Happy Mother’s Day to all of those extraordinary mothers whom I am proud and privileged to call my friends. You are consistently an inspiration to me as I mother my own babies. Thank you most of all for that.

In your honor, I broke into the precious cache containing my most favorite mother quotes of all time:

“At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent.”
— Golda Meir

“If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.”
— Dave Barry

“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”
— Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

“I am convinced that the only reason women decide to have additional babies is to get a break, if even for just a few days, from the babies they already have.”
— Shirley Jackson

“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

“It seems to me that my mother was the most splendid woman I ever knew….I have met a lot of people knocking around the world since, but I have never met a more thoroughly refined woman than my mother. If I have amounted to anything, it will be due to her.”
— Charles Chaplin

“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

“There is so much to teach, and the time goes so fast.”
— Erma Bombeck

“You never realize how much your mother loves you till you explore the attic – and find every letter you ever sent her, every finger painting, clay pot, bead necklace, Easter chicken, cardboard Santa Claus, paperlace Mother’s Day card and school report since day one.”
— Pam Brown

“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

“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

“A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care much for pie.”
–Tenneva Jordan

“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

“It will be gone before you know it. The fingerprints on the wall appear higher and higher. Then suddenly, they disappear.”
— Dorothy Evslin