105 Mother's Day quotes that'll touch your mom's heart (2024)

There's no love quite like a mother's.

And while it may feel nearly impossible to return the favor, you can try by making her Mother's Day the best one yet. On the day, shower her with unique gifts, serve her a delicious meal and pour out your heart in a Mother's Day card.

Not sure how to sum up exactly how much you appreciate her unwavering support, care and wisdom? These Mother's Day quotes will help point you in the right direction.

Below, you'll find beautiful words from famous moms — Michelle Obama, Tina Fey and Hoda Kotb, to name a few — along with heart-touching sentiments from those who've been forever changed as a result of the unconditional love shown by their mom, grandma or other mother figure.

If you don't want to bring the waterworks this Mother's Day, steer clear of the emotional quotes about motherhood and go for the funny ones that'll lean in to your mom's sense of humor.

Recite your favorite quote at the start of your Sunday brunch or include it as a part of your Mother's Day Instagram caption or handwritten message in her greeting card. Whatever you choose, you're bound to warm her heart (and maybe, just maybe, cue the happy tears).

Short (but sweet) Mother's Day quotes

• "The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms." — Jodi Picoult, "House Rules"
• "He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark." — J.K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"
• "A mother is your first friend, your best friend, your forever friend." — Amit Kalantri, "Wealth of Words"
• "A mother's love liberates." — Maya Angelou
• "If evolution really works, how come mother's only have two hands?" — Milton Berle
• “Thus far the mighty mystery of motherhood is this: How is it that doing it all feels like nothing is ever getting done.” ―Rebecca Woolf
• "Motherhood: all love begins and ends there." ― Robert Browning
• "Only mothers can think of the future ― because they give birth to it in their children." ― Maxim Gorky
• "The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness." ― Honore de Balzac
• "A mother's arms are made of tenderness, and children sleep soundly in the them." ― Victor Hugo
• "Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved." ― Erich Fromm
• "Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children." ― William Makepeace Thackeray, "Vanity Fair"
• "Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes." ― P.J. O'Rourke, "All the Trouble in the World"
• "A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary." ― Dorothy Canfield Fisher
• "A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity." ― Sarah Strohmeyer, "Kindred Spirits"
• "Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it." ― M.L. Stedman, "The Light Between Oceans"
• "Being a mother is like being a gardener of souls. You tend your children, make sure the light always touches them” ―Karen White, "Sea Change"
• "You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars." ― E.E. Cummings
• "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 Steiner Rice, "A Mother's Love"
• "There is no such thing as a perfect parent. So just be a real one." ― Sue Atkins
• "The more I go through parenting, the more I say I owe my mother an apology." ― Ray Romano
• "To be in your children's memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today." ― Barbara Johnson
• "Why don't kids understand their nap is not for them, but for us?" ― Alyson Hannigan
• “Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.” — James Joyce
• "If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman." ― Margaret Thatcher
• "A mother's love is more beautiful than any fresh flower." ― Debasish Mridha
• "The woman who is my best friend, my teacher, my everything: Mom." ― Sandra Vischer
• "Sooner or later we all quote our mothers." ― Bern Williams
• "A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin." ― Amy Tan, "The Bonesetter's Daughter"

More heart-touching Mother's Day quotes

• "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 Nightingale"
• "It’s the curse of motherhood. You’re required to love us even when we vex you." — Julia Quinn, "The Duke and I"
• “It’s one of those things where you think you’ve done it all, you think you’ve felt it all. But I just didn’t know that this kind of love existed.” — Hoda Kotb
• “I’m a person of faith. It feels like the greatest embrace from God that I can imagine, to get to have a baby.” — Savannah Guthrie
• “A mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s.” — Princess Diana
• “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
• “Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; a mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
• “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
• “You can feel when your mom’s proud of you. You can feel the love.” — Jimmy Fallon

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• “It’s a funny thing about mothers... Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.” — Roald Dahl
• “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” — Abraham Lincoln
• “When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth.” — Mitch Albom
• “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.” — Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
• “God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.” — Rudyard Kipling
• “Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” — Barbara Kingsolver
• "Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met." — Marguerite Duras

• “Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy.” — Tina Fey
• “If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.” — Booker T. Washington
• “My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.” — George Washington
• “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
• “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
• “I tell my kids, ‘I am thinking about you every other minute of my day.’” — Michelle Obama
• “[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 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
• “Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.” — Oprah Winfrey

• “Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” — Meryl Streep
• “Having children just puts the whole world into perspective. Everything else just disappears.” — Kate Winslet
• “Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.” — John Steinbeck
• “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” — Oscar Wilde
• “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
• “The truth is that no matter how old we are, as long as our mothers are alive, we want our mother.” — Goldie Hawn
• “There are really places in your heart that you don’t know exist until you love a child.” — Anne Lamott
• “To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.” — Dr. Seuss
• “There’s no way to be a perfect mother, and a millions ways to be a good one.” — Jill Churchill
• “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
• “Behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begins.” — Mitch Albom
• “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
• “I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.” — Maya Angelou
• “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
• “Even as a small child, I understood that women had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.” — Alice Hoffman

• “The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.” — Jodi Picoult
• “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
• “The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.” — Jessica Lange
• “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
• “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
• “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
• "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

• “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, “Summer Island"
• “The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children.” — Karl Lagerfeld
• “My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” — Mark Twain
• “My mother used to say, ‘The older you get, the better you get. Unless you’re a banana.’” — Betty White

• “It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?” — Mahatma Gandhi
• “Mothers are like glue. Even when you can’t see them, they’re still holding the family together.” — Susan Gale
• “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
• "My mother taught me empathy – the basic concept of standing in somebody else's shoes and looking through their eyes. If I did something messed up, she'd just say, 'How would that make you feel if somebody did that to you?'” — Barack Obama
• “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.” — Phyllis Diller
• “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, whether it’s what they’re saying to you or the fact that there’s avocado or poop on every surface.” — Kristen Bell
• “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
• “Motherhood is the greatest thing and the hardest thing.” —Ricki Lake
• “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
• “Just because you become a mother, it doesn’t mean you lose who you are.” — Beyoncé
• “A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take.” — Gaspard Mermillod

• “A mother is the truest friend we have.” — Washington Irving
• “Life doesn’t come with a manual; it comes with a mother.” — Unknown
• “Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.” — Linda Wooten
• “The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.” — Osho
• “My mom smiled at me. Her smile kind of hugged me.” — R.J. Palacio, "Wonder"
• “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
• “Mother is a verb. It’s something you do. Not just who you are.” — Cheryl Lacey Donovan
• “The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops.” — Anna Quindlen

• “I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty, but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.” — Rose Kennedy
• “There is no greater good in all the world than motherhood. The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation.” — James E. Faust
• Having kids — the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings — is the biggest job anyone can embark on.” — Maria Shriver
• “Once you’re a mom, you’re always a mom. It’s like riding a bike, you never forget.” — Taraji P. Henson