You could not give me toys in those bleak days;
So when my playmates proudly boasted theirs,
You caught me to the shelter of your arms,
And taught me how to laugh away my tears.

DuBose Heyward (1885-1940) Your Gifts

Oh, what a power is motherhood, possessing a potent spell. All women alike fight fiercely for a child.

Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis (c. 405 BC)

You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's. He's more particular.

Robert Frost, Interview, Writers at Work: Second Series (1963)

A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) The Three Graves

She's somebody's mother, boys, you know
For all she's aged and poor and slow.

Mary Dow Brine   Somebody's Mother

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

Spanish proverb

God pardons like a mother who kisses the offense into everlasting forgetfulness.

Henry Ward Beecher

A mother's example sketches the outline of her child's character.

Mrs. H. O. Ward

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Mark Twain

Women know more about life than men, especially when it comes to the children.

“Escaping Slowly” in The Virago Book of Fairy Tales, ed. Angela Carter (London: Virago Press, 1990)

To love one child and to love all children, whether living or dead --somewhere these two loves come together. To love a no-good but humble punk and to love an honest man who believes himself to be an honest man --somewhere these, too, come together.

Marguerite Duras

Just about the time a woman thinks her job is done, she becomes a grandmother.

Edward H. Dreschnack

When I was giving birth the nurse asked, "Still think blondes have more fun?"

Joan Rivers