Mother Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's. He's more particular.... The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother's always a Democrat.

All Nine often used to come to me, I mean the Muses:
But I ignored them: my girl was in my arms.
Now I've left my sweetheart: and they've left me,
And I roll my eyes, seeking a knife or rope.
But Heaven is full of gods: You came to aid me:
Greetings, Boredom, mother of the Muse.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Experience, the universal Mother of Sciences.

Miguel de Cervantes

He didn't call his father and mother 'Father' and 'Mother' but Harold and Alberta. They were very up to date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotalers, and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on the beds and the windows were always open.

Art thou his father?
Ay, sir, so his mother says, if I may believe her.

William Shakespeare

It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.

Michel de Montaigne

On Arthur Miller's mother always serving matzo ball soup for them:

Isn't there any other part of the matzo you can eat?

My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education. My life and education both do learn me How to respect you. You are the lord of my duty, I am hitherto your daughter. But here's my husband, And so much duty as my mother showed To you, preferring you before her father, So much I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor my lord.

William Shakespeare

Thus she spoke; and I longed to embrace my dead mother's ghost. Thrice I tried to clasp her image, and thrice it slipped through my hands, like a shadow, like a dream.

He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible.

There are 17 million ethnic Russians there, officially. Almost 100% of the people consider Russian as their mother tongue, in the same interview, according to Time.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire them, and to effect this, they have perverted the best religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purposes. With the lawyers it is a new thing. They have, in the mother country, been generally the primest supporters of the free principles of their constitution. But there, too, they have changed.

Thomas Jefferson

My own mother was a housewife all her life. And yet it's turned out that I've hired a lot of women for top jobs, and they've been among my best people. Often, in fact, they are far more effective than the men around them.

Dear mother! Today a joyful notice. H. A. Lorentz has telegraphed me that the English expeditions have really proven the deflection of light at the sun.

Albert Einstein

Ah, mother! How do you do?' said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand; 'Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch...' On his two younger sisters he then bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal tenderness, for he asked each of them how they did, and observed that they both looked very ugly.

As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both!

William Shakespeare

Labour is... not the only source of material wealth, i.e, of the use-values it produces. As William Petty says, Labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother.

Leisure is the mother of philosophy; and commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure.

Who are we, as we stand before the child Jesus? Who are we, standing as we stand before today's children? Are we like Mary and Joseph, who welcomed Jesus and cared for him with the love of a father and a mother? Or are we like Herod, who wanted to eliminate him? Are we like the shepherds, who went in haste to kneel before him in worship and offer him their humble gifts? Or are we indifferent?

"I swear to you, then," said MacIan, after a pause. "I swear to you that nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and by the chalice of the Blood of God."
The atheist drew up his head. "And I," he said, "give my word."

G. K. Chesterton

The mother is only really the mistress of her daughter upon the condition of continually representing herself to her as a model of wisdom and type of perfection

Alexandre Dumas

Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding?

It sounds not only disagreeable but also paradoxical, yet it must nevertheless be said that anyone who is to be really free and happy in love must have surmounted his respect for women and have come to terms with the idea of incest with his mother or sister.

I can't with any conscience argue for New York with anyone. It's like Calcutta. But I love the city in an emotional, irrational way, like loving your mother or your father even though they're a drunk or a thief. I've loved the city my whole life - to me, it's like a great woman.

I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet: I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.