It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.
Birth was the death of him.
Behold, I was shapened in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. [Psalms 51:5]
— Bible
We are brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
— Bible
My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt; helpless, naked, piping loud, like a fiend hid in a cloud.
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.
Every person is a God in embryo. Its only desire is to be born.
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.
Abortion is a skillfully marketed product sold to women at a crisis time in their life. If the product is defective, she can't return it for a refund.
The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.
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.
What is this talked-of mystery of birth but being mounted bareback on the earth?
A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.
I like trying [to get pregnant]. I'm not so sure about childbirth.
Born to be wild -- live to outgrow it.
Although it is generally known, I think it's about time to announce that I was born at a very early age.
The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution -- this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.
Compassion and shame come over one who considers how precarious is the origin of the proudest of living beings: often the smell of a lately extinguished lamp is enough to cause a miscarriage. And to think that from such a frail beginning a tyrant or butcher may be born! You who trust in your physical strength, who embrace the gifts of fortune and consider yourself not their ward but their son, you who have a domineering spirit, you who consider yourself a god as soon as success swells your breast, think how little could have destroyed you!
Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.
— Plutarch
I came to the place of my birth and cried, The friends of my youth, where are they? And echo answered, Where are they?
And when our baby stirs and struggles to be born it compels humility: what we began is now its own.
We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.
When we are born we cry that we are come.. to this great stage of fools.
Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.
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.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.