"...What do girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?"
-LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
"The mother is the medium through which the primitive infant transforms itself into a socialized human being."
-BEATA FRANK
"Mummy herself has told us that she looked upon us more as her friends than as her daughters.  Now, that is all very fine, but still, a friend can't take a mother's place.  I need my mother as an example which I can follow, I want to be able to respect her."
-ANNE FRANK
"To talk to a child, to fascinate him, is much more difficult than to win an electoral victory.  But it is more rewarding."
-COLETTE
"There is no friendship, no  love, like that of the parent for the child."
-HENRY WARD BEECHER
"The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children."
-CLARENCE S. DARROW
"The wildest colts make the best horses."
-PLUTARCH
"The best way to make children good is to make them happy."
-OSCAR WILDE
"The child is father of the man."
-WORDSWORTH
"A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive."
-COLERIDGE
"Men are what their mothers make them."
-EMERSON
"For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world."
-WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE
"Only a mother knows a mother's fondness."
-MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
"In this galaxy of human relationships, a baby has always been the center around whom all other planets revolve."
-ERMA BOMBECK
"The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother."
-NAPOLEON
"Motherhood has a very humanizing effect.  Everything gets reduced to essentials."
-MERYL STREEP
"As soon as a child has left the room his strewn toys become affected."
-RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it."
-GEORGE F. WILL
"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
"The toughest part of motherhood is the inner worrying and not showing it."
-AUDREY HEPBURN
"A mother is she who can take the place of all others, but whose place no one else can take."
-CARDINAL MERMILLOD
"Children are born optimists, and we slowly educate them out of their heresy."
-LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
"If children grew up according to earlier indications, we should have nothing but geniuses."
-JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
"We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body."
-RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."
-RACHEL CARSON
"It is true that a child is always hungry all over;  but he is also curious all over, and his curiosity is excited about as early as his hunger."
-CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
"Where children are, there is the golden age."
-NOVALIS
"The successful mother sets her children free and becomes more free herself in the process."
-ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST
"Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness."
-HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
"If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much."
-JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS
"The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet."
-ISADORA DUNCAN
