Birth Defect Quotes

it's going great. Two months in, and I've created three apps."

"Apps?"

"For people who buy my book as an e-book --which will be everybody. The first is called Don't Look. It's for the overly sensitive. It blurs and turns the type red when a dog dies or a baby is born with a birth defect. Stuff like that. My second is It's Not Okay When You Say It, and it delivers an electrical zap if the reader laughs at a racial slur. My third is Jesus Thesaurus, which replaces explicit sexual language with church words. So, when one of my characters 'saints' a guy's 'disciple', He'll beg her to 'cavalry' his 'Baptists' and 'shout amen'. ~ Helen Ellis

Stupid is forgivable, but ignorance is intolerable. The first is a birth defect, the second is a choice. ~ Lucee Lovett

These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I'm not downplaying that. ~ Steve Jobs

Is there something I can help with?"
"No," Kat said petulantly. "You're a man and I hate all of you right now."
He took two steps back. "Fair enough. Since my presence is obviously causing you pain, I'll take my manhood outside to the terrace, where you can join me if you can overlook my obvious birth defect. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

If another woman had been around, this would never have happened."

"Whatever you're trying to say, just spit it out."

"Come on, Heath. I'm not blond, leggy, or stacked. I was the default setting. Even my fiance never said I was sexy."

"Your ex-fiance wears lipstick, so I wouldn't take that to heart. I promise, Annabelle, you're very sexy. That hair..."

"Do not start in on my hair. I was born with it, okay. It's like making fun of someone with a birth defect. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

A misbegotten hatchling of consciousness, a birth defect of our species, imagination is often revered as a sign of vigor in our make-up. But it is really just a psychic overcompensation for our impotence as beings. Denied nature's exemption from creativity, we are indentured servants of the imaginary until the hour of our death, when the final harassments of imagination will beset us. ~ Thomas Ligotti

A child conceived on Christmas Eve is considered unlucky and will later resent his parents for their unholy transgression, their lack of control and piety. The child may be deformed with a harelip or be cursed with the ears and head of a wolf. Or the infant may be born a werewolf. ~ Jody Shields

Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert. Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver's part, and some who heard Jesus' strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepentant. ~ Philip Yancey

There's a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For 99 percent of people, those things are in alignment. For transgender people, they're mismatched. That's all it is. It's not complicated, it's not a neurosis. It's a mix-up. It's a birth defect, like a cleft palate. ~ Chaz Bono

To see an African-American elected president means that this country is really finally coming full circle from the birth defect of slavery. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Cheap objects resist involvement. We tend to invest less in their purchase, care, and maintenance, and that's part of what makes them so attractive. Cheap clothing lines - sold at discounters such as Target and H & M - are like IKEA emblems of the "cheap chic" where styles fills in for whatever quality goes lacking. There is nothing sinister in this, no deliberate planned obsolescence. These objects are not designed to fall apart, nor are they crafted not to fall apart. In many cases we know this and accept it, and have entered into a sort of compact. Perhaps we don't even want the object to last forever. Such voluntary obsolescence makes craftsmanship beside the point. We have grown to expect and even relish the easy birth and early death of objects. ~ Ellen Ruppel Shell

As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless. ~ Rodney Yee

As lonely and sad as I am today, your return will cause a new birth in me. ~ Jon Jones

We celebrate the birth of one who told us to give everything to the poor
by giving each other motorized tie racks. ~ Bill McKibben

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. ~ Mark Twain

The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it. ~ Richard Whately

TO MY SISTER

IT is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.

My sister! ('tis a wish of mine)
Now that our morning meal is done, 10
Make haste, your morning task resign;
Come forth and feel the sun.

Edward will come with you;--and, pray,
Put on with speed your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar:
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year. 20

Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth:
--It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason:
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey: 30
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,
We'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my Sister! come, I pr ~ William Wordsworth

Instead of hating, my heart cries mercy! Mercy on me! Mercy on me! Mercy on me! ~ Phindiwe Nkosi

When a child is born, the exact moment it draws its first breath should be noted, as that moment, and not the time of delivery, is the time of birth from the astrologer's point of view. ~ Max Heindel

I've had a love of animals from birth. I love getting to know other species. We should all be aware that there is not one thing we can give a wild animal in captivity that they need. ~ Tippi Hedren

God's gift of a call to be Christ's ambassadors of reconciliation intends to unseat other lords - power, nationalism, race or ethnic loyalty as an end in itself - and give birth to deeper allegiances, stories, spaces and communities that are a "demonstration plot" of the reality of God's new creation in Christ. Put simply, reconciliation both names the church as and requires the church to be the sign and agent of God's reconciliation. ~ Emmanuel Katongole

I find that when people haven't found God and do not know the new birth and the Spirit is not on them, yet they have the ancient impulse to worship something. If they're not educated they kill a chicken and put a funny thing on their head and dance around. If they are educated they write poetry. ~ A.W. Tozer

Self-denial is the birth pang of spiritual joy. No woman seeks birth pangs, but she willingly endures them for the pleasure of cradling an infant in her arms. It is because of the sheer delight of living for the glory of Jehovah and the satisfaction of dwelling in the presence of His majestic fellowship that Christians submit to the agonies of self-denial. ~ Walter J. Chantry

The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading. ~ Charlotte M. Mason

In this moment, Maria uncodes how parents carry on through defect, deformity, and sickness. It doesn't matter what sex this child is, she thinks, or how it is, or why it is. It only matters that it is. ANNE ~ Nic Brown

IT IS WITH OUR FACES that we face the world, from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Our age and our sex are printed on our faces. Our emotions, the open and instinctive emotions which Darwin wrote about, as well as the hidden or repressed ones which Freud wrote about, are displayed on our faces, along with our thoughts and intentions. Though we may admire arms and legs, breasts and buttocks, it is the face, first and last, which is judged "beautiful" in an aesthetic sense, "fine" or "distinguished" in a moral or intellectual sense. And, crucially, it is by our faces that we can be recognized as individuals. Our faces bear the stamp of our experiences and character; at forty, it is said, a man has the face he deserves. At ~ Oliver Sacks

Irish people marry late, as a rule. We have that potato-famine DNA from the old country, that mentality where you don't give birth to anything until you have the potatoes all stored up to feed it. My ancestors were all shepherds who got married in their thirties and then stayed together for life, who had long and happy marriages, no doubt because they were already deaf. My grandparents courted for nine years before they married in 1933. ~ Rob Sheffield

It is not birth, marriage, or death, but gastrulation
which is the most important time in your life. ~ Louis Wolpert

One star breaks off from the others, shooting across the sky, a bright light trailing behind it, and I finally understand why people wish on dying stars. Because something always has to die for life to give birth to a new dream. ~ Kimberly Kinrade

This is not the land of my birth, but it is the land for which I hold the greatest affection, and I certainly will come back in the springtime ~ John F. Kennedy

It is not surprising that Ibn Sina is a national icon in Iran today, and one can find countless schools and hospitals named after him in many countries around the world. Indeed, his legacy stretches even further, for there is an 'Avicenna' crater on the moon, and in 1980 every member country of Unesco celebrated the thousand-year anniversary of Ibn Sina's birth. As a philosopher he is referred to as the Aristotle of Islam; as a physician he is known as the Galen of Islam. ~ Jim Al-Khalili

Writing a book is like giving birth. Marketing a book is like giving birth in the 12th century. ~ John Heartfield

That is a failing indeed!" cried Elizabeth. "Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me." "There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil - a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand them." "Do ~ Jane Austen

Is autism a disease?

If a woman asked me right now, "but wouldn't you rather be cured?" I'd reply, "would you like to be cured of being a woman?"

Autism, like womanhood, is painful, and difficult, and not made easy by the structure of our society. But it is who we are.

There are treatments that can make certain aspects easier, yes. But there is no whole cure because there is no whole disease.

Some women take birth control to reduce the effects of PMS or PMDD, to stop their bodies from being so at odds with the world, to make living just a little more easy, a little more comfortable. But it is not for every woman, it does not change the fact that they are a woman, and it does not change the sexism that they face every day, all the problems that result from the fact of society being built to serve people who are not them.

I'd like treatments for autistic people to be seen in the same light. Medicine's priority should be to improve quality of life, not to make a person more palatable to society.

Society must be forced to deal with these people because these people will not be easily consigned to oblivion. ~ Irene Wendy Wode

Ideas are intangible forces, but they have more power than the physical brains that give birth to them. They have the power to live on, after the brain that creates them has returned to dust. ~ Napoleon Hill

The greatest mystery in life is not life itself, but death. Death is the culmination of life, the ultimate blossoming of life. In death the whole life is summed up, in death you arrive. Life is a pilgrimage towards death. From the very beginning, death is coming. From the moment of birth, death has started coming towards you, you have started moving towards death. ~ Rajneesh

I'm told women scream when they give birth because of the intense pain. And I think about how easily life can just slide away, like thawing ice. And how it's only the living that scream. ~ Peter Hedges

Our religious institutions have far too often become handmaidens of the status quo, while the genuine religious experience is anything but that. True religion is by nature disruptive of
what has been, giving birth to the eternally new. ~ Marianne Williamson

It is not easy to get rid of weeds; but it is easy, by a process of neglect, to ruin your food crops and let them revert to their primitive state of wildness. [ ... ] In political civilization, the state is an abstraction and the relationship of men utilitarian. Because it has no roots in sentiments, it is so dangerously easy to handle. Half a century has been enough for you to master this machine; and there are men among you, whose fondness for it exceeds their love for the living ideals which were born with the birth of your nation and nursed in your centuries. It is like a child who in the excitement of his play imagines he likes his playthings better than his mother. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

January?
The month is dumb.
It is fraudulent.
It does not cleanse itself.
The hens lay blood-stained eggs.
Do not lend your bread to anyone
lest it nevermore rise.
Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out.

Do not rely on February
except when your cat has kittens,
throbbing into the snow.
Do not use knives and forks
unless there is a thaw,
like the yawn of a baby.
The sun in this month
begets a headache
like an angel slapping you in the face.

Earthquakes mean March.
The dragon will move,
and the earth will open like a wound.
There will be great rain or snow
so save some coal for your uncle.
The sun of this month cures all.
Therefore, old women say:
Let the sun of March shine on my daughter,
but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law.
However, if you go to a party
dressed as the anti-Christ
you will be frozen to death by morning.

During the rainstorms of April
the oyster rises from the sea
and opens its shell -
rain enters it -
when it sinks the raindrops
become the pearl.
So take a picnic,
open your body,
and give birth to pearls.

June and July?
These are the months
we call Boiling Water.
There is sweat on the cat but the grape
marries herself to the sun.

Hesitate in August.
Be shy.
Let your toes tremble ~ Anne Sexton THE SERMON OF THE TWELVE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people experience the travesty of regret in their end days; the realization that nothing held them back, that nothing was in their way, that there is no one to blame, only themselves. Don't just sit by waiting for your life to happen, make it happen! Don't just hope your dreams will come alive, breathe life into them! Don't let your fear help you birth a well-nourished regret, take action today! At the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of your life, live in such a manner that you can hold your head up high, smile, and be proud of a life well lived. ~ Steve Maraboli

Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only now that his ears were opened to this sound that came from darkness, that could only come from darkness, that yet bore such sure witness to the glory of the light. And now in his moaning, and so far from any help, he heard it in himself--it rose from his bleeding, his cracked-open heart. It was a sound of rage and weeping which filled the grave, rage and weeping from time set free, but bound now in eternity; rage that had no language, weeping with no voice--which yet spoke now, to John's startled soul, of boundless melancholy, of the bitterest patience, and the longest night; of the deepest water, the strongest chains, the most cruel lash; of humility most wretched, the dungeon most absolute, of love's bed defiled, and birth dishonored, and most bloody, unspeakable, sudden death. Yes, the darkness hummed with murder: the body in the water, the body in the fire, the body on the tree. John looked down the line of these armies of darkness, army upon army, and his soul whispered: Who are these? Who are they? And wondered: Where shall I go? ~ James Baldwin

"A child!" said Edith, looking at her. "When was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman - artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men - before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight." ~ Charles Dickens

The Grecian ladies counted their age from their marriage, not their birth. ~ Homer

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
- President Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg address, November 19, 1863 ~ Abraham Lincoln

If you think women are weak, remember they give birth to strong beings. ~ SHIHAB KAZI

All of [motherhood] surprised me. It surprised me from the very first second I saw Jack. I'd believed that my pregnancy was a condition. It never computed. And there he was. Everyone made fun of me because I stared at him for months and months, not being able to believe he was real. ~ Meg Ryan

For all children, mothers are their first love, their first acquaintance with intimacy, touch, warmth, tenderness, sustenance. Infancy is a conspiracy between mothers and their babies, a bond that fathers can only helplessly witness, denied the profound pleasure and pain of giving birth. ~ Victoria Secunda

Let me get this straight...You are sending me out in a minivan whose date of manufacture predates the year of my birth, so that I can watch two dragon slayers track down enormous fire-breathing animals, in an effort to prevent me from spending time in the library? ~ E.K. Johnston

The whole of what we know is a system of compensation. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I had just sat down at a table with Star [Jones] and, bam, it just popped all over Star's shoes. Star was like, 'What is that!?' I said, 'My water broke!' ~ Holly Robinson Peete