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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Mother

A mother is a mother still—the holiest thing alive.

Coleridge.

Heaven is at the feet of mothers.

Roebuck.

All that I am, my mother made me.

J. Q. Adams.

Nature’s loving proxy, the watchful mother.

Bulwer-Lytton.

The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.

Beecher.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Emerson.

A babe is a mother’s anchor.

Beecher.

Where there is a mother in the house, matters speed well.

A. Bronson Alcott.

One good mother is worth a hundred school masters.

George Herbert.

“An ounce of mother,” says the Spanish proverb, “is worth a pound of clergy.”

T. W. Higginson.

  • Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall:
  • A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes.

    But one on earth is better than the wife; that is the mother.

    Leopold Schefer.

    I would desire for a friend the son who never resisted the tears of his mother.

    Lacretelle.

    The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother.

    Napoleon.

    At first babes feed on the mother’s bosom, but always on her heart.

    Beecher.

    If there be aught surpassing human deed or word or thought it is a mother’s love!

    Marchioness de Spadara.

    A mother’s prayers, silent and gentle, can never miss the road to the throne of all bounty.

    Henry Ward Beecher.

    Maternal love! thou word that sums all bliss.

    Pollok.

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

    Thackeray.

    France needs nothing so much to promote her regeneration as good mothers.

    Napoleon I.

    What instruction the baby brings to the mother!

    T. W. Higginson.

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

    Chapin.

    The bearing and the training of a child is woman’s wisdom.

    Tennyson.

    The only love which on this teeming earth asks no return for passion’s wayward birth.

    Mrs. Norton.

    His sweetest dreams were still of that dear voice that soothed his infancy.

    Southey.

    I have not wept these forty years; but now my mother comes afresh into my eyes.

    Dryden.

    A mother’s love, in a degree, sanctifies the most worthless offspring.

    Hosea Ballou.

  • And all my mother came into mine eyes
  • And gave me up to tears.
  • Shakespeare.

    Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable.

    Richter.

    If the whole world were put into one scale, and my mother into the other, the world would kick the beam.

    Lord Langdale.

    Mother love***hath this unlikeness to any other love: Tender to the object, it can be infinitely tyrannical to itself, and thence all its power of self-sacrifice.

    Lew Wallace.

  • A woman’s love
  • Is mighty, but a mother’s heart is weak,
  • And by its weakness overcomes.
  • James Russell Lowell.

    I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of mothers shall, occasionally, be visited on their children, as well as the sins of fathers.

    Dickens.

    A mother is as different from anything else that God ever thought of, as can possibly be. She is a distinct and individual creation.

    Henry Ward Beecher.

    There is in all this cold and hollow world no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother’s heart.

    Mrs. Hemans.

    What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love, fixed in permanent outline forever?

    T. W. Higginson.

    When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly—so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception.

    Henry Ward Beecher.

    The future of society is in the hands of the mothers. If the world was lost through woman, she alone can save it.

    De Beaufort.

    The mother’s love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence.

    George Eliot.

    The child takes most of his nature of the mother, besides speech, manners, and inclination.

    Herbert Spencer.

    A grandam’s name is little less in love than is the doting title of a mother; they are as children but one step below.

    Shakespeare.

    One lamp, thy mother’s love, amid the stars shall lift its pure flame changeless, and before the throne of God burn through eternity.

    N. P. Willis.

  • Happy he
  • With such a mother! faith in womankind
  • Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
  • Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall,
  • He shall not blind his soul with clay.
  • Tennyson.

  • There is a sight all hearts beguiling—
  • A youthful mother to her infant smiling,
  • Who with spread arms and dancing feet,
  • A cooing voice, returns its answer sweet.
  • Baillie.

  • O wondrous power! how little understood,—
  • Entrusted to the mother’s mind alone,
  • To fashion genius, form the soul for good,
  • Inspire a West, or train a Washington!
  • Mrs. Hale.

    A mother has, perhaps, the hardest earthly lot; and yet no mother worthy of the name ever gave herself thoroughly for her child who did not feel that, after all, she reaped what she had sown.

    Henry Ward Beecher.

  • She was my friend—I had but her—no more,
  • No other upon earth—and as for heaven,
  • I am as they that seek a sign, to whom
  • No sign is given. My mother! Oh, my mother!
  • Taylor.

  • I miss thee, my mother! thy image is still
  • The deepest impress’d on my heart,
  • And the tablet so faithful in death must be chill,
  • Ere a line of that image depart.
  • Eliza Cook.

    The instruction received at the mother’s knee, and the paternal lessons, together with the pious and sweet souvenirs of the fireside, are never effaced entirely from the soul.

    Lamennais.

    It is generally admitted, and very frequently proved, that virtue and genius, and all the natural good qualities which men possess, are derived from their mothers.

    Hook.

    No mother who stands upon low ground herself can hope to place her children upon a loftier plane. They may reach it, but it will not be through her.

    Julia C. R. Dorr.

    In after-life you may have friends—fond, dear friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.

    Macaulay.

  • Who ran to help me when I fell,
  • And would some pretty story tell,
  • Or kiss the place to make it well?
  • My mother.
  • Jane Taylor.

  • Maternal love! thou word that sums all bliss,
  • Gives and receives all bliss,—fullest when most
  • Thou givest! spring-head of all felicity,
  • Deepest when most is drawn! emblem of God!
  • Overflowing most when greatest numbers drink!
  • Pollok.

    A mother should give her children a superabundance of enthusiasm, that after they have lost all they are sure to lose on mixing with the world, enough may still remain to prompt and support them through great actions.

    J. C. Hare.

    Even He who died for us upon the cross, in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of His mother, as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought—the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven.

    Longfellow.

    A mother’s love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to age; and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion or the gentle chidings of the best friend that God ever gives us.

    Bovee.

  • The mother, in her office, holds the key
  • Of the soul; and she it is who stamps the coin
  • Of character, and makes the being who would be a savage,
  • But for her gentle cares, a Christian man,
  • Then crown her Queen o’ the world.
  • Old Play.

    The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated, except by those whose feelings are withered by vitiated society. Holy, simple, and beautiful in its construction, it is the emblem of all we can imagine of fidelity and truth.

    Washington Irving.

    Observe how soon, and to what a degree, this influence begins to operate! Her first ministration for her infant is to enter, as it were, the valley of the shadow of death, and win its life at the peril of her own! How different must an affection thus founded be from all others!

    Mrs. Sigourney.

  • My mother!—manhood’s anxious brow
  • And sterner cares have long been mine,
  • Yet turn I to thee fondly now,
  • As when upon thy bosom’s shrine
  • My infant griefs were gently hush’d to rest,
  • And thy low whispered prayers my slumber blessed.
  • George W. Bethune.

    The loss of a mother is always keenly felt, even if her health be such as to incapacitate her from taking an active part in the care of the family. She is the sweet rallying-point for affection, obedience, and a thousand tendernesses. Dreary the blank when she is withdrawn!

    Lamartine.

  • Sweet is the image of the brooding dove!
  • Holy as heaven a mother’s tender love!
  • The love of many prayers, and many tears,
  • Which changes not with dim declining years—
  • The only love, which, on this teeming earth,
  • Asks no return for passion’s wayward birth.
  • Mrs. Norton.

  • A mother’s love—how sweet the name!
  • What is a mother’s love?
  • —A noble, pure and tender flame,
  • Enkindled from above,
  • To bless a heart of earthly mould;
  • The warmest love that can grow cold;
  • This is a mother’s love.
  • James Montgomery.

  • They say that man is mighty,
  • He governs land and sea,
  • He wields a mighty scepter
  • O’er lesser powers that be;
  • But a mightier power and stronger
  • Man from his throne has hurled,
  • For the hand that rocks the cradle
  • Is the hand that rules the world.
  • Wm. Ross Wallace.

    Mother, when your children are irritable, do not make them more so by scolding and fault-finding, but correct their irritability by good nature and mirthfulness. Irritability comes from errors in food, bad air, too little sleep, a necessity for change of scene and surroundings; from confinement in close rooms, and lack of sunshine.

    Herbert Spencer.

    Never, never has one forgotten his pure, right-educating mother! On the blue mountains of our dim childhood, towards which we ever turn and look, stand the mothers who marked out to us from thence our life; the most blessed age must be forgotten ere we can forget the warmest heart. You wish, O woman, to be ardently loved, and forever, even till death. Be, then, the mothers of your children.

    Richter.

  • Would, Mother, thou couldst hear me tell
  • How oft, amid my brief career,
  • For sins and follies lov’d too well,
  • Hath fallen the free, repentant tear.
  • And, in the waywardness of youth,
  • How better thoughts have given to me
  • Contempt for error, love for truth,
  • ’Mid sweet remembrances of thee.
  • James Aldrich.

    Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat; it turns timidity into fierce courage, and dreadless defiance into tremulous submission; it turns thoughtlessness into foresight, and yet stills all anxiety into calm content; it makes selfishness become self-denial, and gives even to hard vanity the glance of admiring love.

    George Eliot.

  • She led me first to God;
  • Her words and prayers were my young spirit’s dew—
  • For when she us’d to leave
  • The fireside every eve,
  • I knew it was for prayer that she withdrew.
  • How often has the thought
  • Of my mourn’d mother brought
  • Peace to my troubled spirit, and new power
  • The tempter to repel!
  • Mother, thou knowest well
  • That thou hast bless’d me since my natal hour.
  • John Pierpont.

    A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world’s condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy.

    Washington Irving.

  • I miss thee, my mother, when young health has fled,
  • And I sink in the languor of pain,
  • Where, where is the arm that once pillowed my head,
  • And the ear that once heard me complain?
  • Other hands may support me, gentle accents may fall—
  • For the fond and the true are still mine:
  • I’ve a blessing for each; I am grateful to all,—
  • But whose care can be soothing as thine?
  • Eliza Cook.

    When Eve was brought unto Adam, he became filled with the Holy Spirit, and gave her the most sanctified, the most glorious of appellations. He called her Eva—that is to say, the Mother of All. He did not style her wife, but simply mother—mother of all living creatures. In this consists the glory and the most precious ornament of woman.

    Luther.