Quote #57599
Mother–that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.
T. DeWitt Talmage
About This Quote
This quote needs no introduction—at least for now. We're working on adding more context soon.
Interpretation
Talmage’s metaphor casts “Mother” as a safe financial institution: a place where emotional burdens can be “deposited” for protection and relief. The line idealizes maternal care as dependable, confidential, and stabilizing—someone who absorbs a child’s pain and anxiety without demanding repayment. It also implies a moral economy of family life: the mother’s love functions as a kind of social insurance against the shocks of the world. In the context of Talmage’s sentimental, sermon-driven rhetoric, the image reinforces Victorian-era reverence for motherhood and the home as a refuge, elevating private domestic compassion into a public virtue.


