569 Quotes About Mothers

When our father does the things he needs to do in the world, we understand it is his due. If our mother does the things she needs to do in the world, we feel she has abandoned us. It is a miracle she survives our mixed messages, written in society's most poisoned ink. It is enough to drive her mad.

Sometimes, the people that love you the most turn out to be the people you will trust the least.

I think women, perhaps unconsciously, convey to female children a deep sense of their own discontent.

Years might pass and they might change, both of them, but she was sure she would still know her own child, just as she would know herself, no matter how long it had been. She was certain of this. She would spend months, years, the rest of her life looking for her daughter, searching the face of every young woman she meet for as long as it took, searching for a spark of familiarity in the faces of strangers.

The first women we know are our mothers, and yet we sometimes treat them, especially when they are angry, with the least compassion. That becomes a model for how we treat other women.

[W]hen my little girl was born, I put my finger in her tiny hand, and she opened her eyes and squeezed it so tightly. And I looked at her, and I realized that she was more powerful than any delicate princess I'd read about. I'd just given birth to a queen. A girl who would grow up to be strong and brave. So I called her Queenie.

It took me years to stop feeling the guilt she made sure I kept feeling about what happened with him. He is a sick person that molests children, but I felt so bad about it for so long. I couldn't talk to a single person about any of this. No one. And she made me feel so bad about it all that I felt I shouldn't talk about it, even if there was someone. I felt ashamed and thought I was an awful person. Sometimes I still do. My mother abandoned me in the worst ways possible.

you wereand always will bethat first ever touchto have fertilizedthe groundbeneath my life’s treesthat first ever roseto have fragrancedthe rest of my memories.

Whenever a group produces murderers, the early parental relationship must have been abusive and neglectful. Yet this elementary truth has not even begun to be considered in historical research; just stating that poor mothering lies behind wars seems blasphemous.