125 Mother’s Day Quotes to Brighten Her Day
Updated: Apr. 18, 2024
These Mother's Day quotes will make you laugh, cry and call your mom!
Mother’s Day quotes to share on her special day
We should all let our moms know how much we admire them on the regular. However, Mother’s Day is an extra special day to spoil her with gifts (and an adorable Mother’s Day card too!). Looking for another great way to show you care? Share one of these Mother’s Day quotes with her.
These quotes about motherhood, Mother’s Day, parenting and everything in between are wise, touching and even chuckle-worthy. Simply choose the quote your mom would like best and send it her way. She’s sure to appreciate the sweet gesture!
Read on for some of the sweetest “Happy Mother’s Day” quotes to share with the best mom ever!
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Short Mother’s Day quotes
1. “There is nothing as sincere as a mother’s kiss.” —Saleem Sharma
2. “We are born of love; love is our mother.” —Rumi
3. “A mother’s love is more beautiful than any fresh flower.” —Debasish Mridha
4. “Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.” —Robert Browning
5. “An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.” —Spanish proverb
6. “The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms.” —Jodi Picoult
7. “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” —Abraham Lincoln
8. “Sons are the anchors of a mother’s life.” —Sophocles
9. “My mother is a walking miracle.” —Leonardo DiCaprio
10. “I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood.” —Lance Conrad
11. “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” —Barbara Kingsolver
12. “Mothers possess a power beyond that of a king on his throne.” —Mabel Hale
13. “A mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s.” —Princess Diana
14. “Men are what their mothers made them.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
15. “As is the mother, so is her daughter.” —Ezekiel 16:4
16. “Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.” —Lin Yutang
17. “The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.” —Henry Ward Beecher
18. “A mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
19. “Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.” —George Eliot
20. “I really learned it all from mothers.” —Benjamin Spock
21. “Mothers can look through a child’s eyes and see tomorrow.” —Reed Markham
22. “A mother understands what a child does not say.” —Jewish proverb
23. “The world needs our mothers.” —Liya Kebede
24. “There is no influence so powerful as that of the mother.” —Sara Josepha Hale
25. “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” —William Makepeace Thackeray
Heart-touching Mother’s Day quotes
26. “Mother is the heartbeat in the home; and without her, there seems to be no heartthrob.” —Leroy Brownlow
27. “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
28. “Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.” —Unknown
29. “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
30. “[My mother] always said I was beautiful, and I finally believed her at some point.” —Lupita Nyong’o
31. “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
32. “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
33. “Blessed is a mother that would give up part of her soul for her children’s happiness.” —Shannon Alder
34. “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
35. “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
36. “There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.” —Jill Churchill
37. “There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that transcends all other affections of the heart.” —Washington Irving
38. “No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother’s love.” —Edwin Hubbel Chapin
39. “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
40. “There are no perfect parents, and there are no perfect children, but there are plenty of perfect moments along the way.” —Dave Willis
41. “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
42. “My children are the reason I laugh, smile and want to get up every morning.” —Gena Lee Nolin Read
43. “No man succeeds without a good woman behind him. Wife or mother, if it is both, he is twice blessed indeed.” —Godfrey Winn
44. “Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.” —Erich Fromm
Need something else to pull at your mom’s heartstrings? Have her read these sweet stories about motherhood.
Inspiring Mother’s Day quotes
45. “Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had.” —Linda Wooten
46. “There is no role in life that is more essential than that of motherhood.” —Elder M. Russell Ballard
47. “The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation.” —James E. Faust
48. “Motherhood is the exquisite inconvenience of being another person’s everything.” —Unknown
49. “I remember my mother’s prayers, and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” —Abraham Lincoln
50. “Acceptance, tolerance, bravery, compassion. These are the things my mom taught me.” —Lady Gaga
51. “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
52. “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
53. “[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
54. “My mother always said ‘Don’t bother other people.’ I think that’s good advice.” —Amy Sedaris
55. “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
56. “A good mother loves fiercely but ultimately brings up her children to thrive without her.” —Erin Kelly
57. “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
58. “That’s the wonderful thing about mothers: You can because you must, and you just do.” —Kate Winslet
59. “My mother sacrificed her dreams so I could dream.” —Rupi Kaur
60. “A mother’s love doesn’t make her son more dependent and timid; it actually makes him stronger and more independent.” —Cheri Fuller
61. “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
62. “I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.” —E.M. Forster
63. “Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe
64. “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.” —William Ross Wallace
65. “Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.” —Oprah Winfrey
66. “I think, as mothers, we are all just trying our best.” —Gisele Bündchen
67. “Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring and integrity, they think of you.” —H. Jackson Brown Jr.
68. “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
69. “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.” —Robert A. Heinlein
70. “I believe the choice to become a mother is the choice to become one of the greatest spiritual teachers there is.” —Oprah Winfrey
Loving these Mother’s Day quotes? If so, these Mother’s Day poems will melt your heart.
Cute Mother’s Day quotes
71. “Mother—that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.” —T. Dewitt Talmage
72. “To a child’s ear, ‘mother’ is magic in any language.” —Arlene Benedict
73. “It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?” —Mahatma Gandhi
74. “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
75. “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
76. “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
77. “But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begins.” —Mitch Albom
78. “My mother was my role model before I even knew what that word was.” —Lisa Leslie
79. “I can only hope to be 10% of the mom mine was to me.” —Charlize Theron
80. “Mothers are like glue. Even when you can’t see them, they’re still holding the family together.” —Susan Gale
81. “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
82. “Moms are as relentless as the tides. They just don’t drive us to practice; they drive us to greatness.” —Steve Rushin
83. “Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother.” —Moroccan proverb
84. “There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.” —Billy Sunday
85. “We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.” —Henry Ward Beecher
86. “Throughout my life, my mom has been the person that I’ve always looked up to.” —Mike Krzyzewski
87. “[A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” —Emily Dickinson
88. “Motherhood is heart-exploding, blissful hysteria.” —Olivia Wilde
89. “She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn’t take them along.” —Margaret Culkin Banning
90. “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
91. “A mother’s arms are made of tenderness, and children sleep soundly in them.” —Victor Hugo
92. “Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
93. “Hugs can do great amounts of good—especially for children.” —Princess Diana
Are you one of your mom’s favorite sons? Send her a few of these mother-son quotes!
Funny Mother’s Day quotes
94. “It’s not easy being a mother. If it were, fathers would do it.” —The Golden Girls
95. “The phrase ’working mother’ is redundant.” —Jane Sellman
96. “If evolution really works, how come mothers have only two hands?” —Milton Berle
97. “There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.” —Chinese proverb
98. “Mom, I love you, even though I’ll never accept your friend request.” —Unknown
99. “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then, I want to move in with them.” —Phyllis Diller
100. “Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy.” —Tina Fey
101. “Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.” —Marguerite Duras
102. “My mother’s menu consists of two choices: Take it or leave it.” —Buddy Hackett
103. “I do what I want, when I want, where I want … if my mom says it’s OK.” —Unknown
104. “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
105. “If at first you don’t succeed, try doing it the way your mom told you to do it from the start.” —Unknown
106. “Mothers are all slightly insane.” —J.D. Salinger
107. “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
108. “Don’t forget Mother’s Day. Or as they call it in Beverly Hills, Dad’s Third Wife Day.” —Jay Leno
109. “I always brought up my children not to believe in Mother’s Day gifts, and now I regret it.” —Lauren Bacall
110. “Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children.” —Sam Levenson
111. “My dear Mama, you are definitely the hen who hatched a famous duck.” —Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
112. “I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers.” —Ogden Nash
113. “Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease.” —Lisa Alther
114. “Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.” —Ambrose Bierce
115. “I’m amazed when I see mothers wearing high heels. If your kids run off, you can’t run after them.” —Claudia Schiffer
116. “A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.” —Peter De Vries
117. “You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.” —Franklin P. Adams
118. “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
119. “When you feel neglected, think of the female salmon, who lays 3,000,000 eggs but no one remembers her on Mother’s Day.” —
120. “Children should have enough freedom to be themselves—once they’ve learned the rules.” —Anna Quindlen
121. “If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.” —Bette Davis
122. “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
123. “A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.” —Dave Barry
124. “When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” —Erma Bombeck
125. “Mama does everything for the baby, who responds by saying ‘Da-da’ first.” –Mignon McLaughlin
Need more laughs? These mom jokes will do just the trick.
Additional reporting by Emma Taubenfeld and Lindsay Tigar.
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