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
Birth was the death of him.
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish Novelist, Playwright
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
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
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
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
We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.
—Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) British Historian
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
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
What a strange thing is the propagation of life! A bubble of seed which may be spilt in a whore’s lap, or in the orgasm of a voluptuous dream, might (for aught we know) have formed a Caesar or a Bonaparte—there is nothing remarkable recorded of their sires, that I know of.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
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
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
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
We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
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
A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.
—Georges Gurdjieff (1877–1949) Armenian Spiritual Leader, Occultist
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
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
—Florynce Kennedy (1916–2000) American Lawyer, Activist, Author
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, hath had elsewhere its setting, and comet from afar: not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
What is birth to a man if it be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such an offspring?
—Philip Sidney (1554–86) English Soldier Poet, Courtier
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
These wretched babies don’t come until they are ready.
—Queen Elizabeth II (1926–2022) Queen of United Kingdom
Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German Literary and Marxist Critic
Behold, I was shapened in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. Pregnancies are damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it’s the cloud of uncertainty forever hanging over these events that darkens a husband’s mood.
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Writer
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
Our birth is nothing but our death begun, as tapers waste the moment they take fire.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
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
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
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