Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.
—George Eliot
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Out of the corner of one eye, I could see my mother. Out of the corner of the other eye, I could see her shadow on the wall, cast there by the lamplight. It was a big and solid shadow, and it looked so much like my mother that I became frightened. For I could not be sure whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world.
—Jamaica Kincaid
A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity; it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.
—Agatha Christie
But the mother's yearning… feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.
—George Eliot
Certainly I can say that my own childhood was unhappy. This was due to a clash of wills between my mother and myself. My early life was a series of fierce battles, from which my mother invariably emerged the victor. If I could not be seen anywhere, she would say, "Go and find out what Bernard is doing and tell him to stop it."
—Bernard Law Montgomery
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
—Florida Scott-Maxwell
In the beginning there was my mother. A shape. A shape and a force, standing in the light. You could see her energy; it was visible in the air. Against any background she stood out.
—Marilyn Krysl
My mother was my first jealous lover.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
At that moment, I missed my mother more than I had ever imagined possible and wanted only to live somewhere quiet and beautiful with her alone, but also at that moment I wanted only to see her lying dead, all withered and in a coffin at my feet.
—Jamaica Kincaid
All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat; psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysands to foist their problems onto the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defense. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health.
—Germaine Greer
What mother and daughter understand each other, or even have sympathy for each other's lack of understanding?
—Maya Angelou
We are impressed with nature's power, but by projecting upon this power an image of the feminine, the mother, we reassure ourselves—for surely a mother will always be loving toward us, continue to feed us, clothe us, and carry away our wastes, and never kill us, no matter how much toxic waste we put in the soil or how many CFCs in the ozone. The sense of nature as inexhaustible mother encourages us to feel there are no limits to a finite planet, while the sense of nature as benign and ever-loving mother permits us to continue disregarding a crescendo of warnings.
—Elizabeth Dodson Gray
I don't have a bank account, because I don't know my mother's maiden name.
—Paula Poundstone
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
—William Makepeace Thackeray