#birth

Blackthorne, beside the gates, was still turmoiled by his boundless joy at her reprieve and he remembered how his own will had been stretched that night of his near-seppuku, when he had had to get up as a man and walk home as a man unsupported, and became samurai. And he watched her, despising the need for this courage, yet understanding it, even honoring it. ↗

— James Clavell

#samurai #samurai-bushido-seppuku #strength-of-mind #courage

Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them. ↗

— Margaret Mitchell

#death #humor #taxes #truth #death

Today, the lay midwife is a response to a growing home-birth movement. In my own community most physicians have decided to withhold prenatal care from the home-birther. This is judgmental and vindictive. These doctors have decided that home birth is not safe, and by withholding prenatal care they are doing their best to make sure it is unsafe. Often it is lay midwives who step forward to fill the void and help eliminate the unnecessary dangers of home birth. They are essential for screening out women who really should not have a home birth. For considerably less money than a physician charges, they spend many more hours with a pregnant woman before, during, and after the birth. and in most places they courageously face the opposition of the established medical community. ↗

— Susan McCutcheon

#midwifery #midwives #courage

The event happened on my birthday. I don’t remember the date, I only know it was my birthday because there was no cake or presents.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#cake #event #forget #memory #presents

Seventeen, eh!" said Hagrid as he accepted a bucket-sized glass of wine from Fred. "Six years to the day we met, Harry, d’yeh remember it?" "Vaguely," said Harry, grinning up at him. "Didn’t you smash down the front door, give Dudley a pig’s tail, and tell me I was a wizard?" "I forge’ the details," Hagrid chortled. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#dursley #hagrid #harry-potter #humor #pig

Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#death #night #rebirth #reincarnation #sleep

After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. ↗

— E.B. White

#death #life #death

The phoenix must burn to emerge. ↗

— Janet Fitch

#failure #rebirth #death

The only sin is the sin of being born ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#death #sin #death

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent, because the mass man will mock it right away. I praise what is truly alive, what longs to be burned to death. In the calm water of the love-nights, where you were begotten, where you have begotten, a strange feeling comes over you, when you see the silent candle burning. Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness, and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward. Distance does not make you falter. Now, arriving in magic, flying, and finally, insane for the light, you are the butterfly and you are gone. And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#life #rebirth #death