#motherhood

I had a dozen years to act before starting a family then found that motherhood dwarfed everything else. Once or twice a year, I take a project that appeals to me for its redeeming social value. ↗

— Sissy Spacek

#appeals #before #dozen #dwarfed #else

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

#children #inspirational-quotes #motherhood #parenting #age

Are we always to be wanting what isn't: the greenest grass accord and principle motherhood and career? Yet our age lies to us like an asp, whispering. "Both. ↗

— Barbara Crooker

#age

Because you live to love and love to live/ And because of what your heardrum will give/ Now we might love to live and live to love. ↗

— Janet Goodfriend

#best #book-club #cape-cod #character #community

Mother seemed happiest when making and tending home, the sewing machine whistling and the Mixmaster whirling. Her deepest impulse was to nurture, to simply dwell; it had nothing to do with ambition and achievement in the world...How had I come to believe that my world of questing and writing was more valuable than her dwelling and domestic artistry?...I wanted to go out and do things--write books, speak out. I've been driven by that. I don't know how to rest in myself very well, how to be content staying put. But Mother knows how to BE at home--and really, to be in herself. It's actually very beautiful what she does...I think part of me just longs for the way Mother experiences home. ↗

— Sue Monk Kidd

#motherhood #beauty

A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#children #love #motherhood #life

I think I'm smart, and I know I was a good mom. But there wasn't a lot I could point to and say, that's why I'm special. ↗

— Charles Duhigg

#business

Every working mother has the things she dreads, things that keep her up in the night – pink eye, an ear infection, the parent-teacher conference, the school play – all forcing her to remind the people she works with that she is not, in fact, wholly devoted to business enterprises, but has another secret life. For me, the night terror is the 5 a.m. phone call from the nanny. ↗

— Emily Roberson

#motherhood #business

Your power as a woman, as a mother, is your medicine, and it saved you. Take your courage in that. ↗

— Jim Fergus

#the-power-of-women #courage

That’s the funny thing,” she said. “Men always want to die for something. For someone. I can see the appeal. You do it once and it’s done. No more worrying, not knowing, about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I know you all think it sounds brave, but I’ll tell you something even braver. To struggle and fight for the ones you love today. And then do it all over again the next day. Every day. For your whole life. It’s not as romantic, I admit. But it takes a lot of courage to live for someone, too. ↗

— Victor LaValle

#motherhood #courage