These Mother's Day quotes will make you laugh, cry and call your mom!
135 Mother’s Day Quotes to Brighten Her Day

Short Mother’s Day quotes
- “There is nothing as sincere as a mother’s kiss.” —Saleem Sharma
- “We are born of love; love is our mother.” —Rumi
- “A mother’s love is more beautiful than any fresh flower.” —Debasish Mridha
- “Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.” —Robert Browning
- “An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.” —Spanish proverb
- “The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms.” —Jodi Picoult
- “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” —Abraham Lincoln
- “Sons are the anchors of a mother’s life.” —Sophocles
- “My mother is a walking miracle.” —Leonardo DiCaprio
- “I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood.” —Lance Conrad
- “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” —Barbara Kingsolver
- “Mothers possess a power beyond that of a king on his throne.” —Mabel Hale
- “A mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s.” —Princess Diana
- “Men are what their mothers made them.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “As is the mother, so is her daughter.” —Ezekiel 16:4
- “Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.” —Lin Yutang
- “The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.” —Henry Ward Beecher
- “A mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- “Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.” —George Eliot
- “I really learned it all from mothers.” —Benjamin Spock
- “Mothers can look through a child’s eyes and see tomorrow.” —Reed Markham
- “A mother understands what a child does not say.” —Jewish proverb
- “The world needs our mothers.” —Liya Kebede
- “There is no influence so powerful as that of the mother.” —Sara Josepha Hale
- “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” —William Makepeace Thackeray
- “Mother’s are the necessity of invention.” —Plato
- “Motherhood is the greatest thing and the hardest thing.” —Ricki Lake

Heart-touching Mother’s Day quotes
- “Mother is the heartbeat in the home; and without her, there seems to be no heartthrob.” —Leroy Brownlow
- “My Mother: She is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.” —Jodi Picoult
- “Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.” —Unknown
- “A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.” —Tenneva Jordan
- “[My mother] always said I was beautiful, and I finally believed her at some point.” —Lupita Nyong’o
- “If I’ve learned anything as a mom with a daughter who’s 3, I’ve learned that you cannot judge the way another person is raising their kid. Everybody is just doing the best they can. It’s hard to be a mom.” —Maggie Gyllenhaal
- “I would say that my mother is the single biggest role model in my life, but that term doesn’t seem to encompass enough when I use it about her. She was the love of my life.” —Mindy Kaling
- “Blessed is a mother that would give up part of her soul for her children’s happiness.” —Shannon Alder
- “Mothers were meant to love us unconditionally, to understand our moments of stupidity, to reprimand us for lame excuses while yet acknowledging our point of view, to weep over our pain and failures as well as cry at our joy and successes and to cheer us on despite countless start-overs. Heaven knows, no one else will.” —Richelle Goodrich
- “A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dates all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.” —Agatha Christie
- “There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.” —Jill Churchill
- “There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that transcends all other affections of the heart.” —Washington Irving
- “No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother’s love.” —Edwin Hubbel Chapin
- “Mothers are the people who love us for no good reason. And those of us who are mothers know it’s the most exquisite love of all.” —Maggie Gallagher
- “There are no perfect parents, and there are no perfect children, but there are plenty of perfect moments along the way.” —Dave Willis
- “Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.” —Pearl S. Buck
- “My children are the reason I laugh, smile and want to get up every morning.” —Gena Lee Nolin Read
- “No man succeeds without a good woman behind him. Wife or mother, if it is both, he is twice blessed indeed.” —Godfrey Winn
- “Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.” —Erich Fromm
- “God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.” —Rudyard Kipling
- “A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take.” —Cardinal Mermillod
- “A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make learning unnecessary.” —Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- ” The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” —Theodore Hesburgh

Inspiring Mother’s Day quotes
- “Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had.” —Linda Wooten
- “There is no role in life that is more essential than that of motherhood.” —Elder M. Russell Ballard
- “The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation.” —James E. Faust
- “Motherhood is the exquisite inconvenience of being another person’s everything.” —Unknown
- “I remember my mother’s prayers, and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” —Abraham Lincoln
- “Acceptance, tolerance, bravery, compassion. These are the things my mom taught me.” —Lady Gaga
- “My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted the seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind.” —Michael Jordan
- “My mom is my hero. [She] inspired me to dream when I was a kid, so anytime anyone inspires you to dream, that’s gotta be your hero.” —Tim McGraw
- “[Motherhood is] the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It’s huge and scary—it’s an act of infinite optimism.” —Gilda Radner
- “My mother always said ‘Don’t bother other people.’ I think that’s good advice.” —Amy Sedaris
- “They are not kidding when they say that mothers are strong women. We need to be strong in more ways than our children will ever know.” —M.B. Antevasin
- “A good mother loves fiercely but ultimately brings up her children to thrive without her.” —Erin Kelly
- “Clarity and focus doesn’t always come from God or inspirational quotes. Usually, it takes your mother to slap the reality back into you.” —Shannon Alder
- “That’s the wonderful thing about mothers: You can because you must, and you just do.” —Kate Winslet
- “My mother sacrificed her dreams so I could dream.” —Rupi Kaur
- “A mother’s love doesn’t make her son more dependent and timid; it actually makes him stronger and more independent.” —Cheri Fuller
- “There will be many times you will feel like you have failed. But in the eyes, heart and mind of your child, you are supermom.” —Stephanie Precourt
- “I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.” —E.M. Forster
- “Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe
- “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.” —William Ross Wallace
- “Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.” —Oprah Winfrey
- “I think, as mothers, we are all just trying our best.” —Gisele Bündchen
- “Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring and integrity, they think of you.” —H. Jackson Brown Jr.
- “When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.” —Sophia Loren
- “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.” —Robert A. Heinlein
- “I believe the choice to become a mother is the choice to become one of the greatest spiritual teachers there is.” —Oprah Winfrey
- “A mother’s love is the fuel that enables a human being to do the impossible.” —Marion C. Garretty
- “The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children.” —Elaine Heffner

Cute Mother’s Day quotes
- “Mother—that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.” —T. Dewitt Talmage
- “To a child’s ear, ‘mother’ is magic in any language.” —Arlene Benedict
- “It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?” —Mahatma Gandhi
- “Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.” —Stevie Wonder
- “My mother has always been my emotional barometer and my guidance. I was lucky enough to get to have one woman who truly helped me through everything.” —Emma Stone
- “My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart—a heart so large that everybody’s joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.” —Mark Twain
- “But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begins.” —Mitch Albom
- “My mother was my role model before I even knew what that word was.” —Lisa Leslie
- “I can only hope to be 10% of the mom mine was to me.” —Charlize Theron
- “Mothers are like glue. Even when you can’t see them, they’re still holding the family together.” —Susan Gale
- “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.” —Maya Angelou
- “Moms are as relentless as the tides. They just don’t drive us to practice; they drive us to greatness.” —Steve Rushin
- “Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother.” —Moroccan proverb
- “There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.” —Billy Sunday
- “We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.” —Henry Ward Beecher
- “Throughout my life, my mom has been the person that I’ve always looked up to.” —Mike Krzyzewski
- “[A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” —Emily Dickinson
- “Motherhood is heart-exploding, blissful hysteria.” —Olivia Wilde
- “She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn’t take them along.” —Margaret Culkin Banning
- “A mother is the truest friend we have when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity.” —Washington Irving
- “A mother’s arms are made of tenderness, and children sleep soundly in them.” —Victor Hugo
- “Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
- “Hugs can do great amounts of good—especially for children.” —Princess Diana
- “There is no velvet so soft as a mother’s lap.” —Jean Paul

Funny Mother’s Day quotes
- “It’s not easy being a mother. If it were, fathers would do it.” —The Golden Girls
- “The phrase ’working mother’ is redundant.” —Jane Sellman
- “If evolution really works, how come mothers have only two hands?” —Milton Berle
- “There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.” —Chinese proverb
- “Mom, I love you, even though I’ll never accept your friend request.” —Unknown
- “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then, I want to move in with them.” —Phyllis Diller
- “Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy.” —Tina Fey
- “Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.” —Marguerite Duras
- “My mother’s menu consists of two choices: Take it or leave it.” —Buddy Hackett
- “I do what I want, when I want, where I want … if my mom says it’s OK.” —Unknown
- “When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.” —Nora Ephron
- “If at first you don’t succeed, try doing it the way your mom told you to do it from the start.” —Unknown
- “Mothers are all slightly insane.” —J.D. Salinger
- “A mother takes 20 years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in 20 minutes.” —Robert Frost
- “Don’t forget Mother’s Day. Or as they call it in Beverly Hills, Dad’s Third Wife Day.” —Jay Leno
- “I always brought up my children not to believe in Mother’s Day gifts, and now I regret it.” —Lauren Bacall
- “Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children.” —Sam Levenson
- “My dear Mama, you are definitely the hen who hatched a famous duck.” —Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- “I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers.” —Ogden Nash
- “Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease.” —Lisa Alther
- “Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.” —Ambrose Bierce
- “I’m amazed when I see mothers wearing high heels. If your kids run off, you can’t run after them.” —Claudia Schiffer
- “A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.” —Peter De Vries
- “You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.” —Franklin P. Adams
- “I can cook, but not well. I figure I have six years until my children discover what their friends’ mothers make for dinner.” —Jane Pauley
- “When you feel neglected, think of the female salmon, who lays 3,000,000 eggs but no one remembers her on Mother’s Day.” —
- “Children should have enough freedom to be themselves—once they’ve learned the rules.” —Anna Quindlen
- “If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.” —Bette Davis
- “When your mother asks, ‘Do you want a piece of advice?’ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.” —Erma Bombeck
- “A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.” —Dave Barry
- “When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” —Erma Bombeck
- “Mama does everything for the baby, who responds by saying ‘Da-da’ first.” –Mignon McLaughlin
- “My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” —Mark Twain
Additional reporting by Emma Taubenfeld and Lindsay Tigar.
Why trust us
At Reader’s Digest, we’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experience where appropriate. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing, and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.