The Most Important Profession

'The Most Important Profession': 8 Quotes About Moms

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).