MOTHER
A mother is God’s deputy on earth.
RACHEL L. VARNHAGEN
A mother understands what a child does not say.
JEWISH PROVERB
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.
SPANISH PROVERB
Countless times each day a mother does what no one else can do
quite as well. She wipes away a tear, whispers a word of hope,
eases a child’s fear. She teaches, ministers, loves, and
nurtures the next generation of citizens. And she challenges and
cajoles her kids to do their best and be the best. But no editorials
praise these accomplishments—where is the coverage our mothers
rightfully deserve?
JAMES C. DOBSON (1936– ) AND GARY L. BAUER (1946– )
God can’t always be everywhere, and so he invented mothers.
SIR EDWIN ARNOLD (1832–1904)
In the eyes of its mother every beetle is a gazelle.
AFRICAN PROVERB
Let your home be your parish, your little brood your congregation,
your living room a sanctuary, and your knee a sacred altar.
BILLY GRAHAM (1918– )
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811–1863)
Motherhood is the greatest privilege of life.
MAY R. COKER
No gift to your mother can ever equal her gift to you—life.
No man is poor who has had a godly mother.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809–1865)
Thank you, God,
For pretending not to notice that one of
Your angels is missing and for guiding her to me.
You must have known how much I would need her, so
You turned your head for a minute and allowed her to slip away
to me.
Sometimes I wonder what special name you had for her.
I call her “Mother.”
BERNICE MADDUX
The child, in the decisive first years of his life, has the
experience of his mother as an all-enveloping, protective, nourishing
power. Mother is food; she is love; she is warmth; she is earth.
To be loved by her means to be alive, to be rooted, to be at home.
ERICH FROMM (1900–1980)
The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children
makes one a mother—which is as absurd as believing that having
a piano makes one a musician.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS (1917–1986)
The God to whom little boys say their prayers has a face very
like their mother’s.
SIR JAMES M. BARRIE (1860–1937)
The most important occupation on earth for a woman is to be
a real mother to her children. It does not have much glory to
it; there is a lot of grit and grime. But there is no greater
place of ministry, position, or power than that of a mother.
PHIL WHISENHUNT
The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.
HENRY WARD BEECHER (1813–1887)
The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense,
tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother’s
side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the
mother and to become fully independent.
ERICH FROMM (1900–1980)
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 (1813–1887)
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall
A mother’s secret love outlives them all.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809–1894)