birth quotes
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. He laid us as we lay at birth 31 On the cool flowery lap of earth.
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arousethesleeper, toshakethe complacent pillars ofthe world.He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, and shows the world its present, and points the way to its new birth.He isat oncetheproduct and thepreceptorof his time.
Perfect happiness, by princes sought, Is not with birth born, nor exchequers bought.
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the Earth And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
Say, lingering fair! why comes the birth Of your brave soul so slowly forth?
Dost thou not know that love respects no blood, Cares not for difference of birth or state?
I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appals. 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.
But set down This, set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.
Birth, and copulation, and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks: Birth, and copulation, and death. I've been born, and once is enough.
The knowledge that you can have is inexhaustible, and what is inexhaustible is benevolent. The knowledge that you cannot have is of the riddles of birth and death, of our future destinyand the purposes of God. Here there is no knowledge, but illusions that restrict freedom and limit hope. Accept the mystery behind knowledge: It is not darkness but shadow.
Whereas my birth and spirit rather took The way that takes the town; Thou didst betray me to a lingering book, And wrap me in a gown.
Land of our birth, we pledge to thee Our love and toil in the years to be; When we are grown and take our place, As men and women with our race.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.
Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois e ve nements: na|"tre, vivre et mourir. Il ne se sent pas na|"tre, il souffre a' mourir, et il oublie de vivre. There are only three great events for a person: to be born, to liveand to die.He doesnot feel his own birth, he suffers upon death and he forgets to live.
At its birth, the republic gave voice to three wordsLiberty,Equality,Fraternity! If Europeiswiseand just, each of those words signifies Peace.
To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
La naissance n'est rien o u' la vertu n'est pas. Birth counts for little when virtue is lacking.
Il faut pleurer les hommes a' leur naissance, et non pas a' leur mort. A person should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.
Ich sage euch: man muss noch Chaos in sich haben, um einem tanzenden Stern geb a« ren zu k o« nnen. I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.
Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language: it isthe condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it. On that definition Swift ismore Irishthan Goldsmith or Sheridan, although by the usual tests they are Irish and he is pure English.
Nec species sua cuique manet, rerumque novatrix ex aliis alias reddit natura figuras. nec perit in toto quidquam, mihi credite, mundo, sed variat faciemque novat, nascique vocatur incipere esse aliud, quam quod fuit ante, morique, desinere illud idem. cum sint huc forsitan illa, haec translata illuc, summa tamen omnia constant. No species remains constant: that great renovator of matter Nature, endlessly fashions new forms from old: there's nothing in the whole universe that perishes, believe me; rather it renews and varies its substance. What we describe as birth isno morethan incipient change froma prior state, while dying is merely to quit it. Though the parts may be transported hither and thither, the sum of all matter is constant.
With each generation the entire race passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing withtheindeliblemarks ofthat mould upon it, that as the os cervix of woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms a ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human headso exactly the intellectual capacity, the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms also an untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive generation the limits of expansion of the human race. 720
Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, And ever-changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?
'Tis no shame for men Of his high birth to love a wench; his honour May privilege more sins. Next to a woman, He loves a running-horse.
Like giving dry birth to a porcupine.
I amso far likethemidwifethat I cannot myself give birth to wisdom, and the common reproach is true, that, though I question others,I can myself bring nothing to light because there is no wisdom in me.
Dost thou look back on what hath been, As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began And on a simple village green; Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance, And grapples with his evil star.
There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.
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 cometh 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: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his wayattended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.
Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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