fathers

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect.
Everything gets reduced to essentials.

Meryl Streep

   
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, comrades and friends - but only one mother in the whole world.

Kate Douglas Wiggin

      

The mother, more than any other, affects the moral and spiritual part
of the children's character. She is their constant companion and
teacher in formative years. The child is ever imitating and assimilating
the mother's nature.  It is only in after life that men gaze backward
and behold how a mother's hand and heart of love molded their
young lives and shaped their destiny. 

E.W. Caswell

  
Mother's love is peace.
It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.

Erich Fromm
   

I affirm my profound belief that God's greatest creation is womanhood.  I also believe that there is no greater good in
all the world than motherhood.  The influence of a mother
in the lives of her children is beyond calculation.

James E. Faust

  

Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn't know
you had, and dealing with fears you didn't know existed.

Linda Wooten
   
   

   

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

William Makepeace Thackeray

   

To be a mother is a woman's
greatest vocation in life. She is
a partner with God. No being
has a position of such power
and influence. She holds in
her hands the destiny of
nations, for to her comes the
responsibility and opportunity
of molding the nation's citizens.

Spencer W. Kimball

   

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts.
A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

Sophia Loren
   
A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world.
It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes
down remorselessly all that stands in its path.

Agatha Christie
   

A mother is she who can take the place of all others
but whose place no one else can take.

Cardinal Mermillod
    

   

The commonest fallacy among women is that simply
having children makes one a mother—which is as absurd as
believing that having a piano makes one a musician.

Sydney J. Harris
  
A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for
five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.

Tenneva Jordan
   

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher
   
   

It is not until you become a mother than your judgment
slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

Erma Bombeck

fathers
Though motherhood is the most important of all the professions--requiring
more knowledge than any other department in human affairs--there was
no attention given to preparation for this office.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
   

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 Gray
   

Motherhood brings as much joy as ever, but it still brings boredom, exhaustion,
and sorrow too. Nothing else ever will make you as happy or as sad, as proud
or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard as helping a person develop his own
individuality especially while you struggle to keep your own.

Marguerite Kelly and Elia Parsons
   
   
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 Gillilan
   

The mother loves her children most divinely, not when she surrounds them
with comfort and anticipates their wants, but when she resolutely holds them
to the highest standards and is content with nothing less than their best.

Hamilton Wright Mabie
    

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Everybody knows that a good mother gives her children a feeling of trust
and stability.  She is their earth.  She is the one they can count on for the
things that matter most of all.  She is their food and their bed and the extra
blanket when it grows cold in the night; she is their warmth and their health
and their shelter; she is the one they want to be near when they cry.  She is
the only person in the whole world in a whole lifetime who can be these
things to her children.  There is no substitute for her.  Somehow even her
clothes feel different to her children's hands from anybody else's clothes.
Only to touch her skirt or her sleeve makes a troubled child feel better.

Katharine Butler Hathaway
    
So when the great word 'Mother!' rang once more,
I saw at last its meaning and its place;
Not the blind passion of the brooding past,
But Mother -- the World's Mother -- come at last,
To love as she had never loved before --
To feed and guard and teach the human race. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman
    

The noblest calling in the world is that of mother.  True motherhood is the
most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions.  She who can
paint a masterpiece or who can write a book that will influence millions
deserves the plaudits and admiration of humankind; but she who rears
successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose
immortal souls will be exerting an influence throughout the ages long
after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have
been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give.

David O. McKay
    
The mother is the most precious possessions of the nation,
so precious that society advances its highest well-being
when it protects the functions of the mother.

Ellen Key
    

    




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A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us;
when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in
our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us,
and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of
darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.

Washington Irving
   

My mother. . . she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered
with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

Jodi Picoult

   

Be a Mother who is committed to loving her children into standing
on higher ground than the environment surrounding them. Mothers are
endowed with a love that is unlike any other love on the face of the earth.

Marjorie Pay Hinckley

   
The mother memories that are closest to my heart are the small gentle
ones that I have carried over from the days of my childhood. They are
not profound, but they have stayed with me through life, and when I
am very old, they will still be near. . . Memories of mother drying my
tears, reading aloud, cutting cookies and singing as she did, listening to
prayers I said as I knelt with my forehead pressed against her knee,
tucking me in bed and turning down the light. They have carried me
through the years and given my life such a firm foundation
that it does not rock beneath flood or tempest.

Margaret Sanger
   

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

   
Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that the small flowered pattern was only a little lighter gray than the background. The dress came down to her ankles, and he strong, broad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor. Her thin, steel-gray hair was gathered in a sparse wispy knot at the back of her head. Strong, freckled arms were bare to the elbow, and her hands were chubby and delicate, like those of a plump little girl. She looked out into the sunshine. Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.

John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath

fathers
  

    

   

When God Created Mothers
Erma Bombeck

When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said. "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."

And God said, "Have you read the specs on this order?" She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts. . . all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands."

The angel shook her head slowly and said. "Six pairs of hands. . . no way."

"It's not the hands that are causing me problems," God remarked, "it's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."

"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel. God nodded.

"One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word."

"God," said the angel touching his sleeve gently, "Get some rest tomorrow. . . ."

"I can't," said God, "I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick. . . can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger. . . and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower."

The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed.

"But tough!" said God excitedly. "You can imagine what this mother can do or endure."

"Can it think?"

"Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator.

Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek.

"There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You that You were trying to put too much into this model."

"It's not a leak," said the Lord, "It's a tear."

"What's it for?"

"It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride."

"You are a genius, " said the angel.

Somberly, God said, "I didn't put it there.”

Erma Bombeck
When God Created Mothers