Maternal love

“ Love, feeling, everything that is tender and passionate in a woman, was converted in her into maternal love. She hovered around her children with anxiety, passion, tears, like the gull of the steppes. ”

“ The world will doubtless laugh at such tender devotion, at such intense absorption in an unformed infant, but no one but a woman, no one but a mother, can understand the wondrous power of maternal love that dominates every other feeling in the feminine heart. All the passion of lovers, the ecstacies of poets, the blind adoration of men for those they love, pale before this strongest of all feelings implanted in the human breast. ”

“ It is as difficult to imagine a mother without maternal love as a light without heat; is it not then perfectly legitimate to attribute to maternal love all the words and actions of a mother, relating to her child? ”

“ Now, when the little child that was such a darling comfort to her sad, lonely life is so rudely wrested from that yearning heart, her thoughts irresistibly center about the father of her child. She had loved her baby best—the maternal love was more deeply developed in her than the conjugal—but even then her husband had been blessed with a fervent, tender worship that is the overflow of only such deep, strong natures as hers—natures prodigal of sweetness. ”

“ There were mothers who had never felt a pang so keen or a pain so sore, as when with hearts too full of anguish for the dry, red eyes to weep, they watched their sons pass from the threshold of the door, and knew that when the golden sunlight, falling so brightly around them, was purple in the west, they would look in vain for that returning step, and listen in vain for tones which were the first, perhaps, to stir the deep fountains of maternal love. ”

“ It may have been simply an act of habitual tenderness, or it may have been the wild reaction toward a neglected duty; the renewed self-consecration of the saint, or the joy of the sinner that repenteth. No matter. She kissed the baby. The feeling of its soft flesh, the busy struggle of its little arms between her hands, the impatient pressure of its little feet against her knees,—these were the same, whatever the mood or circumstance beside. They did something to equalize joy and sorrow, honor and shame. Maternal love is love, whether a woman be a wife or only a mother. Only a mother! ”

“ Let us contemplate at our leisure this delightful image of the maternal reverie—of that second childbirth by which she completes the invisible object of her love—the unknown offspring of desire.
A delightful spectacle, but even more sublime than delightful. Let us be modest here. With us the mother loves that which stirs in her bosom—that which she touches, clasps, enfolds in assured possession; she loves the reality, certain, agitated and moving, which responds to her own movements. ”

“ And though, in its strange providence, Heaven often denies the maternity, it can not and does not mean to shut up the well-spring of that maternal passion—truly a passion to such women as these, almost as strong as the passion of love—but lets the stream, which might otherwise have blessed one child or one family, flow out wide and far, blessing wherever it goes. ”

“ But how feeble are all the varieties of love, which childhood elicits, compared to that which exists in a mother's breast. Examine, I pray you, its unique nature, by contrast and comparison. We are wont to place our affections, where our virtues are appreciated, or to fix our reliance where some benefit may be conferred. But maternal love, is founded on utter helplessness. ”

“ With a thrill of pure maternal love, a stranger to her heart, whose holiest impulses, deadened by reckless indulgence, have degenerated into instincts, she folds the little form closer to her, in spite of its shuddering, and, looking into the upturned face (O mother, miserably blind) , reads understandingly for the first time the hunger of heart so legibly written on every speaking feature. ”

“ The child is part and parcel of the mother: her own flesh and blood and soul; and in loving it the mother practically loves a detached portion of herself—thus uniting the force of selfish with that of altruistic emotion. This is the primitive fountain of maternal affection. ”

“ The heart of the mother is in her child; she glories in its progress, and she refuses to see its defects until they glare too brightly to be overlooked. Then she has a heartbreak all the more bitter for her maternal love. ”

“ but, however all other feelings may be withered in a woman’s nature, there is always one bright smiling spot in the desert of her heart, and that is the shrine of maternal love. ”

“ No one can understand so well the wants of a child as a mother—no one is ever so ready to meet those wants as she; and, therefore, to none but a mother, under ordinary circumstances, should the entire charge of a child be committed, And in all countries in which, luxury has not so far attained the ascendency, that in order to partake of its pleasures a mother will desert her offspring, the cares and trials of maternal love are entered upon as the sweetest of enjoyments and the greatest of pleasures. ”

“ Yet, many a girl has never known what maternal love means until at her marriage she was welcomed by the open arms and large heart of her husband's mother. It is not only orphan girls who have this experience, for some parents never bestow upon their children the peculiar brooding tenderness which all young people need, even when they have almost attained man's and woman's estate. [159] Said one youthful matron to me—"My own mother has been an invalid for so many years that I have not felt that I could go to her with all my worries and perplexities, for my annoyances only added to her troubles. ”

“ Fathers and mothers, you must make your children happy, if you would make them good. You must surround them with an atmosphere of affection and enjoyment, if you would teach them to love you, and to love GOD. It is when held close in their mothers' arms, with tender eyes bent over them, that children first get some faint idea of that Infinite Love, of which maternal fondness is but the faint reflection. ”

“ Now, it is the mother who ought to stand by her children in all these little instances of individual exposure; and it is the office of affection not only to make reparation where injury has been done, but so to shield from danger and from pain, as to inspire a feeling of trust and safety under the protection of maternal love. ”

“ Maternal love is a most powerful instinct in woman. In the hideous society of the past, mothers were to be seen courting misery and shame, in order to bring up illegitimate offspring. Why should ours, exempt as they are from shame and misery, forsake their little ones? There are among us many good partners, and many good mothers. But there is a very large number, which increases apace, of women who dispense with men.’
“Chéron made in this connection a somewhat strange remark. ”

“ No human affection has been so passionately praised as maternal love, and none is supposed to be so holy or so strong. Even the poetic aspect of the instinct which inspires the young with their dearest dreams does not rank so high as this, and neither lover's love nor conjugal love, neither filial affection nor fraternal, comes near the sanctity or grandeur of the maternal instinct. ”

“ Maternal Love.—Maternal love is the visible providence of our race. Its influence is constant and universal. It begins with the education of the human being at the outstart of life, and is prolonged by virtue of the powerful influence which every good mother exercises over her children through life. When launched into the world, each to take part in its labors, anxieties, and trials, they still turn to their mother for consolation, if not for counsel, in their time of trouble and difficulty. ”

“ Not that I am so selfish as to exclude my friends from my affection or society. I feel interested in their concerns, and enjoy their company. I must own, however, that conjugal and parental love are the mainsprings of my life. The conduct of some mothers, in depriving their helpless offspring of the care and kindness which none but a mother can feel, is to me unaccountable. There are many nameless attentions which nothing short of maternal tenderness and solicitude can pay, and for which the endearing smiles and progressive improvements of the lovely babe are an ample reward. ”

“ Unless he is willing to hold his manhood in abeyance to the calls of your nature and to your conditions, and consecrate its passions and its powers to the elevation and happiness of his wife and children, your maiden soul had better return to God unadorned with the diadem of conjugal and maternal love than that you should become the wife of such man and the mother of his children. ”

“ You can analyze paternal love, discover its causes, say 'I love my child because he is so and so, or so and so.' With the mother such analysis is impossible, she does not love her child because he is handsome or ugly, because he does or does not resemble her, has or has not her tastes. She loves him because she can not help it, it is a necessity. Maternal love is an innate sentiment in woman. Paternal love is, in man, the result of circumstances. ”

“ There is no position in which maternal love shines more brightly than when the infant she has nourished at her breast is returned upon her hands, a man or woman, perhaps in middle age, but weak, ill, helpless, and requiring a mother’s care. ”

“ If, therefore, a woman desire her husband’s love, or the respect of others, her giving birth to a child is a source of great joy to herself and him, and her own interest alone is a sufficient motive for maternal tenderness. ”

“ As the father of her child, he stands before her invested with new beauty and dignity. In receiving from him the germ of a new life, she receives that which she feels is to add new beauty and glory to her as a woman—a new grace and attraction to her as a wife. She loves and honors him, because he has crowned her with the glory of a mother. Maternity, to her, instead of being repulsive, is a diadem of beauty, a crown of rejoicing; and deep, tender, and self-forgetting are her love and reverence for him who has placed it on her brow. ”

“ I have seen a young and beautiful mother, herself like a brilliant and graceful flower. Nothing could divide her from her infant. It was to her as a twin-soul. She had loved society, for there she had been as an idol. But what was the fleeting delight of adulation, to the deep love that took possession of her whole being? ”

“ What if she, who had had so exquisite a vision of wifehood, should reconstruct from its ruins this vision of protecting maternity—if her love for her lover should be, not lost, but transformed, enlarged, into this passion of charity for his race? ”

“ The honour of motherhood lies in this, in the calling of her name in deep, sorrowful hours. Why do we not call upon our father—why just our mother? Because we feel from childhood, instinctively that Mother, means a world of love and devotion. ”

“ Have you never seen the sweetest ties existing between father and daughter, or brother and younger sister, when the wife has been removed by death, or, through some fatal fault, is no mother to her child? What love, what devotion, what watchful care, what sympathy, what strength of attachment! The little unmothered daughter calls out all the motherhood in the great, brawny man, and they walk hand in hand, blest with a great content. ”

“ Should a woman only exclusively through marriage be able to come to her right—to the full awakening of the best gifts of her soul? because the highest and most sacred glory of woman is motherhood. But then must a woman be obliged to have a child of her own in order to be a true mother—a being who is all love and sacrifice? ”

“ The tenderness, sympathy, devotion of a mother, very surely and quickly open out the heart feelings of her child and meet with warm response. The more constant the companionship, the more constant the outpouring of affection on both sides, the more that side of the child nature grows.
And the more it grows,—with mother watching over it, helping and guiding, setting the example—the more it has to give to other people and things. It will love a doll, a kitten, a puppy dog, and show them the same sort of tender attention that it receives from mother. ”

“ Never impose on your wife a maternity, except at the call of her own nature. When she is ready to take charge of the germ of a new life, and can joyfully welcome the responsibilities and trials of its development and birth, then, and never till then, impart it to her. Then will a tenderness ineffable, a love that is all-hoping, all-enduring and all-pervading, and a joy unspeakable and full of glory, preside, like a wise and loving Providence, over the conception, ante-natal growth and education, and the birth of your child. ”

“ For myself, dear soul, I grow happier and happier every moment. Each hour creates a fresh tie between the mother and her infant. The very nature of my feelings proves to me that they are normal, permanent, and indestructible; whereas I shrewdly suspect love, for instance, of being intermittent. Certainly it is not the same at all moments, the flowers which it weaves into the web of life are not all of equal brightness; love, in short, can and must decline. But a mother's love has no ebb-tide to fear; rather it grows with the growth of the child's needs, and strengthens with its strength. ”

“ I wonder if women feel it commonly? It was a desire for motherhood—a curiously vivid and very definite longing—entirely irrespective of him, you understand, although he inspired it. Without loving him or being at all moved toward him, he made me sheerly want to be a mother! Or is it only that men we don't love make us feel motherly? ”

“ Strange but beautiful is the strength of maternal affection. This object to all others so hideous—that for earth to hide his deformity, for death to close upon his afflictions, seems a boon to be prayed for, a mercy to be acknowledged with thankfulness—in the eyes of his mother is one of hope and of interest as great as the most perfect. ”