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The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times QUOTES

The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times QUOTES

1 " She sold her hair; she sold her teeth, but it was never enough. The baby became lethargic and ceased to thrive. She called it “wasting fever”.
When the baby died no money could be spared for burial, so she sealed him in an orange box weighed down with stones, and slipped him into the river.
That furtive journey in the middle of the night with her dead baby was the moment when she finally accepted defeat, and knew that the inevitable had come. She and the children would have to go to the workhouse.”. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

2 " That's the trouble, I can't forget him. He was everything to me, except mine. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

3 " Their devotion showed me there were no versions of love there was only... Love. That it had no equal and that it was worth searching for, even if that search took a lifetime. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

4 " Now and then in life, love catches you unawares, illuminating the dark corners of your mind, and filling them with radiance. Once in awhile you are faced with a beauty and a joy that takes your soul, all unprepared, by assault. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

5 " The shell must be broken before the bird can fly. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

6 " Was it love of people?' I asked her.
'Of course no,' she snapped sharply. 'How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don't even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working, in spite of it? One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

7 " Love doesn't adhere to time and boundaries does it? It just is. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

8 " Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

9 " Circumstances bring people together, and take them apart. One cannot keep up with everyone in a lifetime. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

10 " Now and then in life, love catches you unawares, illuminating the dark corners of your mind, and filling them with radiance. Once in a while you are faced with a beauty and a joy that takes your soul, all unprepared, by assault. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

11 " Questions, questions – you wear me out with your questions, child. Find out for yourself – we all have to in the end. No one can give you faith. It is a gift from God alone. Seek and ye shall find. Read the Gospels. There is no other way. Do not pester me with your everlasting questions. Go with God, child; just go with God. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

12 " I've loved someone since I was seventeen but I can't have him and I can't give him up. So until I can do that no one else will stand a chance. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

13 " Sister Monica Joan murmured, as though to herself, but loud enough to be heard by all, "How perfectly charming. Old enough to know it all, and young enough to blush. Perfectly charming. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

14 " Quite suddenly, with blinding insight, the secret of their blissful marriage was revealed to me. She couldn't speak a word of English and he couldn't speak a word of Spanish. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

15 " Her constant phrase, "Go with God", had puzzled me a good deal. Suddenly it became clear. It was a revelation - acceptance. It filled me with joy. Accept life, the world, Spirit, God, call it what you will, and all else will follow. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

16 " I have a theory that all human babies are born prematurely. Given the human life span – three score years and ten – to be comparable with other animals of similar longevity, human gestation should be about two years. But the human head is so big by the age of two that no woman could deliver it. So our babies are born prematurely, in a state of utter helplessness. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

17 " Her religious poetry was surprisingly slender, and as I was eager to know more about her religion, I asked her about this aspect of her poetry. She replied with these lines from Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'--that is all Ye know on eath, and all ye need to know'. Do not ask me to immortalise the great Mystery of Life. I am just a humble worker. For beauty, look to the Pslams, to Isaiah, to St. John of the Cross. How could my poor pen scan such verse? For truth, look to the Gospels-- four short accounts of God made Man. There is nothing more to say. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

18 " In the Russian Orthodox Church there is the concept of the Holy Fool. It means someone who is a fool to the ways of the world, but wise to the ways of God. I think that Ted, from the moment he saw the baby, knew that he could not possibly be the father. ...Perhaps he saw in that moment that if he so much as questioned the baby's fatherhood, it would mean humiliation for the child and might jeopardize his entire future. ...Perhaps he understood that he could not reasonably expect an independent and energetic spirit like Winnie to find him sexually exciting and fulfilling.

...And so he decided upon the most unexpected, and yet the simplest course of all. He chose to be such a Fool that he couldn't see the obvious. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

19 " I am forced to the conclusion that modern medicine does not know it all. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

20 " Quite honestly, a baby covered in blood, still slightly blue, eyes screwed up, in the first few minutes after birth, is not an object of beauty. "

― Jennifer Worth , The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times