kally flipped it into the trough.
Soaking crockery shattered on impact, and the flame demon gurgled and thrashed, steam filling the air as the water was brought to an instant boil. Kally screamed as her arms burned, but she held the creature under until its thrashes stopped. — Peter V. Brett

Neleus ...
The son of Poseidon!
A birth that came from the mate of a god and a mortal woman.
Not plain at all!
So it was, when the gods love, mate as humans with humans!
From such a union two children were born, both boys.
Their mother placed them in a small boat, and dropped it into the sea.
The sea loved and saved them, children of Neptune were anyway!
The river itself is connected with the sea, fresh water with salt, the land and the sea ...
"The sea herself guided us like legendary heroes into this new place ..".
It couldn't be differently.
Children of the Gods aren't we, our race? Have similar origin and similar history! Could not abandoned us, prey and exposed, like the two babies? — Katerina Kostaki

Her [Mary's] motherhood extends beyond view. In the will of the Son, she becomes at once mother and maid: sheltering him, but sheltered in him, forming him, but formed by him ... When she pronounces the words: 'Be it done to me according to thy word', the Mother conceives the mystery from the Trinity, in order to give it to the Son. The Son gives the word back to the Trinity by giving everything he has back to the Father in the Spirit. Then, after the Father has received it again, it is distributed to mankind by means of that extravagant expansioning-the Eucharist and the Holy Spirit. — Adrienne Von Speyr

There is a story about the life of Buddha in which a mother carries her dead son to him draped in her arms. The woman has heard that he is a holy man who can restore life. Weeping, she appeals for mercy. Gently, Buddha tells her that he can help save her son's life, but that first she has to bring him a mustard seed secured from a family that has never experienced death. Desperately she searches home after home. Many want to help, but everyone has already experienced a loss--a sister, a husband, a child. Finally the woman returns to Buddha. "What have you found?" he asks. "Where is your mustard seed and where is your son? You are not carrying him."
"I buried him," she replies — Chanrithy Him

"Oh, ancient god, whatever your name," whispered Ahmed. "Help this lost son of a good father, this evil boy who meant no harm but slept in school, ran errands slowly, did not pray from his heart, ignored his mother, and did not hold his family in great esteem. For all this I know I must suffer. But here in the midst of silence, at the desert's heart, where even the wind knows not my name? Must I die so young? Am I to be forgotten without having been?" — Ray Bradbury

I looked at my son and put my hand on his arm. 'I'd really like to know....What could I have done in the past that would have helped when you were growing up? How could I have been a better mother?'
He thought about it for a few moments and then answered, 'When I was growing up--and even during my difficult years--I would have liked it if you had listened more to my heart than to my words.' ...
Sometimes our children use words or a tone that communicates something completely different from what they are struggling with inside--whether it's fear or insecurity or pain. I realized that this is a great lesson for me to learn and something that could be applied to all my relationships. — Christopher Yuan

I'm always saying a mother never loses her peach pit instinct. Even with a grown son, you have to stop yourself from sticking out your hand when your child finishes a piece of fruit. — Joshua Henkin

Sometimes parents don't find what they're looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what they'd like to grow there instead. I've witnessed this with the former hockey player who takes his son out to skate before he can even walk. Or in the mother who gave up her ballet dreams when she married, but now scrapes her daughter's hair into a bun and watched from the wings of the stage. We are not, as you'd expect, orchestrating their lives; we are not even trying for a second chance. We are hoping that if this one thing takes root, it might take up enough light and space to keep something else from developing in our children: the disappointment we've already lived. — Jodi Picoult

Venus of Eryx, from her mountain throne,
Saw Hades and clasped her swift-winged son, and said:
'Cupid, my child, my warrior, my power,
Take those sure shafts with which you conquer all,
And shoot your speedy arrows to the heart
Of the great god to whom the last lot fell
When the three realms were drawn. Your mastery
Subdues the gods of heaven and even Jove,
Subdues the ocean's deities and him,
Even him, who rules the ocean's deities.
Why should Hell lag behind? Why not there too
Extend your mother's empire and your own ... ?
Then Cupid, guided by his mother, opened
His quiver of all his thousand arrows
Selected one, the sharpest and the surest,
The arrow most obedient to the bow,
And bent the pliant horn against his knee
And shot the barbed shaft deep in Pluto's heart. — Ovid

I think rappers are the fall guy because some of us don't have the wits to point the finger back. The thing is when you take a whole generation and whip them out, string the mothers out and put the fathers in jail - the reason I know respect is because my father is the mediator between me and my grandfather. I'm the mediator between my son and my father because I'm old enough to understand where my father is coming from and young enough to understand what my kid is trying to do. When you whip out the mediator the kids run wild and the old people are scared of them. — Nelly

Son, you were your mother's peace. You brought her so much peace and joy from the very first time she held you, that she knew she had to name you Pax. Your mother loved you more than anything in the world. She would have gladly given her life a hundred times over to keep you safe. Whatever you do, just live a good life for her. She had so many hopes for you. But when it boils down to it, all she would want is for you to be happy. — Courtney Cole

According to Ommaney, prior to their departure Zinat Mahal had been squabbling loudly with Jawan Bakht after the latter had fallen in love with one of his father's harem women. He also began using the family's now scarce financial resources to bribe the guards to bring him bottles of porter: 'What an instance of the state of morals and domestic economy of Ex-Royalty,' wrote a disapproving Ommaney to Saunders. 'Mother and son at enmity, the son trying to form a connection with his father's concubine, and setting at nought the precepts of his religion, buying from, and drinking, the liquor of an infidel. — William Dalrymple

Under her thick pancake makeup, her skin had been pockmarked, but he would stare at her adoringly from his cot at night and imagine her scars were constellations, a secret map to a far-off, happy place. — Sarah Addison Allen

What I failed to see was that, by ending my life, I would cause interminable pain to my family and friends. I could not understand the heartbreak it would cause those around me. Nor did I consider that my brother, Joseph, might live the rest of his life in continual rage, or that my sister, Libby, might shut herself off from the world and fall into perpetual depression, silence, and sadness mistakenly blaming themselves for my death as many family members do when they lose someone they love to suicide. I certainly held no understanding of the enormous pain my mother and father would suffer because they lost their oldest son in such a terrifying and devastating way. They would not have a chance to watch me mature, marry, and perhaps have children. Instead, all of their hopes, aspirations, and dreams for me would be destroyed with my decision to end my life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. — Kevin Hines

Would it surprise you to hear that man's unhappiness is due in large measure to the way he is seeking after happiness? You know this already from your own life. For when you have been unhappy, you have been unhappy with others - with your father or mother, your sister or brother, your spouse, your son, your daughter. If unhappiness is with others, wouldn't it stand to reason that happiness must be with others as well? — Anasazi Foundation

One day, I was on the front lawn of the property and aimed the gun at a sparrow perched high in a tree. Hazel Goldreich, Arthur's wife, was watching me and jokingly remarked that I would never hit the target. But she had hardly finished the sentence when the sparrow fell to the ground. I turned to her and was about to boast, when the Goldreichs' son Paul, then about five years old, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, "David, why did you kill that bird? Its mother will be sad." My mood immediately shifted from one of pride to shame; I felt that this small boy had far more humanity than I did. It was an odd sensation for a man who was the leader of a nascent guerrilla army. — Nelson Mandela

The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought was had enjoyed a direct relation with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, brothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD" "Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon And you were a Christian slave," - W.E. Henley. His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City every day to work in a bank. He was twenty years old and suffered from aspirations. I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker called him by his given name, and he called the marker "Bullseyes." Charlie explained, a little nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the young, I suggested that Charlie should go back to his mother. — Rudyard Kipling

Mom taught me not to look away from the worst but to believe that we can all do better. She never wavered in her conviction that books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose - electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio - is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in human conversation. Mom taught me that you can make a difference in the world and that books really do matter: they're how we know what we need to do in life, and how we tell others. Mom also showed me, over the course of two years and dozens of books and hundreds of hours in hospitals, that books can be how we get closer to each other, and stay close, even in the case of a mother and son who were very close to begin with, and even after one of them has died. — Will Schwalbe

I would not leave a mother alone in her plight. They described how she had kept the news of my brother's death from our ailing father and on the evening that he was brought home, chapel bells rang out and kept ringing in honor of him, his valor, and my father kept asking if it was a bishop or something that was visiting the parish, not knowing that it was his own son. — Edna O'Brien

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on.
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and ... then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door ... and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother ... I want to ... fuck you — The Doors

Son, I hope your opinion of your mother hasn't lessened, knowing what you now know."
Gavin glanced up; incredulity skewed his eyebrows. His expression appeared both stunned and appalled. "Never, Father! I love her! It makes no difference to me where she came from."
The man nodded, a show of relief in his features. His large hand, soft in touch, went to brush a string of hair away from his wife's peaceful profile. "Your mother loves you too, son, more than anything in the world. She worries about you, day and night."
That sentiment stirred something profoundly pleasant inside the boy. He grinned at the internal warmth it created. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The king is my son!" Cersei rose to her feet. "Aye," her uncle said, "and from what I saw of Joffrey, you are as unfit a mother as you are a ruler. — George R R Martin

You can sail in the desert with a ship of fools. You can smuggle in Moses and his book of rules. But you can't take a mother and give her back her son. What kind of freedom is bought with a gun? People like to build their prison walls when they're afraid to look inside ... a thousand points of light are the muzzle flashes in the night. And the freedoms you profess to hold won't bring the dead back from the cold. — Bruce Dickinson

My mother is from another time - the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that's what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn't know what I'm talking about. I know if I wasn't her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going. — Steven Wright

Father, he prayed silently, thank you for sending this boy into my life. Thank you for the joy and the sorrow he brings. Be with him always, to surround him with right influences, and when tests of any kind must come, give him wisdom and strength to act according to your will. Look over his mother, also, and the other children, wherever they are. Feed and clothe them, keep them from harm, and bring them one day into a full relationship with your Son. — Jan Karon

I am not Menda, though that is what my mother called me. I am Tehlu, lord above all. I have come to free you from demons and the wickedness of your own hearts. I am Tehlu, son of myself. Let the wicked hear my voice and tremble." And they did tremble. But some of them refused to believe. They called him a demon and threatened him. They spoke hard, frightened words. Some threw stones and cursed him, and spat toward him and his mother. Then Tehlu grew angry, and he might have slain them all, but Perial leaped forward and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. "What more can you expect?" she asked him quietly. "From men who live with demons for their neighbors? Even the best dog will bite that has been kicked enough. — Patrick Rothfuss

Just as a mother would protect with her life her own son, her only son, so one should cultivate an unbounded mind towards all beings, and loving-kindness towards all the world. One should cultivate an unbounded mind, above and below and across, without obstruction, without enmity, without rivalry. Standing, or going, or seated, or lying down, as long as one is free from drowsiness, one should practice this mindfulness. This, they say, is the holy state here. — Gautama Buddha

I am that rose that grew from concrete, I am the ENTIRE mother to son Langston Hughes poem. And I'm still climbing ... — Jaha Knight

Killenkusi was a Machi59 priestess. Her daughter Kinturay had to choose between succeeding her or becoming a spy; she chose the latter and her love for the Irishman; this opportunity afforded her the hope of having a child who, like Lautaro and mixed-race Alejo, would be raised among the Spaniards, and like them might one day lead the hosts of those who wished to push the conquistadors back beyond the Maule River, because Admapu law prohibited the Araucanians from fighting outside of Yekmonchi. Her hope was realized and in the spring60 of the year 1777, in the place called Palpal, an Araucanian woman endured the pain of childbirth in a standing position because tradition decreed that a strong child could not be born of a weak mother. The son arrived and became the Liberator of Chile. — Roberto Bolano

People are also dying from vaccinations. Evan, my son, died in front of me for two minutes. You ask any mother in the autism community if we'll take the flu, the measles, over autism and day of the week. I think they need to wake up and stop hurting our kids. — Jenny McCarthy

For a mother the project of raising a boy is the most fulfilling project she can hope for. She can watch him, as a child, play the games she was not allowed to play; she can invest in him her ideas, aspirations, ambitions, and values
or whatever she has left of them; she can watch her son, who came from her flesh and whose life was sustained by her work and devotion, embody her in the world. So while the project of raising a boy is fraught with ambivalence and leads inevitably to bitterness, it is the only project that allows a woman to be
to be through her son, to live through her son. — Andrea Dworkin

Proverbs 6:20-26 20 My son, keep your father's command, And do not forsake the law of your mother. 21 Bind them continually upon your heart; Tie them around your neck. 22 When you roam, they* will lead you; When you sleep, they will keep you; And when you awake, they will speak with you. 23 For the commandment is a lamp, And the law a light; Reproofs of instruction are the way of life, 24 To keep you from the evil woman, From the flattering tongue of a seductress. 25 Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, Nor let her allure you with her eyelids. 26 For by means of a harlot A man is reduced to a crust of bread; And an adulteress* will prey upon his precious life. — Anonymous

A smell of burned hair and cotton wafted into the air as I spun toward my desk. There was a low whine from the desk and then smoke billowed out of my closed laptop.
I gaped.
My precious, perfectly brand new laptop I cherished like one would a small child.
Son of a mother ...
Friend or not, it was so on — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity. — Andrea Dworkin

Long ago, returning from some turbulent sequence of misdeeds, the younger, beloved son of the house of Culter would rap at the door of his mother's chamber, and be admitted, and closing the door, would bend upon her the grave, sweet gaze, made of mischief and love, that melted the bones in her body. Then, sinking to one knee, he would kiss her hand, in obedience and humility.

Now he rapped, and she heard his voice speak her name and, rising, she faced him as the door opened and shut and he stood, his bearing and looks unlike anything she had ever seen in him before, in any extremity. He said, 'I have to find Philippa.' And then, walking into the room, he dropped on one knee and said, 'I will promise anything you wish, to the end of my life, if you will tell me the name of the house that you know of. — Dorothy Dunnett

My father was the orphaned son of immigrants to the United States from Ireland. My father never knew his parents. His mother died - we're not sure - either at or shortly after his birth, and he and all of his siblings were placed in orphanages in the Boston area. — George J. Mitchell

Some years later, after Scott's death, we came my father and I to the Field Museum, a long dismal peristyle dwindling away into the howling distance, and inside stood before a tableau of Stone Age Man, father mother and child crouched around an artificial ember in postures of minatory quiet - until, feeling my father's eye on me, I turned and saw what he required of me - very special father and son we were that summer, he staking his everything this time on a perfect comradeship - and I, seeing in his eyes the terrible request, requiring from me his very life; I, through a child's cool perversity or some atavistic recoil from an intimacy too intimate, turned him down, turned away, refused him what I knew I could not give. — Walker Percy

The Sweat and the Furrow was Silas Weekley being earthly and spade-conscious all over seven hundred pages. The situation, to judge from the first paragraph, had not materially changed since Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. The rain dripped from the thatch, and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure. It was not Silas's fault that its steam provided the only uprising element in the picture. If Silas could have discovered a brand of steam that steamed downwards, Silas would have introduced it. — Josephine Tey

It is the liveliest time in life, the happiest of the irresponsible times in life. Mothers echo its happiness - nothing is like a mother who has a son home from college, except another mother with a son home from college. Bloom does actually come upon these mothers; it is a visible thing; and they run like girls, walk like athletes, laugh like sycophants. Yet they give up their sons to the daughters of other mothers, and find it proud rapture enough to be allowed to sit and watch. — Booth Tarkington

This applies, however, only to those who are within the specified age: after that we allow them to range at will, except that a man may not marry his daughter or his daughter's daughter, or his mother or his mother's mother; and women, on the other hand, are prohibited from marrying their sons or fathers, or son's son or father's father, and so on in either direction. — Plato

Dear friends, I want you to hear this: what is said of Jesus is said of you. I know this can be hard to affirm. You are the beloved daughter or son of God. Can you believe it? Can you hear it not only in your head through your physical ears but in your gut, hear it so that your whole life can be turned around? Go to the scriptures and read: "I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have written your name in the palm of my hand from all eternity. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you in your mother's womb. I love you. I embrace you. You are mine and I am yours and you belong to me." You have to hear this, because if you can hear this divine voice speak to you from all eternity, then your life will become more and more the life of the beloved, because that is who you are. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Developing Christlike attributes in our lives is not an easy task, especially when we move away from generalities and abstractions and begin to deal with real life. The test comes in practicing what we proclaim. The reality check comes when Christlike attributes need to become visible in our lives - as husband or wife, as father or mother, as son or daughter, in our friendships, in our employment, in our business, and in our recreation. We can recognize our growth, as can those around us, as we gradually increase our capacity to 'act in all holiness before [Him]' (D&C 43:9). — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Niepokalanow is a home like Nazareth. The Father is God the Father, the mother and mistress of the home is the Immaculata, the firstborn son and our brother is Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the altar. All the younger brothers try to imitate the elder Brother in love and honor towards God and the Immaculata, our common parents, and from the Immaculata they try to love the divine elder Brother, the ideal of sanctity who deigned to come down from heaven to be incarnated in her and to live with us in the tabernacle ... — Maximilian Kolbe

And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg.
Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter ... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold ... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle. — Alan Moore

There are so many different elements to surfing. Small waves, big waves, long boards, short boards. This makes it a sport you can share with people. It's not just a solitary thing - it's become a family thing, too. It's about exercising and passing something on from father to son, and from mother to daughter. — Kelly Slater

The mother of the heating contractor does not
Have the same problem as the mother of the poet.
When the mother of the heating contractor talks about her son
It's usually understood, from the beginning, that her son,
The heating contractor, is not pretending to be a heating contractor. — Matt Cook

At Bob Dylan's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, Bruce Springsteen described hearing Dylan's music for the very first time. Springsteen was fifteen, he said, riding in the car with his mother, idly listening to the radio, when "Like a Rolling Stone" came on. It was as though, Springsteen recalled, "somebody took his boot and kicked open the door to your mind." His mother's verdict: "That man can't sing." Mrs. Springsteen's response reminds us that we don't all react the same way to the same experience - and her son's reminds us that life holds moments when our perspective dramatically shifts, when our assumptions are deeply challenged, when we see new possibilities or sense for the first time that whatever has been holding us back from freedom or creativity or new ventures might actually be overcome. There — Sharon Salzberg

Few boys have been as fortunate as I, raised into manhood with only the gentlest of words and blandishments in my ears and the kindest of caresses upon my person, by a mother who sheltered us from everything that is harsh and ugly in this world. I was spoiled, utterly unprepared for cruelty, and perhaps this sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not! You mustn't think I blame you. I'm afraid I must sound like the most ungrateful son in the world, when in fact the opposite is true. I am more grateful now than ever for the way you raised us, teaching us the value of kindness, of education, of independent thinking and liberal ideals, in the face of the fascism that is sweeping our country. The cruelest punishments now fail to bring even a tear to my eye, but the thought of the hardship you've suffered on behalf of your ideals makes me weep like a baby. — Ruth Ozeki

His personal fulfillment did not lead him to evolve a cheerful Madonna; on the contrary this Madonna was sad; she had already, through his sculptures, known the Descent. The tranquility of his early bas-relief, when Mary still had her decision to make, could never be recaptured. This young mother was committed; she knew the end of her boy's life. That was why she was reluctant to let him go, this beautiful, husky,healthy boy, his hand clasped for protection in hers. That
was why she sheltered him with the side of her cloak.
The child, sensitive to his mother's mood, had a touch of melancholy about the eyes. He was strong, he had courage, he would step forth from the safe harbor of his mother's lap, but just now he gripped her hand with the fingers of one hand, and with the
other held securely to her side. Or was it his own mother he was thinking about, sad because she must leave her son alone in the world? Himself, who clung to her? — Irving Stone

Not all will believe in my teaching. And they who will not believe, will hate it; because it bereaves them of that which they love, and strife will come of it. My teaching, like fire, will kindle the world. And from it strife must arise in the world. Strife will arise in every house. Father against son, mother against daughter; and their kin will become haters of them who understand my teaching, and they will be killed. Because, for him who shall understand my teaching, neither his father, nor his mother, nor wife, nor children, nor all his property, will have any weight. — Leo Tolstoy

All of a sudden from one of the doors I heard a woman scream out, "Michael Shawn Hickenbottom! What are you doing?!" It was Carol, Shawn's mom, and she gave him an earful in front of all of us for going against doctors' orders. Instantly he stopped being the Superstar wrestler Shawn Michaels and turned into a son being scolded by his mother. — Daniel Bryan

Not until all babies are born from glass jars will the combat cease between mother and son. — Camille Paglia

Hail, Son of the Most High, heir of both Worlds, Queller of Satan! On thy glorious work Now enter, and begin to save Mankind. Thus they the Son of God, our Saviour meek, Sung victor, and, from heavenly feast refreshed, Brought on his way with joy. He, unobserved, Home to his mother's house private returned. — John Milton

Not just one day, you will live many days," the doctor would answer, "you will live months and years, too." "But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dears, why do we quarrel, boast before each other, remember each other's offenses? Let us go to the garden, let us walk and play and love and praise and kiss each other, and bless our life." "He's not long for this world, your son," the doctor said to mother as she saw him to the porch, "from sickness he is falling into madness." The — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A watershed moment exists in every man's life...sometimes it's profound, sometimes it's barely a blip. But every man has the moment when he stops being his mother's son and becomes another woman's man. When he goes from protected to protector. — Suanne Laqueur

One could guess that there was the delicate forethought of a mother behind this choice of the pavillon for Albert: while not wanting to be separated from her son, she nevertheless realized that a young man of the viscount's age needed all his freedom. On the other hand, it must be said that one could also recognize in this the intelligent egoism of the young man, the son of wealthy parents, who enjoyed the benefits of a free and idle life, which was gilded for him like a birdcage. — Alexandre Dumas

Bree stared down at Bernardo's still form. The monitor was the only sound in the room apart from his deep breathing. Alessandro had gone down to the cafeteria with Will and Gianni to grab something to eat before they left for home. Bree lied and told him that she wanted to check in with Tina and her mother Roxanna for a few minutes before they left. Even unconscious, the son of a bitch was formidable and Bree felt nervous around him. "Why don't you do everyone a favour and just die already?" Bree said. No response. Bree sneered and shook her head, turning to leave. "You could always smother me with a pillow," a groggy voice said behind her, making her heart nearly stop. Bree whirled around wide-eyed and met Bernardo's dark gaze. She forced herself to shrug and crossed her arms. "Do you think Alessandro would forgive you for murdering his father?" Bernardo asked. They both knew the answer to that. — E. Jamie

When my father first came home from college, he sat my grandparents down to tell them some very serious news. They followed him quizzically into the living room, and from the bantam couch stared up at their nervous, pacing son.
"I'm gay," he announced.
They sat stunned for a moment, and just as his mother started to cry he said,
"Just kidding. I smoke. — Sarah Silverman

May the Mother of Jesus and our Mother, always smile on your spirit, obtaining for it, from her Most Holy Son, every heavenly blessing. — Pio Of Pietrelcina

I'm going that way too. I live in Crouch End. Do you want to share a black cab?'
Black cabs were an extravagance that Neve couldn't afford, not this far away from payday, but that wasn't the reason why she declined. 'No,
thank you. I'm perfectly all right with catching the tube.'
'OK, tube it is,' Max agreed, because he was quite obviously emotionally tone deaf and couldn't sense the huge 'kindly bugger off' vibes that
Neve was sure she was emitting. 'You're still mad at me, aren't you?'
'You apologised, why would I still be mad at you?'
'One day we'll laugh about this. When little Tommy asks how we met, I'll say, "Well, son, I threw an ice cube at your mother, then slapped her
arse, and we've been inseparable ever since. — Sarra Manning

Jesus, the Blessed Child of God, is merciful. Showing mercy is different from having pity. Pity connotes distance, even looking down upon. When a beggar asks for money and you give him something out of pity, you are not showing mercy. Mercy comes from a compassionate heart; it comes from a desire to be an equal. Jesus didn't want to look down on us. He wanted to become one of us and feel deeply with us.
When Jesus called the only son of the widow of Nain to life, he did so because he felt the deep sorrow of the grieving mother in his own heart (see Luke 7:11-17). Let us look at Jesus when we want to know how to show mercy to our brothers and sisters. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

A kiss from my mother made me a painter. — Benjamin West

A boy who could make his mother feel special inspite of his own ordeals is the boon from God in lieu of some good deed. — Adhish Mazumder

The marriage of a Jewish son is a bittersweet prospect. There is relief, always, that he has navigated the tantalizing and plentiful assemblies of non-Jewish women to whom the children of the Diaspora are inevitably exposed: from the moment he enters secondary school there is the constant anxiety that a blue-eyed Christina or Mary will lure him away from the tribe. Jewish men are widely known to be uxorious in all the most advantageous ways. And so each mother fears that, whether he be short and myopic, boorish or stupid or prone to discuss his lactose intolerance with strangers, whether he be blessed with a beard rising almost to meet his hairline, he is still within the danger zone. Somewhere out there is a shiksa with designs on her son. Jewish men make good husbands. It is the Jewish woman's blessing as a wife, and her curse as a mother. — Francesca Segal

This I need to be told?" she'd snapped. As if, sitting in this kitchen where she felt the disapproving presence of his dead mother, she could forget where he'd grown up. Cole was the youngest of six children, with five sisters who'd traveled no farther than the bottom of the hollow, where Dad Widener had deeded each daughter an acre on which to build a house when she married, meanwhile saving back the remainder of the sixty-acre farm for his only son, Cole. The family cemetery was up behind the orchard. The Wideners' destiny was to occupy this same plot of land for their lives and eternity, evidently. To them the word town meant Egg Fork, a nearby hamlet of a few thousand souls, nine churches, and a Kroger's. Whereas Lusa was a dire outsider from the other side of the mountains, from Lexington - a place in the preposterous distance. And now she was marooned behind five sisters-in-law who flanked her gravel right-of-way to the mailbox. — Barbara Kingsolver

Something about an inner value, about love; the love that shone from him as if from some kind of a beacon. — Bryan Islip

He'll take from your mind the answer best suited to lead you on, to enthrall you. He'll weave a web of deceits so thick you won't see the world through it. He wants your strength and he'll say what he must say to get it. Break the chain, child! You're the strongest of them all! Break the chain and he'll go back
to hell for he has no other place to go in all the wide world to find strength like yours. Don't you see?
He's created it. Bred sister to brother, and uncle to niece, and son to mother, yes, that too, when he had
to do it, to make an ever more powerful witch, only faltering now and then, and gaining what he lost in one generation by even greater strength in the next. What was the cost of Antha and Deirdre if he could have a Rowan! — Anne Rice

As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son's future are counting on me. — Letty Cottin Pogrebin

The situation, to judge from the first paragraph, had not materially changed since Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. — Josephine Tey

Though this child came in with nothing but excess baby fat, chemical brain waves, and mother and son bodily toxins on his legs, he had a fate fit for a modern day demigod. — David Scheier

there was this one family in Sarasota that was even identical. people couldn't tell who the father was, the mother was, the son was. they were all so happy that it didn't matter who they were. eventually a circus bought them and charged admission for people to see them in their natural happy habitat. spectators would come from all across the state to see them eat dinner together, watch the same channels together, talk to each other at length. People called them freaks not because they were identical, but because they were so
damn
happy. — David Levithan

My life has certainly had its share of remarkable patterns, symmetries and asymmetries, coincidences that have left me wondering on the ground just what my life looks like from a distance - seen from the air, does it reveal a scheme? I have heard myself mulling over this question many times while growing up. But now that I'm well into middle age and have reached the age my mother was when one son's illness ensnared a second one, I look down from the air and am astonished at the landscape. — Yarrott Benz

MT: That also makes me think of Jesus's "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." And yet, doesn't Christ also speak of violence? RG: "I didn't come to bring peace but war, I came to separate the son from the father, the daughter from the mother, and so on" doesn't mean, "I've come to bring violence," but rather, "I've come to bring a kind of peace that is so utterly free of victims that it surpasses what you are capable of and eventually you'll have to come to a reckoning with your victimary phenomena." These texts are the religious texts of the modern world. They're not just Western. They don't belong to anyone, they're universal. MT — Rene Girard

It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the background, that mothers have a self larger than their maternity, and that when their sons have become taller than themselves, and are gone from them to college or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which are not filled with praying for their boys, reading old letters, and envying yet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons. — George Eliot

Perhaps it's time you stopped sulking over an engagement three years broken and bore yourself like a man!" The duke's voice snaps like a whip. "Zeus and Hera, how did I beget such an unruly son?"

"If you've forgotten, perhaps you could summon up the dead and ask my lady mother."

The duke barks a laugh. "You got that tongue from her, that's for certain. But she was obedient to me for all her carping."

"Obedient?" says Lord Anax. The desk creaks and shifts; I think he is leaning against it. "We must remember her very differently."

"Always when it counted, my boy, which is more than can be said of you. I wanted that girl for my daughter, you know."

"Adopt her, then. I believe it's legal."

"First I'd have to kill her parents," says the duke, "and I am given to understand that's frowned upon these days."

"It's gone the same sad way as the right of a father to execute his sons. — Rosamund Hodge

I found him. It was easy. The Church always seems to know where its priests are, even when they're traveling. He remembered me. His hair had turned almost all gray, but he still had his kindly, hesitant manner. "I told him the truth, exactly what had happened. "'The child was conceived out of wedlock,' he said, 'but the child's father was supposed to have been killed in the war. If you marry the mother now, you can adopt him. Then we will "discover" that he is not merely your adopted son, but your natural born son. So, he was your son, he is your son, he will be your son, you will have married his mother, you will have returned from the dead,' he said, counting on his fingers. 'What more can you want? Five out of six. I have no more fingers on this hand.' "'I don't want him to suffer illegitimacy,' I said. "'He won't'. "'Why?' "'I'll take care of it.' "'How?' "'I don't know, but I will.' "And he did. — Mark Helprin

As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be. — James Joyce

The Son of God did not want to be seen and found in heaven. Therefore he descended from heaven into this humility and came to us in our flesh, laid himself into the womb of his mother and into the manger and went on to the cross. This was the ladder that he placed on earth so that we might ascend to God on it. This is the way you must take. — Martin Luther

With Pauline at my side, in one swift act that could never be undone, an act that ended a thousand dreams but gave birth to one, I bolted for the cover of the forest and never looked back. Lest we repeat history, the stories shall be passed from father to son, from mother to daughter, for with but one generation, history and truth are lost forever. - Morrighan Book of Holy Text, Vol. III — Mary E. Pearson