Beget Quotes & Sayings

Words There is no good father, that's the rule. Don't lay the blame on men but on the bond of paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing better; to have them, what iniquity! — Jean-Paul Sartre

It kills me to be time's eunuch and never to beget. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself. — James Madison

May I reach That purest heaven - be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony; Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in the diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. — George Eliot

Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me, and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-labourers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally, as much as to say, - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill humour or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. — Herman Melville

If you beget a monster of a child it could prove you were rather monstrous yourself. — Nick Joaquin

An acknowledged love sanctifies every little freedom; and little freedoms beget great ones. — Samuel Richardson

Open to them your hand to the shore, watch them walk into the sea.
Press upon them all they need, see them yearn for all they want.
Gift to them the calm pool of words, watch them draw the sword.
Bless upon them the satiation of peace, see them starve for war.
Grant them darkness and they will lust for light.
Deliver to them death and hear them beg for life.
Beget life and they will murder your kin.
Be as they are and they will see you different.
Show wisdom and you are a fool.
The shore gives way to the sea.
And the sea, my friends,
Does not dream of you. — Steven Erikson

When it comes to improv, Specifics beget specifics. — Craig Cackowski

I remember, as a boy, hearing a Christian missionary preach to a crowd in India. Among other sweet things he was telling them was that if he gave a blow to their idol with his stick, what could it do? One of his hearers sharply answered, "If I abuse your God, what can He do?" "You would be punished," said the preacher, "when you die." "So my idol will punish you when you die," retorted the Hindu. The tree is known by its fruits. When I have seen amongst them that are called idolaters, men, the like of whom in morality and spirituality and love I have never seen anywhere, I stop and ask myself, "Can sin beget holiness? — Swami Vivekananda

He ,who is appointed to ,cohabit with the widow shall ,approach her at night anointed with clarified butter and silent, ,and beget one son, by no means a second. — Guru Nanak

Wherefore, by the authority of Apostolic power, We declare inventors of novel notions, which as the Apostle Paul has said are of no edification, but rather are practiced to beget most foolish questions, are to be deprived of the communion of the Church. — Pope Innocent I

Brand-name growth stocks ordinarily command the highest p/e ratios. Rising prices beget attention, and vice versa - but only to a point. Eventually their growth rate can diminish as results revert towards normal. Maybe not in all cases, but often enough to make a long-term bet. Bottom line: I wouldn't want to get caught in a rush for the exit, much less get left behind. Only when big growth stocks fall into the dumper from time to time am I inclined to pick them up - and even then, only in moderation. — John Neff

The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Violence should not always beget more violence. — Gabrielle Zevin

Money is of a prolific generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more. — Benjamin Franklin

The urge to kill, like the urge to beget,
Is blind and sinister. Its craving is set
Today on the flesh of a hare: tomorrow it can
Howl the same way for the flesh of a man. — Andrei Voznesensky

That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind. — Charles Caleb Colton

Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly consistent with ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all compatible with my notion of freedom. — Voltairine De Cleyre

Sometimes kindness doesn't beget anything but misery. My mother didn't have to learn that until she was in her thirties; I've known it nearly all my life. I'm not sure which of us is better off. — Jessica Warman

When you start using more expensive cameras, everything around it gets more expensive, which is something we hadn't necessarily taken into account beforehand. Your lighting package gets way more expensive, and then coloring it is going to be more expensive. So I think all of that will essentially be cushioning our camera package. Budgets beget budgets, and expenses beget expenses. — Katie Aselton

Molecules A and B meet, marry, and beget the species. This takes place in one-millionth of a billionth of a second. This is a fundamental process in nature, and the world was looking for a way to be able to see the process. But many brilliant people said it couldn't be done. — Ahmed Zewail

There are two types of genius; one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Be brave, gladiatrix, he said, And be wary. Bright things beget treachery. Beautiful things breed envy. Once you win Caesar's love, you'll earn his enemies' hate. — Lesley Livingston

If the Son was begotten by the Holy Ghost, it would be very dangerous to baptize and confirm females, and give the Holy Ghost to them, lest he should beget children, to be palmed upon the Elders by the people, bringing the Elders into great difficulties — Brigham Young

The reason why congregations have been so dead is because they have dead men preaching to them. How can dead men beget living children? — George Whitefield

Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other. — Charles Spurgeon

It is in this matter that I fall foul of so many American writers on writing; they seem to think that writing is a confidence game by means of which the author cajoles a restless, dull-witted, shallow audience into hearing his point of view. Such an attitude is base, and can only beget base prose. — Robertson Davies

Caught Summer is always an imagined time. Time gave it, yes, but time out of any mind. There must be prime In the heart to beget that season, to reach past rain and find Riding the palest days Its perfect blaze. — Richard Wilbur

What mature believer does not delight in seeing new converts talk with Christ? As we get older, we sometimes hurry past the ardor we knew as younger Christians. Hurried Christians beget hurried disciples. Hurried disciples become a hurried church - a hassled fellowship of disciples who serve the clock and call it God. But this subnormal Christianity has become so normal we don't see anything abnormal about it. In fact, we've come to believe that the most sincere Christians are supposed to be shallow neurotics. Yet the church holds only one possibility of relevance: Time itself must be surrendered to the pursuit of the depths of God. — Calvin Miller

Hail! the small courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight; it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in. — Laurence Sterne

And you're no going to see me inherit the title
you'll marry on your deathbed and beget an heir just to spite me," he said in a voice that wasn't far from a whine.
"What a wonderful opinion you have of my virility," Rohan replied. — Anne Stuart

It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder, and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge. — Phyllis Diller

God gave you a vision so you can beget a dream — Sunday Adelaja

All my stupid little thoughts beget stupid little thoughts, rampantly speculating every possible outcome of every possible situation until they're all done to death and none of them could ever be true. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

The calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainly from actions, and those the actions of men.We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and we see, arising from the co-operation of their characters in these circumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and these others beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deeds leads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe. — A. C. Bradley

When god lets my body be
From each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom
the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing
a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes
will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow
Into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass
their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea — E. E. Cummings

Vengeance took no account of innocence or right. It was the chain that bound horrific events together, that decreed that one awful act must beget another worse one that would lead to yet a third. It came to me, slowly, that this chain would never end. — Robin Hobb

It is my intent to beget a good understanding between the chymists and the mechanical philosophers who have hitherto been too little acquainted with one another's learning. — Robert Boyle

Doubts and jealousies often beget the facts they fear. — Thomas Jefferson

Every baby born
unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come
due in twenty years with interest, an anger
that must find a target, a pain that will
beget pain. A decade downstream a child
screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,
a firing squad is summoned, a button
is pushed and the world burns. — Marge Piercy

Lies beget lies," he said. "Until, one day, someone needs the truth." Palewski — Jason Goodwin

The human form was never [formed] to beget children. This tendency among people to cohabit is nothing but animal instinct inherited from all the previous lives of evolution from the stone to the human form. — Meher Baba

For not from dust does mischief come,
nor from the soil does trouble sprout.
Human beings beget mischief
as sparks fly upward.

(Job 5:6-7) — Job

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. — Edward R. Murrow

She that would raise a noble love must find Ways to beget a passion for her mind; She must be that which she to the world would seem, For all true love is grounded on esteem: Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart Than all the crooked subtleties of art. — Theresa Villiers

It's not that simple."
"It's as simple as dry toast."
"You're encouraging me to knowingly hurt him."
Cletus grunted impatiently and threw his hands up. "We're talking in circles. Here's reality: People get hurt and they move on or they don't. You can't have it both ways. You either get to be famous, and deal with the hassle that comes with it, or you leave it all behind. Own your shit, Sienna. And let Jethro own his. And then get married and own that shit together."
Cletus stood, clearly frustrated, and stomped away from me to the back door. He disappeared into the house only to appear three seconds later to add, "And while you're at it, beget me some nieces and nephews. — Penny Reid

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion. — Thomas Jefferson

You'll call me a damned Jew, a Christ murderer, a secret worshipper of pigs and a kidnapper of christian children.' This was all said cheerfully. 'How absurd! Who would want to kidnap children, Christian or otherwise? Vile things. The only mercy of children is that they grow up, as my son has but then, tragically, they beget more children. We do not learn life's lessons. — Bernard Cornwell

The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories. — W. H. Auden

Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid. — Cheryl Strayed

The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins. — Will Durant

Capital does not 'beget profit' as Marx thought. The capital goods as such are dead things that in themselves do not accomplish anything. If they are utilized according to a good idea, profit results. If they are utilized according to a mistaken idea, no profit or losses result. It is the entrepreneurial decision that creates either profit or loss. — Ludwig Von Mises

Possibly my hatred of war blinds me so that I cannot comprehend the arguments they adduce. But, in my opinion, there is no such thing as a preventive war. Although this suggestion is repeatedly made, none has yet explained how war prevents war. Worse than this, no one has been able to explain away the fact that war creates the conditions that beget war. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I don't get to treat many lightsaber wounds. It's such an old weapon. People today prefer to fight with rifles and blasters, from long range." She shrugged. "I suppose it doesn't matter. Death is death, no matter the mechanism that is employed to beget it. — Alan Dean Foster

Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character; it tends to beget a love of beauty and of truth in alliance together, it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in making principles operative. — Matthew Arnold

Be, beget, begone. — William, Saroyan

Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other. — Joseph Addison

The Ben Franklin effect shows that, while attitudes influence behavior, behavior can also shape attitudes. If we do a favor for someone, we come to believe we like that person. This liking leads back to another favor, and so on. A close variant of what is called the foot-in-the-door technique, or the strategy of making small requests before larger ones, the Ben Franklin effect tells us that one favor begets more favors and, over time, small favors beget larger ones. — Meg Jay

They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her. — W. Somerset Maugham

Equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like. — Herman Melville

A man should inure himself to voluntary labor, and not give up to indulgence and pleasure, as they beget no good constitution of body nor knowledge of mind. — Socrates

Suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counter-weapons. — John F. Kennedy

Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself. — Charles Dickens

Apsaras are nymphs of lust and desire, they cannot beget without love. But then, neither do they know what love is. They are not supposed to fall in love. — Kavita Kane

I began to entertain a suspicion, that no man in this age was sufficiently qualified for such an undertaking; and that whatever any one should advance on that head would, in all probability, be refuted by further experience, and be rejected by posterity. Such mighty revolutions have happened in human affairs, and so many events have arisen contrary to the expectation of the ancients, that they are sufficient to beget the suspicion of still further changes. — David Hume

My brain I'll prove the female to my soul; my soul the father: and these two beget a generation of still-breeding thoughts, and these same thoughts people this little world. — William Shakespeare

Creating harmony amidst diversity is a fundamental issue of the twenty-first century. While celebrating the unique characteristics of different peoples and cultures, we have to create solidarity on the level of our common humanity, our common life. Without such solidarity, there will be no future for the human race. Diversity should not beget conflict in the world, but richness. — Daisaku Ikeda

The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other. — David Hume

It is the surgeon's duty to tranquillize the temper, to beget cheerfulness, and to impart confidence of recovery. — Astley Cooper

If we cannot think alike, at least we may love alike; and can anything but love beget love? — John Wesley

Cognitive and character skills work together as dynamic complements; they are inseparable. Skills beget skills. More motivated children learn more. Those who are more informed usually make wiser decisions. — James Heckman

Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children. — Enoch

Riches naturally beget pride, love of the world, and every temper that is destructive of Christianity. — John Wesley

I believe the Father came down from heaven, as the apostles said he did, and begat the Saviour of the world; for he is the ONLY-begotten of the Father, which could not be if the Father did not actually beget him in person ... I believe the Father came down in His tabernacle and begat Jesus Christ. — Brigham Young

We must all be fighters and strugglers, Lewie, and it is better to wear out than to rust out. It is bad to let choice things become easily familiar; for, you know, familiarity is apt to beget a proverbial offspring. The — John Buchan

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget. — William Osler

Hot blood begets hot thoughts,
And hot thoughts beget
Hot deeds,
And hot deeds is love. — William Shakespeare

We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feeling, and beget action; they kill and revive, corrupt and cure. The "men-of-words"- priests, prophets, intellectuals- have played a more decisive role in history than military leaders, statesmen, and businessmen. — Eric Hoffer

I open with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience - it also marks the time, which is four o clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since this, too, is one of those things that nature wills. For such as it is to be young and to grow old, and to increase and to reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and grey hairs, and to beget, and to be pregnant and to bring forth, and all the other natural operations that the seasons of your life bring, such also is dissolution. This, then, is consistent with the character of a reflecting man, to be neither careless nor impatient nor contemptuous with respect to death, but to wait for it as one of the operations of nature. As you now wait for the time when the child shall come out of your wife's womb, so be ready for the time when your soul shall fall out of this envelope. — Marcus Aurelius

To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war. — Ralph Bunche

And as the vicissitudes of Nations beget a perpetual tendency to the accumulation of debt, there ought to be in every government a perpetual, anxious, and unceasing effort to reduce that, which at any times exists, as fast as shall be practicable consistently with integrity and good faith. — Alexander Hamilton

Not surprisingly, troubled economic times often beget proselytizers of wacky, extreme ideas. — Steven Rattner

For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organisations ...
Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle. — Alain De Botton

Perhaps it's time you stopped sulking over an engagement three years broken and bore yourself like a man!" The duke's voice snaps like a whip. "Zeus and Hera, how did I beget such an unruly son?"

"If you've forgotten, perhaps you could summon up the dead and ask my lady mother."

The duke barks a laugh. "You got that tongue from her, that's for certain. But she was obedient to me for all her carping."

"Obedient?" says Lord Anax. The desk creaks and shifts; I think he is leaning against it. "We must remember her very differently."

"Always when it counted, my boy, which is more than can be said of you. I wanted that girl for my daughter, you know."

"Adopt her, then. I believe it's legal."

"First I'd have to kill her parents," says the duke, "and I am given to understand that's frowned upon these days."

"It's gone the same sad way as the right of a father to execute his sons. — Rosamund Hodge

I didn't realize that one tragedy can beget another, and another - bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave. — Karen Russell

Temptation gains power by persistent solicitations that beget thoughts that make evil less serious — John Owen

I realized that work doesn't beget work. Good work begets work. So I got a lot more patient and stopped worrying about working all the time. — Brady Corbet

The Christian religion is derogatory to the Creator in all its articles. It puts the Creator in an inferior point of view, and places the Christian devil above him. It is he, according to the absurd story in Genesis, that outwits the Creator in the Garden Eden, and steals from Him His favorite creature, man, and at last obliges Him to beget a son, and put that son to death, to get man back again; and this the priests of the Christian religion call redemption. — Thomas Paine

When a man reaches his maturity in understanding and in years, the feeling comes over him that his father was wrong to beget him. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The mystics will tell you death is perfectly safe. A violent act will beget a violent act; it is simply a law. — Tom Shadyac

They maintain that only a dictatorship - their dictatorship, of course - can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up. — Mikhail Bakunin

Is there a recipe for making beauty? The schools give recipes, but they do not beget works that make people exclaim: How beautiful that is! — Paul Gauguin

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad. — Terry Pratchett

None but praying leaders can have praying followers. A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need pastors and evangelists who will set the saints to this business of praying. We are not a generation of praying saints. Who will restore this breach? The greatest will he be of reformers who can set the Church to praying. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Spyglasses, as Lipperhey called telescopes, whether they're in the form of spotting scopes, spyplanes, or reconnaissance satellites, are more than simple instruments or tools. They beget infrastructures and geographies. — Trevor Paglen

The ordinary chestnut can beget a sickly and reluctant laugh, but it takes a horse chestnut to fetch the gorgeous big horse-laugh. — Mark Twain

I know it's not strictly sex that accounts for my straying the motive usually attributed to men. I think it's just too tempting to have two lives rather than one. Some people think that too much travel begets infidelity: Separation and opportunity test the bonds of love. I think it's more likely that people who hate to make choices to settle on one thing or another are attracted to travel. Travel doesn't beget a double life. The appeal of the double life begets travel. — Elisabeth Eaves

Every evil begets some good. — Voltaire