quotations about birth
I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers to the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the beginning from the shape of later events.
DIANE SETTERFIELD
The Thirteenth Tale
There is no insurance against the accident of birth.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
I erupt from the dark, crushing tunnel into a flash of light and noise. A new kind of air surrounds me, dry and cold, as they wipe the last smears of home off my skin. I feel a sharp pain as they snip something, and suddenly I am less. I am no one but myself, tiny and feeble and utterly alone. I am lifted and swungthrough great heights across yawning distances, and given to Her. She wraps around me, so much bigger and softer than I ever imagined from inside,and I strain my eyes open. I see Her. She is immense, cosmic. She is the world. The world smiles down on me, and when She speaks it’s the voice of God, vast and resonant with meaning, but words unknowable, ringing gibberish in my blank white mind.
ISAAC MARION
Warm Bodies
There are two most powerful days in your life: the day you're born, and the day you discover why.
BONIFACE MWANGI
TEDGlobal speech, "The day I stood up alone", 2014
Birth is a shipwreck, the mewling infant shored on unknown land.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death.
THICH NHAT HANH
The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
Love in the Time of Cholera
When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half.
GRACIE ALLEN
attributed, The Greatest Quotations of All Time
A man is not completely born until he be dead.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
letter to Miss E. Hubbard, February 23, 1756
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Waiting for Godot
The so-called miracle of birth is nature getting her own way.
CAMILLE PAGLIA
Sexual Personae
The birth of all things is weak and tender; and therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Essays
Because they've either conveniently forgotten with time or they're trying to be supportive, most mothers won't tell you how hard pregnancy (and then childbirth) can be. Let me tell you, it is. It's brutal sometimes! But, if I did it, ANYONE can do it. I mean, I always knew I was meant to do something really BIG in life, and now I know that this was it. Screw winning an Academy Award someday ... I GAVE BIRTH!
JENNY MCCARTHY
Belly Laughs
I have personally come to believe that childbirth is a blessing to women sent straight from God. I mean, in its purest form, birth is the most fantastic orgasm married with a miracle! What more heavenly gift could there be?
LAURIE ANNIS MORGAN
The Power of Pleasurable Childbirth
Having a baby is like taking your lower lips and forcing them over your head.
CAROL BURNETT
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Humor
The process of giving birth is a totally life-changing event. That applies to both parents to a certain extent, but for women the change is physical, emotional and spiritual. They are no longer the same, even if the baby does not survive or is handed to another. Even if they regain their pre-pregnant shape, they will never again be the same person.
JENNIFER HALL
"Blood and Straw,", ThirdWay, Dec. 2002
We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other.
STEPHEN KING
Danse Macabre
My mother groaned, my father wept,
into the dangerous world I leapt.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"Infant Sorrow"