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Birth Quote by Pablo Neruda

“We will never have any memory of dying. We were so patient about our being, noting down numbers, days, years and months, hair, and the mouths we kiss, and that moment of dying we let pass without a note - we leave it to others as memory, or we leave it simply to water, to water, to air, to time…” quote by Pablo Neruda
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““We will never have any memory of dying. We were so patient about our being, noting down numbers, days, years and months, hair, and the mouths we kiss, and that moment of dying we let pass without a note - we leave it to others as memory, or we leave it simply to water, to water, to air, to time. Nor do we even keep the memory of being born, although to come into being was tumultuous and new; and now you don’t remember a single detail and haven’t kept even a trace of your first light. It’s well known that we are born. It’s well known that in the room or in the wood or in the shelter in the fishermen’s quarter or in the rustling canefields there is a quite unusual silence, a grave and wooden moment as a woman prepares to give birth. It’s well known that we were all born. But if that abrupt translation from not being to existing, to having hands, to seeing, to having eyes, to eating and weeping and overflowing and loving and loving and suffering and suffering, of that transition, that quivering of an electric presence, raising up one body more, like a living cup, and of that woman left empty, the mother who is left there in her blood and her lacerated fullness, and its end and its beginning, and disorder tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers till everything comes together and adds one knot more to the thread of life, nothing, nothing remains in your memory of the savage sea which summoned up a wave and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree. The only thing you remember is your life." -"Births””

Pablo Neruda

About This Quote

Source Poem: “Births” by Pablo Neruda, 1925

Life’s moments of birth and death slip beyond conscious memory; only the lived experience remains.

In simple terms: We forget birth and death, remembering only life itself.

Key Takeaway

Focus on living fully now.

Themes

mortality memory existence

Mood

reflective melancholic

Type

poetic philosophical

When to use this quote

  • birth
  • death
  • daily routine
  • reflection
  • mindfulness

Key Concepts

impermanence human experience consciousness

Questions to Reflect On

  • How does remembering only life shape your priorities?
  • What does forgetting birth and death teach about presence?
A Different Perspective

Memory is selective; we cannot capture every moment.

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