Happy Mothers Day to all Marine Moms! My heart if full of love, thanks to all of you!
-- Tracy Della Vecchia

1. "Men are what their mothers made them."
   -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. "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 mankind; 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 painting shall have faded, and books and statues shall have been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give."
   -- David 0. McKay

3. "Motherhood is the greatest potential influence in human society. Her caress first awakens in the child a sense of security; her kiss the first realization of affection; her sympathy and tenderness, the first assurance that there is love in the world. Thus in infancy and childhood she implants ever-directing and restraining influences that remain through life."
   -- David 0. McKay

4. "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."
   -- Abraham Lincoln

5. "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom."
   -- Henry Ward Beecher

6. "Of all the rights of a woman, the greatest is to be a mother."
   -- Lin Yutang

7. "Her dignity consists in being unknown to the world; her glory is in the esteem of her husband; her pleasures in the happiness of her family."
   -- Jean Rousseau

8. "There is a woman at the beginning of all great things."
   -- Alphonse de Lamartine

9. "There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness... The memory of my mother and her teachings were, after all, the only capital I had to start life with, and on that capital I have made my way."
   -- Andrew Jackson

10. "I looked on child-rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring it."
    -- Rose Kennedy

11. "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 troubles thicken 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

12. "Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. But here again, because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general disposition to regard a married woman's work as no work at all, and to take it as a matter of course that she should not be paid for it."
    -- George Bernard Shaw

13. "My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her."
    -- George Washington

14. "Because I have been sheltered, fed, By thy good care, I cannot see another's lack And I not share My glowing fire, my loaf of bread, My roof's safe shelter overhead, That he, too may be comforted."
    -- Grace noll Crowell

15. "In all my efforts to learn to read, my mother shared fully my ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way she could. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother."
    -- Booker T. Washington

16. "The man is the brace and ceiling of his house He is the straight walls rising from the earth, The woman is the golden glow of lamps, The firelight on a hearth.
    -- Emery Petho "Perfect Home"

17. "Woman knows what man has long forgotten, that the ultimate economic and spiritual unit of any civilization is still the family."
    -- Clare Boothe Luce

18. "Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all."
    -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

19. "The story of a mother's life: Trapped between a scream and a hug."
    -- Cathy Guisewite, "Like Mother, Like Daughter"

20. "The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother."
    -- Theodore Hesburgh

21. "By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class."
    -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

22. "Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged."
    -- Louisa May Alcott

23. "Making a decision to have a child -- it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."
    -- Elizabeth Stone

24. "Who ran to help me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell, Or kiss the place to make it well? My Mother."
    -- Ann Taylor, "My Mother"

25. "The hand that rocks the cradle usually is attached to someone who isn't getting enough sleep."
    -- John Fiebig

26. "To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. "
    -- Maya Angelou

27. "My mother had a great deal of trouble with me but I think she enjoyed it."
    -- Mark Twain

28. "A picture memory brings to me; I look across the years and see Myself beside my mother's knee. I feel her gentle hand restrain My selfish moods, and know again A child's blind sense of wrong and pain. But wiser now, a man gray grown, My childhood's needs are better known. My mother's chastening love I own."
    -- John Greenleaf Whittier