Pange, lingua, gloriosi Corporis mysterium, Sanguinisque pretiosi, Quem in mundi pretium Fructus ventris generosi Rex effudit gentium. Now, my tongue, the mystery telling Of the glorious Body sing, And the Blood, all price excelling, Which the Gentiles' Lord and King, In aVirgin's womb once dwelling, Shed for this world's ransoming.

-Aquinas, StThomas
  Pange Lingua Gloriosi, known as the Corpus Christi hymn (translated by J M Neale et al).

Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the L gave, and the L hath taken away; blessed be the name of the L.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDORDORDJob1:21.

Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!

-Bible (Old Testament)
Job10:18.

Lo, children are an heritage of the L: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDPsalms127:3^5.

O wombe! O bely! O stynkyng cod Fulfilled of dong and of corrupcioun!

-Chaucer, Geoffrey
  Canterbury  Tales,'The Pardoner's Tale', l.534^5.

Assoon as I stepped out of my mother's womb on to dry land, I realized that I had made a mistake†but the trouble with children is that they are not returnable.

-Crisp, Quentin
US  film  actress.  Originally  a  nightclub  dancer,  she  began  in silent films in1925 and found fame in the1930s and1940s. 1968  The Naked Civil Servant, ch.2.

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

-Donne,John
  La Corona,'Nativity'.

From plots and treasons Heaven preserve my years, But save me most from my petitioners. Unsatiate as the barren womb or grave; God cannot grant so much as they can crave.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.985^8.

Historians spend their lives and lavish ink Explaining how great commonwealths collapse From great defects of policyöperhaps The cause is sometimes simpler than they think. † Have more states perished, then, For having shackled the enquiring mind, Than those who, in their folly not less blind, Trusted the servile womb to breed free men?

-Hope, A(lec) D(erwent)
  'Advice toYoung Ladies', in Collected Poems1930^1970 (1972).

They call her a young country, but they lie: She is the last of lands, the emptiest, A woman beyond her change of life, a breast Still tender but within the womb is dry.

-Hope, A(lec) D(erwent)
'Australia', in Collected Poems1930^1970 (1972).

To be no more; sad cure; for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?

-Milton,John
  Belial. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.146^51.

Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep, For winter's big with summer in her womb.

-Sackville-West,Vita (Victoria Mary)
  The Land,'Spring'.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die, For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  'The Cloud'.

The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our conditionöa desire which†comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.2, ch.3.

First, sturdy March with brows full sternly bent, And arme'  d strongly, rode upon a ram, The same which over Hellespontus swam: Yet in his hand a spade he also hent, And in a bag all sorts of seeds ysame, Which on the earth he strowe'  d as he went, And filled her womb with fruitful hope of nourishment.

-Spenser, Edmund
  The Faerie Queen,'Mutability', canto 7, stanza 32. hent = grasped; ysame = together.