Mother’s Day is coming up fast.
As a mother of five, I’m always searching for the quote I’ve never heard before – the quote that perfectly sums up our complicated feelings regarding Motherhood.
And for those of us who are always looking for a good quote or two to add a personal touch to a card or gift or bring a smile to that special person’s face, here’s a few to consider:
Mothers never sleep. They just worry lying down with their eyes closed.
Cathy Guisewite, American cartoonist
When I dripped paint on the floor at age 6, mom proclaimed me the next Jackson Pollock.
Natasha Richardson, British actress, on her mother Vanessa Redgrave
Mom is the original juggling act. She makes an octopus look short-handed.
Nancy Taylor Robson, author
A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success.
Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist
What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.
Nora Ephron, American writer
There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist
To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.
Maya Angelou, American poet
No matter where you go or what you do, your mother will always be behind you …quietly ripping her hair out.
Cathy Guisewite, American cartoonist
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Mark Twain, American writer
If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?
Milton Berle, comedian
Arthur: “It’s at times like this I wish I’d listened to my mother.”
Ford: “Why, what did she say?”
Arthur: “I don’t know. I never listened.”
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
My mother said to me, “If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll end up as the pope.“ Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter
The price of {a mother} holding down two demanding occupations, one at home and the other away, is high: constant fatigue and overloaded circuits.
Daniel Weingarten, actor
“Have you done your homework?” my mother would ask.
“I’ll do it later.”
“You will do it now, I don’t want you winding up on the third shift {at the local} textile plant.“
I never could figure how failing to read three chapters in my geography book about the various sorts of vegetables to be found in a tropical rain forest had anything to do with facing life as a mill hand. But with enough guilt and fear as catalyst, you can read anything.
Lewis Grizzard, American author
Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother.
A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown.
In my heart it don’t mean a thing.
Toni Morrison, American novelist
The end of the day…usually finds me sitting in the old rocker, shawl over my shoulders…knitting and purling to my heart’s content. I’ve spent hours in therapy warding off the fear that I would eventually turn into my mother. Whoever thought that I’d actually turn into my grandmother?
Ellen Byron, playwright
A mother is never cocky or proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child has just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium.
Mary Kay Blakely, American journalist
No song or poem will bear my mother’s name. Yet so many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother’s stories.
Alice Walker, American writer
An old mother, who had brought up a large family of children with eminent success, was asked by a young one what she would recommend….and her reply was: “I think, my dear, a little wholesome neglect.”
Sir Henry Taylor, English poet
A mother never really leaves her children at home, even when she doesn’t take them along.
Margaret Culkin Banning, American writer
Motherhood means being instantly interruptible, responsive, responsible.
Tillie Olsen, American writer
Being asked to decide between your passion for your work and your passion for your children was like being asked by your doctor whether you preferred him to remove your heart or your brain.
Mary Kay Blakely, Journalist
The story of a mother’s life: trapped between a scream and a hug.
Cathy Guisewite, American cartoonist
So many women have chosen lives of sweeping contradictions. I remember mentioning the babysitter in a column once and receiving outraged letters from readers who could not understand how anyone who could write feelingly of her children would hire help with their care. When did these people think I was writing? In the checkout line at the supermarket?
Anna Quindlen, American columnist
And Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
