c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Life is a fight from the minute you take your first breath to the moment you exhale your last. You have to fight the people who say it can never be done. You have to fight the institutions that put up the glass ceilings that must be shattered. You have to fight your body when it tells you it is tired. You have to fight your mind when doubt begins to creep in. You have to fight systems that are put in place to disrupt you and obstacles that are put in place to discourage you. You have to fight because you can't count on anyone else fighting for you. And you have to fight for people who can't fight for themselves. To get anything of real value, you have to fight for it.
— Ronda Rousey
I will fight death for my right to live until my last breath.
— A.J. Compton, The Counting-Downers
We will win this battle because we are fighting for our lives and the lives of our Clanmates. Our enemies are already dead. They fight only out of hate and that will be their weakness.
— Erin Hunter, The Last Hope
The future glory far outweigh the present troubles.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
There are monsters all around usThey can be so hard to seehey don't have fangs, no blood-soaked clawsThey look like you and me. But we're not defenselessWe're no damsels in distressTogether we can fend off the attackAll we gotta do is watch our backs.Your body is beautiful how it isWho you love is nobody's business We all contemplate life and deathIt's the poet who gives these thoughtsbreath.The monster is strong, don't be mistakenIt thrives on fear-keeps us isolatedBut together we can fend off its attackAll we gotta do is watch our backs.In your darkest hourWhen the fight's made you wearyWhen you think you've lost your powerWhen you can't see clearlyWhen you're ready to surrenderGive in to the blacklook over your shoulderI've got your back.
— Gayle Forman, Sisters in Sanity
She may be trained, but I'm fighting for my family, my home, my freedom. She's fighting for a goddamn paycheck.
— Amie Kaufman, This Shattered World
It takes a lot of hard work, devotion, good food, balanced diet, enough money, etcetera. Do you have any of them?
— Waheed Ibne Musa, Johnny Fracture
You have to fight the odds in life to be able to reach a greater height.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Tom adjusted his sword and checked his knives and his pistol. If there had been anyone to see his face, they would have seen a man at peace with himself and the world. And if they were wise they would know that such a man was the most dangerous of all opponent - one who fights to preserve love rather than perpetuate hate.
— Jonathan Maberry
Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.
— Marguerite Duras
All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
— Abraham Lincoln
But mothers lie. It's in the job description.
— John Green
Does your ma know you're this silly?" she demanded tartly.He nodded, comically sad. "The few gray hairs she has on her head are my doing. But" — with an exaggerated change of mood — "I send her plenty of money, so she can pay to have them dyed!""I hope she beat you as a child," Onua grumbled.
— Tamora Pierce, Wild Magic
God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.
— David C. Gross, Dictionary of 1000 Jewish Proverbs
You count the hours you could have spent with your mother, it's a lifetime in itself.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
Be a Mother who is committed to loving her children into standing on higher ground than the enviroment surrounding them. Mothers are endowed with a love that is unlike any other love on the face of the earth.
— Marjorie Pay Hinckley
She was a monster, but she was my monster.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
A good mother is irreplaceable.
— Adriana Trigiani
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
A mother's love is everything, Jared. It is what brings a child into this world. It is what molds their entire being. When a mother sees her child in danger, she is literally capable of anything. Mother have lifted cars off of their children, and destroyed entire dynasties. A mother's love is the strongest energy known to man. You must that love, and it's power.
— Jamie McGuire, Eden
Always respect Mother Nature. Especially when she weighs 400 pounds and is guarding her baby.
— James Rollins, Ice Hunt
Right, except I'm not going to lie to my mom, because what kind of bastard lies to his own mother?
— John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
Blessed is a mother that would give up part of her soul for her children's happiness.
— Shannon L. Alder
Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.
— Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys
It's the child who's supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth to hold it together in front of their own kids.
— Jodi Picoult, House Rules
A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.
— Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
— John Irving, Until I Find You
This is what we do, my mother's life said. We find ourselves in the sacrifices we make.
— Cammie McGovern, Neighborhood Watch
Gilbert put his arm about them. 'Oh, you mothers!' he said. 'You mothers! God knew what He was about when He made you.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams
But I guessed she would never stop wanting more for me, more from me. Maybe that’s what mothers did.
— Kiera Cass, The Selection
But my mother's life was a never-ending round of maintenance. Not one single thing did she ever achieve but that it had to be done all over again, one day or one week or one season later. Oh, the monotony.
— Jacqueline Kelly, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
That's your mom, right?" Pathik smiled. "She looks nicer than she did when she was dragging you away the other night.
— Teri Hall, The Line
Most young men are such bores. They haven't lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers.
— L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest
She still remembered sitting for hours as a little girl and pretending to be a hassock. A foot stool. Because if she could just stay very small, and very quiet, her mother would forget she was there, and then she wouldn't scream about people and places and things that had gone wrong.
— Eloisa James, An Affair Before Christmas
Mothers see the angel in us because the angel is there. If it's shown to the mother, the son has got an angel to show, hasn't he? When a son cuts somebody's throat the mother only sees it's possible for a misguided angel to act like a devil - and she's entirely right about that!
— Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons
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.
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
She never called her son by any name but John; 'love' and 'dear', and such like terms, were reserved for Fanny.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
Dan clung to her in speechless gratitude, feeling the blessedness of mother love, — that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it.
— Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys
Is Lisa going to the prom?'I shelved my worries for the moment. 'I don't know, Mom. We don't talk about the You-Know-What. We made a pact.'You could go together, if you didn't want to mess with dates and things.'I don't want to mess with the prom at all, Mom.'She ignored me, placidly eating popcorn, piece by piece.'Some girls in my high school class did that and had a wonderful time. They weren't lesbians or anything. Not that it would matter if they were.'That's nice, Mom. I'm glad you're so open-minded.' I grabbed my Coke and the popcorn bowl and headed for the stairs, because I could go my whole life without ever hearing my mother talk about lesbians again.Maybe you could take Justin to the prom,' she called after me, laughter in her voice. 'He is such a hottie.'Shoot me now.
— Rosemary Clement-Moore, Prom Dates from Hell
I was always mortified.Didn't they know they were tying thier mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners?
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander
Don't you know, you idiot, that that is what every fool of a woman says about her child?Miss Bulstrode's thoughts.
— Agatha Christie, Cat Among the Pigeons
This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework.
— Ben Aaronovitch, Midnight Riot
Very few writers thank their mothers for keen editorial insight
—  I'm happy to be the exception.
And mother-like, Mrs. Jo forgot the threatened chastisement in tender lamentations over the happy scapegrace…
— Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys
Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us. We idolize them and take them for granted. We hate them and blame them and exalt them more thoroughly than anyone else in our lives. We sift through the evidence of their love, reassure ourselves of their affection and its biological genesis. We can steal and lie and leave and they will love us.
— Megan Mayhew Bergman, Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories
Mama took me in her arms and held me tight. Her embrace was hot and she smelled like sweat, dust, and grease, but I wanted her. I wanted to crawl inside her mind to find that place that let her smile and sing through the worst dust storms. If I had to be crazy, I wanted my mama's kind of crazy, because she was never afraid.
— Sarah Zettel, Dust Girl
His master plan to get them all out the door early met its first check of the day when he opened his closet door to discover that Zap the Cat, having penetrated the security of Vorkosigan House through Miles's quisling cook, had made a nest on the floor among his boots and fallen clothing to have kittens. Six of them.Zap ignored his threats about the dire consequences of attacking an Imperial Auditor, and purred and growled from the dimness in her usual schizophrenic fashion. Miles gathered his nerve and rescued his best boots and House uniform, at a cost of some high Vor blood, and sent them downstairs for a hasty cleaning by the overworked Armsman Pym. The Countess, delighted as ever to find her biological empire increasing, came in thoughtfully bearing a cat-gourmet tray prepared by Ma Kosti that Miles would have had no hesitation in eating for his own breakfast. In the general chaos of the morning, however, he had to go down to the kitchen and scrounge his meal. The Countess sat on the floor and cooed into his closet for a good half-hour, and not only escaped laceration, but managed to pick up, sex, and name the whole batch of little squirming furballs before tearing herself away to hurry and dress.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory
Why would you family think about it?""Oh, my mother's the only one that counts, and she likes you very much from what she's seen of you.""So you had me inspected?""No-dash ti all, I seem to be saying all the wrong things today. I was absolutely stunned that first day in court, and I rushed off to my mater, who's an absolute dear, and the kind of person who really understands things, and I said, 'Look here! here's the absolutely one and only woman, and she's being put through a simply ghastly awful business and for God's sake come and hold my hand!' You simply don't know how foul it was.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
Mothers are only human, you turn it over to God and then you just wing it.
— Jo-Ann Mapson
I'm a mother," said her mother, in her foodless flat where the dust did not dare to settle, "and I know what I know.
— Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Mothers tend toward right on most things.
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
Tears on your mother's eyes are heavier than ocean waters
— Zybejta Beta Metani'Marashi
The heart of a good mother is as big as the ocean
—  accommodating all kind of things and sweeping all unwanted things to its shores!
Tears on yo'ur mother's eyes are havier than Ocean waters.
— Zybejta Beta Metani' Marashi
Mums are mums, lance-constable. They don't like to see men managing by themselves, in case that sort of thing catches on.
— Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
Was it possible this one would be a son too? She hoped so, but not because she favored men. Her husband modeled the seriousness, the stoicism, that she hoped her sons would inherit, but she had nothing to teach a daughter. She could teach her to dream—say, to be a painter, as she herself had been trained—and then teach her to let it go. Teach her to cloister herself in dark hallways, admiring how the light fell through the rice-paper doors while knowing that there was no point in putting it on canvas.
— Shawna Yang Ryan, Green Island
Children are angels.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Breakfast was the full whammy: eggs, rashers, sausages, black pudding, fried bread, fried tomatoes. This was clearly some kind of statement, but I couldn't work out whether it was See, we're doing just grand without you, or I'm still slaving my fingers to the bone for you even though you don't deserve it, or possibly We'll be even when this lot gives you a heart attack.
— Tana French, Faithful Place
Journeyman stared at Grimm as though Grimm had just suggested that the engineer should prostitute his mother to pirates.
— Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass
My mother described her reactions better than I ever could mine: she said she was "surprised with thunder" that her boy had come back, and that the happiness in her heart was "as deep as the sea".
— Saroo Brierley, A Long Way Home
This is the role of the mother. And in that visit I really saw clearly, for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and also cuddles... but because in an interesting and and maybe an eerie and other worldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known.
— Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom
A mother is an unrelenting source of love.
— Farshad Asl
My mother is not evil, Faith reminded herself. She is just a perfectly sensible snake, protecting her eggs and making her way in the world as best she can.
— Frances Hardinge
Bryar Kosala just likes helping people, and is good at running things, and when invited to become the world’s Mom she said, “Sure.
— Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning
I've never begged. not for anything... except my mother's love.And that was a useless waste of time.
— Kristin Hannah, Fly Away
Children are born to break their mothers’ hearts, my boy.
— Sabaa Tahir, A Torch Against the Night
If I had still been an immortal, I might have flirted with her myself. But I was now a sixteen-year-old boy. My mortal form was working its way upon my state of mind. I saw Sally Jackson as a mom—a fact that both consternated and embarrassed me. I thought about how long it had been since I had called my own mother. I should probably take her to lunch when I got back to Olympus.
— Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle
How much I love my mom cannot be measured in words, it's just too much and too hard to describe.
— Auliq-Ice
Some delightful inscriptions are found in second-hand books. One, the most famous of all, may be found in every bookshop in the nation, repeated in a thousand and one volumes with only a single change of phrase in each. It is this: '______, with love from Momma.
— Vincent Starrett, Books and Bipeds
Dead mothers are rather fashionable these days. They lend such an attractive air of tragedy.
— Heidi Schulz, Hook's Revenge
I tried desperately not to think about her eyes, about the way they lit up when she saw me. Or her hands, the way she waved them in the air as she talked, as if she thought she could pull words out of the sky with her fingers. And her arms, wrapping around me like my own house, because she was the place where I was from.
— Kami Garcia, Beautiful Redemption
I live three thousand miles away from my mother. But no matter how far away, I'm still hers. I'm brave in the ways she's made me brave and scared in the ways she's made me scared. I'll never belong to anyone the way I belong to her.
— Elizabeth Bard, Picnic in Provence: A Memoir with Recipes
My mother was either telepathic or she had secret cameras in my apartment, and I hoped for the latter.
— Atom Yang, Red Envelope
Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother thinks was merely cute may have been lethal.
— Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg
Of course she’s right. How bad are things when your clinically insane mother is more rational than you are?
— Susan Ee, World After
Like all good mothers, she always knew the worst was going to happen and was disappointed and relieved when it finally did.
— Elizabeth McCracken, Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry
Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother things was merely cute may have been lethal.
— Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg
Common sense. Mothers are the last riddle, the worst horror, the only consolation.
— Kiana Davenport, Shark Dialogues
But Moominmamma was quite unperturbed. "Well, well!" she said, "it seems to me that our guests are having a very good time.""I hope so," replied Moominpappa. "Pass me a banana, please dear.
— Tove Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll
Moominmamma had got up very early to pack their rucksacks, and was bustling to and fro with wooly stockings and packets of sandwiches, while down by the bridge Moominpappa was getting their raft in order."Mamma, dar," said Moomintroll, "we can't possibly take all that with us. Everyone will laugh.""It's cold in the Lonely Mountains," said Moominmamma, stuffing in an umbrella and a frying pan. "Have you got a compass?""Yes," answered Moomintroll, "but couldn't you at least leave out the plates -- we can easily eat off rhubarb leaves.
— Tove Jansson, Comet in Moominland
The way I saw the world changed in an instant. My eyes were opened to a need in this country that was just beginning to be recognized. The floodgates were opened, and our battle-injured warriors filled our military hospitals.
— Diana Mankin Phelps
Temujin nodded. He had every intention to do his bit in the battle, like his mother.
— Bryn  Hammond, Amgalant One: The Old Ideal
Oh!" said Moominmamma with a start, "I believe those were mice disappearing into the cellar. Sniff, run down with a little milk for them." Then she caught sight of the suitcase which stood by the steps. "Luggage too," thought Moominmamma. "Dear me -- then they've come to stay." And she went off to look for Moominpappa to ask him to put up two more beds -- very, very small ones.
— Tove Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll
Mother was a beautiful young woman; the house was too plain, too small to contain her. I watched her; for the first time I understood that she had an inner life that didn't have anything to do with me or my brothers and sisters.
— Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
Isn't that what I always think when I get The Poor Motherless Girl Look? Like I've been shoved out of the airplane without a parachute because mothers are the parachutes.
— Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun
Have we ever wondered a mothers silent cries? Her struggles, her fears and her worries? Do we ever have time for this in our busy lives? Have we ever thought of the sacrifices she has done in order to make our lives happier, and her dreams cut short to make our dreams come true?
— Ama H. Vanniarachchy
Both man and woman have their own parts to play in bringing faith to the next generation, and the woman's role is particularly important. How can we ever think that the female sex is inferior when we see the essential responsibility God has given women in this world? Their sensitivity to spiritual concerns seems to be farm more innate and natural than a man's. Mothers and wives often are the medium for our intercourse with the heavenly world, the faithful repositories of spiritual knowledge and wisdom. We should all be careful to avail ourselves of the benefits they have to offer both the present generation and the one that will follow us.
— William Wilberforce
Did you ever look out in that dark and fucked-up world out there and think, how do I let my daughter out into that? And how do i stop her? And the things you can’t stop because you’re … because-
— Megan Abbott, The Fever
On famous relatives - First I was my mother's daughter..and now..I am my daughter's mother !
— Abha Maryada Banerjee, Nucleus: Power Women: Lead from the Core
There are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame. By murdering a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward depositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine.
— P.G. Wodehouse
They are not kidding when they say that mothers are strong women. We need to be strong in more ways than our children will ever know.
— M. B Antevasin
My mother is a wonderful, eccentric lady who has no concept whatever of interior monologue. We'll be driving along in the car and she'll suddenly say, 'Ants don't like cucumbers, you know. And roaches don't like cinnamon. Do you want some cheese, Michael? Rembrandt was the Lord of the day.' -Mike Myers
— Mitchell Symons, That Book: ...of Perfectly Useless Information
He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.
— Kahlil Gibran
Mothers took their mothering so seriously now. Their frantic little faces...Ponytails swinging. Eyes fixed on the mobile phones held in the palms of their hands like compasses.
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies
She was too honest, too natural for this frightened man; too remote from his tidy laws. She was, after all, a country girl; disordered, hysterical, loving. She was muddled and mischievous as a chimney-jackdaw, she made her nest of rags and jewels, was happy in the sunlight, squawked loudly at danger, pried and was insatiably curious, forgot when to eat or ate all day, and sang when sunsets were red.
— Laurie Lee, Cider With Rosie
The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game.
— Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue
All mothers are slightly insane.
— J.D. Salinger
Mom lied. The crust is the shittiest part.
— Brian Spellman, Cartoonist's Book Camp
Mothers are generally starvers or feeders
— Fiona Wood, Wildlife
Mom could make small things seem miraculous. That was her talent.
— Matthew Quick, The Good Luck of Right Now
(...)no one can take the place of a perfect mother who gives you the world as you know it and makes you believe that it is yours to take.
— Tristan Wood, The Wanton Life of My Friend Dave
America—where we hate our fathers, love our mothers, andeveryone is hung up on tryingto be a man
— Phil Volatile, White Wedding Lies, and Discontent: An American Love Story
The only thing mothers have in common with each other is the fact that they slept with a man while they were ovulating without the appropriate protection
— Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, Rigning í nóvember
But she loves her daughter, David can tell, loves her the way David's mother loved him, and sometimes David feels that same love he used to, except now it's coming from other places, other people, and it's a good thing the love is coming because he's beginning to think there aren't enough rules in the universe to bring his mother back.
— Jerry Spinelli
There's an old joke about a mother watching a column of soldiers pass by. Her son is in the ranks. All those men out of step, she says, except our Fred.
— Kevin Pietersen
There is nothing as sincere as a mother's kiss.
— Saleem Sharma
Generations of women have sacrificed their lives to become their mothers. But we do not have that luxury any more. The world has changed too much to let us have the lives our mothers had. And we can no longer afford the guilt we feel at not being our mothers. We cannot afford any guilt that pulls us back to the past. We have to grow up, whether we want to or not. We have to stop blaming men and mothers and seize every second of our lives with passion. We can no longer afford to waste our creativity. We cannot afford spiritual laziness.
— Erica Jong, Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir
Outside in the sun the Holy Mother stood on her pedestal in the garden, sorry but unsympathetic. The usual position of mothers.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
Mothers are multi-taskers.
— Sophie Kinsella, Mini Shopaholic
that old Mrs. Bishop was lacking in the qualities that make a good mother. And saying it that way makes her sound a good deal better than she really was.
— Irene Hunt, Up a Road Slowly
[Judith Warner:] Our neurotic quest to perfect the mechanics of mothering can be interpreted as an effort to do on an individual level what we’ve stopped trying to do on a society-wide one.
— Emily Matchar, Homeward Bound: Why Women are Embracing the New Domesticity
MOTHER' A flower of our Life's garden, which we don't wanna let it withers ever.
— Samar Sudha
…these mothers at their midnight council were more like one great mind probing itself, divided at times as great minds may be, but one entity
— Elizabeth Cunningham, Magdalen Rising: The Beginning
Her husband and her children did not consider her beyond criticism. She belonged to them; whatever she did affected them; their pride, their good name in the world lay in her hands. They would give her love, protection, even a sort of homage, but in return for that she must be what they wanted and needed her to be.
— Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, The Blank Wall
We dragged Linc along. His current honey is working tonight.""Still the intern?""Yeah." Helen sat on the curvy velvet chaise, made herself at home. "I'm starting to think he'sgetting serious about her.""And?""I don't know. She's a nice girl, raised well. Focused, which he could use, and independent,which I appreciate.""But he's your baby.""But he's my baby," Helen agreed. "I miss the little boy sometimes, with the scabbed knees andloose shoelaces. Still see him in that tall, gorgeous lawyer in the three-piece suit that strolls in andout of my life now. And Jesus,
— Nora Roberts, The Villa
I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.
— Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom
You were tossed away like a pair of beautiful, brand new shoes that did not quite fit.
— Donna K. Childree
The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother's life - without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter.
— Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
...do you have someone you can stay with? Hell, stay with your mother. The Pentagon doesn’t have the security system she’s g
— Josh Lanyon, Fatal Shadows
There she was, the mother of me, like a lit plinth,Heavenly, though I was reared to find this kind Of visitation impractical; she was an unbearable detailOf the supreme celestial map,Of which I had been taught that there wasNo such thing.
— Lucie Brock-Broido, Trouble in Mind: Poems
What thumbsuckers we all are...when it comes to mothers.
— Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg
Mama stared at me not with sadness, but with pleading. She was thinner than I'd ever allowed myself to notice, looking more like a child than a woman. I wanted to believe she knew what was best for me. I wanted to believe she was like every other mother and that she loved me more than I loved her. I hoped, if I followed her wishes, I would finally make her happy.
— Ami McKay, The Virgin Cure
My mother's deathchanged the alchemy of food.Holidays run together nowlike ungrooved rivers. I forgetwhat they are for. I buy bakery goods.They look deadunder the blue lights.I don't do anything the way she taught mebut I get fat.I don't look like her and I don't soundlike her, but I stand like her.
— Florence Weinberger
I’ve been washing stairs my whole life. One day after the other. Since I was five years old. I’ve never complained. Shame on you. I’m embarrassed to have a son like you…can’t even look after his own bicycle. You just wait until your dad comes home. Then you’ll be in trouble, I can tell you that much.”Poul-Erik’s MotherThe Informer
— Steen Langstrup, The Informer
Not every daughter mourns the loss of a mother.
— Rasmenia Massoud, Broken Abroad
But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
No one worries about you like your mother, and when she is gone, the world seems unsafe, things that happen unwieldy. You cannot turn to her anymore, and it changes your life forever. There is no one on earth who knew you from the day you were born; who knew why you cried, or when you'd had enough food; who knew exactly what to say when you were hurting; and who encouraged you to grow a good heart. When that layer goes, whatever is left of your childhood goes with her.
— Adriana Trigiani, Big Stone Gap
I always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me. She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. She tended to me. She administrated me.
— Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
There is a distinct difference between the ability to create life and the innate need to protect it; to cherish it. The life you've created is the one being you love most in the universe, and that intense love evolves into something that goes far beyond a sense of duty. It is instinct; pure and undeniable. As a direct result, one must neglect all else to preserve it. Even those we have claimed to love before.
— Jamie McGuire, Eden
All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
— Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
But mostly I remember every morning before school. How she'd say "Hey, honey!" just I was walking out the apartment door. And me stopping and turning around and saying "What?" And her saying "I love you." And me rolling my eyes like I just wanted to hurry up so I didn't miss the bus. I'd start going again and she'd say "Hey, honey!" and I'd pretend I was so annoyed 'cause she was wasting time and I had to go catch the bus. And how secretly it was my favorite part of every day.
— Matt de la Pena, I Will Save You
Not that she means anything by it, he knows. This is simply her lifelong habit of moderation at work, her need to tamp everything down to the routine, the modest, the tepid everyday. He understands the whole concept of boundaries, but there’s a point where this mania for normalizing turns toxic.
— Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.
— Will Leamon
He was looking forward eagerly to seeing her again. He had coped perfectly well on his own, of course, but it was very reassuring to have someone in your life who was always ready to fight for you, and he had missed that comforting feeling,
— Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth Part 1 of 3
It's like she thinks my job is to please her, and that should be my dearest wish, and when I don't please her - I get shut out.
— John Green, Paper Towns
As time passed from solstice to mild solstice in those occluded zones of my early childhood, I played beneath the distracted majesty of my mother's blue-eyed gaze. With her eyes on me I felt as if I were being studied by flowers.
— Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
The daughter prays
—  the mother listens.
Never underestimate the fury of an angry mother, Caspar. They're the most vicious creatures in the world.
— Elizabeth  Hunter
Mothers possess a power beyond that of a king on his throne.
— Mabel Hale
I'll tend to her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter. Nobody will ever get my milk no more except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else--and the one time I did it was took from me--they held me down and took it. Milk that belonged to my baby.... I know what it is to be without the milk that belongs to you; to have to fight and holler for it, and to have so little left.
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
Even her pink bunny slippers seem to prick up their ears.Diary of a Penguin-napper (p. 15)
— Sally  Harris, Diary of a Penguin-napper
At the end of the day, can you look back and say to yourself, "Today, my mother would be proud of me because I gave it all I had"? If you can, you will have had a very good day. And if you can do this every day, you will have a very good life.
— Patrick Henry Hughes, I Am Potential: Eight Lessons on Living, Loving, and Reaching Your Dreams
She taught me what's important, and what isn't. And I've never forgotten. And that's what mothers do, I say.
— Steven Herrick, A Place Like This
Hideo," said my mother, in the terrifying way women have of passing without interval from one subject to another because they have them all present in their mind at once, "you haven't found any kind of relationship?
— Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
My mother was widely loved, and rightly so – and widely regarded as too sweet for words. Well, she had them buffaloed. Any woman who could out-stubborn a dachshund deserved to be accorded the wary and respectful affection the dachshund gave her.
— Markham Shaw Pyle
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
People don't always get what they deserve in this world.
— Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book
I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.
— Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.
— Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder
— Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
The world was fucked up. It was hard to say how exactly, but we could feel it. There was injustice, lots of it, we saw it as a dull shape coming into focus.
— Michelle Tea
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
— Thomas Jefferson
Most people will not stand up to injustice unless their comfort of living is severely threatened. This is because today's man does not care for the outside world so long as he has a roof over his head and four walls to contain his own.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
[T]he vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.
— Lyndon B. Johnson
I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.
— Franz Kafka, The Trial
Laws, it is said, are for the protection of the people. It's unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable; laws that deny people the right to refuse protection. A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months.
— Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
And yet the feeling of injustice itself turned out to be strangely physical. Even realer, in a way, than a her hurting, smelling, sweating body. Injustice had a shape, an a weight, and a temperature, and a texture, and a very bad taste.
— Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
Everything human beings can imagine has been thrown at injustice, and injustice just absorbs it, and enlarges.
— Greg Baxter, The Apartment
They had no previous connection whatever with Connemara
—  but they saw connections where others who should have seen them simply looked the other way.
My own attitude to the innumerable injustices of life has always been a philosophical one, especially when they have tended to operate in my favour.
— Auberon Waugh
Their hands are tied not by ropes but by the greed of the intermediaries that the system has generated, who eat up the farmer’s income while it is on its way into his hands.
— Faraaz Kazi
Oh! if, when we oppress and grind our fellow-creatures, we bestowed but one thought on the dark evidences of human error, which, like dense and heavy clouds, are rising, slowly it is true, but not less surely, to Heaven, to pour their after-vengeance on our heads; if we heard but one instant, in imagination, the deep testimony of the dead men's voices, which no power can stifle, and no pride shut out; where would be the injury and injustice: the suffering, misery, cruelty, and wrong: that each day's life brings with it!
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention; and what we term justice is truly nothing but this equilibrium transformed, as honey is nothing but a transformation of the sweetness found in the flower. Outside man there is no justice; within him injustice cannot be.
— Maurice Maeterlinck, Wisdom and Destiny
We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all; as the bee is not wrong to make honey in a world that itself can make none. But we are wrong to desire an external justice, since we know that it does not exist. Let that which is in us suffice. All is for ever being weighed and judged in our soul. It is we who shall judge ourselves; or rather, our happiness is our judge.
— Maurice Maeterlinck
It’s a dark thing when the world sets no value on you and your kin, and then Death comes stalking in, in his bloody boots”.
— Sebastian Barry, Days Without End
I decry the injustice of my wounds, only to look down and see that I am holding a smoking gun in one hand and a fistful of ammunition in the other.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
I'm starting to realize that being born into this social world is a little like being born into clean air. You take it in as soon as you breathe, and pretty soon you don't even realize that while you can walk around with clear lungs, other people are wearing oxygen masks just to survive.
— Randa Abdel-Fattah, The Lines We Cross
This (white settlers) was the section of humanity that was favored in that place, the Indians had no place no more there. Their tickets of passage were rescinded and the bailiffs of God took back the papers of their soles.
— Sebastian Barry, Days Without End
It is enough to write a few lines about tanks in the streets in some sad country, about a clear injustice, which requires no description; it is enough to move from one side to another, to satisfy someone’s taste, the need of the moment, the need for “big” games to take a peek into everything and to prove everything with cheap opinions formed almost on command, almost as a recipe of measured pain to resolve the crisis, to extinguish the pain based on a few words that don’t change anything except that they flatter vanity and a misguided interest in all dimensions of life and creation, in the air that is being poisoned by smoke from cars, smoke from the television screens, the smoke curtains of politicians, left and right, the smoke of films and pop culture, smokescreens of intelligence that finds an explanation for all this, makes up theories, finds justification for the schizophrenic decisions of the new rulers, for wars, agreements, contracts; finds justification for obedience, for the sale of beliefs under the disguise of conviction, for several awards, for a few moments of illusion in the hocus-pocus world where the truth does not interest anyone anymore, except for ways for lies to be packaged and sold as the greatest truth with the help of big intellectuals that will find a good argument, a good defense and justification for everything, since everything becomes much easier, if a hoax is supported by “scientific” evidence.
— Dejan Stojanovic, Serbian Satire and Aphorisms
Sentimentality about Lee's story grew even as the harder truths of the book took no root. The story of an innocent black man bravely defended by a white lawyer in the 1930s fascinated millions of readers, despite its uncomfortable exploration of false accusations of rape involving a white woman. Lee's endearing characters, Atticus Finch and his precocious daughter, Scout, captivated readers while confronting them with some of the realities of race and justice in the South. A generation of future lawyers grew up hoping to become the courageous Atticus, who at one point arms himself to protect the defenseless black suspect from an angry mob of white men looking to lync
— Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know how much truth is stronger than errors, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
All it takes to be a voice against injustice, is to say something against it.
— Christina Engela
Only the honorable people resist the injustices! The rest - the honorless - are afraid of even their own shadows!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
If only ten or twenty Negroes had been put into slavery, we would call it injustice, but there were hundreds of thousands of them throughout the country. If this state of affairs had lasted for two or three years, we could say that it was unjust; but it lasted for more than two hundred years. Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory, is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life.
— Richard Wright, Native Son
It is time for the international community to work for the creation of an independent Kurdistan as they did once for the Jews after the Holocaust. The current war against ISIS, which is perceived by many as World War Three, can be compared to World War Two. After horrible wars, great changes can be brought about for those who have suffered extreme injustice.
— Widad Akreyi
This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.
— Antonin Scalia
I wonder why it is that the countries with the most nobles also have the most misery?
— Francis Bacon
When an Israelite and a Gentile have a lawsuit before thee, if thou canst, acquit the former according to the laws of Israel, and tell the latter such is our law; if thou canst get him off in accordance with Gentile law, do so, and say to the plaintiff such is your law; but if he cannot be acquitted according to either law, then bring forward adroit pretexts and secure his acquittal. These are the words of Rabbi Ishmael.
— Maurice H. Harris, Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and Kabbala
Poverty is not just a sad accident. Yes, it’s partly about lack of jobs, “but it’s also a result of the fact that some people make a lot of money off low-income families and directly contribute to their poverty.” Matthew Desmond
— Jennifer Schuessler
If you see an injustice, and don’t move to right it when you have a chance, history won’t forget that, either.
— Diane Duane, Swordhunt
Nothing can justify injustice.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The universe was playing with loaded dice, which insured an excess of cowards in our ranks.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Waldo was not alone by any means in trembling over an unjust plight. With the recent uproar over drunk driving, arrests had skyrocketed and detention centers all around the country were overflowing with bewildered motorists. Many of these dumbstruck, inebriated souls had been transferred and thoughtfully placed behind the same bars that held back murderers and rapists. Unfortunately for our heroes, they now joined the ranks of these luckless citizens.
— Donald Jeffries, The Unreals
It is but another instance of injustice, Fray Felipe said. For twenty years we, of the missions, have been subjected to it, and it grows. The sainted Junipero Serra invaded this land when other men feared, and at San Diego de Alcala he built the first mission of what became a chain, thus giving an empire to the world. Our mistake was that we prospered. We did the work, and others reap the advantages. They began taking out mission-lands from us, lands we had cultivated, which had formed a wilderness and which my brothers had turned into gardens and orchards. They robbed us of worldly goods. And not content with that they now are persecuting us. The mission-empire is doomed, caballero. The time is not far distant when mission roofs will fall in and walls crumble away. Some day people will look at the ruins and wonder how such a thing could come to pass.
— Johnston McCulley
When we become quiet at the collapsed value system in our nation, iniquity and injustice would eventually overrun that nation if action is not taken promptly.
— Sunday Adelaja
America's prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill.
— Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Lose your freedom, and become a slave by borrowing.
— Auliq Ice
Injustice is a rule of the service, as you know very well; and since you have to have a good deal of undeserved abuse, you might just as well have it from your friends.
— Patrick O'Brian
Whenever you become aware of a conflict in the world, realize that you only perceive it as a conflict because it resonates with something that's already inside of you.
— Auliq Ice
Thy designs are a bottomless pit. How can I descend into this pit to examine it? Thou lookest thousands of years into the future and then Thou judgest. What today seems an injustice to man's minute brain becomes, thousands of years hence, the mother of man's salvation. If what today we term injustice did not exist, perhaps true justice would never come to mankind.
— Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis
Surely you can see the failings of the system. Inequality, injustice, unfairness, and exploitation--
— Allan Dare Pearce, Hitler Burns Detroit
You can not be lazy and expect everyone to like you. That will be injustice.
— Paul Bamikole
When now we turn and look five miles above, there on the edge of town are five houses of prostitutes,—two of blacks and three of whites; and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy was harbored too openly two years ago; so he was hanged for rape. And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the "stockade," as the county prison is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals,—the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor.
— W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features, Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly. Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,Could never be friendly ourselves.
— Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913-1956
People will continue to commit atrocities as long as they believe in absurdities.
— Voltaire