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
He plough’d her, and she cropp’d.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
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
For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
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
Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.
—Andy Warhol (1928–87) American Painter, Printmaker, Film Personality
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
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
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
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 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
These wretched babies don’t come until they are ready.
—Queen Elizabeth II (1926–2022) Queen of United Kingdom
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
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
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
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
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
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
There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
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
What is this talked-of mystery of birth but being mounted bareback on the earth?
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
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
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
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
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
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
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
I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim… lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German Literary and Marxist Critic
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