Much has been written about mothers. This is not surprising since none of us would be here without them. No one can make you feel more loved or guilty than a mom. We welcome their protection and affection as children, often rebel against them as adolescents, and grow to appreciate their wisdom when we reach childbearing age ourselves.

So on this Mother’s Day we offer for your edification some illuminating, amusing and touching observations about moms.

Men who reached the loftiest heights put their mom’s on the highest pedestal.

“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her,” said our first president, George Washington, about his mother, Mary Ball Washington.

Not to be outdone, another of the nation’s greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, said of his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln: “All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” Abe was only 9 years old when he lost his angel, poisoned when she drank milk from a cow that had ingested a toxic plant.

The current occupant of the White House, President Barack Obama, looks back with awe at Stanley Ann Dunham’s strength in raising him as a single mom. “My mother was the one constant in my life. When I think about my mom raising me alone when she was 20, and working and paying the bills … I think (it) is a feat that is unmatched.”

The king of basketball, his Airness, Michael Jordan, said his mother, Dolores Jordan, gave him the gift of thinking big. “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.”

Others look at the lot of mothers, and the tasks they balance in maintaining a house, a job, and everyone’s schedules, with respectful good humor.

“Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help mom do the dishes,” observed political journalist and satirist, P.J. O’Rourke.

“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?” stand-up comic Milton Berle would ask his audiences.

“God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers,” concluded author and poet Rudyard Kipling.

Then there is the topic of a mother’s love.

“Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world, a mother’s love is not,” wrote Irish novelist James Joyce.

“Mother’s love is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. If it is there, it is like a blessing; if it is not there, it is as if all the beauty has gone out of life,” observed the Indian spiritualist, Amit Ray.

“Mothers are the people who love us for no good reason. And those of us who are mothers know it’s the most exquisite love of all,” said social conservative commentator Maggie Gallagher.

This is why contemporary American author Jodi Lynn Picoult, wrote, “The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms.”

In appreciation of that special place they hold in our lives, we wish a happy Mother’s Day to all moms.