117 Inspiring Motherhood Quotes That Celebrate the Beauty of Being a Mom

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

- Cardinal Mermillod

"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

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

- Mitch Albom

"A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place."

- Amy Tan

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

- Jodi Picoult

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

- Sharon Jaynes

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

- Mitch Albom

"Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did - that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that 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

"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

"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

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

- Jennifer Weiner

"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

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

- Jill Churchill

"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

"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

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

- Michelle Obama

"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's arms are more comforting than anyone else's."

- Princess Diana

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

- Rumi

"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."

- Brené Brown

"We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong."

- Laura Stavoe Harm

"Mother is the heartbeat in the home; and without her, there seems to be no heartthrob."

- Leroy Brownlow

"Mothers are like glue. Even when you can't see them, they're still holding the family together."

- Susan Gale

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

- George Eliot

"Mother: the most beautiful word on the lips of mankind."

- Kahil Gibran

"There is no influence so powerful as that of the mother."

- Sara Josepha Hale

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

- Abraham Lincoln

"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

"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

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

- Kelly Clarkson

"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

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

- Jill Churchill

"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

"Mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled."

- Emily Dickinson

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

- Jodi Picoult

"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

"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

"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

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

- Joan Ryan

"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

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

- Maria Shriver

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

- Ricki Lake

"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 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.

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

- Barbara Kingsolver

"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

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

- R.J. Palacio

"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

"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Only mothers can think of the future because they give birth to it in their children."

- Maxim Grosky

"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

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

- Elder M. Russell Ballard

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

- Sarah Addison Allen

"There is eternal influence and power in motherhood."

- Julie B. Beck

"Motherhood changes everything."

- Adriana Trigiani

"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

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

- Betsy Jacobsen

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

- Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober

"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

"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

"So often, children are punished for being human. They are not allowed to have grumpy moods, bad days, disrespectful tones, or bad attitudes. Yet, we adults have them all the time. None of us are perfect. We must stop holding our children to a higher standard of perfection than we can attain ourselves."

- Rebecca Eanes

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

- Anthony Withman

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

- Robert Brault

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

- Riney Jordan

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

- Pamela S. Nadav

"Giving birth and being born brings us into the essence of creation, where the human spirit is courageous and bold and the body, a miracle of wisdom."

- Harriette Hartigan

"Whether your pregnancy was meticulously planned, medically coaxed, or happened by surprise, one thing is certain—your life will never be the same."

- Catherine Jones

"In giving birth to our babies, we may find that we give birth to new possibilities within ourselves."

- Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn

"Babies are bits of star-dust blown from the hand of God. Lucky the woman who knows the pangs of birth for she has held a star."

- Larry Barretto

"My mother was my role model before I even knew what that word was."

- Lisa Leslie

"My mother is a walking miracle."

- Leonardo DiCaprio

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

- Saleem Sharma

"I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves."

- C. JoyBell C.

"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

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

- Pramoedya Ananta Toer

"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."

- Glennon Doyle

"I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood."

- Lance Conrad

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

- Tina Fey

"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

"The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness."

- Jessica Lange

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

- Amanda Morgan

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

- Naomi Aldort

"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

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

- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

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

- Oprah Winfrey

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

- Oprah

"Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation."

- Robert A. Heinlein

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

- Howard W. Hunter

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

- Annie Lennox

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

- Jennie Finch

"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

"Trust children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we should not be trusted."

- John Holt

"Motherhood is basically finding activities for children in three-hour pockets of time for the rest of your life."

- Mindy Kaling

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

- Rumi

"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

"Birth is the epicentre of women's power."

- Ani DiFranco

"Birthing is the most profound initiation to spirituality a woman can have."

- Robin Lim

"The world needs our mothers."

- Liya Kebede

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

- Barbara Walters

"There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids."

- Stephen King

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

- Milton Berle

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

- Boyd K. Packer

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

- Bette Davis

"Mothers are all slightly insane."

- J. D. Salinger

"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

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

- Margaret Sanger

"A mother's love is more beautiful than any fresh flower."