Quotes about cradle (173 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“How to be sure that nothing will happen, when you don't always need a reason to become one of those cursed and deceptive beings, those entities thrown from the cradle of God.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

God

“There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Democracy , Wealth

“I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.
There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison.Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)

Life , Age , Mountain , Business

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Speak, Memory: A Memoir (1951)
Context: The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour).

Sense , Light

“The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

W.B. Yeats The Second Coming

The Second Coming (1919)
Context: p>Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?</p

Sleep

“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5

Life , Death , Men , Religion

“Dear Reader: The title of this book is composed of three words from my novel Cat's Cradle. A wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of some of the reviews and essays I've written, a few of the speeches I made.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

"Preface"
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

People , Books , Soul , Cats

“This writing distinctly about the kite seems to be my destiny, because among the first recollections of my infancy, it seemed to me that, as I was in my cradle, a kite came to me and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me several times with its tail inside my lips.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XXI Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.

Time

“Interview to the newspaper "Week" [Russian: "Неделя"/Nedelya], 1978:
-They say you started singing from the cradle?
-Couldn't do it in the cradle: the dummy was in the way.”

Sofia Rotaru (1947) Ukrainain soviet and Ukrainian musician, singer, songwriter, actress, author of Moldavian origin

Way , Singing

“A mother-complex is not got rid of by blindly reducing the mother to human proportions. Besides that we run the risk of dissolving the experience "Mother" into atoms, thus destroying something supremely valuable and throwing away the golden key which a good fairy laid in our cradle. That is why mankind has always instinctively added the pre-existent divine pair to the personal parents-the "god"father and "god"-mother of the newborn child-so that, from sheer unconsciousness or shortsighted rationalism, he should never forget himself so far as to invest his own parents with divinity.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious P.172

God , Parent , Personality , Forgetting

“Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.”

Joseph Hall (1574–1656) British bishop

Epistles, Decade III, epistle 2. Compare: "And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb./Our birth is nothing but our death begun", Edward Young, Night Thoughts, night v., line 718.

Death , Birth

“That was the burden,' she mused, 'laid on me in the cradle; murmured by waves; breathed by restless elm trees; crooned by singing women; what we must rememeber; what we would forget.”

Virginia Woolf book Between the Acts

Between the Acts (1941)

Women , Tree , Singing , Forgetting

“The Gnostics were the earliest Christians with anything like a regular theological system, and it is only too evident that it was Jesus who was made to fit their theology as Christos, and not their theology that was developed out of his sayings and doings. Their ancestors had maintained, before the Christian era, that the Great Serpent — Jupiter, the Dragon of Life, the Father and "Good Divinity," had glided into the couch of Semele, and now, the post-Christian Gnostics, with a very trifling change, applied the same fable to the man Jesus, and asserted that the same "Good Divinity," Saturn (Ilda-Baoth), had, in the shape of the Dragon of Life, glided over the cradle of the infant Mary.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter X

Life , Change

“So we can all appreciate our own identities, our bloodlines, our beliefs, our backgrounds -- that tapestry is what makes us who we are. But the history of Africa -- which is both the cradle of human progress and a crucible of conflict -- shows us that when define ourselves narrowly, in opposition to somebody just because they’re of a different tribe, or race, or religion -- and we ignore who is a good person or a bad person, are they working hard or not, are they honest or not, are they peaceful or violent -- when we start making distinctions solely based on status and not what people do, then we're taking the wrong path and we inevitably suffer in the end. This is why Martin Luther King called on people to be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. And in the same way, people should not be judged by their last name, or their religious faith, but by their content of their character and how they behave. Are they good citizens? Are they good people?”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

People , Peace , Faith , Religion

“Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"To the Babies" (14 November 1879)

Age

“Waliullah had travelled all the way to Mecca and Medina - a difficult and dangerous undertaking in his days - and studied under half a dozen Sufis and savants of ‘Islamic sciences’, only to ‘discover’ and declare what the meanest mullah in the most obscure village mosque in India had been mouthing for more than a thousand years. He himself wrote as many as 43 books between 1732 and 1762 - thirty thoughtful years - only to re-echo the routine ravings of a thousand theologians who had continued to thunder ever since the advent of Islam in this country! He wrote hundreds of letters to his contemporary Muslim monarchs and mercenaries, including Ahmad Shah Abdali, whom he considered to be the saviours of Islam in India, only to convey the conventional Islamic message which all of them had crammed in their cradles - convert of kill the kãfirs, humiliate the Hindus, and establish an Islamic state in keeping with the ‘holy’ commandments of the Quran!”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Books , Way , Travel , Study

“Sancho Panza by name, is my own self, if I was not changed in my cradle.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 30.

Change

“Recognizing the equality of all men and women, we are willing and able to lift the weak, cradle those who hurt, and nurture the bonds that tie us together as one nation under God.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Address accepting the Republican presidential nomination (23 August 1984)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Women , Men , God , Hurt

“If you cannot reconcile yourself to the law, remain in the cradle.”

Pedro Calderón de la Barca Life is a Dream

Que si a la Ley no te ajustas, quedó en la cuna labrada la materia de la tumba.
Segismundo, Act I, l. 956-958.
La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream)

Law

“From the cradle to the grave, each individual pays for the sin of not being God. That's why life is an uninterrupted religious crisis, superficial for believers, shattering for doubters.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

Life , God

“It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)
Context: It's easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward. It is easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples, a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.

People , World , Faith , Heart

“We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
Context: We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,—"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".

Tattoo

“Life for both sexes — and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement — is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 2, p. 35
Context: Life for both sexes — and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement — is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to one self. By feeling that one has some innate superiority — it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney — for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination — over other people.

Life , Sex , Way , Confidence

“You say you want diamonds on a ring of Gold,You say you want your story to remain untold.But all the promise we made from the Cradle to the Grave,When All I want is You”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

"All I Want Is You"
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: You say you want diamonds on a ring of Gold, You say you want your story to remain untold. But all the promise we made from the Cradle to the Grave, When All I want is You

“This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations — the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Ch. XXXVIII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5811/5811-h/5811-h.htm
Following the Equator (1897)

God , Religion , History , Country

“Let nobody doubt that religions are the cradles of despotism. The first of all despots was a priest; the first king and the first emperor of Rome, Numa and Augustus, both allied themselves with the priesthood; Constantine and Clovis were abbots rather than sovereigns; Heliopolis was the priest of the sun. In all times, in all centuries, despotism and religion have been so thoroughly interconnected that, as is easily demonstrated, in destroying one you undermine the other, for the profound reason that each will help the other to gain power.”

Marquis de Sade Philosophy in the Bedroom

Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)

Sun , Religion , Time , Help

“You’re beautiful because when you were born, undiscovered planets lined up to peep over the rim of your cradle and lay gifts of gravity and light at your miniature feet”

Simon Armitage (1963) Poet, playwright, novelist

Beauty , Light

“In Seattle we live among the trees and the waterways, and we feel we are rocked gently in the cradle of life. Our winters are not cold and our summers are not hot and we congratulate ourselves for choosing such a spectacular place to rest our heads.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Life , Feeling , Tree , Winter

“Everyone needs a hobby,” he said. “And everyone needs a miracle or two, just to prove life is more than just one long trudge from the cradle to the grave.”

Stephen King book Revival

Source: Revival

Life

“Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave, and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.”

Alice Childress (1916–1994) American playwright and author

Life , Way

“There is no "mid" about it. Lifea crisis from the cradle to the grave.”

Graham Joyce (1954–2014) British writer

Source: How to Make Friends with Demons

“Achilles weeps. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: The World As I See It

Beauty , Beauty , Art , Science

“Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

History

“the world is the cradle and your trap.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

World

“What brings you onto my property?" Rhev said, cradling his mug with both hands trying to absorb its warmth.
Got a problem"
I can't fix your personality, sorry”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Enshrined

Problem , Personality

“Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: Proverbs of Hell

“Valkyrie, if there was ever a cradle to be robbed… Gods, justat him."…

… "Face it, Nat, this is one tiger who will never be jumping through your flaming hoop--”

Kresley Cole American writer

God

“I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow… I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

People

“To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey (1817)

Life , Beauty , Girl

“Right. As opposed to your cradle-robbing mentor. I don't really see you making much progress with him.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant translations: The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties — this knowledge, this feeling … that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.
As quoted in After Einstein : Proceedings of the Einstein Centennial Celebration (1981) by Peter Barker and Cecil G. Shugart, p. 179
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
As quoted in Introduction to Philosophy (1935) by George Thomas White Patrick and Frank Miller Chapman, p. 44
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Context: The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.

Beauty , Art , Science , Dead

“Why, you're all grown up! The last time I saw you I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle!”

Daniel Handler book The Grim Grotto

Count Olaf
The Grim Grotto (2004)

Time

“Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles. But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and approximate to the comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable of the soldier class — creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence — it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.

How admirable is this Law of Compensation! And how perfect a proof of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the States in Flatland! By a judicious use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible — by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians — to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland

Life , Wisdom , Women , Law

“Cradle the weight of your life
You can survive what lies before you.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Seasons Change
Anastacia (2004)

Life

“We all know the beautiful hymn commencing with the cheerful line: "Hark from the tombs, a doleful sound." Nothing could have been more appropriate for children. It is well to put a coffin where it can be seen from the cradle. When a mother nurses her child, an open grave should be at her feet. This would tend to make the babe serious, reflective, religious and miserable.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)

Children , Beauty

“I was surprised that Godzilla was going to die on land instead of in the ocean, which was his cradle. I think it's natural for Godzilla to die because he is a living thing, but I envisioned his death differently. My idea was based on the legend of the tomb of elephants. According to the legend, when an elephant begins to feel that he is going to die, he secretly goes to the tomb. I envisioned Godzilla returning to the South Pacific when he began to feel that his end was coming. There then would have been some implication that Godzilla had died.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

Death , Feeling , Idea , Nature

“A revolution determines, within the social body, an instantaneous process of reorganisation akin to the tumultuous combinations of the elements of a dissolved body that then tend to recompose themselves in a new form.1 This process cannot begin as long as a breath of life animates the old aggregation. As a result, the ideas that would reconstitute society will never take shape so long as a cataclysm, by dealing the old, decrepit society a mortal blow, has not freed the captive elements whose spontaneous and rapid fermentation will organise the new world. All the powers of thought, all the greatest efforts of intelligence are unable to anticipate this creative phenomenon that can break out at any given moment. One can prepare the cradle, but not bring to life the long-awaited being. Right up until the moment of death and rebirth, the doctrines [that will serve as the] bases of the future society remain vague aspirations, distant and hazy glimpses. They are like a blurred and floating silhouette on the horizon, the contours of which cannot be determined or grasped by human efforts.”

Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) French socialist and political activist

On Revolution (1850)

Life , Death , World , Intelligence

“It is not likely that the history of psychology can be written in the next three centuries without mention of Freud's name and still claim to be a general history of psychology… Perhaps, had Freud been smothered in his cradle, the times would have produced a substitute, It is hard to say. The dynamics of history lack control experiments.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Cited in: Eric Shiraev (2010) A History of Psychology: A Global Perspective. p. 314
A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929

History , Time

“After all, though beauty be deceitful, and favour be vain, yet beauty is the most exquisite gift ever lavished by fairies around an infant cradle. Its charm is nameless; it wins us, we know not why — and lingers on our memory, we know not wherefore. Whether in the animate or the inanimate world, it is the cause of our most delicious sensations; it belongs to the imagination, for it calls up within us whatever of poetry may be lurking in the "hidden mines of thought." It is the attribute of all that is most glorious in existence — it is on the azure sky — it clothes the earth as with a garment — it rides triumphant over the purple bosom of the sea. Look within our hearts, it has originated all that is ideal in our nature. Beauty is the shadow flung from heaven on earth — it is the type of a lovelier and more spiritual existence, and the broken and transitory lights that it flings on this our sad and heavy pilgrimage, do but indicate another and a better sphere, where the beautiful will also be the everlasting. The homage involuntarily paid to its mysterious influence is but an unconscious acknowledgment of its divine origin, and its eternal future.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.8. The Black Dwarf — ISABEL VERE.
Literary Remains

World , Sadness , Beauty , Imagination

“Oh, give me again the rover's life — the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding their dull way from their cradles to their graves. Let me snuff thee up, sea-breeze! and whinny in thy spray. Forbid it, sea-gods! intercede for me with Neptune, O sweet Amphitrite, that no dull clod may fall on my coffin! Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 19

Life , God , Lie , Way

“When I was born good fairies clustered round my cradle, showering me with wit, beauty, grace, freedom from dandruff, natural piety and other great gifts, but the Wicked Fairy Carabosse (who had not been invited to the party) crept to my side and screamed "Let him be cursed with Inability To Do Little Jobs Around The House", and so it has always been.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

Beauty , Nature , Freedom , Housing

“While man is growing, life is in decrease;
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 717.

Life , Death , Birth

“Now, such an enterprise as would be the drawing and printing [by lithography ] of a series of, for instance, thirty pages of types of workmen, a sower, a digger, a woodcutter, a plowman, a wash-woman, then also a child's cradle or a man from the almshouse - well, the whole immeasurable field lies open, there are plenty of beautiful subjects - I should think the following would be the best way: as it is useful and necessary that Dutch drawings are made, printed, and spread, destined for the houses of workmen, a few persons should unite in order to use their full strength for this end.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands in Autumn 1882; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 249), p. 20
1880s, 1882

Beauty , Way , Thinking , Drawing

“India whose ancient borders stretched until Afghanistan, lost with the country of seven rivers (the Indus Valley), the historical center of her civilization. At a time when the Muslim invaders seemed to have lost some of their extremism and were ready to assimilate themselves to other populations of India, the European (British) conquerors, before returning home, surrendered once more to Muslim fanaticism the cradle of Hindu civilization.”

Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) French historian, musicologist, Indologist and expert on Shaivite Hinduism

Alain Danielou, Histoire de l'Inde - Alain Danielou p. 355

Home , Time , Country

“There as elsewhere a cruel universe combined to crush a child. As though three or four vigorous brothers and sisters, with the best will, were not enough to crush any child, every one else conspired towards an education which he hated. From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics, and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame. Rarely has the boy felt kindly towards his tamers. Between him and his master has always been war. Henry Adams never knew a boy of his generation to like a master, and the task of remaining on friendly terms with one's own family, in such a relation, was never easy.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life , Hate , War , Education

“The past is our cradle, not our prison, and there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.”

Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) British writer

The Voice of Jerusalem, Macmillan, 1921, p. 270

Past

“And this was your Cradle? Why, surely, my Jenny,
Such cozy dimensions go clearly to show
You were an exceedingly small pickaninny,
Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago.”

Frederick Locker-Lampson (1821–1895) British poet

The old Cradle; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Summer

“All this was obvious enough at the time even though it was not always put forward exactly in this form and in this language. Schlegel found India "the home of universal religion, the cradle of the noblest human race." J. C. Herder asked the question: "All the peoples of Europe, where are they from?" And he answered: "From Asia." Schopenhauer thought that India was the "fatherland of mankind," and he expressed the hope that European peoples "who stemmed from Asia… would re-attain the holy religions of their home." All this however changed under a growing consciousness of Imperial power and Euro-centricity. New theories reflected new power realities and new Imperial needs. Aryan dispersion from a common centre was retained, but its direction was changed and it became the theory of the Aryan invasion of India. The theory was meant to justify and to help the British Imperialism. The theory has little intellectual respectability left, but it has not lost its political usefulness and it is quite popular with the representatives of preceding Imperialisms and their Hindu apologists.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

People , Religion , Hope , Home

“Fay: Have you known him long?
Hal: We shared the same cradle.
Fay: Was that economy or malpractice?
Hal: We were too young then to practice and economics still defeat us.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act I

“And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when,
But we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time then."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Cat's in the Cradle
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Home , Boy , Cats , Time

“The instant myth of Amy Fisher turned feminist dogma on on is head: as in the hit films Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, woman rules and destroys. The femme fatale is for real.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 134

“The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar,
I am following the river down the highway
Through the cradle of the Civil War.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Graceland
Song lyrics, Graceland (1986)

War

“When will you disembarrass yourselves of the lymphatic ideology of that deplorable Ruskin, which I would like to cover with so much ridicule that you would never forget it? With his morbid dream of primitive and rustic life, with his nostalgia for Homeric cheeses and legendary wool-spinners, with his hatred for the machine, steam power, and electricity, that maniac of antique simplicity is like a man who, after having reached full physical maturity, still wants to sleep in his cradle and feed himself at the breast of his decrepit old nurse in order to recover his thoughtless infancy.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

Quoted in: Anthony L. Geist, Jose B. Monle-N, Modernism and Its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America. Taylor & Francis, 1999, p. 57.
1910's, Futurist Speech to the English' (1910)

Life , Dreams , Sleep , Nostalgia

“Mr. Churchill you were given a mission.
— Yes
— I want to have been given your mission. I want your place in world events, the centrality of it. You were born in the cradle of a catapult!
— You are wrong. I found my mission.
— I disagree.
— If you must.
— Tell me: where is my mission? Where are my bunkers and trenches, my goddamn Gallipoli?”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

World

“Cradle of Letters! Mistress of the World!
Soil of the Sun! Italia! I salute thee!
How oft the human race have worn thy yoke.
The vessels of thine arms, thine arts, thy sky!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

World , Art , Sun

“As an advocate of birth control I wish … to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation…. On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

"The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda", October 1921, page 5.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Birth , Problem

“The first duty of a government is to be true to itself. This does not mean perfection, it means a plan to strive for perfection. It means loyalty to ideals. The ideals of America were set out in the Declaration of Independence and adopted in the Constitution. They did not represent perfection at hand, but perfection found. The fundamental principle was freedom. The fathers knew that this was not yet apprehended. They formed a government firm in the faith that it was ever to press toward this high mark. In selfishness, in greed, in lust for gain, it turned aside. Enslaving others, it became itself enslaved. Bondage in one part consumed freedom in all parts. The government of the fathers, ceasing to be true to itself, was perishing. Five score and ten years ago, that divine providence which infinite repetition has made only the more a miracle, sent into the world a new life destined to save a nation. No star, no sign foretold his coming. About his cradle all was poor and mean, save only the source of all great men, the love of a wonderful woman. When she faded away in his tender years from her deathbed in humble poverty, she endowed her son with greatness. There can be no proper observance of a birthday which forgets the mother. Into his origin, as into his life, men long have looked and wondered. In wisdom great, but in humility greater, in justice strong, but in compassion stronger, he became a leader of men by being a follower of the truth. He overcame evil with good. His presence filled the nation. He broke the might of oppression. He restored a race to its birthright.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Duty of Government (1920)

Love , Life , Wisdom , Men

“Blade grumbled about the absurdities of the theological imagination and why didn’t people have sense enough to smother would-be priests in their cradles?”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 10 (p. 261)

People , Imagination , Sense

“One of these days I'll make a few casual remarks about Winston [Churchill]. Not a speech—no oratory—just a few words in passing. I've got it all ready. I am going to say that when Winston was born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle gifts—imagination, eloquence, industry, ability, and then came a fairy who said "No one person has a right to so many gifts", picked him up and gave him such a shake and twist that with all these gifts he was denied judgment and wisdom. And that is why while we delight to listen to him in this House, we do not take his advice.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Conversation with Thomas Jones (22 May 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 204.
1936

Wisdom , Imagination , Housing , Personality

“All the terms that we demanded have, since the war began, been substantially conceded…My hon. Friend…[said] that we must obtain a success in order that we may secure better terms; but that is not the public and popular sentiment; the popular feeling is, that as to terms there is no great matter at issue, but that what you want is more military success…It is not only indefensible—it is hideous, it is anti-Christian, it is immoral, it is inhuman; and you have no right to make war simply for what you call success. If, when you have obtained the objects of the war, you continue it in order to obtain military glory…I say you tempt the justice of Him in whose hands the fates of armies are as absolutely lodged as the fate of the infant slumbering in its cradle; you tempt Him to launch upon you His wrath; and if this be courage, I, for one, have no courage to enter upon such a course. I believe it to be alike guilty and unwise.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1855/may/24/prosecution-of-the-war in the House of Commons (24 May 1855) on the Crimean War.
1850s

Fate , War , Justice , Feeling

“Harry Dresden: The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold. But in my corner of the country, I'm trying to nail things down. I don't want to live in Victor's jungle, even if it did eventually devour him. I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Storm Front (2000), Chapter 27, final lines of the book

Children , Books , World , Hell

“The tragedy of King impressed him intensely: "There you have it in the face!" he said — "the best and brightest man of his generation, with talents immeasurably beyond any of his contemporaries; with industry that has often sickened me to witness it; with everything in his favor but blind luck; hounded by disaster from his cradle, with none of the joy of life to which he was entitled, dying at last, with nameless suffering alone and uncared-for, in a California tavern.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life , Suffering , Joy

“Islamic literary sources provide far more extensive evidence of temple destruction by the Muslim invaders of India in medieval times. They also cover a larger area, from Sinkiang and Transoxiana in the North to Tamil Nadu in the South, and from the Seistan province of present-day Iran in the West to Assam in the East. As we wade through this evidence, we can visualise how this vast area, which was for long the cradle of Hindu culture, came to be literally littered with the ruins of temples and monasteries belonging to all schools of Sanãtana Dharma-Bauddha, Jaina, Šaiva, Šãkta, VaishNava and the rest. Archaeological explorations and excavations in modern times have proved unmistakably that most of the mosques, mazãrs, ziãrats and dargãhs which were built in this area in medieval times, stood on the sites of and were made from the materials of deliberately demolished Hindu monuments.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

School , Time

“Drunk with triumph, I cuddled in my rocking cradle and ransacked every unvisited chamber of the memory…. to see the residue take life and meaning in the light of the great revelation.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 276.

Life , Light , Memory

“Muslim historians credit all their heroes with many expeditions each of which “laid waste” this or that province or region or city or countryside. The foremost heroes of the imperial line at Delhi and Agra such as Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak (1192-1210 A. D.), Shamsu’d-Dîn Iltutmish (1210-36 A. D.), Ghiyãsu’d-Dîn Balban (1246-66 A D.), Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî (1296-1316 A. D.), Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-51 A. D.), Fîruz Shãh Tughlaq (135188 A. D.) Sikandar Lodî (1489-1519 A. D.), Bãbar (1519-26 A. D.) and Aurangzeb (1658-1707 A. D.) have been specially hailed for “hunting the peasantry like wild beasts”, or for seeing to it that “no lamp is lighted for hundreds of miles”, or for “destroying the dens of idolatry and God-pluralism” wherever their writ ran. The sultans of the provincial Muslim dynasties-Malwa, Gujarat, Sindh, Deccan, Jaunpur, Bengal-were not far behind, if not ahead, of what the imperial pioneers had done or were doing; quite often their performance put the imperial pioneers to shame. No study has yet been made of how much the human population declined due to repeated genocides committed by the swordsmen of Islam. But the count of cities and towns and villages which simply disappeared during the Muslim rule leaves little doubt that the loss of life suffered by the cradle of Hindu culture was colossal.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Life , God , Study , Light

“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Appendix
1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)

Love , Women , Hate , Christ

“o, I believe
fate smiled and destiny
laughed as she came to my cradle
know this child will be able
laughed as she came to my mother
know this child will not suffer
laughed as my body she lifted
know this child will be gifted
with love, with patience and with faith
she'll make her way”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Tigerlily (1995), Wonder

Love , Fate , Faith , Smile

“Mother:
Children and sorrow come together. First
Are sleepless nights, and cradle watchings — next
Your age is vexed with maiden fantasies,
And your girl's lover costeth you more care
Than ever did your own. It is not well!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette (7th February 1835)
Translations, From the German

Children , Age , Girl , Lovers

“It is something to remember, if we feel distant from humans. We owe a great deal to human love. We live forever by the grace of human love, which rocked strange children in their cradles and did not despair and did not turn away. I know which side of my heritage my soul comes from. Our fathers were demons. Our mothers were heroes.”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Catarina Loss, to Magnus Bane and Ragnor Fell in 1890, p. 42.
The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)

Love , Children , Feeling , Soul

“I believe there is no one Principle, which predominates in human Nature so much in every Stage of Life, from the Cradle to the Grave, in Males and females, old and young, black and white, rich and poor, high and low, as this Passion for Superiority.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Abigail Adams (22 May 1777), as quoted in And the War Came: The Slavery Quarrel and the American Civil War https://books.google.com/books?id=WbFznb7PSGsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, by Donald J. Meyers
1770s

Life , Nature , Passion

“It is very appropriate that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us time and again down through history. Let us rise to the call for freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

First Inaugural Speech as Governor of Alabama, (January 1963)
1960s

Love , People , History , Freedom

“Noiselessly Kerchak entered, crouching for the charge; and then John Clayton rose with a sudden start and faced them.
The sight that met his eyes must have frozen him with horror, for there, within the door, stood three great bull apes, while behind them crowded many more; how many he never knew, for his revolvers were hanging on the far wall beside his rifle, and Kerchak was charging.
When the king ape released the limp form which had been John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, he turned his attention toward the little cradle; but Kala was there before him, and when he would have grasped the child she snatched it herself, and before he could intercept her she had bolted through the door and taken refuge in a high tree.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Tarzan of the Apes (1912)

Tree

“It comes to me as a desire to have something in the world. And again to quote Blake, 'It is better to murder an infant in the cradle than to nurse an ungratified desire.'... You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world that's not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen.... when you desire a work of art and make it, you've added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 15

People , World , Art , Quotes

“The child is not mine as the first was,
I cannot sing it to rest,
I cannot lift it up fatherly
And bliss it upon my breast;
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle
And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

The Changeling http://seacoastnh.com/poems/changeling2.html, st. 7 (1879)

Light , Singing

“I learned, practically in my cradle (actually from Bill McMillan's thesis), that the ground state wave function of a system of bosons should necessarily be real and positive, a fact which made his early Monte Carlo simulations infinitely easier.”

Philip Warren Anderson (1923) American physicist

[Four Last Conjectures, 23 March 2018, arXiv.org, https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.11186] (section on "Overlap Currents")

Learning

“Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the mathematics; for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws.
Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the Christian religion, which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put an end to the prestiges of the false Gods, itself reveres those Magi who came from the East, guided by a Star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXXII : Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, p. 841

God , World , Religion , Law

“Boys are scolded even for their violent fantasies- for the violent stories they want to hear, the violent books they want to read, the violent games they want to play. Male "demonism" is punished, pathologized, and stigmatized from cradle to campus. Even the good guys are treated like bad guys for ganging up, for being "xenophobic," patriotic, or too exclusive. Video games, fighting sports, and movies are decried for being "too violent." Football is deemed "too dangerous" by many overprotective parents. Everyone is supposed to agree that violence is never the answer- unless that violence comes from the cutting edge of the State's ax.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 105
The Way of Men (2012)

Books , Guy , Game , Boy

“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)

Life , Hostility , World , Family

“If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever.”

William McDonough (1951) American architect

"William McDonough: Godfather of Green", WNYC Studio 360 (18 March 2008) http://www.studio360.org/2011/apr/22/william-mcdonough-godfather-green/

Nature , Thinking

“Every cradle asks us, "Whence?" and every coffin, "Whither?" The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

At A Child's Grave (1882)

Intelligence , Question , Dead

“For some time I debated over whether I should start these memoirs at the beginning or at the end, that is, whether I should put my birth or my death in first place. Since common usage would call for beginning with birth, two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that I am not exactly a writer who is dead but a dead man who is a writer, for whom the grave was a second cradle; the second is that the writing would be more distinctive and novel in that way. Moses, who also wrote about his death, didn't place it at the opening but at the close: a radical difference between this book and the Pentateuch.”

Machado de Assis (1839–1908) Brazilian writer

Algum tempo hesitei se devia abrir estas memórias pelo princípio ou pelo fim, isto é, se poria em primeiro lugar o meu nascimento ou a minha morte. Suposto o uso vulgar seja começar pelo nascimento, duas considerações me levaram a adotar diferente método: a primeira é que eu não sou propriamente um autor defunto mas um defunto autor, para quem a campa foi outro berço; a segunda é que o escrito ficaria assim mais galante e mais novo. Moisés, que também contou a sua morte, não a pôs no intróito, mas no cabo: diferença radical entre este livro e o Pentateuco.
Source: As Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881), Ch. 1 (opening words), p. 7.

Death , Books , Way , Birth

“[Witches] steal young children out of their cradles, ministerio dæmonum, and put deformed in their rooms, which we call changelings.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 1, subsection 3.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

Children

“We’re best at the long high throws. Like when you take four or five steps and rip it— It’s almost like a shotput approach, the steps, four or five quick, one over the other, kind of sideways-like—and then you slash away with that fucker, it’s such a violent act, throwing that white thing, you’re first cradling it to your breast and then you whip that fucker as hard as you can while keeping it level, keeping it straight, but otherwise with everything you can send with it you whip that fucker like it had blades on it and you wanted it to cut straight through the paperblue sky like a screen, rip through it and have it be blood and back space beyond.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“To fall asleep in your embrace,
Land of our dreams, what bliss,
O you our cradle, you our grave,
You the new hope we ever crave,
Peninsula so beautiful,
Finland for aye our all!”

Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872) Finnish writer

The Finnish Land.

Beauty , Dreams , Hope

“The Republic of Korea has emerged as an important partner of the United States in many parts of the world. Also, in the course of investigating and responding to the North's March sinking of our naval vessel the Cheonan, Seoul and Washington have closely coordinated efforts and expertise. In all these endeavors, we are not losing sight of the necessity of eventually turning the Korean Peninsula into a cradle of regional and world peace.”

Lee Myung-bak (1941) 10th President of South Korea

A Note of Thanks (2010)

World , Peace , Effort , Parting

“It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Il est certain que pendant le seizième siècle, dans les années qui le précédèrent et le suivirent, l'empoisonnement était arrivé à une perfection inconnue à la chimie moderne et que l'histoire a constatée. L'Italie, berceau des sciences modernes, fut, à cette époque, inventrice et maîtresse de ces secrets dont plusieurs se perdirent.
Source: About Catherine de' Medici (1842), Part II: The Ruggieri's Secret, Ch. II: Schemes Against Schemes.

Secret , History , Science , Perfection

“What was uncovered at Sidhpur only to be covered up again was verily the tip of an iceberg which remains submerged in hundreds of histories written by Muslim historians, in Hindu literary sources which are slowly coming to light, in the accounts of foreign travellers who visited India and the neighbouring lands during medieval and modern times, and above all in the reports of the archaeological surveys carried out in all those countries which had been for long the cradles of Hindu culture. No systematic effort has yet been made by scholars to see the iceberg emerge from the dark depths and tell its own story in a simple and straight-forward manner. Rare is the historian or archaeologist who had related this vandalism to the theology of Islam based on the Qur’ãn and the Sunnah of the Prophet. On the contrary, the subject has been politicised by the votaries of Secularism who become hysterical by the very mention of the untold story. Politicians in power have made and are making frantic efforts to suppress every tip of the iceberg which chances to surface in spite, of the conspiracy to keep it out of sight. Some of these politicians are masquerading as academicians and selling far-fetched and fantastic apologies for the havoc caused by Islamic iconoclasm.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Travel , History , Effort , Light

“Land of ancient India
Cradle of humanity, hail
Hail! revered motherland,
Whom centuries of brutal invasions
Have not yet buried
Under the dust of oblivion.
Hail! Fatherland of faith,
Of love, of poetry and of science,
May we hail a revival of thy past
In our Western future!”

Louis Jacolliot (1837–1890) French writer and lawyer

The Bible in India, as quoted in K. M. Talreja, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible: A Comparative Study https://books.google.com/books?id=9qkoAAAAYAAJ, New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan, 2000

Love , Faith , Science , Past

“We must look into unknown dimensions, into Nature, into that incalculable and imponderable life, whose carrier and mediator, the blood of the Earth that accompanies us steadfastly from the cradle to the grave, is water.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Implosion Magazine, No. 103, p. 28 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Life , Nature , Water