Read an Excerpt

Mother

A Book of Quotations

Dover Publications, Inc.

Did you ever hear of a great and good man who had not a good mother?

JOHN ADAMS

* * *

Don't aim to be an earthly Saint, with eyes fixed on a star,
Just try to be the fellow that your mother thinks you are.

WILL S. ADKIN

* * *

Where there is a mother in the house, matters speed well.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

* * *

"... What do girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?"

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

* * *

Mary was that Mother mild.
Jesus Christ her little Child.

CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER

Before a day was over,
Here comes the rover,
For mother's kiss,—sweeter this
Than any other thing!

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM

* * *

When by my bed I saw my mother kneel,
And with her blessing took her nightly kiss;
Whatever time destroys, he cannot this;—
E'en now that nameless kiss I feel.

WASHINGTON ALLSTON

* * *

The ideal which the wife and mother makes for herself, the manner in which she understands duty and life, contain the fate of the community.

HENRI F. AMIEL

* * *

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.

MAYA ANGELOU

* * *

When it comes to love, Mom's the word.

Bigamy is a crime for which the extreme penalty is two mothers-in-law.

Mother's Day comes nine months after Father's Day.

ANONYMOUS

Mothers are fonder of their children than their fathers, for they remember the pain of bringing them forth, and are surer that they are their own.

ARISTOTLE

* * *

The crying need of the world is mental mothers. Primitive, physical, passionate mothers we have in abundance. But the mothers we need, the mothers who are to stimulate mentally the town, family, and church are all too rare.

FRANK R. ARNOLD

* * *

The joys of parents are secret: and so are the griefs and fears.

FRANCIS BACON

* * *

To be told that mother love is not an innate impulse but a free choice, a gift that can be given and withdrawn at will, confronts each of us with the fearsome possibility that we might have been born into a void of indifference.

ELISABETH BADINTER

* * *

Instant availability without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play.

LOTTE BAILYN

* * *

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.

Husbands ... know that all they have to do is to confront their own mother with their wife's and they will be found to neutralize one another.

A wife should not be allowed to go alone to see her mother.

Maternity begins in the imagination.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

* * *

For when you looked into my mother's eyes you knew, as if He had told you, why God sent her into the world—it was to open the minds of all who looked to beautiful thoughts.

JAMES M. BARRIE

* * *

My wife is the kind of girl who'll not go anywhere without her mother, and her mother will go anywhere.

JOHN BARRYMORE

* * *

The future of society is in the hands of the mothers. If the world was lost through woman, she alone can save it.

DE BEAUFORT

* * *

When God thought of MOTHER, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly,—so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception.

The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.

What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

* * *

To a child's ear, "mother" is magic in any language.

ARLENE BENEDICT

* * *

He maketh the barren woman to keep house; and to be a joyful mother of children.

A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.

Honour thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth there.

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget.

Go not empty unto thy mother-in-law.

Despise not thy mother when she is old.

Her children arise up and call her blessed.

As is the mother, so is the daughter.

THE BIBLE

* * *

A smart mother makes often a better diagnosis than a poor doctor.

AUGUST BIER

The best thing that could happen to motherhood already has. Fewer women are going into it.

VICTORIA BILLINGS

* * *

Every nursing mother, in the midst of her little dependent brood, has far more right to whine, sulk or scold, as temperament dictates, because beefsteak and coffee are not prepared for her and exactly to her taste, than any man ever had or ever can have during the present stage of human evolution.

ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL

* * *

My mother groan'd! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I lept!
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

WILLIAM BLAKE

* * *

When a woman is twenty, a child deforms her; when she is thirty, he preserves her; and when forty, he makes her young again.

LÉON BLUM

* * *

I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: "Checkout Time is 18 years."

* * *

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

ERMA BOMBECK

I have reached the age when a woman begins to perceive that she is growing into the person she least plans to resemble: her mother.

ANITA BROOKNER

* * *

The sweetest sounds to mortals given
Are heard in Mother, Home and Heaven.

WILLIAM GOLDSMITH BROWN

* * *

What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?

Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there.

A mother who boasts two boys was ever accounted rich.

Women know
The way to rear up children (to be just)
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense ...

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

* * *

Under Providence, I attribute any little distinction which I may have acquired in the world to the blessing which He conferred upon me in granting me such a mother.

JAMES BUCHANAN

The concept of "Momism" is male nonsense. It is the refuge of a man seeking excuses for his own lack of virility.

Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.

PEARL S. BUCK

* * *

Nature's loving proxy, the watchful mother.

EDWARD GEORGE BULWER-LYTTON

* * *

In the mind of a woman, to give birth to a child is the short cut to omniscience.

GELETT BURGESS

* * *

Peter remained on friendly terms with Christ notwithstanding Christ's having healed his mother-in-law.

SAMUEL BUTLER

* * *

Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps;
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her slumbering child with pensive eyes.

CAMPBELL

Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.

ANDREW CARNEGIE

* * *

How could Jimmy criticize me? I am his momma.

LILLIAN CARTER, mother of former president Jimmy Carter

* * *

A mother alone knows what it is to love and be happy.

CHAMISSO

* * *

The evil-hearted Grocer
Would call his mother "Ma'am,"
And bow at her and bob at her,
Her aged soul to damn.

I remember my mother, the day that we met,
A thing I shall not entirely forget;
And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am,
I should know her again if we met in a tram.

She was maintaining the prime truth of woman, the universal mother: that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

G. K. CHESTERTON

A man may compass important enterprises, he may become famous ... he may deserve a measure of popular approval, but he is not right at heart, and can never be truly great, if he forgets his mother.

GROVER CLEVELAND

* * *

Praise the child and you make love to the mother.

WILLIAM COBBETT

* * *

Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy—the mother.

CLAUDETTE COLBERT

* * *

Mother of God! no lady thou:
Common woman of common earth!

MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE

* * *

So for the mother's sake the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Those love children always suffer because their mothers have crushed them under their stays trying to hide them, mores the pity. Yet, after all, a lovely unrepentant creature, big with child, is not such an outrageous sight.

COLETTE

* * *

There can be no proper observation of a birthday which forgets the mother.

CALVIN COOLIDGE

* * *

Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn,
Hundreds of bees in the purple clover,
Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn,
But only one mother the wide world over.

GEORGE COOPER

* * *

I know a mother-in-law who sleeps in her spectacles, the better to see her son-in-law suffer in her dreams.

ERNEST COQUELIN

* * *

Better the child should cry than the mother sigh.

A rich child often sits in a poor mother's lap.

DANISH PROVERB

The female of one of the emus, as soon as she catches sight of her progeny, becomes violently agitated, and notwithstanding the resistance of the father, appears to use her utmost endeavors to destroy them.

CHARLES DARWIN

* * *

Men compete with their sons, but mothers devour their daughters.

LEN DEIGHTON

* * *

There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.

A suburban mother's role is to deliver children; obstetrically once and by car forever after.

PETER DE VRIES

* * *

I think it must somewhere be written, that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of the fathers.

CHARLES DICKENS

* * *

I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.

EMILY DICKINSON

* * *

I think we're seeing in working mothers a change from "Thank God, it's Friday" to "Thank God, it's Monday." If any working mother has not experienced that feeling, her children are not adolescent.

ANN DIEHL

* * *

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.

PHYLLIS DILLER

I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad.

WILLIAM DILLON

* * *

Just about the time a woman thinks her job is done, she becomes a grandmother.

EDWARD H. DRESCHNACK

* * *

No mother more indulgent but the true.

DRYDEN

* * *

With what a price we pay for the glory of motherhood.

ISADORA DUNCAN

* * *

I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhoods and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.

MARGUERITE DURAS

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

* * *

Most of the fellows in our neighborhood think a fellow should not go steady until he can tie his bow tie without his Mom's help.

EAGLE (MOULTON, TEXAS NEWSPAPER)

* * *

There's nothing like an afternoon nap to refresh a young mother. At the end of it she has accomplished lots of work she couldn't have done if the youngster had been awake.

EAGLE (MURRAY, UTAH NEWSPAPER)

* * *

What is home without a mother?

My mother was the making of me.

THOMAS ALVA EDISON

* * *

Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder is nonexistent.

BARBARA EHRENREICH

The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children.

PAUL EHRLICH

* * *

The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the base degraded man.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

GEORGE ELIOT

* * *

The mother is the child's supreme parent.

HAVELOCK ELLIS

* * *

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

Men are what their mothers made them.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

* * *

The good mother saith not, "Will you?" but gives.

A child may have too much of his mother's blessing.

He that would the daughter win,
Must with the mother first begin.

ENGLISH PROVERB

For a short while, our mothers' bodies are the boundaries and personal geography which are all that we know of the world. Once we no longer live beneath our mother's heart, it's the earth with which we form the same dependent relationship.

LOUISE ERDRICH

* * *

It is safer in a mother's lap than in a lord's bed.

ESTONIAN PROVERB

* * *

I warned my son against taking home the foal of a bad mother.

EURIPIDES

* * *

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate. The "Ode On a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

* * *

Motherhood is never honored by excessive talk about the heroics of pregnancy.

LEONARD FEENEY

* * *

Mother Knows Best.

EDNA FERBER

An infant, when her love first came—
A man, I find it just the same;
Reverently I breathe her name,
The blessed name of mother.

GEORGE GRIFFITH FETTER

* * *

Nobody knows of the lessons taught
Of loving one another;
Nobody knows of the patience sought,
Nobody—only mother.

THE FIRESIDE

* * *

A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.

DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

* * *

The mother cult is something that will set future generations roaring with laughter.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

* * *

... a friend can't take a mother's place. I need my mother as an example which I can follow. I want to be able to respect her.

ANNE FRANK

First, every woman, I don't care who she is, prefers her son to her husband. ... And why shouldn't she prefer someone who is so much like herself, who represents nine months of special concern and love and intense physical closeness—someone she actually created?

IAN FRAZIER

* * *

The truth is that it is not the sins of the fathers that descend unto the third generation, but the sorrows of the mothers.

MARILYN FRENCH

* * *

A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success.

SIGMUND FREUD

* * *

Strangely, many mothers who loved their daughters—and mine was one—did not want their daughters to grow up like them either. They knew we needed something more.

BETTY FRIEDAN

* * *

Mother is food; she is love; she is warmth; she is earth. To be loved by her means to be alive, to be rooted, to be at home.

Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.

The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.

ERICH FROMM

* * *

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.

ROBERT FROST

* * *

The Mother-in-Law remembers not, that she was a Daughter-in-Law.

Everyone can keep house better than her Mother, till she trieth.

THOMAS FULLER

* * *

Do you think your mother and I should have liv'd comfortably so long together, if ever we had been married?

JOHN GAY

* * *

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be—
I had a mother who read to me.

STRICKLAND GILLILAN

The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty.... From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to the home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and faction and weariness that so mar it now.

It is not motherhood that keeps the housewife on her feet from dawn to dusk; it is the house service, not child service.

When we see great men and women, we give credit to their mothers. When we see inferior men and women-and that is a common circumstance-no one presumes to the question of the motherhood that has produced them.

Maternal instinct, merely as an instinct, is unworthy of our superstitious reverence.

You cannot teach every mother to be a good school educator or a good college educator. Why should we expect every mother to be a good nursery educator?

---

Excerpted from Mother by Herb Galewitz. Copyright © 2002 Dover Publications, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---