Begat Quotes

Be careful with words, they're dangerous. Be wary of them. They begat either demons or angels. It's up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as giving free rein to words ~ Elie Wiesel

On the hearth, in front of a back-brand to give substance, blazed a fire of thorns, that crackled 'like the laughter of the fool.'

Nineteen persons were gathered here. Of these, five women, wearing gowns of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls shy and not shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley Jake the hedge-carpenter, Elijah New the parish-clerk, and John Pitcher, a neighboring dairyman, the shepherd's father-in-law, lolled in the settle; a young man and maid, who were blushing over tentative pourparlers on a life companionship, sat beneath the corner-cupboard; and an elderly engaged man of fifty or upward moved restlessly about from spots where his betrothed was not to the spot where she was. Enjoyment was pretty general, and so much the more prevailed in being unhampered by conventional restrictions. Absolute confidence in each other's good opinion begat perfect ease, while the finishing stroke of manner, amounting to a truly princely serenity, was lent to the majority by the absence of any expression or trait denoting that they wished to get on in the world, enlarge their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever - which nowadays so generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of all except the two extremes of the social scale.

("The Three Strangers") ~ Thomas Hardy

I shall be better satisfied if the same can be said of me as was said of the prophet of old, "That I walked in the fear of the Lord, and begat sons and daughters" [Genesis 5:22], than if it were inscribed on my tombstone that I governed the councils or commanded the arms of the whole continent of America. ~ Benjamin Rush

These soldiers had done what they had done, and been done unto in return. This was how it went.
In the cycle of slaughter, reprisal begat reprisal, forever. ~ Laini Taylor

The corrupt begat corruption. ~ Steven Magee

Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they 'felt', not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities." This tendency has often been satirised - the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs - but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance.
Anyway, what you swiftly realise if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighbourhood or envi ~ Christopher Hitchens

I did not care if Ella went to Princeton, if she was exceptionally pretty, if she grew up to marry a rich man, or really if she married at all - there were many incarnations of her I felt confident I could embrace, a hippie or a housewife or a career woman. But what I did care about, what I wanted most fervently, was for her to understand that hard work paid off, that decency begat decency, that humility was not a raincoat you occasionally pulled on when you thought conditions called for it, but rather a constant way of existing in the world, knowing that good luck and bad luck touched everyone and none of us was fully responsible for our fortunes or tragedies. Above all, I wanted my daughter to understand that many people were guided by bitterness and that it was best to avoid these individuals - their moods and behavior were a hornet's nest you had no possible reason to do anything other than bypass and ignore. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

Gargantua, at the age of four hundred four score and forty- four years begat his son Pantagruel, from his wife, named Badebec, daughter of the King of the Amaurotes in Utopia, who died in child-birth: because he was marvelously huge and so heavy that he could not come to light without suffocating his mother. ~ Francois Rabelais

Laziness begat wearisomeness, and this put men in quest of diversions, play and company, on which however it is a constant attendant; he who works hard, has enough to do with himself otherwise. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

In the beginning was Scream
Who begat Blood
Who begat Eye
Who begat Fear
Who begat Wing
Who begat Bone
Who begat Granite
Who begat Violet
Who begat Guitar
Who begat Sweat
Who begat Adam
Who begat Mary
Who begat God
Who begat Nothing
Who begat Never
Never Never Never

Who begat Crow

Screaming for Blood
Grubs, crusts
Anything

Trembling featherless elbows in the nest's filth ~ Ted Hughes

I am assured at any rate Man's practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There's always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at. ~ Robert Frost

Paranoia begat perfection in the wetboy's trade. ~ Brent Weeks

Funnel

The family story tells, and it was told true,
of my great-grandfather who begat eight
genius children and bought twelve almost-new
grand pianos. He left a considerable estate
when he died. The children honored their
separate arts; two became moderately famous,
three married and fattened their delicate share
of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was
a concert pianist. She had a notable career
and wore cropped hair and walked like a man,
or so I heard when prying a childhood car
into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan.
One died a pinafore child, she stays her five
years forever. And here is one that wrote-
I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive
words and scratch out my short marginal notes
and finger my accounts.
back from that great-grandfather I have come
to tidy a country graveyard for his sake,
to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun
and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake.
I like best to think of that Bunyan man
slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale
for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan
of culture to do it big. On this same scale
he built seven arking houses and they still stand.
One, five stories up, straight up like a square
box, still dominates its coastal edge of land.
It is rented cheap in the summer musted air
to sneaker-footed families who pad through
its ro ~ Anne Sexton

At eight years old, Katherine Lundy already knew the shape of her entire life. Could have drawn it on a map if pressed: the long highways of education, the soft valleys of settling down. She assumed, in her practical way, that a husband would appear one day, summoned out of the ether like a necessary milestone, and she would work at the library while he worked someplace equally sensible, and they would have children of their own, because that was how the world was structured. Children begat adults begat children, now and forever. ~ Seanan McGuire

The family story tells, and it was told true,
of my great-grandfather who begat eight
genius children and bought twelve almost new
grand pianos. He left a considerable estate
when he died. ~ Anne Sexton

A self-made man - not of woman born but alchemized, through sheer force of will, by the man himself. This is what I want to be. I want to be a self-made woman. I want to conjure myself out of every sparkling, fast moving thing I can see. I want to be the creator of myself. I'm going to begat myself ~ Caitlin Moran

Sixty-five years ago [written 2009], in a brief lull between storms in a remarkably stormy June, even by the standards of Channel weather, the heirs of Harold and the kinsmen of the Conqueror came to Normandy. They were supported by the remnants of their first, North American, empire, the two great nations that they had planted in the New World in the time of Good Queen Bess and James 6th and 1st: the Americans, who had rebelled in the name of the rights of Englishmen, and the Canadians, who had stood loyal in the name of the Crown. … The honours of these regiments are ancient and moving: Minden and Malplaquet, Mysore, Badajoz, Waterloo, Inkerman, Gallipoli, the Somme, Imjin. None shines more brightly than Normandy 1944. The paths of glory may lead but to the grave; yet all, even golden boys and girls, must come to dust. It is a better path to the grave than any of the others, not because glory is something to seek, but because, not once or twice in our long island story, the way of duty has been the path to glory; and duty is to be done. …Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. ~ G.M.W. Wemyss

Begat! What a satisfying word it is! It scorns. It despises. It spits. Summarily it dismisses all that bleating nonsense about love and romance, moonlight and motherhood. ~ Poile Sengupta

I believe the Father came down from heaven, as the apostles said he did, and begat the Saviour of the world; for he is the ONLY-begotten of the Father, which could not be if the Father did not actually beget him in person ... I believe the Father came down in His tabernacle and begat Jesus Christ. ~ Brigham Young

It may seem a hard matter, to love our neighbours who have so much of what is evil about them, and whose faults so often await the evil that lingers within ourselves. But remember that he made them and he loves them, and whosever loves him that begat, loveth him that was begotten also. and if god so loveth us that he gave his only begotten son to die for us, we ought also to love one another, but if you cannot feel positive affection for those that do not care for you, you can at least try to do to them as they should do unto you. You can endeavour to pity their failings and excuse their offenses and to do all the good you can to those about you. And if you accustom yourself to this, Nancy, the very effort itself will make you love them in some degree, to say nothing of the goodwill your kindness would beget in them, though they might have little else that is good about them. If we love God, and wish to serve him, let us try to be like him, to do his work, to labour for his glory, which is the good of man, to hasten the coming of his kingdom, which is the peace and happiness of all the world. However powerless we may seem to be in doing all the good through life, the humblest of us may do much towards it. And let us dwell in love, that he may dwell in us, and we in him. The more happiness we bestow, the more we shall receive even here and the greater will be our reward in heaven when rest from our labours. ~ Anne Bronte

Sometimes, when outrage begat outrage with enough frequency, it threatened the fabric of the universe, and the universe pushed back. ~ Dennis Lehane

I worked as a production assistant on a couple of films, and finally, I got a job at an animation studio as an editor. After that, work begat work. I got into directing music videos and commercials. ~ Thomas Schlamme

So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm. ~ Herman Melville