As the saying goes, mothers know best! So, we've tapped into mommy wisdom and other motherhood or child-rearing 'experts' like comedians and even a few dads to raise our very own, growing collection of quotes. (psst... If you know some good sayings we've missed, send us a note)
Fun Mother Quotes
Household Chores Quotes
Inspirational Mommy Quotes
Mothering Proverbs from around the World
Fun Mother Quotes
“My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it.” - Buddy Hackett“I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them.” - Phyllis Diller
"Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going." - Phyllis Diller
"We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up." - Phyllis Diller
"Poverty is hereditary - you get it from your children." - Phyllis Diller
“I asked my mom if I was a gifted child... she said “they certainly wouldn't have paid for me.” – Unknown
“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?” - Milton Berle
“I know how to do anything - I'm a Mom.” - Roseanne Barr
“A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car for ever after” – Peter De Vries
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.” - Oscar Wilde
“It's not easy being a mother. If it were easy, fathers would do it.” - The Golden Girls
“If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylum would be filled with mothers.” - Edgar Watson Howe
“The mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters was asked whether or not she'd have children if she had it to do over again. ‘Yes’, she replied ‘but not the same ones.’” - David Finkelstein
“Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.” - Lisa Alther
“Mothers of teenagers know why animals eat their young” – Unknown
"Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble."- Dennis Fakes
"Raising a kid is part joy and part guerilla warfare." - Ed Asner
"Children are gleeful barbarians." - Joseph Morgenstern
"The hand that rocks the cradle usually is attached to someone who isn't getting enough sleep." - John Fiebig
"I'd like to be the ideal mother, but I'm too busy raising my kids." - Unknown
"Child rearing myth #1: Labour ends when the baby is born." - Unknown
"Children are a great comfort in your old age. And they help you reach it faster, too." - Lionel Kaufman
“My mother tried to kill me when I was a baby. She denied it. She said she thought the plastic bag would keep me fresh.” – Bob Monkhouse
Household Chores Quotes
“Cleaning up with children around is like shoveling during a blizzard” – Unknown“I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.” - Roseanne Barr
“My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.” - Erma Bombeck
“By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacation-less class.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.” – Calvin Trillin
"It is amazing how quickly the kids learn the operation of the DVD, yet are unable to understand the vacuum cleaner." - Etienne Marchal
Inspirational Mommy Quotes
“Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.” - Lin Yutang
“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 a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.” - Tenneva Jordan
“To a child's ear, "mother" is magic in any language.” - Arlene Benedict
“There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one” - Jill Churchill
“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.” - Maya Angelou
“A mother's heart is the child's classroom.” - Henry Ward Beecher
“You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back.” - William D. Tammeus
“Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.” - Oprah Winfrey
“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
“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
“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
“Only mothers can think of the future - because they give birth to it in their children.” - Maxim Gorky
“The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”- W.R. Wallace
“Every mother is like Moses. She does not enter the promised land. She prepares a world she will not see.”- Pope Paul VI “A mother's love is patient and forgiving when all others are forsaking, it never fails or falters, even though the heart is breaking”- Helen Rice
“A mother is the truest friend we have…”- Washington Irving
“The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant.” - Jane Sellman
“That best academy, a mother's knee.” - James Russell Lowell
“With what price we pay for the glory of motherhood.” - Isadora Duncan
“A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, 'Where mother is.'" - Keith L. Brooks
“A mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” - Emily Dickinson
“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.” - Rajneesh
“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother.” - Abraham Lincoln
“Making the decision to have a child - It's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”- Elizabeth Stone
“A mother never realizes that her children are no longer children.”- James Agee
“She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn't take them along.”- Margaret Culkin Banning
“Mother - that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.”- T. DeWitt Talmage
“Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs in my field, since the payment is pure love.”- Mildred B. Vermont
Mothering Proverbs from around the World
“God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.” - Jewish Proverb
“A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.” - Irish Proverb
“A mother understands what a child does not say.” - Jewish Proverb
"Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother." - African proverb
“The woman is weak, but the mother is strong.” - Korean proverb (p.s. thanks Connie)
"An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest." - Spanish proverb
“There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.” – Chinese Proverb
