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.

Oh! God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!

-Honorius of Autun
  'The Song of the Shirt'.

Just because you're rich doesn't mean you're not cheap.

-Seibel, Cathy
  On the prosecution of hotel owner Leona Helmsley. In the NewYorkTimes, 24 Aug.