Inspiring Quotes About Mothers

What can we say about mothers?  As Mother’s Day approaches, enjoy these inspiring (sometimes funny) thoughts on moms, from everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Maya Angelou. 

On Mother’s Day or any day, enjoy these inspiring (and sometimes funny) thoughts on moms, from everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Maya Angelou. 

Shop Guideposts Mother’s Day Gifts!

 

Guideposts: A young boy gives his smiling mother a smooch

1 of 14 Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.

—Robert Browning


Guideposts: A young girl holds the laundry basket as her mother hangs the wash from the line

2 of 14 The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant.

—Jane Sellman

Guideposts: A mother's hands rest in prayer on an open Bible

3 of 14 I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

—Abraham Lincoln


Guideposts: A woman stand atop a mountain's peak, gazing out at the world below

4 of 14 [Motherhood is] the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It’s huge and scary–it’s an act of infinite optimism.

—Gilda Radner


Guideposts: A photograph album featuring pictures of a happy family

5 of 14 When you’re in the thick of raising your kids by yourself, you tend to keep a running list of everything you think you’re doing wrong. I recommend taking a lot of family pictures as evidence to the contrary.

—Connie Schultz


Guideposts: A freshly baked pie sits on a window sill

6 of 14 A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.

—Tenneva Jordan


Guideposts: A mother embraces her sleeping child

7 of 14 A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.

—Victor Hugo

Guideposts: A sink full of dirty dishes, waiting for someone to wash them

8 of 14 Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

—P. J. O’Rourke


Guideposts: Judy Garland and daughter Liza Minnelli

9 of 14 [Judy Garland] raised us with humor, and she raised us to understand that not everything was going to be great—but how to laugh through it.

—Liza Minnelli


Guideposts: A mother duck with her young ducklings

10 of 14 Mothers and their children are in a category all their own. There’s no bond so strong in the entire world. No love so instantaneous and forgiving.

—Gail Tsukiyama


Guideposts: A woman graduating from college raises her arms in celebration

11 of 14 A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.

—Dorothy Canfield Fisher


Guideposts: An open hatchback reveals a car packed with a college student's possessions

12 of 14 Kids don’t stay with you if you do it right. It’s the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run.

—Barbara Kingsolver

Guideposts: A rainbow appears above a field filled with bright yellow flowers

13 of 14 To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.

—Maya Angelou


Thinkstock: A beautiful pale purple blossom

14 of 14 Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.

—Stevie Wonder

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