Mother’s Day gives us the perfect time to express our gratitude for the special woman who shaped our lives. And what better way to express how you feel to your mother than with these 175 Mother’s Day quotes.
From sleepless nights to endless support, a mother’s unconditional love deserves more than just one special day of recognition.
Finding the right words for your Mother’s Day card isn’t always easy. Whether you’re crafting a heartfelt message or searching for funny quotes that capture her personality, the right words make all the difference.
These 179 quotes celebrate every type of amazing mom and mother figure. From the woman who went the extra mile for every little thing to the guiding light who taught life’s most important lessons.
Use these thoughtful sayings in greeting cards, as a Mother’s Day Instagram caption, or simply during phone calls if distance separates you. There’s no better way to make her smile than with words that recognize the special bond you share.
Remember, the sweetest sounds to any mom are the personal notes of appreciation from those she loves most.
179 Best Mother’s Day Quotes
- “A mother’s love is more beautiful than any fresh flower.” – Debasish Mridha
- “Acceptance, tolerance, bravery, compassion. These are the things my mom taught me.” – Lady Gaga
- “It’s not easy being a mother. If it were, fathers would do it.” – The Golden Girls
- “My mother was my role model before I even knew what that word was.” – Lisa Leslie
- “A mother is your first friend, your best friend, your forever friend.” – Amit Kalantri
- “When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Your mind floods with oxygen. Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows.” – Amy Poehler
- “To the world, you are a mother, but to your family, you are the world.” – Unknown
- “The loveliest masterpiece of the heart of God is the heart of a mother.” – St. Therese of Lisieux
- “Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it.” – M.L. Stedman
- “Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
- “A mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s.” – Princess Diana
- “When you are looking at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.” – Charley Benetto
- “Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.” – George Eliot
- “Behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begins.” – Mitch Albom
- “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.” – Alfred Tennyson
- “My mother used to say, ‘The older you get, the better you get. Unless you’re a banana.'” – Betty White
- “Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.” – Oprah Winfrey
- “The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.” – 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
- “All that I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.” – Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- “Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had.” – Linda Wooten
- “Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.” – Robert Browning
- “An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.” – Spanish Proverb
- “Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy.” – Tina Fey
- “No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother’s love.” – Edwin Chapin
- “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
- “God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.” – Rudyard Kipling
- “Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible.” – Marion C. Garretty
- “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
- “Mothers are like glue. Even when you can’t see them, they’re still holding the family together.” – Susan Gale
- “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
- “Having children just puts the whole world into perspective. Everything else just disappears.” – Kate Winslet
- “A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take.” – Cardinal Mermillod
- “If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?” – Milton Berle
- “Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.” – Erich Fromm
- “A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.” – Honore de Balzac
- “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” – Barbara Kingsolver
- “The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.” – Honore de Balzac
- “There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one.” – Jill Churchill
- “A mother understands what a child does not say.” – Jewish Proverb
- “The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.” – Osho
- “A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.” – Victor Hugo
- “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
- “It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children.” – Elaine Heffner
- “A mom’s hug lasts long after she lets go.” – Unknown
- “A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place.” – Amy Tan
- “Mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” – Emily Dickinson
- “The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms.” – Jodi Picoult
- “There’s no velvet so soft as a mother’s lap, no rose as lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps.” – Archibald Thompson
- “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” – Meryl Streep
- “Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.” – Lin Yutang
- “We are born of love; love is our mother.” – Rumi
- “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
- “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'” – Fred Rogers
- “I believe the choice to become a mother is the choice to become one of the greatest spiritual teachers there is.” – Oprah Winfrey
- “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
- “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” – William Makepeace Thackeray
- “I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “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
- “The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation.” – James E. Faust
- “A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity.” – Sarah Strohmeyer
- “Mothers possess a power beyond that of a king on his throne.” – Mabel Hale
- “The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness.” – Jessica Lange
- “A good mother is worth hundreds of schoolmasters.” – George Herbert
- “A mother teaches us that there is no end at all to what love can do.” – Keely Chace
- “For when a child is born the mother also is born again.” – Gilbert Parker
- “A mom forgives us all our faults, not to mention one or two we don’t even have.” – Robert Brault
- “In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.” – Maya Angelou
- “Once you sign on to be a mother, 24/7 is the only shift they offer.” – Jodi Picoult
- “The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant.” – Jane Sellman
- “A mother’s love is everything. It is what brings a child into this world.” – Jamie McGuire
- “There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.” – Chinese Proverb
- “There is no influence so powerful as that of the mother.” – Sara Josepha Hale
- “Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.” – James Joyce
- “When a mother is happy, the baby touches the stars with two hands.” – Hopi Proverb
- “If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.” – Bette Davis
- “Sooner or later we all quote our mothers.” – Bern Williams
- “I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood.” – Lance Conrad
- “He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark.” – J.K. Rowling
- “Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
- “My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” – Mark Twain
- “Kids don’t stay with you if you do it right. It’s the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run.” – Barbara Kingsolver
- “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” – Elizabeth Stone
- “A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us.” – Washington Irving
- “Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease.” – Lisa Alther
- “When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you will ever know.” – Mitch Albom
- “Motherhood is the greatest thing and the hardest thing.” – Ricki Lake
- “My mother was the one constant in my life. When I think about my mom raising me alone when she was 20, and working and paying the bills, and, you know, trying to pursue your own dreams, I think is a feat that is unmatched.” – Barack Obama
- “Mother is a verb. It’s something you do. Not just who you are.” – Cheryl Lacey Donovan
- “M-O-M is just another way of spelling LOVE.” – Keely Chace
- “A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me.” – Kristin Hannah
- “The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” – Theodore Hesburgh
- “Mothers have the ability to liberate by love or, by neglect, to imprison. They’re our first teachers; they are our first loves.” – Maya Angelou
- “That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub, ‘Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you.’ She says, ‘Toughen up, this is the reality we are living in.'” – Lauryn Hill
- “A mother’s love is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.” – Erich Fromm
- “My mother taught me empathy — the basic concept of standing in somebody else’s shoes and looking through their eyes.” – Barack Obama
- “When you’re in the thick of raising your kids by yourself, you tend to keep a running list of everything you think you’re doing wrong. I recommend taking a lot of family pictures as evidence to the contrary.” – Connie Schultz
- “Your heart feels like it’s outside your body and you’re too old to drink the feelings away like you used to.” – Amy Schumer
- “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then, I want to move in with them.” – Phyllis Diller
- “As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She is the beating of my heart.” – Kristin Hannah
- “I finally understand for a woman it ain’t easy tryin to raise a man.” – Tupac Shakur
- “Having kids—the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings—is the biggest job anyone can embark on.” – Maria Shriver
- “It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. My mom says some days are like that.” – Judith Viorst
- “A mother is clothed with strength and dignity, laughs without fear of the future. When she speaks her words are wise and she gives instructions with kindness.” – Proverbs
- “Mothers and their children are in a category all their own. There’s no bond so strong in the entire world. No love so instantaneous and forgiving.” – Gail Tsukiyama
- “A mother knows what her child’s gone through, even if she didn’t see it herself.” – Pramoedya Ananta Toer
- “The world needs our mothers.” – Liya Kebede
- “Just because you become a mother, it doesn’t mean you lose who you are.” – Beyoncé
- “There is no such thing as a perfect parent. So just be a real one.” – Sue Atkins
- “To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today.” – Barbara Johnson
- “If I know what love is, it is because of you.” – Herman Hesse
- “When your mother asks, ‘Do you want a piece of advice?’ it’s a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.” – Erma Bombeck
- “No one worries about you like your mother, and when she is gone, the world seems unsafe, things that happen unwieldy. You cannot turn to her anymore, and it changes your life forever.” – Adriana Trigiani
- “Every day when you’re raising kids, you feel like you could cry or crack up and just scream ‘This is ridiculous!’ because there’s so much nonsense.” – Kristen Bell
- “The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children.” – Karl Lagerfeld
- “Good moms grow great kids.” – Dean Walley
- “Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark … to have been loved so deeply… will give us some protection forever.” – J.K. Rowling
- “A mother is the truest friend we have.” – Washington Irving
- “When they’ve finished reading, Olivia’s mother gives her a kiss and says, ‘You know, you really wear me out. But I love you anyway.’ And Olivia gives her a kiss back and says, ‘I love you anyway too.'” – Ian Falconer
- “It’s the curse of motherhood. You’re required to love us even when we vex you.” – Julia Quinn
- “I tell my kids, ‘I am thinking about you every other minute of my day.'” – Michelle Obama
- “Motherhood has taught me the meaning of living in the moment and being at peace. Children don’t think about yesterday, and they don’t think about tomorrow. They just exist in the moment.” – Jessalyn Gilsig
- “The mother’s heart is the child’s school-room.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “In the end, mothers are always right. No one else tells the truth.” – Randy Susan Meyers
- “There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.” – Jerry Seinfeld
- “Home is people. Not a place.” – Robin Hobb
- “My mom smiled at me. Her smile kind of hugged me.” – R.J. Palacio
- “It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family.” – Menachem Begin
- “The most important thing in the world is family and love.” – John Wooden
- “A happy family is but an earlier heaven.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Children are gifts. They are not ours for the breaking. They are ours for the making.” – Dan Pearce
- “You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” – Desmond Tutu
- “Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.” – Zelda Fitzgerald
- “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” – David Viscott
- “Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” – Michael J. Fox
- “You sacrificed for us. You’re the real MVP.” – Kevin Durant
- “Mothers can look through a child’s eyes and see tomorrow.” – Reed Markham
- “Mothers and their children are in a category all their own. There’s no bond so strong in the entire world. No love so instantaneous and forgiving.” – Gail Tsukiyama
- “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” – John Muir
- “A mother who is really a mother is never free.” – Honoré de Balzac
- “It takes a village to raise a child.” – African Proverb
- “Mom, when thoughts of you are in my heart, I’m never far from home.” – Unknown
- “A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all.” – Washington Irving
- “A mom forgives us all our faults, not to mention one or two we don’t even have.” – Robert Brault
- “In the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child reads the message: ‘You are there!'” – Adrienne Rich
- “Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark … to have been loved so deeply… will give us some protection forever.” – J.K. Rowling
- “A mother is the truest friend we have.” – Washington Irving
- “When they’ve finished reading, Olivia’s mother gives her a kiss and says, ‘You know, you really wear me out. But I love you anyway.’ And Olivia gives her a kiss back and says, ‘I love you anyway too.'” – Ian Falconer
- “It’s the curse of motherhood. You’re required to love us even when we vex you.” – Julia Quinn
- “I tell my kids, ‘I am thinking about you every other minute of my day.'” – Michelle Obama
- “Motherhood has taught me the meaning of living in the moment and being at peace. Children don’t think about yesterday, and they don’t think about tomorrow. They just exist in the moment.” – Jessalyn Gilsig
- “The mother’s heart is the child’s school-room.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “In the end, mothers are always right. No one else tells the truth.” – Randy Susan Meyers
- “There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.” – Jerry Seinfeld
- “Home is people. Not a place.” – Robin Hobb
- “My mom smiled at me. Her smile kind of hugged me.” – R.J. Palacio
- “It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family.” – Menachem Begin
- “The most important thing in the world is family and love.” – John Wooden
- “A happy family is but an earlier heaven.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Children are gifts. They are not ours for the breaking. They are ours for the making.” – Dan Pearce
- “You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” – Desmond Tutu
- “Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.” – Zelda Fitzgerald
- “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” – David Viscott
- “Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” – Michael J. Fox
- “You sacrificed for us. You’re the real MVP.” – Kevin Durant
- “Mothers can look through a child’s eyes and see tomorrow.” – Reed Markham
- “Mothers and their children are in a category all their own. There’s no bond so strong in the entire world. No love so instantaneous and forgiving.” – Gail Tsukiyama
- “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” – John Muir
- “A mother who is really a mother is never free.” – Honoré de Balzac
- “It takes a village to raise a child.” – African Proverb
- “Mom, when thoughts of you are in my heart, I’m never far from home.” – Unknown
- “A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all.” – Washington Irving
- “A mom forgives us all our faults, not to mention one or two we don’t even have.” – Robert Brault
Want a free copy of these best Mother’s Day inspirational quotes on a handy PDF cheat sheet you can pull up on your phone or download and print?
Final Thoughts
Finding the perfect words to honor your wonderful mother shouldn’t be limited to just one special day each year. These heartfelt sayings can inspire gratitude in Mother’s Day cards, texts, or phone calls throughout the seasons.
Remember that a personal note expressing thanks for the little things she does speaks volumes. Even simple day messages acknowledging the extra mile she goes as a guiding light in your life create lasting memories.
The best way to celebrate isn’t always with an expensive gift. Sometimes reading funny quotes together or sharing memories of when you were a small child brings more joy than anything money can buy.
Whether crafting a Mother’s Day Instagram caption or writing in a greeting card, these words help bridge any distance between you. Her unconditional love deserves recognition beyond social media posts or thoughtful Mother’s Day gifts.
Take this perfect time to remind that special woman how much she means to you. After all, there’s no one quite like your best mom in the whole world.
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Jeff Campbell is a father, martial artist, budget-master, Disney-addict, musician, and recovering foodie having spent over 2 decades as a leader for Whole Foods Market. Click Here to learn more about me. Click Here to learn more about my site. Editorial Policies.
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