Inspirational Motherhood Quotes: A Heartfelt Collection to Celebrate Moms

"Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else's happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you're not sure what the right thing is...and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong."

- Donna Ball

"I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know."

- Mitch Albom

"The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children."

- Karl Lagerfeld

"In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe."

- N.K. Jemisin

"He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark."

- J.K. Rowling

"No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother’s love."

- Edwin Chapin

"A mother’s love endures through all."

- Washington Irving

"Motherhood: all love begins and ends there."

- Robert Browning

"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

"The best love in the world, is the love of a man. The love of a man who came from your womb, the love of your son! I don't have a daughter, but maybe the love of a daughter is the best, too. I am first and foremost me, but right after that, I am a mother. The best thing that I can ever be, is me. But the best gift that I will ever have, is being a mother."

- C. JoyBell C.

"It's just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man - the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated off-spring - you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one. I look at him and see the baby I held in my arms, dewing besotted, unable to believe that I'd created another human being. I see the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history."

- Jojo Moyes

"Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother? Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life."

- Jodi Picoult

"Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without."

- Jodi Picoult

"A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dates all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path."

- Agatha Christie

"There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one."

- Jill Churchill

"Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. … To have been loved so deeply … will give us some protection forever."

- J. K. Rowling

"Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else’s happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you’re not sure what the right thing is ... and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong."

- Donna Ball

"Mothers and 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

"(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that’s the only shift they offer."

- Jodi Picoult

"Having kids — the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings — is the biggest job anyone can embark on."

- Maria Shriver

"Motherhood: All love begins and ends there."

- Robert Browning

"The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that — a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest."

- Debra Ginsberg

"Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness."

- Jessica Lange

"There is no greater good in all the world than motherhood. The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation."

- James E. Faust

"I am a mother and mothers don’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of their children, even when they are afraid, even when their children are adults."

- Kristin Hannah

"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

"When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child."

- Sophia Loren

"The bond between mothers and their children is one defined by love. As a mother’s prayers for her children are unending, so are the wisdom, grace, and strength they provide to their children."

- George W. Bush

"Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy."

- Tina Fey

"Be a full person. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood. Be a full person. Your child will benefit from that."

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"This is motherhood for you,' said my own mother. ‘Going through life with your heart outside your body.'"

- Jennifer Weiner

"A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me."

- Kristin Hannah

"I don’t think empathy is something you can drill in someone’s head. You have to have faith that while your kids can seem to be selfish and concerned only about the word ‘mine’ sometimes, overall, they are watching you really carefully. And if you care about other people, they will too."

- Jennifer Garner

"Sometimes we try to protect our children so much that when something doesn’t go right in their lives, they’re unprepared to deal with adversity. I don’t think that does our kids any favors."

- Taraji P. Henson

"What children take from us, they give… We become people who feel more deeply, question more deeply, hurt more deeply, and love more deeply."

- Sonia Taitz

"Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother."

- Oprah Winfrey

"As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong."

- Kristin Hannah

"I believe the choice to become a mother is the choice to become one of the greatest spiritual teachers there is."

- Oprah

"If love is as sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love."

- Stevie Wonder

"Acceptance, tolerance, bravery, compassion. These are the things my mom taught me."

- Lady Gaga

"We are born of love; love is our mother."

- Rumi

"Your words as a parent have great power. Use them wisely and make sure they come from the heart."

- Carolina King

"To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today."

- Barbara Johnson

"Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder."

- Rumi

"A child seldom needs a good talking to as much as a good listening to."

- Robert Brault

"Behind every young child who believes in himself is a parent who believed first."

- Matthew L. Jacobson

"Feeling heard and understood allows children to release the feelings, let go, and move on."

- Janet Lansbury

"Being a mom means choosing to show up day after day and love day after day and give day after day and try day after day and not having all the answers and not being perfect but simply doing your best."

- Rachel Martin

"It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it myself."

- Joyce Maynard

"Kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care."

- Riney Jordan

"My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted the seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind."

- Michael Jordan

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

- Victor Hugo

"I don’t know about changing my perspective, because motherhood is such a glorious blessing and I am very thankful for that. It is such a beautiful experience. I so strongly recommend it. It’s bliss, love, and fulfillment of another level."

- Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

"Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate."

- Charlotte Gray

"There is no role in life more essential and more eternal than that of motherhood."

- M. Russell Ballard

"Motherhood has taught me the meaning of living in the moment and being at peace. Children don’t think about yesterday, and they don’t think about tomorrow. They just exist in the moment."

- Jessalyn Gilsig

"Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind. It places her who honors its holy calling and service next to the angels."

- First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

"The highest and noblest work in this life is that of a mother."

- Russell M. Nelson

"I have found being a mother has made me emotionally raw in many situations. Your heart is beating outside your body when you have a baby."

- Kate Beckinsale

"Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had, and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed."

- Linda Wooten

"You have nothing in this world more precious than your children. When you grow old, when your hair turns white and your body grows weary, when you are prone to sit in a rocker and meditate on the things of your life, nothing will be so important as the question of how your children have turned out."

- Gordon B. Hinckley

"There will be so many times you feel like you’ve failed, but in the eyes, heart, and mind of your child, you are super mom."

- Stephanie Precourt

"Who can justly measure the righteous influence of a mother’s love? What enduring fruits result from the seeds of truth that a mother carefully plants and lovingly cultivates in the fertile soil of a child’s trusting mind and heart? As a mother, you have been given divine instincts to help you sense your child’s special talents and unique capacities."

- Richard G. Scott

"I feel that in the heavens above, the angels whispering to one another can find among their burning terms of love, none so devotional as that of ‘mother.’"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"If you try your best to be the best parent you can be, you will have done all that a human being can do and all that God expects you to do."

- Jeffrey R. Holland

"Motherhood is about raising and celebrating the child you have, not the child you thought you would have."

- Joan Ryan

"Becoming a mother has made me next-level confident. I’ve never felt more empowered."

- Kelly Clarkson

"There is no role in life that is more essential than that of motherhood."

- Elder M. Russell Ballard

"There is eternal influence and power in motherhood."

- Julie B. Beck

"If I were asked to define Motherhood. I would have defined it as Love in its purest form. Unconditional love."

- Revathi Sankaran

"Motherhood is the greatest thing and the hardest thing."

- Ricki Lake

"Motherhood changes everything."

- Adriana Trigiani

"Motherhood is the greatest potential influence either for good or ill in human life. The mother’s image is the first that stamps itself on the unwritten page of the young child’s mind. It is her caress that first awakens a sense of security; her kiss, the first realization of affection; her sympathy and tenderness, the first assurance that there is love in the world."

- David O. McKay

"I think motherhood is the noblest task of all, because you cannot do it at your convenience, or tailor it to suit your preferences. You have to be ready to give up everything when you take on this task: your time, restful nights, your hobbies, your pursuit of physical fitness, any beauty you may have had, and all of the private little pleasures you might have counted as a right, from late dinners and long soaks in the tub to weekend excursions and cycling trips … I’m not saying you can’t have any of these things, but you have to be ready to let them all go if you’re going to have children and put them first."

- Johann Christoph Arnold

"Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I’m wearing will never really fit."

- Jodi Picoult

"Motherhood brings as much joy as ever, but it still brings boredom, exhaustion, and sorrow too. Nothing else ever will make you as happy or as sad, as proud or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard as helping a person develop his own individuality especially while you struggle to keep your own."

- Marguerite Kelly

"Real motherhood is different. It’s better and it’s messier and it’s more complicated. It will break your heart and make you laugh harder than you ever imagined."

- Melanie Shankle

"I think every working mom probably feels the same thing: You go through big chunks of time where you’re just thinking, ‘This is impossible – oh, this impossible.’ And then you just keep going, and you sort of do the impossible."

- Tina Fey

"The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly – indeed, to embrace uncertainty and imperfection."

- Ariana Huffington

"Get rid of the guilt. When you’re at one place, don’t feel bad that you’re not at work. When you’re at work, don’t feel bad that you’re not at home."

- Katie Couric

"There’s always going to be bad stuff out there. But here’s the amazing thing light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can’t stick the dark into the light."

- Jodi Picoult

"If you’re a mom, you’re a superhero. Period."

- Rosie Pope

"There are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child."

- Anne Lamott

"A mother’s love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible."

- Marion C. Garretty

"A mother’s love is everything. It is what brings a child into this world. It is what molds their entire being. When a mother sees her child in danger, she is literally capable of anything. Mothers have lifted cars off of their children and destroyed entire dynasties. A mother’s love is the strongest energy known to man."

- Jamie McGuire

"Children do not need us to shape them; they need us to respond to who they are."

- Naomi Aldort

"You must first teach a child he is loved. Only then is he ready to learn everything else."

- Amanda Morgan

"Speak with your children as if are the wisest, kindest, most beautiful humans on earth, for what they believe is what they will become."

- Brooke Hampton

"It’s time we stop buying the lie that we need to be hard on kids because ‘the world is hard.” Love them as hard as you can. That’s what they need."

- Tara Vogler

"If your children fear you, they cannot trust you. If they don’t trust you, they cannot learn from you."

- Lori Petro

"Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?"

- Jane Nelson

"It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless."

- L.R. Knost

"The way we talk to children becomes their inner voice."

- Peggy O’ Mara

"It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself."

- Joyce Maynard

"What it’s like to be a parent: It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, but in exchange, it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love."

- Nicholas Sparks

"The real questions for parents should be: “Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?” If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn’t exist, and I’ve found what makes children happy doesn’t always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults."

- Brene Brown

"The question isn’t so much “Are you parenting the right way?” as it is: “Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?”"

- Brene Brown

"Have we created a space in our families where our kids know that they belong. Where there are no prerequisites for worthiness, you don’t have to hustle here for me to believe you’re worthy of loving. You don’t have to perform here for me to think that you belong here. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to get a certain grade on your test. You don’t have to hit so many home-runs. You belong here."

- Brené Brown

"The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means you already are one."

- Jodi Picoult

"Balance is not better time management, but better boundary management. Balance means making choices and enjoying those choices."

- Betsy Jacobsen

"Successful mothers are not the ones who have never struggled. They are the ones who never gave up despite the struggles."

- Sharon Jaynes

"Being a mother is not about what you gave up to have a child, but what you’ve gained from having one."

- Jill Churchill

"At the end of the day, my most important job is still mom-in-chief."

- Michelle Obama

"I tell my daughter every morning, ‘Now, what are the two most important parts of you?’ And she says, ‘My head and my heart.’ Because that’s what I’ve learned in the foxhole: What gets you through life is strength of character and strength of spirit and love."

- Viola Davis

"No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you’ve got, say “Oh, my gosh,” and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop. It’s not a question of choice."

- Marisa de los Santos

"The women whom I love and admire for their strength and grace did not get that way because shit worked out. They got that way because shit went wrong, and they handled it. They handled it in a thousand different ways on a thousand different days, but they handled it. Those women are my superheroes."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Say yes to the feelings, even as you say no to the behavior."

- Daniel J. Siegel

"It’s not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings."

- Ann Landers

"Even if I’m setting myself up for failure, I think it’s worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obsessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. A mother who doesn’t fret over failings and slights, who realizes her worries and anxieties are just thoughts, the continuous chattering and judgment of a too-busy mind. A mother who doesn’t worry so much about being bad or good but just recognizes that she’s both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad."

- Ayelet Waldman

"Even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you had your mother at your back, you’d be okay."

- Jojo Moyes

"When you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know."

- Mitch Albom

"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

"A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take."

- Cardinal Mermillod

"Effective discipline means that we’re not only stopping a bad behavior or promoting a good one, but also teaching skills and nurturing the connections in our children’s brains that will help them make better decisions and handle themselves well in the future."

- Daniel J. Siegel

"As parents, we are wired to try to save our children from any harm and hurt, but ultimately we can’t. They’ll fall down, they’ll get their feelings hurt, and they’ll get scared and sad and angry. Actually, it’s often these difficult experiences that allow them to grow and learn about the world. Rather than trying to shelter our children from life’s inevitable difficulties, we can help them integrate those experiences into their understanding of the world and learn from them."

- Daniel J. Siegel

"As parents become more aware and emotionally healthy, their children reap the rewards and move toward health as well. That means that integrating and cultivating your own brain is one of the most loving and generous gifts you can give your children."

- Daniel J. Siegel

"Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting."

- Brene Brown

"Raising children who are hopeful and who have the courage to be vulnerable means stepping back and letting them experience disappointment, deal with conflict, learn how to assert themselves, and have the opportunity to fail. If we’re always following our children into the arena, hushing the critics, and assuring their victory, they’ll never learn that they have the ability to dare greatly on their own."

- Brene Brown

"So often, when we feel lost, adrift in our lives, our first instinct is to look out into the distance to find the nearest shore. But that shore, that solid ground, is within us. The anchor we are searching for is connection, and it is internal."

- Brene Brown

"To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is."

- Fred Rogers

"Too much love never spoils our children. Children become spoiled when we substitute presents for presence."

- Anthony Withman

"When I had my children and I felt that type of love, which I know you understand and every mom out there understands, it made me understand that there was a purity to love. That there is an unconditional love."

- Jennifer Lopez

"A mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s."

- Princess Diana

"Mother is a verb. It’s something you do. Not just who you are."

- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

"I’m not a good mom. I’m not a bad mom. I’m the mama I am, and I try very hard, and when I fail, that’s ok."

- Kristen Bell

"A mother understands what a child does not say."

- Jewish Proverb

"Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials."

- Meryl Streep

"The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children."

- Jessica Lange

"Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I've become a juggler, I suppose. It's all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do."

- Jane Seymour

"Motherhood is wonderful, but it's also hard work. It's the logistics more than anything. You discover you have reserves of energy you didn't know you had."

- Deborah Mailman

"There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children."

- Marianne Williamson

"The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children."

- Elaine Heffner

"All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you."

- Louisa May Alcott

"A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories."

- Honore de Balzac

"I wholeheartedly believe that when we are fully engaged in parenting regardless of how imperfect, vulnerable, and messy it is, we are creating something sacred."

- Brene Brown

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

- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

"A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them."

- Victor Hugo

"A mother's love liberates."

- Maya Angelou

"I know how to do anything—I'm a mom."

- Roseanne Barr

"Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible."

- Marion C. Garretty

"Mother's love grows by giving."

- Charles Lamb

"Motherhood is not for the faint-hearted. Frogs, skinned knees, and the insults of teenage girls are not meant for the wimpy."

- Danielle Steel

"One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters."

- George Herbert

"One day, your child will make a mistake or a bad choice and run to you instead of away from you, and in that moment, you will know the immense value of peaceful, positive, respectful parenting."

- L.R. Knost

"Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Liberation was meant to expand women's opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering."

- Elaine Heffner

"Having children just puts the whole world into perspective. Everything else just disappears."

- Kate Winslet

"There is nothing as sincere as a mother's kiss."

- Saleem Sharma

"The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world."

- William Ross Wallace

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

- Erich Fromm

"The golden rule of parenting is to always show your children the kind of person you want them to be."

- Elizabeth Roxas

"Making a decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."

- Elizabeth Stone

"All those clichés—those things you hear about having a baby and motherhood—all of them are true. And all of them are the most beautiful things you will ever experience."

- Penélope Cruz

"Parents are not perfect, nor are they saints. Dads and moms make mistakes all the time. How you handle these situations will be an important life lesson for your children."

- Bethany Bridges

"There are so many times you will feel you have failed, but in the eyes, heart and mind of your child, you are supermom."

- Stephanie Precourt

"Heaven is at the feet of Mothers."

- Arabic proverb

"It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?"

- Mahatma Gandhi

"For when a child is born the mother also is born again."

- Gilbert Parker

"There is nothing in the world of art like the songs Mother used to sing."

- Billy Sunday

"The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly—indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection."

- Arianna Huffington

"A miracle is really the only way to describe motherhood and giving birth. It’s unbelievable how God has made us women and babies to endure and be able to do so much. A miracle indeed. Such an incredible blessing."

- Jennie Finch

"The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms."

- Jodi Picoult

"Compassion is like mother giving love to her children. Mother’s ways are higher than others, even when everyone rejects, mother accepts with her arms open and wide."

- Amit Ray

"I think in a lot of ways unconditional love is a myth. My mom's the only reason I know it's a real thing."

- Conor Oberst

"Successful mothers are not the ones that have never struggled. They are the ones that never give up, despite the struggles."

- Sharon Jaynes

"Motherhood is a choice you make every day, to put someone else’s happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you’re not sure what the right thing is...and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong."

- Donna Ball

"In the end...I am the only one who can give my children a happy mother who loves life."

- Janene Wolsey Baadsgaard

"I think a lot about teaching my kids to work hard. I’ve learned something about kids — they don’t do what you say; they do what you do."

- Jennifer Lopez

"One generation of deeply loving parents would change the brain of the next generation, and with that, the world."

- Charles Raison

"No society will long survive without mothers who care for their young and provide that nurturing care so essential for their normal development."

- Ezra Taft Benson

"Discipline is helping a child solve a problem. Punishment is making a child suffer for having a problem. To raise problem-solvers, focus on solutions not retribution."

- L.R. Knost

"Call your mother. Tell her you love her. Remember, you're the only person who knows what her heart sounds like from the inside."

- Rachel Wolchin

"in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest."

- Debra Ginsberg

"Kids raised from birth on to feel safe expressing their emotions, who feel their parents are on their side, aren’t perfect. They’re easier to parent, though, because they’re better at managing their emotions, and therefore their behavior. They’re more willing to accept our guidance."

- Laura Markham

"A mother knows what her child's gone through, even if she didn't see it herself."

- Pramoedya Ananta Toer

"(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer."

- Jodi Picoult

"Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist. What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live. If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent."

- Glennon Doyle

"The joy of motherhood comes in moments. There will be hard times and frustrating times. But amid the challenges, there are shining moments of joy and satisfaction."

- M. Russell Ballard

"Having kids—the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings—is the biggest job anyone can embark on."

- Maria Shriver

"My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual, and physical education I received from her."

- George Washington

"[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

"The work of a mother is hard, too often unheralded work. Please know that it is worth it then, now, and forever."

- Jeffrey R. Holland

"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

"The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation."

- James E. Faust

"Mother—that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries."

- T. Dewitt Talmage

"A mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled."

- Emily Dickinson

"I looked on child-rearing not only as a work of love and duty, but as a profession that was fully interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it."

- Rose Kennedy

"There is such a special sweetness in being able to participate in creation."

- Pamela S. Nadav

"Most mothers are instinctive philosophers."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn't take them along."

- Margaret Culkin Banning

"No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement."

- Florida Scott-Maxwell

"If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy."

- Ferrell Sims

"I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them."

- Phyllis Diller

"The hand that rocks the cradle usually is attached to someone who isn't getting enough sleep."

- John Fiebig

"A happy mother is a good mother, and if work makes you hum, your whole family sings along."

- Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober

"But 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

"No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."

- Margaret Sanger

"There are few things more powerful than the faithful prayers of a righteous mother."

- Boyd K. Packer

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

- Henry Ward Beecher

"Having a baby is just living in the constant unexpected. You never know when you’re gonna get crapped on or when you’re gonna get a big smile or when that smile immediately turns into hysterics."

- Blake Lively

"This struggle is real. The juggle is real. That’s why everyone should hire working mothers. They are put in crazy situations all the time and are forced to problem-solve. They are some of my most resourceful employees."

- Sara Blakely

"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

"I’m blessed and I couldn’t be more grateful. Do you want to know why? Because I’m a mother, but that’s only half of it. I’m blessed because, when I need to, I can still just be a daughter. I get the feeling that there is nothing more precious than to have both of these roles, simultaneously."

- Adrianna Stepiano

"Don’t wait until everything is just right [..] There will always be challenges, obstacles, and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger…"

- Mark Victor Hansen

"My mother has always been my emotional barometer and my guidance. I was lucky enough to get to have one woman who truly helped me through everything."

- Emma Stone

"Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; a mother’s secret hope outlives them all."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"A mother needs only step into the shower to be instantly reassured she is indispensable to every member of her family."

- Lynne Williams

"Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I’ve become a juggler, I suppose. It’s all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do."

- Jane Seymour

"Perhaps the reason we respond so universally to our mothers’ love is because it typifies the love of our Savior."

- Bradley D. Foster

"Motherhood is hard enough without judgement from others who don’t know the whole story."

- Sarah Addison Allen

"You don’t take a class; you’re thrown into motherhood and learn from experience."

- Jennie Finch

"Motherhood is tough. If you just want a wonderful little creature to love, you can get a puppy."

- Barbara Walters

"I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood."

- Lance Conrad

"I’ve never met a 2-year-old who is terrible. I’m so cool with every stage my daughter goes through. I just think she’s amazing. I hope she’s not looking at me thinking, ‘Mom, are the terrible 30s coming on with you?’"

- Katie Holmes

"Motherhood was the great equalizer for me; I started to identify with everybody."

- Annie Lennox

"Thus far the mighty mystery of motherhood is this: How is it that doing it all feels like nothing is ever getting done."

- Rebecca Woolf

"Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is being made by many women now, without guilt."

- Betty Friedan

"It is not change that causes anxiety; it is the feeling that we are without defenses in the presence of what we see as danger that causes anxiety."

- Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey

"It’s the curse of motherhood. You’re required to love us even when we vex you."

- Julia Quinn

"Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it."

- M.L. Stedman

"Right in the difficult, we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"The one thing you’ve got to be prepared to do as a parent is not to be liked from time to time."

- Emma Thompson

"If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent."

- Bette Davis

"'You have suffered enough.' That became my mantra for motherhood from there on out. You have suffered enough. If you can make it easier, make it easier, and don’t feel guilty about it."

- Ali Wong

"Motherhood seems to be a no-win battle: however you decide to do (or not do) it, someone’s going to be criticizing you."

- Celeste Ng

"Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind."

- Howard W. Hunter

"Burnt toast is actually fairly symbolic of Motherhood. If you are the one who burned the toast, you scrape if off and eat it yourself. If they burned it, you eat it because the burned it specially for you."

- Emily Watts

"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."

- Robert J. Quillen

"If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?"

- Milton Berle

"My mom smiled at me. Her smile kind of hugged me."

- R.J. Palacio

"The best thing a girl can be is a good wife and mother. It is a girl's highest calling. I hope I am ready."

- Nancy E. Turner

"The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires."

- Dorothy Parker

"A mother is the truest friend we have. When trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts."

- Anonymous

"A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest."

"I'd like to be the ideal mother, but I'm too busy raising my kids."

"I am not a bad mom because I work, and I am not a bad employee because I am a mom."

"Whenever you feel like you are failing, look in the eyes of your child and know your value."

"Make the most of today because it is right here. Play that game, sing that song, read one more book, and enjoy those cuddles. Treasure all those precious little moments. Because at the end of your life, you’ll never look back and think, ‘I spent too much time with my kids.’"

"I am brave and courageous for even trying, when I think I can’t do it."

"Never limit yourself. You can be a mom and pursue your dream simultaneously."

"Behind every great child is a mom who’s pretty sure she’s screwing it all up."