But the mother's yearning… feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

About George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the...

More quotations from George Eliot

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

—George Eliot

love life mother

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

—George Eliot

silence communication

To get an idea of our fellow countrymen's miseries we have only to look at their pleasures.

—George Eliot

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The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

—George Eliot

progress world

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

—George Eliot

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More quotations tagged with “mother”

There is an emptiness inside of me—a void that will never be filled. No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no love as pure, unconditional and strong as a mother's love. And I will never be loved that way again.

—Hope Edelman in Motherless Daughters

love mother motherhood emptiness

When a daughter loses a mother, the intervals between grief responses lengthen over time, but her longing never disappears. It always hovers at the edge of her awareness, ready to surface at any time, in any place, in the least expected ways. This isn't pathological. It's normal. It's why you find yourself, at twenty-four, or thirty-five or forty-three, unwrapping a present or walking down an aisle or crossing a busy street, doubled over and missing your mother.

—Hope Edelman in Motherless Daughters

grief loss mother daughter

Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.

—Meghan O'Rourke in The Long Goodbye

life death loss mother

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

love heart mother

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

—Abraham Lincoln

hope mother

History

13 May 2014 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

But the mother's yearning . . . feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.