69 Quotations to Inspire Frazzled Mothers

Ever had a day when you just don’t want to do it anymore?

Four o’clock hits, you’re anticipating the 5pm frenzy, cooking dinner while you use various body parts to simultaneously stir the pasta sauce, help your 8 year-old with his homework and keep your toddler from practicing his party trick of spinning the plates he filched from the dishwasher earlier while you chopped the garlic.

C’mon, hands up. Thought so.

Now, you could reach for the wine or the chocolate to numb your brain cells, setting off both a dopamine cascade and the scale needle that will register an ever higher number tomorrow morning.

Or you could remind yourself why you’re doing this in the first place, comfort yourself, bring a smile to your face with these zero calorie alternatives. There’s 69 of them. Something for everyone.

Print it out. Stick it on the fridge. Find your favorite.

1. There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one ~ Jill Churchill

2. Mothers are all slightly insane. ~ J.D. Salinger

3. My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. ~ George Washington

4. 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

5. The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. ~ Honoré de Balzac

6. There was never a great man who had not a great mother. ~ Olive Schreiner

7. In the man whose childhood has known caresses, there is always a fiber of memory that can be touched to gentle issues. ~ George Eliot

8. Mothers have as powerful an influence over the welfare of future generations as all other earthly causes combined. ~ John S C Abbott

9. There is no influence so powerful as that of the mother. ~ Sarah Josepha Hale

10. The joys of motherhood are never fully experienced until the children are in bed. ~ Author Unknown

11. No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

12. Before becoming a mother I had a hundred theories on how to bring up children. Now I have seven children and only one theory: love them, especially when they least deserve to be loved. ~ Kate Samperi

13. If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much. ~ Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

14. Having someone else to blame when there is a rude smell in the air. ~ Jane Horrocks

15. The story of a mother’s life: Trapped between a scream and a hug. ~ Cathy Guisewite

16. Our children are not going to be just “our children” – they are going to be other people’s husbands and wives and the parents of our grandchildren. ~ Mary S Calderone

17. That feeling is so nice as a child’s hand in yours? So small, so soft and warm, like a kitten huddling in the shelter of your clasp. ~ Marjorie Holmes

18. There is no point at which you can say, ‘Well, I’m successful now. I might as well take a nap. ~ Carrie Fisher

19. A mother’s love is patient and forgiving when all others are forsaking, and it never fails or falters, even though the heart is breaking. ~ Helen Steiner Rice

20. It will be gone before you know it. The fingerprints on the wall appear higher and higher. Then suddenly they disappear. ~ Dorothy Evslin

21. A hundred years from now…it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove…but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child. ~ Kathy Davis

22. A daughter reminds you of all the things you had forgotten about being young. Good and bad. ~ Maeve O’Reilly

23. My mother taught me to walk proud and tall ‘as if the world was mine.’ ~ Sophia Loren

24. There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

25. Families with babies and families without are so sorry for each other. ~ Ed Howe

26. I want to have children, but my friends scare me. One of my friends told me she was in labor for 36 hours. I don’t even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours. ~ Rita Rudner

27. Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease. ~ Lisa Alther

28. Do not, on a rainy day ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won’t feel like watching. ~ Fran Lebowitz

29. No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. ~ Erma Bombeck

30. Adorable children are considered to be the general property of the human race. Rude children belong to their mothers. ~ Judith Martin

31. What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. ~ Mark Twain

32. 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

33. Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree. ~ Martin Wright Edelman
34. The country clubs, the cars, the boats, your assets may be ample, but the best inheritance you can leave your kids is to be a good example. ~ Barry Spilchuk

35. A vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by mother, who sees that the others get it. ~ Marcelene Cox

36. Babies don’t need fathers, but mothers do. Someone who is taking care of a baby needs to be taken care of. ~ Amy Heckerling

37. Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death. ~ Rebecca West

38. I know how to do anything – I’m a Mom. ~ Roseanne Barr

39. Mother – that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries. ~ T. DeWitt Talmage

40. When you educate a man you educate an individual; when you educate a woman you educate a whole family. ~ Robert M. Maciver

41. Before you were conceived I wanted you. Before you were born I loved you. Before you were here an hour I would die for you. This is the miracle of love. ~ Maureen Hawkins

42. No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother’s love. ~ Edwin Chapin

43. Make a memory with your children, spend some time to show you care; toys and trinkets can’t replace those precious moments that you share. ~ Elaine Hardt

44. A mother is the one who is still there when everyone else has deserted you. ~ Unknown

45. Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown. In my heart it don’t mean a thing. ~ Toni Morrison

46. A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path. ~ Agatha Christie

47. A mother is someone who dreams great dreams for you, but then she lets you chase the dreams you have for yourself and loves you just the same. ~ Unknown

48. You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. ~ Albert Einstein

49. You know you’re a mother when your child throws up and you run to catch it before it hits the rug. ~ Unknown
50. Moms are fantastic, even when they’re spelt upside down they’re still WOW! ~ Unknown

51. Mothers are basically part of a scientific experiment to prove that sleep is not a crucial part of human life. ~ Unknown

52. No one in the world can take the place of your mother. Right or wrong, from her viewpoint you are always right. She may scold you for little things, but never for the big ones. ~ Harry Truman

53. She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn’t take them along. ~ Margaret Culkin Banning

54. The phrase “working mother” is redundant. ~ Jane Sellman

55. An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. ~ Spanish Proverb

56. Only mothers can think of the future – because they give birth to it in their children. ~ Maxim Gorky

57. A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest. ~ Irish Proverb

58. There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it. ~ Chinese Proverb

59. A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. ~ Peter De Vries

60. Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. ~ Marion C. Garretty

61. I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine – she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights. ~ Adabella Radici

62. [A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled. ~ Emily Dickinson

63. It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another twenty minutes for another woman to make a fool of him. ~ Helen Rowland

64. God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers. ~ Jewish Proverb

65. A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, “where mother is. ~ Keith L. Brooks

66. Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

67. Now, as always, the most automated appliance in a household is the mother. ~ Beverly Jones

68. Some mothers 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

69. If you have children, the demands made upon you during the first hour of the morning can make the job of an air traffic controller seem like a walk in the park. ~ J. Wurtman

Do you have one of your own? Let us have it in the comments!

Alison has one husband, two children and three blogs. She writes about life, family and superheroes at The Secret Life of a Warrior Woman, paleo eating in a non-paleo world at PaleoNonPaleo and clearing clutter at Clutter365.