My momma told me

[photo credit]

The last time my mom visited, we put on makeup together in the bathroom, and I told her about a trick that she had showed me when I was younger: only put mascara on your top lashes. She didn't remember telling me. "That's common knowledge," she said. "You probably read it in a beauty magazine."

"Nope," I said. "You said it." She wanted to know how I could be sure she had. "Because what you say sticks with me," I said.

Recently I came across a list of quotations by famous writers, musicians, athletes, et cetera, talking about things their mothers had told them, and I thought it was interesting how deeply some of these quotes stuck with them, and shaped there future lives.

Here are some of my favorites from that list:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” -(Mr.) Fred Rogers

"You don't have to prove anything," my mother said. "Just be ready for what God sends." -William Stafford, poet and pacifist.

"My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors." -Maya Angelou

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” -John Lennon

"My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent. " - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that." -Etta James

"I hope they're still making women like my momma. She always told me to do the right thing. She always told me to have pride in myself; she said a good name is better than money."
- Joe Louis

What's something your mother told you that's stuck with you?