#moth

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

I wondered if my smile was as big as hers. Maybe as big. But not as beautiful. ↗

— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

#mothers #mums #smile #smiles #beauty

The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision. James ain't talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make me bright and beautiful so all the moths and bats would circle me like I was the center of the world an held secrets. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#moths #secrets #streetlight #beauty

To see her, amid all of it. To see that contentment and beauty were not unattainable things. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#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

A talent for building children's souls, Hilde. So building their souls that they might grow straight and fine, nobly and beautifully formed, to their full human stature. That was where Aline's talent lay. ↗

— Henrik Ibsen

#beauty

God in His infinite wisdom blessed humans with redundant tongues: one to outfit the mouth for speech. And a mother tongue to give it meaning... Though it wags out such inconceivable beauty, attached to the mother tongue lies one much maligned woman. ↗

— David B. Lentz

#bostoniad #david-b-lentz #mother-tongue #beauty

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

My father was frightened of his mother; I was frightened of my father, and I am damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me. ↗

— King George V

#children #damned #father #frightened #going