Quotes & Sayings About Your Place Of Birth

The ego dies and the ego lives, but people say that 'I died'. That which takes birth and dies is the ego, and the Soul is in the same place (is always intact). Even Pudgal (the atoms that were charged; which are being discharged in the form of mind, body, speech) is in the same place. The issue is only of the ego in the middle. — Dada Bhagwan

You can't take this speck of dust in this midst of all this incredible panorama of birth and complexifying and say ... this is the only place that [life] happens. It's like turning your back on the whole idea of growth and evolution. — Gene Roddenberry

Christianity had not started off as the ideology of an empire. Virtually nothing is known about its supposed founder, Jesus of Nazareth. There is not even any definite proof he was a historical rather than a mythical figure. Certainly the proof is not to be found in the Christian New Testament. It claims his birth was in Bethlehem in the Roman province of Judaea, where his family had gone for a census during the time of Augustus. But there was no census at the time stated and Judaea was not a Roman province at the time. When a census was held in AD 7 it did not require anyone to leave their place of residence. Similarly, the New Testament locates Jesus's birth as in the time of King Herod, who died in 4 BC. Roman and Greek writers of the time make no mention of Jesus and a supposed reference by the Jewish-Roman writer Josephus is almost certainly a result of the imagination of medieval monks.100 — Chris Harman

If an aristocrat became bankrupt he looked to the sunshine of royal providence [ ... ] but when the nobility sank too low to qualify for royal notice, they became fraudsters, trading on the display of rank: the man would become a card-sharper or gigolo, while the woman sold herself. Actual work would have been unthinkable. It would have offended against the ancient order of things, which assigned that role to the middle classes and the peasantry. This concept is difficult to connect with our modern view of the world, but its very absurdity follows directly from the fact that everything in its old order was so firm and wonderful - with everything in its eternally appointed place and moving in fixed circles like the stars. There was no changing your lot in life at will: it was assigned to you forever, by birth. If you fell below your appointed station, you couldn't just swap it for another - you simply plummeted into the void. — Antal Szerb

People's beliefs and faiths are as a result of their place of birth, or how they were brought up — Osazee Williams Omoregie

One of the obvious implications is that a person will have to face the fact that she cannot meet other people's expectations. This signals the end of what might be called the "camel" phase of human development. I believe it was Nietschze who suggested that for the first part of life, we are camels, trudging through the desert, accepting on our backs everybody's "shoulds" and "don'ts." Camels only know how to spit; they don't think for themselves or talk back. As the camel dies, a lion is born in its place. Lions discover both their roar and the art of preening. The lion may be a little shaky at first, so support and encouragement are vital. But once the camel begins to die (e.g., signaled by depression), there is no turning back. Symptoms occupy the space between the death of the camel and the birth of the lion. A therapist can be a good midwife during this liminal phase. — Stephen Gilligan

I have spent every New Year's Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It's a place with meaning for me. — Paulo Coelho

It's a shadowy world, skies are slippery grey. A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet. He'll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat, take the motherless children off the street and place them at the feet of a harlot. — Bob Dylan

New Rule: Conspiracy theorists who are claiming that we didn't really kill Bin Laden must be reminded that they didn't think he did the crime in the first place. Come on, nutjobs, keep your bullshit straight: The towers were brought down in a controlled demolition by George W. Bush to distract attention from Hawaii, where CIA operatives were planting phony birth records so that a Kenyan named Barack Obama could someday rise to power and pretend to take out the guy we pretended took out the Towers. And I know that's true because I just got it in an e-mail from Trump. — Bill Maher

The human organism is thus still developing biologically while already standing in a relationship to its environmont. In other words, the process of becoming man takes place in an interrelationship with an environment. ( ... ) From the moment of birth, man's organismic development, and indeed a large part of his biological being as such, are subjected to continuing socially determined interference. — Peter L. Berger

Previously, until a few years ago, it was customary for the Norwegian to be born with skis on his feet. But one of the improvements that has been made is that this is no longer the case*. Modern research has revealed, in fact, that this could be very uncomfortable and, to some extent, dangerous to the mother.
*It still happens that the birth takes place with skis on the feet, but now it is most often the mother who has the skis on during the birth. — Odd Borretzen

How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate- your brain- that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all. — V.S. Ramachandran

The novel was born with the Modern Era, which made man, to quote Heidegger, the "only real subject," the ground for everything. It is largely through the novel that man as an individual was established on the European scene. Away from the novel, in our real lives, we know very little about our parents as they were before our birth; we have only fragmentary knowledge of the people close to us: we see them come and go and scarcely have they vanished than their place is taken over by others: they form a long line of replaceable beings. Only the novel separates out an individual, trains a light on his biography, his ideas, his feelings, makes him irreplaceable: makes him the center of everything. — Milan Kundera

As the Laurel-wreathed boxes come down to Gamma, I think about how clever it really is. They won't let us win the Laurel. They don't care that the math doesn't work. They don't care that the young scream in protest and the old moan their same tired wisdoms. This is just a demonstration of their power. It is their power. They decide the winner. A game of merit won by birth. It keeps the hierarchy in place. It keeps us striving, but never conspiring.

Yet despite the disappointment, some part of us doesn't blame the Society. We blame Gamma, who receives the gifts. A man's only got so much hate, I suppose. And when he sees his children's ribs through their shirts while his neighbors line their bellies with meat stews and sugared tarts, it's hard for him to hate anyone but them. You think they'd share. They don't. — Pierce Brown

Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime - by your genes, your physical development since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from? — Sam Harris

If we want to unlock the secret behind the origin of our sun and its planets, it would be helpful to find some remnants from the birth itself, an event that took place about four-and-a-half-billion years ago. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

In fact, they didn't even keep track of birth dates here. Instead, they used a traditional method of counting a person's age. Newborn babies were "one year old," and became one year older at the start of the new year. As for the reason it didn't start at zero... I was briefly afraid I'd discover they didn't yet have the concepts of zero or place-value notation. In fact, they had both. Newborn babies being "one" was just a holdover from previous times, before the numeral "zero" existed within their culture. Old — Kanata Yanagino

I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little. — William Shenstone

If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place. — Richard Dawkins

Dear Mama,
I am being stalked by not one but two men of exceptionally high birth. One is a madman who tortured me and promised to make me love him forever. The other is a madman who gave me his shadow and lives to make my life difficult. No doubt you would be pleased, but I intend to deny you grandchildren for the foreseeable future. Henry is a dear, but I suspect the only reason his parents were willing to consider me for his bride was that he does not, in fact, like women at all. In place of comforting news about my marriageability and future grandchildren, please know I have adopted a bird. You would like him.
Much love,
Hopeless Jessamin — Kiersten White

One can return to their place of birth, but one cannot go back to your youth. — John Burroughs

Anyone can take a picture of poverty; it's easy to focus on the dirt and hurt of the poor. It's much harder - and much more needful - to pry under that dirt and reveal the beauty and dignity of people that, but for their birth into a place and circumstance different from our own, are just like ourselves. I want my images to tell the story of those people and to move us beyond pity to justice and mercy. — David DuChemin

Some people are agents from birth, Monsignors
he told them
appointed to the work by the period of history, the place, and their own natural dispositions. In their cases, it was simply a question of who got to them first, Your Eminences: 'Whether it's us, whether it's the opposition, or whether it's the bloody missionaries. — John Le Carre

Every new truth has its birth-place in a manger, lives thirty years, is crucified, and then deified. — Lucy Stone

There is no such thing as slow freedom. Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free we are slaves. All birth takes place in a moment. — Mahatma Gandhi

But if you were going to change the chain of events that killed your child, where would you begin? How far back would you go? All the way back to their birth? And how many times had you saved your child's life without even realizing how close you'd just come to disaster, to being one link too late in a chain of events that would wrap around your neck and choke you forever? How close had you come to knowing this place - the place where you collapse on your knees with one fist in your belly and the other clutching a blue GAP bag containing your baby's ruined clothes, the place from which there is no going back? — Kelly Kittel

Detached gibbous moonlight,
Befalls me,
Lying still on a sandy hill,
In a place far from home.
Home, where your warm hands,
Once embraced me,
Where you suckled me at birth,
And kissed me goodnight,
Where I once played as a child.
Now bereft and solitary,
I lie still far away,
In a foreign field of sand,
They'll bring me home
To you soon,
To lay me down
In an earthen chamber,
Beneath a green patch,
Close to you, so close,
Far from the guns of war. — Richard Kinsella

After all, I wasn't even sure if the ancient causes belonged to me in the first place because being born into a belief tended to make me feel more like I belonged to it instead. — J.D. Brewer

Frankly, I am quite tired of those who tout Christianity as a way to stop smoking or drinking or break wild habits of the world. Is that all Christianity is, to keep us from some bad habit? Of course, regeneration will clean us up, and the new birth will make a man right. If that is what Christianity is all about, what about the person whose life is not that bad? The purpose of God in redemption is to restore us again to the divine imperative of worship. We were created to worship, but sin destroyed that ability. Jesus Christ, on the cross, redeemed us and brought us back to the place where we now can worship and have fellowship with God Almighty. My clean life is a by-product of my conversion. My life may have pointed out to me that I needed a drastic change, but that is not the purpose for which I was converted. The essence of conversion is to bring me into a right relationship with God and have fellowship with Him. — A.W. Tozer

It's not necessary for you to exacerbate your contrast with struggle in order to get it into a higher place. It is not necessary to suffer in order to give birth to desire. But when you have suffered and you have given birth to desire, so what? You've got a desire. Turn your attention to the desire. Think about where you're going and never mind where you've been. Don't spend any more time justifying any of that stuff. — Abraham Hicks

I hardly dare believe it after that horrible day last summer. I have had a heart ache ever since then. But it is gone now."
"This baby will take Joy's place." Said Marilla.
"Oh, no no no Marilla. He can't, nothing can ever do that. He has his own place, my dear wee man child. But little Joy has hers, and always will have it. — L.M. Montgomery

Told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he didn't understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before. In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth. — Douglas Adams

Father, thank you for giving us a new birth in spite of our sin and rebellion. Lord, part of us longs to be holy and sinless, but there is much in us that still cherishes our sin and clings to it. Please help us to hate our sin and run from it. As you draw us toward heaven, open our eyes and help us to see how offensive our sin is to you, and how damaging it is to us. When we are dazzled by the alluring temptations of sexual and nonsexual sins, teach us that you are the only feast that satisfies our souls deeply and permanently. Fill us with awe and wonder that you give us the radiant robes of your Son's perfection to wear, and carry us to a place of high honor for his glory. Thank you that you have begun a good work in us that nothing can stop, and that one day we will stand before you in the bliss of sinless perfection as Christ's beautiful bride. We give thanks for this in Jesus' name, amen. — Barbara R. Duguid

On differing perspectives:

"At birth, we're yanked from a warm, safe place and thrust into a world we have no way of comprehending. Childhood is a constant routine of punishment and confusion. Hell we're depressed and misunderstood as teenagers, then frightened and unprepared as we become adults. In midlife, we watch as our youth slowly slips away; our dreams for greatness becoming pathetic memories. Old age brings loneliness, infirmity, and the constant fear of death."

"At birth, we're rescued from a dark, silent place and ushered into a world full of wonder. Childhood is a magical time, free from responsibility. We're curious and filled with energy as teenagers, and then challenged to reach our full potential as we become adults. In mid-life, we watch as our pretensions slowly slip away, our dreams for happiness finally becoming realized. Old age brings wisdom, wonderful memories, and a passionate love of life. — Rick Reynolds

There have been delivered to us in the Gospel three Persons and names through Whom the generation of the birth of believers takes place, and he who is begotten by this Trinity is equally begotten of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ? for thus does the Gospel speak of the Spirit, that 'that which is born of the Spirit is spirit' (Jn. 3:6), and it is 'in Christ' (I Cor. 4:15) that Paul begets, and the Father is the 'Father of all.' — Gregory Of Nyssa

The endorphin high of birth will fade, but its trace remains with you forever, its fingerprints indelible proof of love's presence and daily grandeur. You have offered up your prayer. You have vowed service to a new world and laid a bedrock of earthly faith. You have chosen your sword, your shield, and where you will fall. Whatever the morrow brings, these things, these people, will be with you always. The power of choice, of a life, a lover, a place to stand, will be there to be called upon and make fresh sense of your tangled history. More important, it will also be there when you waver, when you're lost, providing you with the elements of a new compass, encased within your heart. — Bruce Springsteen

Golden hands. It is said that all Poles have them, and that this is how you know your place in life, by the ease of your hands, that whether you are born to make cakes or butcher animals, cuddle children or paint pictures, drive nails or play jazz, your hands know it before you do. Long before birth, the movements are choreographed into the tendons as they're formed. — Brigid Pasulka

I've always felt very proud of Wales and being Welsh. People are a bit surprised when I say I'm Welsh. I was born in Wales, went to school in Wales and my mother was Welsh. I'm Welsh. It's my place of birth, my country. — John Prescott

It was not only from Europe that so much could be learned! This modern age had provided many breasts to suckle me - from among the Natives themselves, from Japan, China, America, India, Arabia, from all the peoples on the face of this earth ... In humility, I realized I am a child of all nations, of all ages, past and present. Place and time of birth, parents, all are coincidence: such things are not sacred. — Pramoedya Ananta Toer

He changed his final wad up at the train station. Which was a sad place now. There were homeless people and disturbed people hanging around. There were furtive men with swivel eyes, their hands thrust deep in capacious pockets. There was spray-can graffiti on the walls. Nothing compared to the South Bronx or inner-city Detroit or South-Central LA. But unusual for Germany. Reunification had been a strain. Economically, and socially. And mentally. He had watched it. Like living a comfortable life in a nice little house with your family. And then a whole bunch of relatives moves in. From someplace where they don't really know how to use a knife and fork. Ignorant and stunted people. But German like you. As if a brother had been taken away at birth and locked in a closet. Then in his mid-forties he comes stumbling out again, pale and hunched and blinking. A tough situation to manage. He — Lee Child

Music requires a particular type of education which is simply not given to most people. And, as a result, it's set further apart. It has a special place. People who are familiar with painting and photography and drama and dance, and so on, cannot talk so easily about music. And yet, as Nietzsche writes in The Birth of Tragedy, music is potentially the most accessible art form because, with the Apollonian and the Dionysian coming together, it makes a — Edward W. Said

If we believe that this particular pain is the one that will push the baby out of the womb and into our arms, we somehow try to make a place for that pain in our heart. Pain is still there: excruciating, terrible pain. But at the moment of birth, we rarely feel betrayal or rage; we somehow feel that this is simply pain that has come with life. — Wayne Muller

The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.
- Cited in ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p.475 — Norman Cousins

You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions. When you shed the cultural operating system, then, essentially you stand naked before the inspection of your own psyche ... and it's from that position, a position outside the cultural operating system, that we can begin to ask real questions about what does it mean to be human, what kind of circumstance are we caught in, and what kind of structures, if any, can we put in place to assuage the plan and accentuate the glory and the wonder that lurks, waiting for us, in this very narrow slice of time between the birth canal and the yawning grave. In other words we have to return to first premises. — Terence McKenna

But the healing place is within you. Healing is a gift you were granted at birth, just as you were granted others. Use your gifts, child. Use the beauty, the courage, the hope and the love that is in you. Call upon your strength. Use compassion and faith. Even during sad times joy is within you. Bring it forth. Wisdom is there to guide you. Use any one of your gifts and you will rouse the power of your healing place. Use all of them and you will sustain it. — Charlene Costanzo

No one could endure lasting adversity if it continued to have the same force as when it first hit us. We are all tied to Fortune, some by a loose and golden chain, and others by a tight one of baser metal: but what does it matter? We are all held in the same captivity, and those who have bound others are themselves in bonds - unless you think perhaps that the left-hand chain is lighter. One man is bound by high office, another by wealth; good birth weighs down some, and a humble origin others; some bow under the rule of other men and some under their own; some are restricted to one place by exile, others by priesthoods: all life is a servitude.
So you have to get used to your circumstances, complain about them as little as possible, and grasp whatever advantage they have to offer: no condition is so bitter that a stable mind cannot find some consolation in it. — Seneca.

I will win you away from every earth, from every sky,
For the woods are my place of birth, and the place to die,
For while standing on earth I touch it with but one foot,
For I'll sing your worth as nobody could or would. — Marina Tsvetaeva

But every woman is different. Some women need more monitoring, others need very little. Sometimes medical intervention helps a pregnancy, and sometimes it leads to problems. Some women feel more comfortable surrounded by medical facilities; others feel more comfortable in the familiarity of their homes. Our job is to place you in the most ideal situation to allow you to give birth, so that you and your baby are healthy. — Lisa Ferland

I prefer the retro chic of spending Christmas just like Joseph and Mary did - Traveling arduously back to the place of your birth to be counted, with no guarantee of a bed when you get there. — Tina Fey

Your soul's desire are with you at birth like a hidden treasure chest of possibilities for you to discover as you grow and evolve into the person you were meant to be. Give voice to what you long for in the deepest place in your heart. — Debbie Ford

The Cross was the place of your spiritual birth; it must ever be the spot for renewing your health, for it is the sanatorium of every sin-sick soul. The blood is the true balm of Gilead; it is the only catholicon [remedy] which heals every spiritual disease. — Charles Spurgeon

Home is the place you return to when you have finally lost your soul. Home is the place where life is born, not the place of your birth, but the place where you seek rebirth. When you no longer have to remember which tale of your own past is true and which is an invention, when you know that you are an invention, then is the time to seek out your home. Perhaps only when you have come to understand that can you finally reach home. — Karen Maitland

I'm talking about equalizing the pressure between outer actions and events which are shattering and devastating to us and then the place where we recompose and reconstruct ourselves, where we finally achieve what Jung called the second birth. The second birth is the one that you can make, and the discovery of that to me was always a great relief. As long as we expect the changes to come only from the outside or from action outside or from political systems, then we are bound to feel helpless, to feel sometimes that reality is bigger and stronger than we are. But if suddenly we begin to feel that there is one person we can change, simultaneously we change many people around us. And as a writer I suddenly discovered the enormous radius of influence that one person can have. — Anais Nin

Sometimes he counts himself to sleep by imagining the miles between stars like the succession of footsteps cleaving him from his home, as if mastering the distance in thought might blunt the separation. But if a man cannot return to the place of his birth, then what is there to stay his restless feet? What center will hold him from wandering endlessly? It should not be so difficult, he thinks, to know one's place in the order of things. — John Pipkin

20 She said: How can I have a son and no mortal has yet touched me, nor have I been unchaste? 21 He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord says: It is easy to Me; and that We may make him a sign to men and a mercy from Us.a And it is a matter decreed.b 21a. Jesus was a sign to men, in the sense that he was made a prophet, and every prophet is a sign, because the Divine revelation which is granted to him affords a clear proof of the existence of the Divine Being. Or, he was a sign to the Israelites in particular, because with him prophethood came to an end among the Israelites. 21b. She conceived him in the ordinary way in which women conceive children; see 3:44a. 22 Then she conceived him; and withdrew with him to a remote place. 23 And the throes of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree.a She said: Oh, would that I had died before this, and had been a thing quite forgotten!b 23a. This shows that Mary gave birth to Jesus while on a journey; — Anonymous

Not chance of birth or place has made us friends, Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations, But the endeavor for the selfsame ends, With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Here the four elements of solidity, fluidity, heat and motion have no place; the notions of length and breadth, the subtle and the gross, good and evil, name and form are altogether destroyed; neither this world nor the other, nor coming, going or standing, neither death nor birth, nor sense-objects are to be found. — Walpola Rahula

Lifeless and shockingly alien in that place where dissolution itself was a seething turmoil of ejaculation tumescence conception and birth, and death did not even exit. — William Faulkner

This, then, is the legacy of January 1973. The "me generation" found its voice, religion became a political force, poverty and civil rights became someone else's problem, and the national will for concerted action for the common good of all its citizens was scattered into "a thousand points of light."

At some point, perhaps those scattered lights will re-form and reunite to give birth to a rededicated nation, one that includes a place for everyone, opportunity for all, and help for those who need it. After all, it only takes a moment in time and some simultaneity. As Lyndon Johnson so aptly observed in his greatest speech - the "We Shall Overcome" speech - there are times in America when "history and fate meet at a single time in a single space to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom."

Let us hop such a time is nearing. — James Robenalt

But how is it conceivable that Allah, the highest being of all, would enter into this world? This world is filthy and sinful, no place for the One who deserves all glory and all praise. And how could I even begin to suggest that God, the magnificent and splendid Creator, would enter into this world through the birth canal of a girl? Audhu billah,3 that's disgusting! To have to eat, to grow fatigued, and to sweat and spill blood, and to be finally nailed to a cross. I cannot believe this. God deserves infinitely more. His majesty is far greater than this. "But what if His majesty is not as important to Him as His children are? — Nabeel Qureshi

Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place i1legally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1,500 percent since legalization. — Bernard Nathanson

Let us be the ones who say we do not accept that a child dies every three seconds simply because he does not have the drugs you and I have. Let us be the ones to say we are not satisfied that your place of birth determines your right for life. Let us be outraged, let us be loud, let us be bold. — Brad Pitt

One of the significant facts about the moment of birth is that it is an unconscious moment. No one ever knows when he is being born that the event is actually taking place, and sometimes we don't find out about it until quite a long time afterward. Sometimes, we never do really find out that we have been born. So frequently, we don't know why we were born; we don't know where we came from; we don't know what the purpose of life is; nor do we understand the possibilities of our godly destiny. — Sterling W. Sill

Daughters of Naiads were a dime a dozen in those days; the place was crawling with them. Nevertheless, it never hurts to be of semi-divine birth. Or it never hurts immediately. — Margaret Atwood

We often behave as though Jesus is only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselves, or an idealized version of our mess of a world, and so we offer to him a version of our best selves. With our Sunday school shoes on, we sing songs about kings and drummers at his birth, perhaps so we can escape the Herod in ourselves and in the world around us. But we've lost the plot if we use religion as the place where we escape from difficult realities instead of as the place where those difficult realities are given meaning. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

He wished he understood where they come from: all the terrorists, religious revolutionists
and hate-criminals. Did terrorizing entire communities of people help them sleep sound at
night? Did it make them happy? Or are they just in for the attention? Have they nothing to
lose? Or are they simply bored and spit balling issues that have always been there? Can all
global acts of violence and terror be summed up, as just a whole other level of a mixture of
bad parenting, psychological disorders and unattended anger management issues? Can they
be treated, medically or spiritually? Are we waiting for the birth of another great visionary
like Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad, who will 'make the world a better
place'? Or are we just too soaked in the idea that religion is a dying concept and spirituality
is overrated? Is it too late? Are we too far behind? He wanted to know. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

He was thinking about men like his Uncle Ted, a Cornishman to his bones, who lived and would die in St. Mawes, part of the fabric of the place, remembered as long as there were locals, beaming out of fading photographs of the Life Boat on pub walls. When Ted died - and Strike hoped it would be twenty, thirty years hence - they would mourn him as the unknown Barrovian Grammar boy was being mourned: with drink, with tears, but in celebration that he had been given to them. What had dark, hulking Brockbank, child rapist, and fox-haired Laing, wife-torturer, left behind in the towns of their birth? Shudders of relief that they had gone, fear that they had returned, a trail of broken people and bad memories. — Robert Galbraith

I was born on an even keel. Family lore says I never cried, even at birth. I felt at ease on earth, in the right place. And like many children, I took comfort in life's regularity: Every few days it rained, the school bus came and went, and my parents were rooted in their union. — Amity Gaige

Was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there. — Charles Dickens

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

I have no protection at home, or resting place abroad ... I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were. — Frederick Douglass

I can think of no sadder example of our food paradigm than two posters taped to the window of a California IHOP. One is a colorful photo of pancakes heaped with bananas, strawberries, nuts, syrups and whipped cream with the caption, 'Welcome to Paradise.' Lower down, an 8x10 photocopy states: 'Chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm may be present in food or beverages sold here.' Such signs are posted on many fast-food outlets. Heaven isn't a place on earth, at least not at these drive-throughs. — Adam Leith Gollner

Since you came to birth in this world at this time, in this place, and with this particular destiny, it was this indeed that you wanted and required for your own ultimate illumination. That was a great big wonderful thing that you thereupon brought to pass: not the "you" of course, that you now suppose yourself to be, but the "you" that was already there before you were born. You are not now to lose your nerve! Go on through with it and play your own game all the way! — Joseph Campbell

They have removed the struggle to find anything. And therefore there is no genuine sense of discovery. Struggle is the first thing we know getting along the birth canal, out in the world. It's pretty basic. Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you'd go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life. All that's gone. — Tom Waits

The length of life takes the leading place among inquiries about events following birth. — Ptolemy

Birth is a bittersweet event ... a place where heaven and earth collide in a perplexing clash of hopes, dreams, facts, fears, questions, and expectations. — Debra Evans

Everyone should be very grateful radioactivity exists at all. It can kill you, yes, but without it you wouldn't have been born in the first place. On Earth, deep under your feet, our planet happens to contain many atoms that do decay, all the time. Less so now than in the past, but still, Earth's mantle is radioactive. When atoms decay there, the particles they emit bump into their neighbours and generate heat, the very heat that contributes to keeping our planet warm. Without radioactivity, there would be no seismic or volcanic activity. The surface of the Earth would have been dead cold billions of yeras ago. Life as we know it would probably not exist at all. — Christophe Galfard

In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, take shape as events: the trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy ... whence the birth of ideologies, doctrines, deadly games.
Idolaters by instinct, we convert the objects of our dreams and our interests into the Unconditional. History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable. Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike. — Emil Cioran

Kangaroos give birth to only one baby at a time. So as soon as one baby is born, the female gets pregnant again. Otherwise the kangaroo population would never sustain itself. This means the female kangaroo spends her entire life either pregnant or nursing babies. If she's not pregnant, she's nursing babies; if she's not nursing babies, she's pregnant. You could say she exists just to ensure the continuance of the species. The kangaroo species wouldn't survive if there weren't any kangaroos, and if their purpose wasn't to go on existing, kangaroos wouldn't be around in the first place. — Haruki Murakami

It is well said that neglected prayer is the birth-place of all evil. — Charles Spurgeon

According to my file, I was abandoned on the steps of the children's home in Telbury with a birth certificate tucked inside the shawl. The certificate stated my name, date of birth, and place of birth - which was Aldabury Maternity Hospital - and my birth mother's name and address. All I have is my first name and date and place of birth. Everything else regarding my birth mother on the certificate seems to be false. — Lorna Peel

Another point important to recognize is that the creation was 'mature' from its birth. It did not have to grow or develop from simple beginnings. God formed it full-grown in every respect, including even Adam and Eve as mature individuals when they were first formed. The whole universe had an 'appearance of age' right from the start. It could not have been otherwise for true creation to have taken place. 'Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them' (Genesis 2:1). — Henry M. Morris

Finally, in 1888, Cixi approved the Western-style Navy Regulations. It was in endorsing these Regulations that she effectively unveiled China's first national flag. The country had had no national ensign, until its engagement with the West at the beginning of her reign necessitated a triangular-shaped golden yellow flag for the nascent navy. Now she endorsed its change into the internationally standard quadrangular shape. On the flag, named the Yellow Dragon, was a vividly blue, animated dragon, raising its head towards a bright-red globe, the sun. With the birth of this national flag, remarked contemporary Western commentators, 'China proudly took her proper place among the nations. — Jung Chang

You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last.
The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold
your hard-breathing point
during your endurance runs. Respecting that speed limit was a lot easier before the birth of cushioned shoes and paved roads; diet, and those tumors may never appear in the first place. Eat like a poor person, as Coach Joe Vigil likes to say, and you'll only see your doctor on the golf course. — Christopher McDougall

A scientist places an ad in a Paris newspaper offering a free horoscope. He receives about 150 replies, each, as requested, detailing a place and time of birth. Every respondent is then sent the identical horoscope, along with a questionnaire asking how accurate the horoscope had been. Ninety-four per cent of the respondents (and 90 per cent of their families and friends) reply that they were at least recognizable in the horoscope. However, the horoscope was drawn up for a French serial killer. If an astrologer can get this far without even meeting his subjects, think how well someone sensitive to human nuances and not overly scrupulous might do. — Carl Sagan

Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion ... but he set in its place the positivist doctrine of revelation which says in effect, 'Take it or leave it': Virgin Birth, Trinity or anything else, everything which is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which latter has to be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That is not in accordance with the Bible. There are degrees of perception and degrees of significance, i.e. a secret discipline must be re-established whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are preserved from profanation. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer