We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity…. But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.
—Meister Eckhart (c.1260–1327) German Christian Mystic
I’m hurt, hurt and humiliated beyond endurance, seeing the wheat ripening, the fountains never ceasing to give water, the sheep bearing hundreds of lambs, the she-dogs, until it seems the whole country rises to show me its tender sleeping young while I feel two hammer-blows here instead of the mouth of my child.
—Federico Garcia Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish Poet
Willful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement. No man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other cause, and retain his or her self-respect.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Historian, Political Leader, Explorer
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
Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.
—Erich Fromm (1900–80) German-American Psychoanalyst, Social Philosopher
Although it is generally known, I think it’s about time to announce that I was born at a very early age.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life’s over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
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
The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
It would be one of the greatest triumphs of humanity, one of the most tangible liberations from the constraints of nature to which mankind is subject, if we could succeed in raising the responsible act of procreating children to the level of a deliberate and intentional activity and in freeing it from its entanglement with the necessary satisfaction of a natural need.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition.
—Thomas Browne (1605–82) English Author, Physician
The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Birth was the death of him.
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish Novelist, Playwright
I have learned to judge of men by their own deeds, and not to make the accident of birth the standard of their merit.
—Sarah Josepha Hale (1788–1879) American Poet
When real nobleness accompanies the imaginary one of birth, the imaginary mixes with the real and becomes real too.
—George Greville, 2nd Earl of Warwick (1746–1816) British Nobleman, Politician
He plough’d her, and she cropp’d.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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
Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible.
—Samuel Butler
High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem toward those who receive it, since it costs them neither study nor labor.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt; helpless, naked, piping loud, like a fiend hid in a cloud.
—William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker
I came to the place of my birth and cried, “The friends of my youth, where are they?” And echo answered, “Where are they?”
—Arabic Proverb
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
—Florynce Kennedy (1916–2000) American Lawyer, Activist, Author
Those who have nothing else to recommend them to the respect of others but only their blood, cry it up at a great rate, and have their mouths perpetually full of it.—By this mark they commonly distinguish themselves; but you may depend upon it there is no good bottom, nothing of the true worth of their own when they insist so much and set their credit on that of others.
—Pierre Charron (1541–1603) French Preacher, Philosopher
The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution—this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.
—Margaret Oliphant (1828–97) Scottish Author
What is this talked-of mystery of birth but being mounted bareback on the earth?
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
I have no conscience, none, but I would not like to bring a soul into this world. When it sinned and when it suffered something like a dead hand would fall on me,—“You did it, you, for your own pleasure you created this thing! See your work!” If it lived to be eighty it would always hang like a millstone round my neck, have the right to demand good from me, and curse me for its sorrow. A parent is only like to God: if his work turns out bad so much the worse for him; he dare not wash his hands of it. Time and years can never bring the day when you can say to your child, “Soul, what have I to do with you?”
—Olive Schreiner (1855–1920) South African Writer, Feminist
I don’t know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.
—Annie Dillard (b.1945) Essayist, Novelist, Poet, Naturalist, Mystic
Luckless is the country in which the symbols of procreation are the objects of shame, while the agents of destruction are honored! And yet you call that member your pudendum, or shameful part, as if there were anything more glorious than creating life, or anything more atrocious than taking it away.
—Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–55) French Soldier, Duelist, Writer
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