Paintings: Mother and child

"My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance

but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, 

unable to go to school, were more educated 

and more intelligent than college professors."

- Maya Angelou

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Juene Fille et Enfant mi corps

"I think, at a child's birth,

if a mother could ask a fairy godmother

to endow it with the most useful gift,

that gift should be curiosity."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Maternal admiration (1869)

"Children are a great comfort in your old age

– and they help you reach it faster, too." 

- Lionel Kauffman

Hippolyte Camille Delpy - Mother and child in the garden

"A mother takes twenty years

to make a man of her boy,

and another woman makes a fool

of him in twenty minutes."
- Robert Frost

Frederick Warren Freer - Mother and Child Reading

"Insanity is hereditary; 

you get it from your children."
- Sam Levenson

An interlude by William Sergeant Kendall

"If you’ve never been hated by your child,

you’ve never been a parent."
- Bette Davis

Gustav Klimt - Mother and child

"Children seldom misquote. 

In fact, they usually repeat word for word

what you shouldn’t have said."
- Author Unknown

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Young mother gazing at her child (1871)

"There are no seven wonders

of the world in the eyes of a child.

There are seven million."
- Walt Streightiff

Frederick Goodall - Mother and child

"There are three ways to get something done:

do it yourself, employ someone, or forbid your children to do it."
- Monta Crane

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Bunch of Grapes (1868)

"It is not that I half knew my mother.

I knew half of her: the lower half 

- her lap, legs, feet, her hands and wrists 

as she bent forward."
- Flann O'Brien

Leon Jean Basile Perrault - A mother with her sleeping child

"Women as the guardians of children possess a great power.

They are the molders of their children's personalities

and the arbiters of their development."
- Ann Oakley

Leighton - Mother and Child

 "Whenever I'm with my mother,

I feel as though I have to spend the whole time

avoiding land mines."
- Amy Tan

Renoir, Pierre-Auguste - Mother and child (1881)

 "The joys of motherhood are never fully experienced

until the children are in bed."
- Author Unknown

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Lullaby

 "Before becoming a mother

I had a hundred theories on how to bring up children.

Now I have seven children and only one theory:

love them, especially when they least deserve to be loved."
- Kate Samperi

Frederick Richard Pickersgill - Mother and child with a poppy

"Motherhood brings as much joy as ever,

but it still brings boredom, exhaustion, and sorrow too.

Nothing else ever will make you as happy or as sad,

as proud or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard

as helping a person develop his own individuality

especially while you struggle to keep your own."

- Marguerite Kelly and Elia Parsons

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Rest (1879)

"What you teach your own children

is what you really believe in."
- Cathy Warner Weatherford

Marry Cassatt - Mother and child

Marry Cassatt - Mother and child (1900)

"Our children are not going to be just "our children"

- they are going to be other people's husbands

and wives and the parents of our grandchildren."
 Mary S Calderone

Shriya Das - Mother and child

 "Love your children with all your hearts,

love them enough to discipline them before it is too late...

Praise them for important things,

even if you have to stretch them a bit.

Praise them a lot. They live on it like bread and butter

and they need it more than bread and butter."
- Lavina Christensen Fugal

William Adolphe Bouguereau  - Maternal admiration

 "If I had my child to raise over again
I’d build self-esteem first and the house later
I’d finger paint more and point the finger less
I would do less correcting and more connecting
I’d take my eyes off my watch and watch with my eyes
I would care to know less and know to care more
I’d take more hikes and fly more kites
I’d stop playing serious and seriously play
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars
I’d do more hugging and less tugging
I’d see the oak tree in the acorn more often
I would be firm less often and affirm much more
I’d model less about the love of power
And more about the power of love."
– Diane Loomans