Compiled by Scott Robertson
It’s my tradition to use this space to commemorate holidays with words from those who are much wiser than I. With warmest regards to all mothers from all of us who have had a mother.
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother”
-Edgar Allen Poe
You too, my mother, read my rhymes
For love of unforgotten times,
And you may chance to hear once more
The little feet along the floor.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?
– Milton Berle
Moms, even good ones, sometimes lose it a little so as not to lose it all.”
― Susan Squire
I hope someday she meets just the right man and has babies–a whole passel of babies, more than I could have–so she understands how it kills me now that she won’t let me hug her when she’s in obvious distress.
– Kristina Riggle
I’m beginning to perceive motherhood as a long, slow letting go, of which birth is just the first step.
– Sandra Steingraber
The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant.”
― Jane Sellman
Making the decision to have a child – it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body
― Elizabeth Stone
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
– Florida Scott-Maxwell
If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.
– Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.
– Old Jewish Proverb
Nothing can prepare you for the all-consuming nature of motherhood.
– Mariella Frostrup
A mother’s heart is her child’s first schoolroom.
– Henry Ward Beecher
All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
– Abraham Lincoln
Someone asked me the other day if I had my life to live over would I change anything… Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy and complaining about the shadow over my feet, I’d have cherished every minute of it and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was to be my only chance in life to assist God in a miracle…I would have sat cross-legged on the lawn with my children and never worried about grass stains… When my child kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, “Later. Now, go get washed up for dinner.”
– Erma Bombeck
Simply having children does not make mothers.
– John Shedd
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 Gilliam
I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing…. Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, “I told you so.”
– Bombeck
Her children arise and call her blessed.
– Proverbs 31:28.
When the strongest words for what I have to offer come out of me sounding like words I remember from my mother’s mouth, then I either have to reassess the meaning of everything I have to say now, or re-examine the worth of her old words.
– Audre Lorde
Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
Of all the haunting moments of motherhood, few rank with hearing your own words coming out of your daughter’s mouth.
– Victoria Secunda
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to let him sleep.
– Ralph Waldo
