By far the most common craving of pregnant women is not to be pregnant.
—Phyllis Diller (b.1917) American Actor, Comedian
A great joy is coming
—Unknown
Being pregnant is an occupational hazard of being a wife.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
I positively think that ladies who are always enceinte quite disgusting; it is more like a rabbit or guinea-pig than anything else and really it is not very nice.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but it catches fire again every time a child is born
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
The canvas glow’d beyond ev’n Nature warm, The pregnant quarry teem’d with human form.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
A ship under sail and a big-bellied woman, Are the handsomest two things that can be seen common
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
If men were equally at risk from this condition – if they knew their bellies might swell as if they were suffering from end-stage cirrhosis, that they would have to go nearly a year without a stiff drink, a cigarette, or even an aspirin, that they would be subject to fainting spells and unable to fight their way onto commuter trains – then I am sure that pregnancy would be classified as a sexually transmitted disease and abortions would be no more controversial than emergency appendectomies
—Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–2022) American Social Critic, Essayist
Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped
—Sam Levenson (1911–80) American Humorist, Writer, TV Personality, Journalist
A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy—the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born babe, and assures it of a mother’s love.
—Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian Author, Humorist, Jurist
Over the last decade or so ‘wars’ have been proclaimed, in turn, on teen pregnancy, dropping out, drugs, and most recently violence. The trouble with such campaigns, though, is that they come too late, after the targeted problem has reached epidemic proportions and taken firm root in the lives of the young. They are crisis intervention, the equivalent of solving a problem by sending an ambulance to the rescue rather than giving an inoculation that would ward off the disease in the first place. Instead of more such ‘wars,’ what we need is to follow the logic of prevention, offering our children the skills for facing life that will increase their chances of avoiding any and all of these fates
—Daniel Goleman (b.1946) American Psychologist, Author, Science Journalist
Telegram to a friend who had just become a mother after a prolonged pregnancy: Good work, Mary. We all knew you had it in you
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
There’s only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.
—Common Proverb
Love and pregnancy and riding on a camel cannot be hid
—Arabic Proverb
No language can express the power and beauty and heroism and majesty of a mother’s love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over the wastes of worldly fortune sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star in heaven.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–80) American Preacher, Poet
If Nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternately, there would never be more than three in a family.
—Laurence Housman (1865–1959) English Novelist, Dramatist, Illustrator
God’s interest in the human race is nowhere better evinced than in obstetrics
—Martin H. Fischer
Everything grows rounder and wider and weirder, and I sit here in the middle of it all and wonder who in the world you will turn out to be.
—Carrie Fisher (1956–2016) American Actress, Author
Back in the days when men were hunters and chest beaters and women spent their whole lives worrying about pregnancy or dying in childbirth, they often had to be taken against their will. Men complained that women were cold, unresponsive, frigid. They wanted their women wanton. They wanted their women wild. Now women were finally learning to be wanton and wild—and what happened?. The men wilted.
—Erica Jong (b.1942) American Novelist, Feminist
I begin to love this creature,
and to anticipate her birth
as a fresh twist to a knot,
which I do not wish to untie
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) English Writer, Feminist
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
—Florynce Kennedy (1916–2000) American Lawyer, Civil Rights Leader, Feminist, Activist
Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
If men were equally at risk from this condition—if they knew their bellies might swell as if they were suffering from end-stage cirrhosis, that they would have to go nearly a year without a stiff drink, a cigarette, or even an aspirin, that they would be subject to fainting spells and unable to fight their way onto commuter trains—then I am sure that pregnancy would be classified as a sexually transmitted disease and abortions would be no more controversial than emergency appendectomies.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–2022) American Social Critic, Essayist
Most of a modest woman’s life was spent, after all, in denying what, in one day at least of every year, was made obvious.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
There is no friendship, no love, like that of a mother for her child.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
Life is magic, the way nature works seems to be quite magical
—Jonas Salk (1914–95) American Microbiologist
With every rising of the sun, Think of your life as just begun. The past has shrived and buried deep All yesterdays; there let them sleep. Concern yourself with but today, Woo it, and teach it to obey Your will and wish. Since time began Today has been the friend of man; But in his blindness and his sorrow, He looks to yesterday and tomorrow. You, and today! a soul sublime, And the great pregnant hour of time, With God himself to bind the twain! Go forth, I say-attain, attain! With God himself to bind the twain!
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American Poet, Journalist
A grand adventure is about to begin
—A. A. Milne (1882–1956) British Humorist, Playwright, Children’s Writer
It is said that the present is pregnant with the future
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
Everything in woman hath a solution. It is called pregnancy.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
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