It’s been more than 100 years since Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother’s Day a national celebration in May 1914.
To mark the occasion now celebrated annually on the second Sunday in May you could lavish mom with flowers, cards or other gifts. But how about giving her something that won’t wilt, collect dust or be thrown away. Tell mom how important she is with words—specifically iconic quotes that remind her how important moms are to everyone.
1. “All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” —Abraham Lincoln
2. “My mother has always been my emotional barometer and my guidance. I was lucky enough to get to have one woman who truly helped me through everything.” —Emma Stone
3. “I believe in the strength and intelligence and sensitivity of women. My mother, my sisters [they] are strong. My mum is a strong woman and I love her for it.” —Tom Hiddleston
4. “I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” —Abraham Lincoln
5. “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
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