By Vi-An Nguyen, Parade
It’s been 100 years since Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother’s Day a national celebration! To mark the occasion, we’ve rounded up 100 moving quotes about the most important lady in all of our lives: mom.
Michelle Obama. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
These missives come from all types of people, from authors and poets to politicians, actors, and celebrities, and from across a huge span of time. Some were recorded in the 18th century; others were uttered just last week. George Eliot and Edgar Allen Poe are quoted here; so are Tupac Shakur and even Snooki. They all have one thing in common: they know the importance of a mother.
1. “All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” —Abraham Lincoln
2. “I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” —Abraham Lincoln
3. “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
4. “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.” ―Washington Irving
5. “Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.” —Robert Browning
6. “Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.” —George Eliot
7. “It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.” —Roald Dahl
8. “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
9. “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
10. “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
11. “The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms.” —Jodi Picoult
12. “A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.” —Dorothy Canfield Fisher
13. “Mother’s love is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. If it is there, it is like a blessing; if it is not there it is as if all the beauty had gone out of life.” —Erich Fromm
14. “If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.” —Booker T. Washington
15. “There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.” —Jill Churchill
16. “I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.” —Mitch Albom
17. “Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.” —P.J. O’Rourke
18. “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.” —Robert A. Heinlein
19. “If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?” —Milton Berle
20. “Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe
21. “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
22. “The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant.” —Jane Sellman
23. “[A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” —Emily Dickinson
24. “A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.” —Victor Hugo
25. “Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes
Read the full article by Vi-An Nguyen from Parade.
