Birth Quotes - Page 32

• "A child!" said Edith, looking at her. "When was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman - artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men - before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight."

  Charles Dickens

  Children, Character, Pride

  Charles Dickens (1867). “Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].”, p.245

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• Dombey and Son had often dealt in hides, but never in hearts. They left that fancy ware to boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr. Dombey would have reasoned: That a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner in such a house, could not fail to awaken a glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her sex.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Girl, Sex

  1846-8 Dombey and Son, ch.1.

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• But to measure cause and effect... you must ensure that a simple correlation, however tempting it may be, is not mistaken for a cause. In the 1990s the stork population of Germany increased and the German at-home birth rate rose as well. Shall we credit storks for airlifting the babies?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Baby, Home, Simple

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• My mother's idea of natural childbirth was giving birth without makeup. She was hyper-positive - the world is a wonderful place, rainbows and unicorns. If you said anything contrary to her, you were basically exiled.

  Robin Williams

  Mother, Makeup, Ideas

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• Just previous to the birth of my little son, my mind gave way and my child was born in the asylum for the insane at Stockton, Cal. My boy was buried there.

  Belle Boyd

  Children, Son, Boys

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• So many words commonly used to describe childbirth-support, patient, management, delivered by, coached, helped, guided-suggest that a woman does not have the power to give birth without being dependent on somebody else. This isn't the case at all.

  Michel Odent

  Giving, Support, Doe

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• If birth matters, midwives matter. In Europe, there are hospitals where the cesarean rate is less than 10%, and you'll find midwives in these hospitals, you'll see a lot less re-admissions with infections and complications, and you'll see a lot less injury to mothers.

  Ina May Gaskin

  Mother, Europe, Cesarean

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• The best a health care system can do is to equip itself to meet the needs of each individual woman and birth. Those needs run the gamut from undisturbed home birth to planned cesarean section.

  Ina May Gaskin

  Running, Home, Needs

  "Global Motherhood: Birth Freedom or Birth Totalitarianism?" by Ina May Gaskin, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 23, 2012.

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• Christ's resurrection is the ground-work of our hope. And the new birth is our title or evidence of our interest in it.

  John Flavel

  Titles, Resurrection, Christ

  John Flavel (1836). “The Fountain of Life Opened; Or, A Display of Christ in His Essential and Mediatorial Glory. 1671”, p.405

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• For God, nothing is impossible. And, if he wanted, in the future women would give birth from their ears.

  Francois Rabelais

  God, Faith, Giving

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• Gargantua, at the age of four hundred four score and forty- four years begat his son Pantagruel, from his wife, named Badebec, daughter of the King of the Amaurotes in Utopia, who died in child-birth: because he was marvelously huge and so heavy that he could not come to light without suffocating his mother.

  Francois Rabelais

  Death, Daughter, Mother

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• I do not correct my first imaginings by my second--well, yes, perhaps a word or so, but only to vary, not to delete. I want to represent the course of my humors and I want people to see each part at its birth.

  Michel de Montaigne

  People, Want, Firsts

  Michel de Montaigne (1979). “Essays”

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• Religion is a self-conferred intellectual decision; it's not something you get at birth and is unchangeable. You're collusive with the religion when you accept it; you have a choice.

  George Carlin

  Self, Choices, Decision

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• Whatever each individual woman is facing; only she knows her biggest challenge. However, if we add up the problems that affect the biggest numbers of women, then issues having to do with physical safety and reproduction are still the biggest. Female bodies are still the battleground, whether that means restricting freedom, birth control and safe abortion in order to turn them into factories, or abandoning female infants because females are less valuable for everything other than reproduction.

  Gloria Steinem

  Mean, Order, Numbers

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• Women well understood how to restrict birth through timing of sexual intercourse, herbs and abortifacients. I suspect the focus on men's control of women as the means of reproduction came later, in the last five percent or so of human history, with the idea of children as property and labor. One needed to have as many as possible, never mind about women's health or mobility or brainpower. Women's freedom was restricted in order to make sure of the paternity and ownership of children.

  Gloria Steinem

  Children, Mean, Men

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• I've always said even the most hardened pro-choice people would be just devastated to watch an actual birth and then watch a baby be killed before their eyes.

  Kevin Sorbo

  Baby, Eye, People

  "Kevin Sorbo on playing John Calvin in “Let the Lion Roar,” plans for a “God’s Not Dead” sequel and his support of the “Gosnell” movie". Interview with John W. Kennedy, www.beliefnet.com.

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• I discovered that some things are written for us. It's not that we can't change our ancestral bearings, or that the path or purpose of any of our lives is really written in stone. But what tends to happen sometimes is the path is so deeply inscribed in the birth that it becomes you and every variation away from it brings you back in ways that you are not controlling.

  Maya Tiwari

  Variation, Stones, Way

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• What saved me then? Nothing but pregnancy. And each time after I had given birth to my work my life hung suspended by a thin thread.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Pregnancy, Creativity, Given

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• Thus do I want man and woman to be: the one fit to wage war and the other fit to give birth, but both fit to dance with head and feet.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Dance, War, Men

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• For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexibleorder gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves.... I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stooping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Music, Hands, Giving

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• Birth means nothing where there is no virtue.

  Moliere

  Mean, Aristocracy, Virtue

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• The use of history is to tell us what we are, for at our birth we are nearly empty vessels and we become what our tradition pours into us.

  Learned Hand

  Empty Vessels, History, Use

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

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• And if joy were not on the earth,
  There were an end of change and birth,
  And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die,
  And in some gloomy barrow lie
  Folded like a frozen fly.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Change, Lying

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.368, Simon and Schuster

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• When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Virginia, Parent, Climate

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.126, Rowman & Littlefield

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• I have always felt that too much time was given before the birth, which is spent learning things like how to breathe in and out with your husband (I had my baby when they gave you a shot in the hip and you didn't wake up until the kid was ready to start school), and not enough time given to how to mother after the baby is born.

  Erma Bombeck

  Mother, Baby, Husband

  Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.167, Open Road Media

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