This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; a mother's secret hope outlives them all." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is thy bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things do her homage, the very least as feeling her care; and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy." - Richard Hooker
"A man never sees all that his mother has been to him till it's too late to let her know that he sees it." - William Dean Howells
"The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated, except by those whose feelings are withered by vitiated society. Holy, simple, and beautiful in its construction, it is the emblem of all we can imagine of fidelity and truth." - Washington Irving
"There is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir... fitful influences from beyond leak in, showing otherwise unverifiable common connection." - William James
"We know that we are not limited by the accident of our birth or the timing of it, and we recognize the truth that we have always been around. We can reinhabit time and own our story as a species. We were present back there in the fireball and the rains that streamed down on this still molten planet, and in the primordial seas. We remember that in our mother’s womb, where we wear vestigial gills and tail and fins for hands. We remember that. That information is in us and there is a deep, deep kinship in us, beneath the outer layers of our neocortex or what we learned in school. There is a deep wisdom, a bondedness with our creation, and an ingenuity far beyond what we think we have. And when we expand our notions of what we are to include this story, we will have a wonderful time and we will survive." - Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy
"If there be aught surpassing human deed or word or thought it is a mother’s love!" - Marchioness de Spadara
"Beauty does not lie in the face. It lies in the harmony between man and his industry. Beauty is expression. When I paint a mother I try to render her beautiful by the mere look she gives her child." - Kate Millet, Katherine Murray Millett
"Visible creation in time, or nature... does not exist of itself. It is not the cause of itself, but is an ever-changing copy of something which lies behind appearances. The recipient, or mother, is three-dimensional space, which must be empty of all properties in order to receive the impress of the model. The copy is in time. The model (idea) is outside our space and time." - Maurice Nicoll
"It is this earth that, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born; it is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is never found an enemy of man." - Pliny the Younger, full name Casus Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo NULL
"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." - Margaret Sanger, fully Margaret Higgins Sanger Slee
"The ideal mother, like the ideal marriage, is a fiction." - Milton R. Sapirstein
"Necessity is the mother of invention." - Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of children." - William Makepeace Thackeray
"A mother once asked a clergyman when she should begin the education of her child which she told him was then four years old. “madam,” was the reply, “you have lose three years already. From the very first smile that gleams over the infant’s cheek, your opportunity begins." - Richard Whately
"You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother’s bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stones! Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again. You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it, and be rich like white men, but how dare I cut my mother’s hair? I want my people to stay with me here. All the dead men will come to life again. Their spirits will come to their bodies again. We must wait here in the homes of our fathers and be ready to meet them in the bosom of our mother." - Wovoka, aka Jack Wilson NULL
"You tell us that baptism is absolutely necessary to go to heaven. If there were a man so good that he had never offended God, and if he died without baptism, would he go to hell, never having given any offense to God? If he goes to hell, then God must not love all good people, since He throws one into the fire. You teach us that God existed before the creation of heaven and earth. If He did, where did He live, since there was neither heaven nor earth? You say that the angels were created n the beginning of the world, and that those who disobeyed were cast into hell. How can that be so, since you say the angels sinned before earth’s creation, and hell is in the depths of the earth? You declare that those who go to hell do not come out of it, and yet you relate stories of the damned who have appeared in the world - how is that to be understood. Ah, how I would like to kill devils, since they do so much harm! But if they are made like men and some are even among men, do they still feel the fire of hell? Why is it that they do not repent for having offended God? If they did repent, would not God be merciful to them? If Our Lord has suffered for all sinners, why do not they receive pardon from him? You say that the virgin, mother of Jesus Christ, is not God, and that she has never offended God. You also say that her Son has redeemed all men, and atoned for all; but if she has done nothing wrong, her son could not redeem her nor atone for her." - Young “Savage” Seminarians NULL
"True knowledge is the mother of deed." - Leopold Zunz
"The religion of a child depends on what its mother and father are, and not on what they say." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"The mother said, “This is a better day than the last, for my children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage. Today I have given them strength... This is the best day of all, for I have shown my children God... I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know that the end is better than the beginning, for my children can walk alone, and their children after them.” And the children said, “You will always walk with us, Mother, even when you have gone through the gates.”" - Temple Bailey, born Irene Temple Bailey
"As long as anger lives, she continues to be the fruitful mother of many unhappy children." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites
"The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother and to become fully independent." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"For the seeker, contrast is the mother of clarity." - Os Guiness
"The mother’s face and voice are the first conscious objects as the infant soul unfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of God to her child." - Granville Stanley Hall
"For governing a country well thee is nothing better than moderation. The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas. Tolerant like the sky, all-pervading like sunlight, firm like a mountain, supple like a tree in the wind, he has no destination in view and makes use of anything life happens to bring his way. Nothing is impossible for him. Because he has let go, he can care for the people’s welfare as a mother cares for her child." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Supported by the authority of all institutions, parenthood has come to amount to little more than a campaign against individuality. Every father and every mother trembles lest an offspring, in act or thought, should be different from his fellows; and the smallest display of uniqueness in a child becomes the signal for the application of drastic measures aimed at stamping out that small fire of noncompliance by which personal distinctness is expressed. In an atmosphere of anxiety, in a climate of apprehension, the parental conspiracy against children is planned." - Robert M. Linder, fully Robert Mitchell Linder
"These are our times and our responsibilities. Every human being has a sacred duty to protect the welfare of our Mother Earth, from whom all life comes. In order to do this we must recognize the enemy -- the one within us. We must begin with ourselves." - Leon Shenendoah, elected Tadodaho, aka Chief Leon Shenendoah
"Heaven is my Father, the earth my mother, and even a tiny creature such as myself finds an intimate place in their midst. In everything that moves throughout the universe, I see my own body, and in everything that governs the universe, my own soul. All men are my brethren, and all things my companions." - Zhang Zai, also Chang Tsai
"The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity." - Francis Maitland Balfour
"A Humanist Code of Ethics: Do no harm to the earth, she is your mother. Being is more important than having. Never promote yourself at another's expense. Hold life sacred; treat it with reverence. Allow each person the dignity of his or her labor." - Arthur Dobrin
"Diligence is the Mother of Good luck." - Benjamin Franklin
"The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity." - Benjamin Franklin
"If a mother respects both herself and her child from his very first day onward, she will never need to teach him respect for others." - Alice Duer Miller
"Education does not commence with the alphabet; it begins with a mother's look, with a father's nod of approbation, or a sign of reproof; with a sister's gentle pressure of the hand, or a brother's noble act of forbearance; with handfuls of flowers in green dells, on hills, and daisy meadows; with birds' nests admired, but not touched; with creeping ants, and almost imperceptible emmets; with humming-bees and glass beehives; with pleasant walks in shady lanes, and with thoughts directed in sweet and kindly tones and words to nature, to beauty, to acts of benevolence, to deeds of virtue, and to the source of all good to God Himself!" - Author Unknown NULL
"Silence is the mother of Truth." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all things as they must live together, like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father." - Black Elk, formallly Heȟáka Sápa NULL
"Each day, say ‘thank you’ for being alive. Each day, take responsibility for your physical performance. Each day, be careful of human nature [your own and others’]. Each day, behold the wonder of Mother nature." - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"Poverty is the mother of crime." - Cassiodorus, fully Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator NULL
"If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases." - Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat
"The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases." - Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat
"Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it...Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars. We shall all be alike - brothers of one father and one mother, with only the sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all." - Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat
"As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder." - Coretta Scott King
"Can you imagine how painful and tough it would be, trying to be wise all the time? Thank God none of us try. Or trying to be good and pure all the time: Sir Lancelot or Mother Teresa? What a burden! I am sure Mother Teresa doesn’t try to be good. She just does what she has to do. That is the secret of great people, they just do what they have to do." - Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
"Sickness is the mother of modesty, as it puts us in mind of our mortality, and while we drive on heedlessly in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear, and brings us to a sense of our duty." - Edmund Burke