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Mother's Day Quotes

Most of what you will see here is about love in general, because the Mother page itself is short. The page is assembled from the pages on mothers, love and gratitude.

If you want quotes that are actually about mothers, the Mother page has fewer but more precise ones. For anything you plan to print or say out loud, check the source line and the label next to it.

Random quote on Mother's Day

Most quoted on mother's day:

Give into love or live in fear

Jonathan Larson Rent (1996)

I’ve heard it said that sometimes, in return for the gifts of the earth, gratitude is enough. It is our uniquely human gift to express thanks, because we have the awareness and the collective memory to remember that the world could well be otherwise, less generous than it is. But I think we are called to go beyond cultures of gratitude, to once again become cultures of reciprocity.

Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.
Doing the mind guerrilla,
Some call it magic — the search for the grail. Love is the answer and you know that for sure.
Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow.

John Lennon

Women are so strangely constructed that they have in them darkness as well as light, though it be but a little curtain hung across the sun. And love is the hand that takes the curtain down, a stronger hand than fear, which hung it up. For all the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love.

Eleanor Farjeon Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)

Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving her, as she stands with the reapers amid the waving corn. Her beautiful, unselfish spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel age. Love like Ruth's, love which can rise above conflicting creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world.

Helen Keller

Bliss in love is seldom the case: for every successful contemporary love experience, for every short period of enrichment, there are ten destructive love experiences, post-love ‘downs’ of much longer duration – often resulting in the destruction of the individual, or at least an emotional cynicism that makes it difficult or impossible ever to love again.

Shulamith Firestone The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

The mass of men need arousing to see that good comes to all men alike and not just to a few privileged groups, and to learn also that "hatred ceases not by hatred but that hatred ceases by love". This love is not a sentiment, but practical goodwill, expressing itself through individuals, in communities and among nations.

Alice Bailey

Oh my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
Oh my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.

Robert Burns

In all I wish, how happy should I be,
Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee?
So weak thou art that fools thy power despise;
And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.

Jonathan Swift

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

William Shakespeare Henry V (1599)

The bravest battle that ever was fought;
Shall I tell you where and when?
On the maps of the world you will find it not;
It was fought by the mothers of men.

Joaquin Miller

Excuse me I'm sorry to bother you,
But don't I know you?
There's just something about you.
Haven't we met before? We've been in love forever.

Kate Bush

measureless our pure living complete love
whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow

E. E. Cummings

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who

E. E. Cummings

i feel that(false and true are merely to know)
Love only has ever been,is,and will ever be,So

E. E. Cummings XAIPE (1950)

We have come by curious ways
To the Light that holds the days;
We have sought in haunts of fear
For that all-enfolding sphere:
And lo! it was not far, but near.

Alfred Noyes The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907)

I can't compete with a memory
How can I fight with someone that I can't see?
There's two of us but it feels like three
I wish her ghost would just let us be
Boy you're everything I ever wanted
But I got to let you go 'cause this love is
Haunted.

Rihanna

There is happiness in duty, although it may not seem so. To fulfill one's duty elevates the soul to a state of constant sweetness. Love is the bond between men, the way to teach and the center of the world.

José Martí Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish; that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife.

Stephen L. Carter The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002)

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