“Virtue is the nursing-mother of all human pleasures, who, in rendering them just, renders them also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them in breath and appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses, whets our desires to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberal mother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if not to lassitude.” IfsHumansKindMotherDesirePleasureVirtuePureBreathsRefusePermanentAppetiteNursingRenderingSatiety Author:Socrates
“Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.” ThinkingSoulMovingMotherSunBreathsCommittedDeedsGood DeedsBreezeThings ChangeEraseNoonScorching Author:Jean-Paul Sartre
“How fragile life was, how fleeting their days on earth, and how fickle was Death, claiming the young as often as the old, the healthy as often as the ailing, cruelly stealing away a baby's first breath, a mother's fading heartbeat.” FirstsEarthYoungMotherBabyHealthyBreathsStealingFragileFleetingHeartbeatFadingFickle Author:Sharon Kay Penman
“Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! Come to the mother's, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath! Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke!” FeelsFirstsDeathMotherBornCitiesFirst TimeBreathsBlessedBrokeStrokesChamberCrowdedSealsPestilenceBridalCrowded Cities Book:Alnwick Castle, with Other Poems Source: Alnwick Castle, with Other Poems
“Anybody can become a widow. There aren't any special qualifications. It happens in less time than it takes to draw a breath. It doesn't require the planning, for example, that it takes to become a wife or a mother or any of the other ritual roles of womanhood.” HappensMotherRolesWifeSpecialExampleDrawsBreathsPlanningRitualWomanhoodWidowsQualificationsWidowhood Author:Jacquelyn Mitchard