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“The mother instinct is something of which I am completely devoid. I explain it like this to myself: life is a vale of tears and all human beings are miserable creatures, so I cannot take the responsibility for bringing yet another unhappy creature into the world.”
― An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943; and Letters from Westerbork
― An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943; and Letters from Westerbork
“Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more, it preformed a miracle with man, but later did not know him”
― The Last Messiah
― The Last Messiah
“Performing residual actions is to participate daily in small funeral ceremonies.”
― Discomfort and Moral Impediment: The Human Situation, Radical Bioethics and Procreation
― Discomfort and Moral Impediment: The Human Situation, Radical Bioethics and Procreation
“This crime was by my father done -To me, but never by me to one." (in regards to life and being born)”
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“As soon as the child is born, the mother who has just brought him into the world must console him, quiet his crying, and lighten the burden of the existence she has given him. And one of the principal duties of good parents in the childhood and early youth of their children is to comfort them, to encourage them to live,1 because sorrows and ills and passions are at that age much heavier than they are to those who through long experience, or simply because they have lived longer, are used to suffering. And in truth it is only fitting that the good father and the good mother, in trying to console their children, correct as best they can, and ease, the damage they have done by procreating them. Good God! Why then is man born? And why does he procreate? To console those he has given birth to for having been born?”
― Zibaldone
― Zibaldone
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