Judith Viorst Quotes

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.

Love is the very essence of family life. Why is it that the children we love become so frequently the targets of our harsh words? Why is it that these children who love their fathers and mothers sometimes speak as if with daggers that cut to the quick? "There is beauty all around," only when there's love at home.

I was the oldest of five children, each about a year apart, and my mother, bless her heart, had her hands full.

Mothers aren't allowed to have favorite children!

The only perfect love to be found on earth is not sexual love, which is riddled with hostility and insecurity, but the wordless commitment of families, which takes as its model mother-love. This is not to say that fathers have no place, for father-love, with its driving for self-improvement and discipline, is also essential to survival, but that uncorrected father-love, father-love as it were practiced by both parents, is a way to annihilation.

True love in Mexico isn't between lovers; it's between a parent and a child. Mexico is a very intense culture of sons adoring their mothers, and this is why I claim that Mexican culture is matriarchal. Because the one constant, faithful, inviolable, holy love of loves - the love of your life - is not your wife or your lover; it's your mother.

All mothers love their own children as best they can, according to their temperament and circumstances, and all mothers should have done better, in their children's eyes, when the going gets tough for the children.

No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back.

We have to divide mother love with our brothers and sisters. Our parents can help us cope with the loss of our dream of absolute love. But they cannot make us believe that we haven't lost it.

We already had an adopted daughter, 10-year-old Courtney, from my previous marriage. To me, there is no difference between 'natural' and 'adopted.' My own childhood showed me that when it comes to loving your kids, concepts like that don't apply. I was the oldest of six, and three of my siblings were adopted. Mom and Dad even took in foster children. 'There are no limits to how much you can love,' Dad always said.

Feeling the security and constancy of love from a spouse, a parent or a child is a rich blessing. Such love nurtures and sustains faith in God. Such love is a source of strength and casts out fear. Such love is the desire of every human soul.

I was very close to my mother as the youngest of three. She was my playmate.

I love celebrating Mother's Day. Since I was a kid, it was a special day to tell my mother and grandmother how much I love them. Now that I'm a mom, it is a special day to spend with my children.

I was happy as an only child, but I've always wanted to be part of a bigger family.

I am the youngest of four siblings, and we're all so close. I don't know where I would be without my brothers and sister. I secretly believe that my parents love me the most!

If you have many children, the first one is always different because you can only have one child who is the first. They have different natures and talents for you to love.

When a parent has two children, it is difficult to pick one favourite.

All my children are blessings. I love them to bits. They're my world.

My friends and my family are such a massive part of my life. My kids are everything.

Praise the child, and you make love to the mother.

My children are most important to me. I'm a mother and I adore my children. I live for them.

The hand of a bride becomes the hand of a mother. Ever so gently she cares for her precious child. Bathing, dressing, feeding, comforting-there is no hand like mother's. Nor does its tender care diminish through the years.

My brother wasn't loved by my mother in the same way that I was.

How long has it been since you looked into the eyes of your mother and, holding nothing back, spoke those welcome words, 'Mother, I truly love you'? How about Father, who daily toils to provide for you? Fathers appreciate hearing those same precious words from the lips of a child, 'I love you.'

To be a mother is a great treasure. Mothers, in their unconditional and sacrificial love for their children, are the antidote to individualism; they are the greatest enemies against war.