Mother’s Day quotes from world-famous writers

We've curated some of our favourite Mother's Day quotes penned by world-famous writers, to help you express your sentiments this Mother's Day.

At a time when we want to celebrate the many roles that mothers and maternal figures play in our lives, our own words can sometimes fail to do our sentiments justice. So, from the hilarious to the heartfelt, we’ve curated a list of our favourite quotes about mothers by world-famous writers, especially for Mother’s Day.

Inspiring quotes for Mother's Day

Far From the Madding Crowd

by Thomas Hardy

"She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises."

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

by Maya Angelou

Book cover for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

"To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow."

The Last Séance

by Agatha Christie

Book cover for The Last Séance

"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."


Funny quotes for Mother's Day

The African Queen

by C. S. Forester

“When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.”

Matilda

by Roald Dahl

Book cover for Matilda

"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."


Sweet quotes for Mother's Day

Little Big Love

by Katy Regan

"She told me then too how she loved me the second I was born. She said it was like she knew me, even though ti was the first time she'd ever seen me. She said I looked really wise and clever when I came out, like I'd been on earth before and could teach her stuff - it sounded mad. But mainly she just wanted to cuddle and look after me. She said meeting me was the happiest moment of her life.

Mum-love is a fact like that - it just happens, whatever you do, you can't do anything about it, like rain."

Little Women

Book cover for Little Women

"The clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlid here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter."

Peter Pan

by J. M. Barrie

“‘Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?’‘Nothing, precious,’ she said; ‘they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.’”

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

by J. K. Rowling

Book cover for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

“He didn't realise that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark.”


Sad quotes for Mother's Day

King Henry V

by William Shakespeare

“And all my mother came into mine eyes. And gave me up to tears.”

The Road

Book cover for The Road

“By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.”

Wild

by Cheryl Strayed

Book cover for Wild

“I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again.”