He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. He laid us as we lay at birth 31 On the cool flowery lap of earth.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Of  William Wordsworth. Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'Memorial Verses,  April1850', l.47^9.

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

-Beckett, Samuel
  Waiting for Godot, act 2.

The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arousethesleeper, toshakethe complacent pillars ofthe world.He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, and shows the world its present, and points the way to its new birth.He isat oncetheproduct and thepreceptorof his time.

-Bethune, Norman
  Letter from Madrid, 5 May. Quoted in Ted  Allen and Sydney Gordon The Scalpel, The Sword (1952).

Perfect happiness, by princes sought, Is not with birth born, nor exchequers bought.

-Chapman, George
The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets,'Epistle Dedicatory'.

   Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the Earthö And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  'Dejection:  An Ode', stanza 4.

Say, lingering fair! why comes the birth Of your brave soul so slowly forth?

-Crashaw, Richard
  'To the Noblest and Best of Ladies, the Countess of Denbigh'.

Dost thou not know that love respects no blood, Cares not for difference of birth or state?

-Dekker,Thomas
  The Shoemaker's Holiday, act 5, sc.5.

I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appals. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.

-Dillard, Annie
  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, ch.10.

But set down This, set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'The  Journey of the Magi'.

Birth, and copulation, and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks: Birth, and copulation, and death. I've been born, and once is enough.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Sweeney  Agonistes,'Fragment of an  Agon'.

The knowledge that you can have is inexhaustible, and what is inexhaustible is benevolent. The knowledge that you cannot have is of the riddles of birth and death, of our future destinyand the purposes of God. Here there is no knowledge, but illusions that restrict freedom and limit hope. Accept the mystery behind knowledge: It is not darkness but shadow.

-Frye, Northrop
   Address, Metropolitan United Church, Toronto,10  Apr, quoted by Alexandra  Johnston in Vic Report, spring1991.

Whereas my birth and spirit rather took The way that takes the town; Thou didst betray me to a lingering book, And wrap me in a gown.

-Herbert, George
'Affliction (1)', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

Land of our birth, we pledge to thee Our love and toil in the years to be; When we are grown and take our place, As men and women with our race.

-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard
  Puck of Pook's Hill,'Children's Song'.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Manö There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:ö That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.

-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard
  Rudyard Kipling's Verse,'The Gods of the Copybook Headings'.

Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois e¤  ve¤  nements: na|"tre, vivre et mourir. Il ne se sent pas na|"tre, il souffre a'   mourir, et il oublie de vivre. There are only three great events for a person: to be born, to liveand to die.He doesnot feel his own birth, he suffers upon death and he forgets to live.

-La Bruye'  re,Jean de
  Les Caracte'  res ou les m½urs de ce sie'  cle,'De l'homme', no.48.

At its birth, the republic gave voice to three wordsöLiberty,Equality,Fraternity! If Europeiswiseand just, each of those words signifies Peace.

-Lamartine, Alphonse Marie Louis de
  A Manifesto to the Powers, 4 Mar.

   To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

-McCarthy,Joseph R(aymond)
  Of Catholicism. Memories of a Catholic Girlhood,'To the Reader'.

La naissance n'est rien o  u' la vertu n'est pas. Birth counts for little when virtue is lacking.

-Molie'  re,Jean Baptiste Poquelin
  Dom Juan, act 4, sc.4.

Il faut pleurer les hommes a'   leur naissance, et non pas a' leur mort. A person should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.

-Bre'  de et de
Lettres persanes, no.40.

Ich sage euch: man muss noch Chaos in sich haben, um einem tanzenden Stern geb a« ren zu k o« nnen. I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.

-Nietzsche, FriedrichWilhelm
^92  Also sprach Zarathustra ( Thus Spake Zarathustra), prologue, section 5 (translated by R  J Hollingdale).