Classic Mom Quotes from Literature and History

“I am angry nearly every day of my life, but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it.”

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868), spoken by Marmee

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

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848)

“A mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Three Graves (1798)

“If I were hanged on the highest hill, I know whose love would follow me still. Mother o' mine.”

Rudyard Kipling, Mother o' Mine (1891)

“Who ran to help me when I fell, and would some pretty story tell, or kiss the place to make it well? My mother.”

Ann Taylor, My Mother (1804)

“The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”

William Ross Wallace, poem title and refrain (1865)

“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”

Attributed to Abraham Lincoln by his biographer William Herndon

“Strength and dignity are her clothing. She laughs at the time to come.”

Proverbs 31:25, World English Bible (public domain translation)

“God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.”

Traditional proverb

“An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.”

Traditional Spanish proverb