Being Born Quotes & Sayings

Before I was born [my father] wanted me to go specifically to Yale, which he thought would help. It was easy for him to think I could be president: he didn't have to worry about being president himself, being ineligible because he wasn't born in the United States. — Calvin Trillin

I try my very hardest to remember that I don't have to be anything but Evangeline. That's all that's expected of me. And if I try to be more or less, I will fall flat on my face. So if I just continue to hold my head high and keep myself in check, I'm being who I was born to be. — Evangeline Lilly

Of course, everyone knows my story of being born in Russia and moving to the United States at 7. For a few years people would say, 'Well, she's living in the United States, but she's Russian.' — Maria Sharapova

You told me trees could speak
and the only reason one heard
silence in the forest
was that they had all been born knowing different languages.

That night I went into the forest
to bury dictionaries under roots,
so many books in so many tongues
as to insure speech.

and now this very moment,
the forest seems alive
with whispers and murmurs and rumblings of sound
wind-rushed into my ears.

I do not speak any language
that crosses the silence around me
but how soothing to know
that the yearning and grasping embodied
in trees' convoluted and startling shapes
is finally being fulfilled
in their wind shouts to each other.

Yet we who both speak English
and have since we were born
are moving ever farther apart
even as branch tips touch. — Carol Goodman

Being aware that we may be wrong is different from claiming that it is senseless to speak of right and wrong. Recognizing diversity and taking seriously ideas that diverge from our own is different from claiming that all ideas are equally worthy. Knowing that a given judgment is born within a complex cultural context and is related to many others does not necessarily imply that we are unable to recognize it is wrong. — Carlo Rovelli

Young people, some of whom are not born into the faith, are being fired up by preachers using basic Islamic scripture and mobilized to wage jihad by radical imams who represent themselves as legitimate Muslim clergymen. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Not even God who made us all can kill everybody at once. He kills people one by one, and the more he kills the more people are gonna be born and grow up and go on being born and growing up and mixing, and no son-of-a-bitch is gonna stop 'em! — Jorge Amado

One of the greatest tragedies I can think of is for a person to die having never fully questioned the life he was born into. — Dan Pearce

Ask yourself how many of the billions of inhabitants of this planet have any idea of how rare it is to have been born as a human being. How many of those who understand the rarity of human birth ever think of using that chance to practice the Dharma? How many of those who think of practice actually do? How many of those who start continue? ... But once you see the unique opportunity that human life can bring, you will definitely direct all your energy into reaping its true worth by putting the Dharma into practice. — Joseph Goldstein

Whenever I see an ambulance, I like to think there is a baby being born, rather than a death. — Phil Lester

When a woman births, not only is a baby being born but so is a mother.
How we treat her will affect how she feels about herself as a mother
and as a parent.
Be gentle. Be kind. Listen. — Ruth Ehrhardt

Being born into the world is the greatest crapshoot there is. — Katie McGarry

I am not meant to be a biomass, I am a human being and I am born with a mission — Sunday Adelaja

You don't survive in me
because of memories;
nor are you mine because
of a lovely longing's strength.
What does make you present
is the ardent detour
that a slow tenderness
traces in my blood.
I do not need
to see you appear;
being born sufficed for me
to lose you a little less. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need: in the artist it is mandatory. Unable to fulfill it, he goes mad. But when the artist is a woman she fulfills it at the expense of herself as a woman. — May Sarton

If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don't know its name or realize that it's what we're starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it. — Frederick Buechner

Immortality: "It is impossible to be conscious of being unconscious."

It is not possible to be aware of being unconscious from your own perspective. You cannot be aware of not being aware. You can be less aware/conscious, such as when you are asleep, but not completely unconscious (dead), because time would stand still for you. A billion years could pass, and you would not know it.

How do you know you are dead? It is not possible to be aware of any gaps in life; it is continuous and never-ending from your own point of view.

Death and birth are a continuous event from your own perspective.

You will die physically, but you will be born into a new physical body. Being born happens, or you would not be here now. You were born into this life. It is what we know happens. There is no evidence anything else happens. True or false? — Michael Smith

To live is nothing more than to come here to die, to be what we were before being born, but with apprenticeship, experience, knowledge of cause, and perhaps with will. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

I was never born to write. I was taught to write. And I am still being taught to write. — Atul Gawande

It was when I discovered that there are two kinds of death. There is ceasing to exist, usually accompanied by a funeral and loved ones in mourning. And then there is emotional death born out of necessity and measured solely by the absence of grief it causes: the turning off the lights of oneself in order to shut down the feelings of being alive. — Kerry Kletter

I've always said that growing up in postwar Japan, I never felt any connection to my work through those experiences. The work I do really comes from inside myself. For me, being born in Japan was an accident. — Rei Kawakubo

All this convinced him that he had come to one of those revolting havens where pathetic depravity makes its abode, born of tawdry education and the terrible populousness of the capital. One of those havens where man blasphemously crushes and derides all the pure and holy that adorns life, where woman, the beauty of the world, the crown of creation, turns into some strange, ambiguous being, where, along with purity of soul, she loses everything feminine and repulsively adopts all the mannerisms and insolence of a man, and ceases to be that weak, that beautiful being so different from us. — Nikolai Gogol

When my daughter Zulekha was born, I was at the pinnacle of my working life as a model, and I pulled myself in two trying to cope with being both a mother and a career girl. — Iman

We're all gonna die someday, and in between being born and then, you only have one f***ing life. If you spend more time being happy with what you've got than you do being unhappy about things you don't have, then you've cracked the secret. — Conor Bowman

I've lived my whole life exactly the way I've wanted to. Being gay, being white, being male, it doesn't matter to me. They're all things I'm born with. — Johnny Weir

She isn't a storm or a leader or a king or a war or anyone whose life and death makes noise. The problem is words. There is skin, yes. And then, inside that, there is your language, the casual, inherited magic spells taht make your skin real. It's too late now
even if we could say "Shut up" or "Where's my dinner?" in the first language, the real language, the words weren't born in us. And unless your skin and your language touch each other without interruption, there is no word strong enough to make you understand that it matters that you live. The things that really "stay" are an Orisha, a kind night, a pretended boy, a garden song that made no sense. Those come closer to being enough. — Helen Oyeyemi

School feeding is a great tool to encourage education and provide food aid to children born into extremely impoverished situations. The kids in school being fed by WFP are empowered by their school meal to learn and better their lives! — Lauren Bush

I believe in revelation, but not in revelation which each religion claims to possess ... but in the living revelation which surrounds us on every side - mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die. — Jose Rizal

Being born in New York City, tends to lead to big expectations, expectations that I only started to realize after I had left. — Joseph Pisani

If you take a moment to consider the state of the world, the thing you notice is that there are plenty of babies being born; the planet doesn't really need all of us to produce more babies. — Caitlin Moran

For the Athenians of that day did not look for an orator or a general who would enable them to live in happy servitude; they cared not to live at all, unless they might live in freedom. For every one of them felt that he had come into being, not for his father and his mother alone, but also for his country. And wherein lies the difference? He who thinks he was born for his parents alone awaits the death which destiny assigns him in the course of nature: but he who thinks he was born for his country also will be willing to die, that he may not see her in bondage, and will look upon the outrages and the indignities that he must needs bear in a city that is in bondage as more to be dreaded than death. — Demosthenes

In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed. — Tertullian

Well," said Dorothy, "I was born on a farm in Kansas, and I guess that's being just as 'spectable and haughty as living in a cave with a tail tied to a rock. If it isn't I'll have to stand it, that's all. — L. Frank Baum

The old world order changed when this war-storm broke. The old international order passed away as suddenly, as unexpectedly, and as completely as if it had been wiped out by a gigantic flood, by a great tempest, or by a volcanic eruption. The old world order died with the setting of that day's sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow. — Nicholas Murray Butler

The kiss obliterated her. It was like coming home or being born or suddenly finding an entire half of herself that had been missing. His — Sarah J. Maas

The touch of his skin against hers was not a caress, but a wave of pain, it became pain by being wanted too much, by releasing in fulfillment all the past hours of desire and denial. It was an act of clenched teeth and hatred, it was the unendurable, the agony, an act of passion - the word born to mean sunering - it was the moment made of hatred, tension, pain - the moment that broke its own elements, inverted them, triumphed, swept into a denial of all suffering, into its antithesis, into ecstasy. — Ayn Rand

Even more than in the concert hall, in church there are things you can and cannot do, just out of respect. You would never have the sound of someone being nailed to a cross, or the sound of a child being born, because everybody knows the story. We know that we're meant to feel a complicated raft of things. — Nico Muhly

A part of control is learning to correct your own weaknesses. The person doesn't live who was born with everything. Sometimes he has one weak point, generally he has several. The first thing is to know your faults. And then take on a systematic plan of correcting them. You know the old saying about a chain only being as strong as its weakest link. The same can be said in the chain of skills a man forges. — Babe Ruth

Nothing is harder yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
Spoken by Albertus Secundus in Das Glasperlenspiel — Hermann Hesse

The thought grew strong in me that since I had gone to the trouble of being born, I might as well be useful in helping people live long and healthy lives. And this thought has always resided in the back of my mind. — Koichi Tanaka

All of our forebears contributed to what South Africa has become. That does not, however, mean that I must apologize to anyone for being born a Zulu, or for having that culture. — Mangosuthu Buthelezi

So, with the crash of artillery, in the dark, with hatred, and fear, and reckless daring, new Russia was being born. — John Reed

We lost Coop in this very spot not even a year ago, and here we are now - Coop's son being born right where he was lost to us forever. "Full Circle," I murmur, stroking Zac's cheek. — Harper Sloan

Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That's an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life. — Joseph Campbell

Being a Parisian is not about being born in Paris, it is about being reborn there. — Sacha Guitry

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it's like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can't really speak on it, because I wasn't there. I don't feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person. — Eminem

There was the usual dreaminess, I suppose. Also a shyness that caused me - and others - to notice that I could express myself better by writing than by speaking. This is typical of many writers, I think. What is a drawback in childhood is an asset to a literary life. Not being fluent on one's feet sends one to the page and a habit is born. — Lorrie Moore

Family is the one human institution we have no choice over. We get in simply by being born, and as a result we are involuntarily thrown together with a menagerie of strange and unlike people. Church calls for another step: to voluntarily choose to band together with a strange menagerie because of a common bond in Jesus Christ. I have found that such a community more resembles a family than any other human institution. Henri Nouwen once defined a community as "a place where the person you least want to live with always lives." His definition applies equally to the group that gathers each Thanksgiving and the group that congregates each Sunday morning. (p. 64-65, Church: Why Bother?) — Philip Yancey

Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student. — Anonymous

Finally we are being told the truth: life isn't always easy and pleasant. We already know this to be true, but somehow we tend to go through life thinking that there is something wrong with us when we experience sadness, grief, and physical and emotional pain. The first truth points out that this is just the way it is. There is nothing wrong with you: you have just been born into a realm where pain is a given. — Noah Levine

Gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths. They are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes. And whether we know it or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors. Being gay is not a Western invention. It is a human reality. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Life can be beautiful when you understand the inconvenience of being born. — David Foenkinos

And many years later, as an adult student of history, Knecht was to perceive more distinctly that history cannot come into being without the substance and the dynamism of this sinful world of egoism and instinctuality, and that even such sublime creations as the Order were born in this cloudy torrent and sooner or later will be swallowed up by it again ... Nor was this ever merely an intellectual problem for him. Rather, it engaged his innermost self more than any other problem, and he felt it as partly his responsibility. His was one of those natures which can sicken, languish, and die when they see an ideal they have believed in, or the country and community they love, afflicted with ills. — Hermann Hesse

I'm Irish as hell: Kelly on one side, Shanley on the other. My father had been born on a farm in the Irish Midlands. He and his brothers had been shepherds there, cattle and sheep, back in the early 1920s. I grew up surrounded by brogues and Irish music, but stayed away from the old country till I was over 40. I just couldn't own being Irish. — John Patrick Shanley

Why not stop trying to prevent posterity being silent about you? You were born to die, and a silent funeral is less bothersome. — Seneca.

The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It's so incredible what women can do ... birthing naturally, as most women do around the globe, is a superhuman act. You leave behind the comforts of being human and plunge back into being an animal ... — Ani DiFranco

It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted,' said Toby. 'I hadn't much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can't make out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not. Sometimes I think we must have a little; and sometimes I think we must be intruding. I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad. We seem to do dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against. One way or another, we fill the papers. Talk of a New Year!' said Toby, mournfully. — Charles Dickens

If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being. — Jerry Falwell

The difference between me and American-born actors is that I came here with the expectation of not being treated fairly. — Joan Chen

We Catholics have not only to do our best to keep down our own warring passions and live decent lives, which will often be hard enough in this odd world we have been born into. We have to bear witness to moral principles which the world owned yesterday and has begun to turn its back on today. We have to disapprove of some of the things our neighbors do, without being stuffy about it; we have to be charitable towards our neighbors and make great allowances for them, without falling into the mistake of condoning their low standards and so encouraging them to sin. Two of the most difficult and delicate tasks a man can undertake; and it happens, nowadays, not only to priests, to whom it comes as part of their professional duty, but to ordinary lay people...So we must know what are the unalterable principles we hold, and why we hold them; we must see straight in a world that is full of moral fog. — Ronald Knox

What is the purpose of my writing about the various experiences of my life? It is not for publicity, but with the hope that the reader, especially my descendants, may plan a career to which they are naturally best adapted. Most children are born with a gift or talent which can be noticed in early childhood and should be encouraged and directed in the right way. Solomon said, 'Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Train does not mean compel, or to compare him with other children, but to encourage him in that for which he has a natural tendency. The boy who will become proficient in a lawful trade or profession, other things being favorable, will be a value to society and remunerative to himself and others. — Ernest Albert Law

For a wild child born into a rigid community, the usual outcome is to experience the ignominy of being shunned. Shunning treats the victim as if she does not exist. It withdraws spiritual concern, love, and other psychic necessities from that person. The idea is to force her to conform, or else kill her spirituality and/or to drive her from the village to languish and die in the outback — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born. — Robert Benchley

Think back for a moment on your own history
not just where you were born or where you grew up, but the circumstances that contributed to your being right here, right now. What were the moments along the way that wounded or scared you? Chances are, you've had a few. But here's what's remarkable: You are still here, still standing. — Oprah Winfrey

Being born, especially being born a person of color, is a political act in itself. — Andres Serrano

We teach girls shame. Close your legs; cover yourself. We make them feel as though being born female, they're already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up
and this is the worst thing we do to girls
they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form. — Chimamamda Ngozi Adichie

I'm probably a little more like my dad. But because of my mom, I never saw being a woman as being an impediment to being able to do something. She had her Ph.D. before I was born. — Mary Cheney

We do take pleasure in one thing that you probably won't be able to guess. Namely, making friends with nature ... nature is always there at hand to wrap us up, gently: glowing, swaying, bubbling, rustling.
Just by looking at nature, I feel as if I'm being swallowed up into it, and in that moment I get the sensation that my body's now a speck, a speck from long before I was born, a speck that is melting into nature herself. This sensation is so amazing that I forget that I'm a human being, and one with special needs to boot.
Nature calms me down when I'm furious, and laughs with me when I'm happy. You might think that it's not possible that nature could be a friend, not really. But human beings are part of the animal kingdom too, and perhaps us people with autism still have some left-over awareness of this, buried somewhere deep down. I'll always cherish that part of me that thinks of nature as a friend. — Naoki Higashida

Every time I make a new game, I put all of my effort completely into that game. It's like putting all your effort into a new child that's being born. Once the project is done, I can step back and look at it objectively, which is when I can see a lot of flaws. That's when I start to make a new game that tries to fix some of those flaws. — Hideo Kojima

Thousands more were being born today, being conceived - women with their knees raised all over the world. Mrs. — Alice McDermott

We were born to be friends. We both knew it. The Australian Aborigines have the traditional belief that a complete human being comprises two parts that are split before birth, that we spend our lives seeking the other part to make ourselves whole again, and that only the lucky succeed in doing so. — John Grant

The inner life is bruised by a running against the laws of the Kingdom. The bruises are guilt complexes, a sense of inferiority, of missing the mark, of being out of harmony with God and with oneself, a sense of wrongness. Divine forgiveness wipes out all that sense of inner hurt and condemnation. Brings a sense of at-homeness- at home with God and oneself and with life. The universe opens its arms and takes one in. You are accepted- by God, by yourself, and by life. All self-loathing, self-rejection, all inferiorities drop away. You are a child of God; born from above, you walk the earth, a conqueror, afraid of nothing. Healed at the heart, you can say to life: Come on, I'm ready for anything. — E. Stanley Jones

Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either to our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had to assume to correct attitude to her unchosen faith. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as taking pride in it. — Milan Kundera

I too get goosebumps when someone talks of national pride and integrity but my brain knows better. What is there to be so proud of pieces of land? People die for them. They kill each other for them. They behave as if being born on this piece makes them superior to the people living on other pieces. Just because people who speak the same language and eat the same food surround you makes you a proud owner of the land you share, completely ignoring the fact that given a chance, the same people can slit your throat at the slightest provocation? — Amit Sharma

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I sat next to a young woman on a plane once who bombarded me for five hours with how she had decided to be born again and so should I. I told her I was glad for her, but I hadn't used up being born the first time. — Alan Alda

She isn't stupid. She's intelligent enough in a purely feminine way. Eighteenth-century France would have been a marvellous setting for her, or the old South if she hadn't made the mistake of being born a Negro. — Nella Larsen

It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as the Eye, always tried to escape from violence even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around twenty years old when Salvador Allende died. — Roberto Bolano

I'm very fond of the concept of choice as the basis for sexual preference. This point of view is unpopular in an era in which every claim for gay rights is bases on pseudoscientific sulking about how we can't help being queer; we're just born that way. Thanks, but I don't want to receive my civil rights as a charity fuck bequeathed on me by my genetic superiors. — Patrick Califia-Rice

Darkness was and darkness was good. As with light. Light and Darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful rhythm. — Madeleine L'Engle

There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road. — Sylvia Plath

You have no reason to be sorry for anything, ma petite."
Her clenched fist lay over his heart, the three diamonds in her palm. "You think I can't read your body? Feel the heaviness in your mind as you try to shield me? I can't change who I am, not even for you. I know I'm failing you, causing you discomfort."
A slow smile curved his mouth. Discomfort. Now,there was a word for it. His hand crushed her hair, ran it through his fingers. "I have never asked you to change, nor would I want you to. You seem to forget that I know you better than anyone. I can handle you."
She turned her head so that he could see the silver stars flashing in her blue eyes, a smoldering warning. "You are so arrogant,Gregori, it makes me want to throw things.Do you hear yourself? Handle me? Ha! I try to say I'm sorry for failing you, and you act the lord of the manor. Being born centuries ago when women were chattel does not give you an excuse. — Christine Feehan

I like being me, I don't mind that I have a diagnosis. I am who I was born to be. I love that I can be enthralled with things and want to learn all about something that interests me. Some days can be hard. People can be confusing for me to understand. I love time to indulge in my interests. It helps me to cope with a world that constantly changes — Tina J. Richardson

I'm a practicing Zen Buddhist and I'm influenced by my readings in that tradition, such as the notion that everyone is born a perfect being and we spend most of our lives with a clouded vision trying to realize our perfection, he says. At critical moments in the book, T.S. registers his inkling of this realization. When he makes his maps, it feels like taking down dictation from the universe. — Reif Larsen

Te is thus the natural miracle of one who seems born to be wise and humane, comparable to what we call "perfect specimens" of flowers, trees, or butterflies - though sometimes our notions of the perfect specimen are too formal. Thus Chuang-tzu enlarges on the extraordinary virtue of being a hunchback, and goes on to suggest that being weird in mind may be even more advantageous than being weird in body. He compares the hunchback to a vast tree which has grown to a great old age by virtue of being useless for human purposes because its leaves are inedible and its branches twisted and pithy.5 Formally healthy and upright humans are conscripted as soldiers, and straight and strong trees are cut down for lumber; wherefore the sage gets by with a perfect appearance of imperfection, such as we see in the gnarled pines and craggy hills of Chinese painting. — Alan W. Watts

What dreams would he have, not seeing. Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way? — James Joyce

Today millions of people are living who will never do it again. Millions are being born for the first time-and millions are doing nothing because it's the best offer they've had this week ... It is for these people and many others that the Surprise Party is conceived and desecrated, founded upon the principle that everybody is just as good as anybody else, even though they aren't quite so smart. — Gracie Allen

We are what our genetics say we are. Melissa Mae Palmer on being born with one of the rarest diseases in history and possessing the only genetic living code. — Melissa Mae Palmer

I am thinking of one woman and the rest is blotto. I say I am thinking of her, but the truth is I am dying a stellar death. I am lying there like a sick star waiting for the light to go out. Years ago I lay on this same bed and I waited and waited to be born. Nothing happened. Except that my mother, in her Lutheran rage, threw a bucket of water over me. My mother, poor imbecile that she was, thought I was lazy. She didn't know that I had gotten caught in the stellar drift, that I was being pulverized to a black extinction out there in the farthest rim of the universe. — Henry Miller

Being is born of not being. — Laozi

We must believe in a sense of life renewed by the theater, a sense of life in which man fearlessly makes himself master of what does not yet exist, and brings it into being. And everything that has not been born can still be brought to life if we are not satisfied to remain mere recording organisms. — Antonin Artaud

Jesus being born as a baby was God's way of laughing at a world trying to grow up too quickly. — Steven James

Love has been many things throughout history: the simple comfort of the familiar, having a person to know and being known by that person in return; a connection born of shared experiences, an irrational joy in another's presence; a particular calming influence that one member of the couple may exert on the other, or that they both provide to one another. A combination of all these and myriad other things can go into making one person wish to stay tied to another. Anyone who is not in the couple--that is, everyone else in the world--will not understand precisely how or why it works for two people. — Annette Gordon-Reed

It is our own pain, and our own desire to be free of it, that alerts us to the suffering of the world. It is our personal discovery that pain can be acknowledged, even held lovingly, that enables us to look at the pain around us unflinchingly and feel compassion being born in us. We need to start with ourselves. — Sylvia Boorstein

What conclusion is to be drawn from this paradox so worthy of being born in our time; and what will become of virtue when one has to get rich at all cost?
The ancient political thinkers forever spoke of morals and of virtue; ours speak only of commerce and money. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I'm just sick of being tossed around. He'll forget every word he said to me once he gets married. Before long, an heir will be born and he'll no longer remember the promise he made to me. Just like the former master forgot. It never worked out with anyone. I became intimate with some people. But they never lasted long ... — Shoko Hidaka

Instead of being a static one-time event, bonding is a process, a dynamic and continuous one. Thus, a reciprocal, loving attachment is still realizable even when early contact is delayed
as it is for many mothers and their prematurely born infants, or when illness of either the newborn or the mother intervenes. — Julius Segal

The media called us ruthless terrorists. We're not. We're just fighting for what's right. Being born a nought shouldn't automatically slam shut myriad doors before you've even drawn your first breath. — Malorie Blackman

None of us is born with the right face. It's a tough job being a portrait photographer. — Imogen Cunningham

And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me. — Ray Bradbury