In Honor of Mother's Day, I searched the web and selected the 50 best quotes about mothers. Psychological attachment theories suggest that the child's relationship with the parents forms the basis for adult relationships. The majority of children form secure attachments which allow them to use the parent as a safe haven from which to go out and explore the world.

The attributes of a loving mother we see in the below quotes should result in a securely attached adult.

Here are 50 Beautiful Mother's Day Quotes

1. “All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” —Abraham Lincoln

2. “I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” —Abraham Lincoln

3. “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

4. “A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” ―Washington Irving

5. “Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.” —Robert Browning

6. “Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.” —George Eliot

7. “It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. 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

8. “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

9. “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

10. “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

11. “The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms.” —Jodi Picoult

12. “A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.” —Dorothy Canfield Fisher

13. “Mother’s love is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. If it is there, it is like a blessing; if it is not there it is as if all the beauty had gone out of life.” —Erich Fromm

14. “If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.” —Booker T. Washington

15. “There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.” —Jill Churchill

16. “I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.” —Mitch Albom

17. “Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.” —P.J. O’Rourke

18. “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.” —Robert A. Heinlein

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

20. “Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe

21. “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

22. “The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant.” —Jane Sellman

23. “[A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” —Emily Dickinson

24. “A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.” —Victor Hugo

25. “Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes

26. “Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.” —James Joyce

27. “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

28. “My mother was a reader, and she read to us. She read us Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when I was six and my brother was eight; I never forgot it.” —Stephen King

29. “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

30. “It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. My mom says some days are like that.” —Judith Viorst in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

31. “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 in Olivia

32. “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

33. “[My mom] had this amazing attitude in the face of everything, including when she got cancer.” —Bill Clinton

34. “I unapologetically and unabashedly am deeply biased toward my mother.” —Chelsea Clinton




35. “My mother … had a very deep inner spirituality that allowed her to rebuild her life. It’s extraordinary that she had such a strong sense of self and such a commitment to the future and such a strong creative sense that she could build new worlds for herself and for us out of the total devastation in her life.” —Caroline Kennedy

36. “I tell my kids, ‘I am thinking about you every other minute of my day.’” —Michelle Obama

37. “I’m still amazed at how my mother emerged from her lonely early life as such an affectionate and levelheaded woman.” —Hillary Clinton

38. “My parents elected me president of the family when I was 4. We actually had an election every year and I always won. I’m an only child, and I could count on my mother’s vote.” —Condoleezza Rice

39. “A mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s.” —Princess Diana

40. “[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

41. “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

42. “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

43. “Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.” —Oprah Winfrey

44. “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

45. “Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” —Meryl Streep

46. “She raised us with humor, and she raised us to understand that not everything was going to be great—but how to laugh through it.” —Liza Minnelli (on mom Judy Garland) 

47. “I don’t know if I feel like a bad mom, but at the end of the day I’m always plagued with, did I do enough? Should I go in a different direction? But I also know that my entire life revolves around [my son] Louis.” —Sandra Bullock

48. “It’s not easy being a mother. If it were easy, fathers would do it.” —Dorothy on The Golden Girls

49. “If I were hanged on the highest hill / Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! / I know whose love would follow me still / Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!” —Rudyard Kipling


50. “Because I feel that, in the Heavens above / The angels, whispering to one another, / Can find, among their burning terms of love / None so devotional as that of ‘Mother'” —Edgar Allen Poe 
Note: Mother's Day is a modern celebration honoring one's mother, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world, most commonly in the months of March or May.