Birth and Death
Birth and Death
 Birth and Death (172) |
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| Birth (55) |
Death (117) |
Was she old? When they lit all the candles on her birthday cake, six people were overcome with the heat.
I recently turned sixty. Practically a third of my life is over.
We're born and then we die, what will you do in the meantime?
Happy Birthday, Johnny,
Live beyond your income,
Travel for enjoyment,
Follow your own nose.
For man's greatest crime is to have been born.
There's a sucker born every minute.
You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
My mother groan'd, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you get un-birthday presents ... And only one for birthday presents, you know.
For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals from the moment of conception until death.
Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you'll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you'll eat yourself.
There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it.
Through a dull tract of woe, of dread,
The toiling year has pass'd and fled:
And, lo! in sad and pensive strain,
I sing my birth-day date again.
We are all born naked and young.
A mountain in labour shouted so loud that everyone, summoned by the noise, ran up expecting that she would be delivered of a city bigger than Paris; she brought forth a mouse.
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
Every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
Man tell us our lives are free of danger. We stay at home. They go to war. Rubbish. I'd rather face three assaults. In line of battle, than bear one child.
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They came through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
I often think it's comical
How Nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.
There is still no cure for the common birthday.
Good-morrow to the golden morning!
Good-morrow to the world's delight!
I've come to bless thy life's beginning,
That hath made my own so bright!
So mayst thou live, dear! many years,
In all the bliss that life endears,
Not without smiles, nor yet from tears
Too strictly kept:
When first thy infant littleness
I folded in my fond caress,
The greatest proof of happiness
Was this - I wept.
A million million spermatozoa,
All of them alive;
Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah
Dare hope to survive.
And among that billion minus one
Might have chanced to be
Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne -
But the One was Me.
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birth-day hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand any thing in it beyond cake and orange.
Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die.
Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, the morning-stars their ancient music make.
The living are just the dead on holiday.
Now and then there is a person born who is so unlucky that he runs into accidents, which started to happen to somebody else.
In the dark womb where I began
My mother's life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her.
Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.
Man should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
Better mankind born without mouths and stomachs than always to worry about money to buy, to shop, to fix, to cook, to wash, to clean.
At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.
I used to anticipate my childhood birthday parties as if each were an annual coronation. Like most kids, I loved sitting at the head of the table with a crown on my head. In recent years, however, birthdays have been more like medical check-ups - no fun at all but necessary if one intends to stay alive from year to year.
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year: The same energy that God invested in you at birth is present once again.
There's a time when you have to explain to your children why they're born, and it's a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then.
At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
When we are born, we cry that we
are come
To this great stage of fools:
The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.
For every year of life we light
A candle on your cake
To mark the simple sort of progress
Anyone can make,
And then, to test your nerve or give
A proper view of death,
You're asked to blow each light, each year,
Out with your own breath.
If men had to have babies they would only ever have one each.
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
May you live all the days of your life.
There is a great difference between being born wise and only looking it.
We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.
I was born modest, but it didn't last.
I was born on a day God was sick.
Set me as a seal upon thine
heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for
love is strong as death; jealousy
is cruel as the grave: the coals
thereof are coals of fire, which
hath a most vehement flame.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
We're born and then we die, what will you do in the meantime?
Life is a journey, but don't worry, you'll find a parking spot at the end.
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
Nothing, but death.
There's no bad publicity except an obituary.
Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours.
Surprise me!
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
I am about to - or I am going to - die: either expression is correct.
The fence around a cemetery is foolish, for those inside can't come out and those outside don't want to get in.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
Many people's tombstones should read,Died at 30. Buried at 60.
Money is dead men's bones and dead men's souls. The money that men make lives after them.
All tragedies are finish'd by death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage.
Missionary life is simply a chance to die.
Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for the public ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the community, in the form of the state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at death the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life.
The man who dies rich dies disgraced.
For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals from the moment of conception until death.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too.
Journalism largely consists in sayingLord Jones Deadto people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative.
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Swans sing before they die; 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
I have never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, for ever, on my best affections. Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them.
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
How easy it is for a man to die rich, if he will but be contented to live miserable.
It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying which is terrible.
If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading,
Or do things worth the writing.
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
If I die a violent death as some fear and a few are plotting, I know the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassin, not in my dying.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.
Some die because they feel everything, others because they feel nothing. Some are fools because they suffer no regrets, and others because they do.
An illness in stages, a very long flight of steps that led assuredly to death, but whose every step represented a unique apprenticeship. It was a disease that gave death time to live and its victims time to die, time to discover time, and in the end to discover life.
Life is very insistent; and it always seems to be so when friends sadly leave us.
Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Preach! Write! Act! Do any thing, save to lie down and die!
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Only the young die good.
In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Beauty for some provides escape,
Who gain a happiness in eyeing
The gorgeous buttocks of the ape
Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
Don't study the idea to death with experts and committees. Get on with it and see if it works.
Now I have finished with all earthly business, and high time too. Yes, yes, my dear child, now comes death.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in.
Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die.
His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.
I don't know any executive who ever thought about stress, although a lot of other people do. No one ever dies of hard work. But a lot of people die once they retire from an active job.
The living are just the dead on holiday.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control. If you are not honest at all everybody hates you, and if you are absolutely honest you get martyred.
In the dark womb where I began
My mother's life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her.
I always wait for the Times each morning. I look at the obituary column and if I'm not in it, I go to work.
Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.
Nearly all men die of their medicines, and not of their illnesses.
Man should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.
I die the King's good servant, but God's first.
Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.
Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed
He watched the ads
And not the road.
Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease, not hard work.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
I mourn in grey, grey as the sleeted wind the bled shades of twilight, gunmetal, battleships, industrial paint.
I'm not afraid of life and I'm not afraid of death: Dying's the bore.
Cured yesterday of my disease. I died last night of the physician.
You know it takes a year, a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing somebody. That's a true saying.
I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.
It's true hard work never killed anyone but I figure why take the chance?
You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.
One of the blessings of age is to learn not to part on a note of sharpness, to treasure the moments spent with those we love, and to make them whenever possible good to remember, for time is short.
I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
It's not a matter of life and death, it's more important than that!
Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not, I'll die your maid, To be your fellow
You may deny me, but I'll be your servant,
Whether you will or no.
I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;
for grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.
To me and to the state of my great grief
let kings assemble; for my grief's so great
that no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up:
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
I can't stand whispering. Every time a doctor whispers in the hospital, next day there's a funeral.
One evil in old age is that as your time is come you think every little illness is the beginning of the end. When a man expects to be arrested every knock at the door is an alarm.
Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.
As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.
The fear of death is more to be dreaded then fear itself.
We die as often as we lose a friend.
Don't go to sleep, so many people die there.
I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.
I take my only exercise acting as pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth.
Every man dies, not every man really lives.
Beware of writing to me. I always answer ... My father spent the last 20 years of his life writing letters. If someone thanked him for a wedding present, he thanked them for thanking him and there was no end to the exchange but death.
The Khomeini cry for the execution of Rushdie is an infantile cry. From the beginning of time we have seen that. To murder the thinker does not murder the thought.
England never appreciates a poet until he is dead.
Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.
Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?
Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America.
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover, when it is too late, that the only thing one never regrets are one's mistakes.
One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.
Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease.
Those whom the Gods hate die old.
To lose one parent...may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
