Motherhood

I desire to be a mother--

if only to give food to the craving activity of my soul...

Maternity is an enterprise in which

I have opened an enormous stake...

Motherhood will develop my energy, enlarge my heart,

and compensate me for all things by infinite joys!

--Honore de Balzac, Memoirs of Two Young Married Women (1894)


And so our mothers and grandmothers have,

more often than not anonymously,

handed on the creative spark,

the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see

-- or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

--Alice Walker


There is no way to be a perfect mother,

and a million ways to be a good one.

--Jill Churchill


A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future

but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

--Honore de Balzac