▲"Motherhood: all love begins and ends there." - Robert Downing

▲"As my mom always said, 'You'd rather have smile lines than frown lines.'" - Cindy Crawford

▲"A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path." - Agatha Christie

▲"God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers." - Rudyard Kipling

▲"Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you." - Louisa May Alcott

▲"I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life." - Abraham Lincoln

▲"A mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s." - Princess Diana

▲"To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow." - Maya Angelou

▲"A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them." - Victor Hugo

▲"My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted the seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind." - Michael Jordan

▲"My mother is a walking miracle." - Leonardo DiCaprio

▲"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not." - James Joyce

▲"Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark… to have been loved so deeply... will give us some protection forever." - J.K. Rowling

▲"I unapologetically and unabashedly am deeply biased toward my mother." - Chelsea Clinton

▲"[Motherhood is] the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It’s huge and scary—it’s an act of infinite optimism." - Gilda Radner

▲"When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child." - Sophia Loren

▲"Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials." - Meryl Streep

▲"Because I feel that, in the Heavens above
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love
None so devotional as that of 'Mother.'" - Edgar Allen Poe

▲"Having children just puts the whole world into perspective. Everything else just disappears." - Kate Winslet

▲"[My mother] always said I was beautiful and I finally believed her at some point." - Lupita Nyong’o

▲"Mothers possess a power beyond that of a king on his throne." - Mabel Hale

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

▲"The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness." - Honoré de Balzac

▲And to everyone out there who didn't have to give birth to become mothers: "Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother." - Oprah Winfrey

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"Personally, becoming a mother has been such a rewarding and wonderful experience." - Kate Middleton

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"Having kids—the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings—is the biggest job anyone can embark on." - Maria Shriver

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"My favorite thing about being a mom is just what a better person it makes you on a daily basis." - Drew Barrymore

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"Motherhood is the most completely humbling experience I've ever had. It puts you in your place, because it really forces you to address the issues that you claim to believe in — and if you can't stand up to those principles when you're raising a child, forget it." - Diane Keaton

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"Mothers and their children are in a category all their own. There’s no bond so strong in the entire world. No love so instantaneous and forgiving." - Gail Tsukiyama

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

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"Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything." - William Macneile Dixon

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"I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know." - Mitch Albom

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"The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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"Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved." - Eric Fromm

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"It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?" - Mahatma Gandhi

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"There is such a special sweetness in being able to participate in creation." - Pamela S. Nadav

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"All those cliches, those things you hear about having a baby and motherhood - all of them are true. And all of them are the most beautiful things you will ever experience." - Penélope Cruz

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"That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub, Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in." - Lauryn Hill

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"Motherhood was the great equaliser for me; I started to identify with everybody." - Annie Lennox

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"Motherhood is filled with magical little moments that bring you immense joy." - Namrata Shirodkar

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"Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face." Novelist George Eliot wrote these words in Victorian-era England, about a century and a half ago, but they will always ring true. Very few things are as visceral as the bond between a mother and a baby, regardless of species. To celebrate this special bond, click through the gallery and check out these beautiful animal mothers loving on their babies.