Need inspiring quote about a person's value not being about their achievements

[AlexaShutUp]

My mum is an intelligent, talented and generous woman who has spent her life giving to her family, to neighbours and to our wider society. Sadly, she feels that she wasted her talent and potential by giving up her career to become a SAHM. She never found the confidence to return.

She feels that she has wasted her time and done nothing with her life. No matter what anyone says to her, she cannot entertain any alternative perspectives. As she gets older, these feelings of regret seem to be consuming her.

I'm working on a gift to try and reflect the value that she has in our lives, but I really need a quote that says something along the lines of us being so much more than the sum of our achievements in life.

Can anyone suggest a lovely quote for my lovely mum, please?

Your first sentence! Sorry, can't help with the quote but it did strike me that you've summed it yourself .

buy her the boy, the mole, the fox and the horse

It’s wonderful

Something about the number of lives she has touched in different ways

Oops

Thank you Mo. I've told her all that umpteen times but it doesn't seem to sink in. I think she thinks we're just saying stuff to make her feel better, so I wondered if a quote from someone else might help to drive the message home.

The gift will include messages from family, I just wanted some external validation too!😁

The final paragraph of Middlemarch would be apt:

"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Tell her that she is

'a failure at everything except life '

My favourite quote from a film and something I and many others can only aspire to. She sounds amazing.

Love that Middlemarch quotation.

One of these??

It is not what you achieve in life, but who you become.

Trying again...

Or this one?

Final go.

Oh sorry. They did post earlier. Oops!

The Middlemarch one is lovely!

That Middlemarch quotation is fabulous, and exactly along the right lines. Thank you.

Have ordered the boy and the mole book, it looks beautiful.

Some other lovely suggestions too, will try to incorporate them all.

30days, she is amazing, I just wish that she could see what everyone else can see.

'It's a wonderful life' on blu ray?

Good idea Later, have ordered a dvd too. I love that film, don't know whether my mum has ever seen it.

I came on to suggest the Middlemarch quote but I see I'm too late! My favourite book - there is a lovely radio adaptation on BBC Sounds at the moment, and the famous closing paragraph is beautifully read by Juilet Aubrey.

I do like the middlemarch quote but it makes me feel sad too, especially the unvisited tombs bit.

What about these?

It’s from a film about a teacher, but some of this might be appropriate?

Mr. Holland had a profound influence on my life and on a lot of lives I know. But I have a feeling that he considers a great part of his own life misspent. Rumor had it he was always working on this symphony of his. And this was going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr. Holland isn't rich and he isn't famous, at least not outside of our little town. So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure. But he would be wrong, because I think that he's achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. We are the music of your life.

Lovely quote from Disney Sarcelle.

And that quote from Mr Holland's Opus is beautiful too, Synthetic. Strikes just the right note.

I'm now going to have to think about how I can use all of these!

Life is mostly froth and bubble, two things stand like stone. Kindness in another's trouble, courage in your own

Love that one.