Best Motherhood Quotes

I already have a post with best Mother’s Day quotes in honor of mothers … quotes that are wonderful for Mother’s Day cards or scrapbooking. This post is about the feelings we mothers have … quotes about being a mother. Some of them are funny, some are simply empathetic, some are inspirational. I hope that all of them help you realize you’re not alone in this confusing, overwhelming, absolutely beautiful thing called motherhood.

“People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.” Leo J. Burke

“Working mothers are guinea pigs in a scientific experiment to show that sleep is not necessary to human life.” Author Unknown

“(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that’s the only shift they offer.” Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

“When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” Erma Bombeck

“OF COURSE I’d like to be the ideal mother. But I’m too busy raising children.” From the comic strip The Family Circus by Bil Keane

“If evolution really works, how come mothers have only two hands?” Milton Berle

“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 know how to do anything—I’m a mom.” Roseanne Barr

“When it rains look for rainbows. When it’s dark look for toys on the stairs.” Scary Mommy

“A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car for ever after.” Peter De Vries

“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 full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs… since the payment is pure love.” Mildred B. Vermont

“Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.” Louisa May Alcott

“It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.” L.R. Knost, Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages

“Being a mother is about learning about strengths you didn’t know you had and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.” Linda Wooten

“I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway… let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.” C. JoyBell C.

“There is no way to be a perfect mother, but a million ways to be a good one.” Jill Churchill

“Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood – finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.” Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match

“The best love in the world, is the love of a man. The love of a man who came from your womb, the love of your son! I don’t have a daughter, but maybe the love of a daughter is the best, too. I am first and foremost me, but right after that, I am a mother. The best thing that I can ever be, is me. But the best gift that I will ever have, is being a mother.” C. JoyBell C.

“Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else’s happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you’re not sure what the right thing is…and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.” Donna Ball, At Home on Ladybug Farm

“How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe?
How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No. A woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.” G.K. Chesterton

“Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did – that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that – a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.” Debra Ginsberg

“When you were small and just a touch away, I covered you with blankets against the cold night air. But now that you are tall and out of reach, I fold my hands and cover you with prayer.” Dona Maddux Cooper

“But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after – oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock my the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.” Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“She had watched other women with infants and eventually understood what she craved: the boundless permission-no, the absolute necessity- to hold and kiss and stroke this tiny person. Cradling a swaddled infant in their arms, mothers would distractedly touch their lips to their babies’ foreheads. Passing their toddlers in a hall, mothers would tousle their hair even sweep them up in their arms and kiss them hard along their chins and necks until the children squealed with glee. Where else in life, Mabel wondered, could a woman love so openly and with such abandon?” Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

“Being a mother is not about what you gave up to have a child, but what you’ve gained by having one.” Sunny Gupta

“A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity. It didn’t matter if her child were three, thirteen, or thirty.” Sarah Strohmeyer, Kindred Spirits

“You will never have this day with your children again. Tomorrow they will be a little bigger then they are today. This day is a gift. Breathe and notice. Smell and touch them; study their faces and little feet and pay attention. Relish the charms of the present. Enjoy today mama. It will be over before you know it.” Jen Hatmaker

“I don’t want my children to follow in my footsteps….
I want them to take the path next to me and go farther than I ever dreamt possible.” Author Unknown

“Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” – Elizabeth Stone

“The Decision to Have a Child” Word Art Freebie (without watermark)

What is your favorite motherhood quote?

Note: I have lots of word-art inspiration at the Bits of Positivity Facebook page and on Pinterest!

Image Credit: Image at top of post by mitarart