An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

 —Spanish proverb

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

—George Eliot

Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.

—W. Somerset Maugham

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

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.                                    —Dorothy Canfield Fisher

You’re not famous until my mother has heard of you.

 —Jay Leno

Whenever I’m with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.                             —Amy Tan

If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.      

—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world.                      

 —Kate Douglas Wiggin

Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate.   

 —Charlotte Grey

All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages.                                           —Robertson Davies

The love of a parent for a child is the love that should grow towards separation.                                                —Kahlil Gibran

Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore, / And that’s what parents were created for.                                          —Ogden Nash

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.                                                                  —Gloria Steinem

You may have tangible wealth untold; / Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. / Richer than I you can never be – / I had a mother who read to me.                                          —Strickland Gillian

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.                                                           

—Maya Angelou

My mother loved children. She would have given anything if I had been one.                                                        —Groucho Marx

Before becoming a mother, I had a hundred theories on how to bring up children. Now I have seven children and only one theory: Love them, especially when they least deserve to be loved.

—Kate Samperi