'The Most Important Profession': 8 Quotes About Moms

At a loss for how to express yourself on Mother's Day? These musings on motherhood and parenting might give you just the inspiration you need.

1. "The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears."
--Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, lawyer, and statesman. From "Of Parents and Children" (1625).

2. "A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive."
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), British poet. From "The Three Graves" (1798).

3. "The hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world."
--William Ross Wallace (1819-1881), U.S. poet and songwriter. From "What Rules the World" (1865).

4. "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."
--Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish-born writer and wit. From The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

5. "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 (1815-1902), U.S. abolitionist and campaigner for woman suffrage. From Eighty Years and More: 1815-1897 (1898).

6. "Dear Mary, We all knew you had it in you."
--Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), U.S. writer and wit. Telegram sent to a friend upon the successful outcome of a much-publicized pregnancy.

7. "I love all my children, but some of them I don't like."
--Lillian Carter (1902-1983), mother of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. In Woman (April 9, 1977).

8. "Motherhood meant I have written four fewer books, but I know more about life."
--A. S. Byatt (1936- ), British novelist and academic. In the London Sunday Times (October 21, 1990).

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