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Procreation   /prˈoʊkriˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Procreation

noun
1.
The sexual activity of conceiving and bearing offspring.  Synonyms: breeding, facts of life, reproduction.






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"Procreation" Quotes from Famous Books



... organized beings similar to himself. By a consequence of his temperament and of physical laws, this generation does not take place, except when the circumstances necessary to its production find themselves united. Thus this procreation is not operated by chance; the animal does not fructify, but with an animal of his own species, because this is the only one analogous to himself, who unites the qualities, who combines the circumstances, suitable to produce a being resembling himself; without this he would not produce any thing, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... pass them by: 'tis a prefatory introduction, continued my father, or an introductory preface (for I am not determined which name to give it) upon political or civil government; the foundation of which being laid in the first conjunction betwixt male and female, for procreation of the species—I was insensibly led into it.—'Twas ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... years' comparative sobriety, enforced by vine-disease, had a sensible effect in diminishing the cases of idiocy. Nervous constitution and consumption exercise important influence. Of the professions, lawyers furnish the smallest proportion of idiots, while they are credited with the procreation of a relatively very large number of men of eminence. With the clergy, these proportions are more than reversed. The influence of consanguineous marriage, per se, is insignificant, if it exists.—Pop. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various

... to obtain still stronger and more productive varieties, we may go to work several ways. We may plant our choice varieties in close proximity, and let the bees and summer gales do the hybridizing. It will be remembered that the organs of procreation in the perfect strawberry blossom are the pistils on the convex receptacle and the encircling stamens. The anthers of the latter produce a golden powder, so light that it will float on a summer breeze, and so fine that insects dust ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... supervening during so-called growth at a particular period, and being inherited at a corresponding period. In the case, however, of diseases which supervene during old age, subsequently to the ordinary period of procreation, and which nevertheless are sometimes inherited, as occurs with brain and heart complaints, we {390} must suppose that the organs were in fact affected at an earlier age and threw off at this period affected gemmules; but that the affection ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... entranced her, especially about the presentation of the dear little children. She would have supposed that naturally it thoroughly satisfied Anna and Harold and Flora and the others; and the point of interest rests here, that Rosalie's mother also believed that this explanation of marriage and procreation completely satisfied Anna at sixteen and Harold in the Bank at eighteen. She never gave them any other explanation of the phenomenon of birth; and it is to be supposed that, just as she instructed them that ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... emasculation was made use of in order to get rid of it, which may, perhaps, have been the origin of Eunuchs. But however this be, it is certain, that there were men of various religions who made themselves incapable of procreation on a religious account, as we are told that the priests of Cybele constantly castrated themselves; and by our Saviour, that there are eunuchs who make themselves such for ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... Oaths and Swearing, could never have enter'd into the the Heads of Politician, if the Fear of an invisible Cause had not pre-existed and been supposed to be universal, any more than they would have contrived matrimony, if the Desire of Procreation had not been planted in Human Nature and visible in both Sexes. Passions don't affect us, but when they are provoked: The Fear of Death is a Reality in our Nature: But the greatest Cowards may, and often do, live Forty Years and longer, without ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... discovered about the procreation of fish, and in no case have scientists worked so hard and discovered more than in the case of Salmonidae. Fish culture, particularly trout culture, has become a trade, and a paying one. To any one who has the least idea ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker

... higher animals—man and women—sexual intercourse is desired more or less continuously throughout adult life, and desired much more for romantic than for reproductive considerations—that is, for the sake of health and happiness rather than for the sake of procreation only. A few women, and still fewer men, have no sexual desires. To them sexual abstinence seems more natural than sexual satisfaction. But for the majority of mankind and womankind—for all normally ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout

... of advance or decline. Seeck thinks that a general weariness of life in the Greco-Roman world caused indifference to procreation. It accounts for the readiness to commit suicide and for the indifference to martyrdom. Life was hardly worth having. He says that during the whole period of the empire there was no improvement in the useful arts, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... shall have arrived, the new social institutions of that day will prevent the weeding out of weakness and inefficiency. All, the weak and the strong, will have an equal chance for procreation. And the progeny of all, of the weak as well as the strong, will have an equal chance for survival. This being so, and if no new effective law of development be put into operation, then progress must cease. And not only progress, for deterioration would at once ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... advanced occultists for the abuse of the functions of sex. Not only the act, but the thought behind the act was condemned by him. The advanced occult teaching is that the function of the sex organization is entirely that of procreation—aught else is a perversion of nature. Jesus speaks in strong words to men and women, in this passage, regarding this great question. The concluding portion of the passage is a condemnation of the abuse of the marriage relation, and the privilege of divorce, which was being strongly agitated ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... First, where the insanity has arisen from some violent disappointment, and not from intemperance in the use of spirituous liquors. Secondly, where the parent has acquired the insanity or epilepsy by habits of intoxication after the procreation of his children. Which habits I suppose to be the general cause of the disposition to insanity in this country. See Class III. 1. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... every case to reconcile Tolstoy the great artist with Tolstoy the almost venomous reformer. It is difficult to believe that a man who draws in such noble outlines the dignity of the daily life of humanity regards as evil that divine act of procreation by which that dignity is renewed from age to age. It is difficult to believe that a man who has painted with so frightful an honesty the heartrending emptiness of the life of the poor can really grudge them every one of their pitiful pleasures, from courtship to tobacco. It is difficult to ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton



Words linked to "Procreation" :   facts of life, interbreeding, crossbreeding, propagation, sexual activity, sexual practice, sex activity, sex, procreate, breeding, multiplication, generation, reproduction, miscegenation



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