Popular quotes about Bird! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 15
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
Anne LamottFor us, a pretty bird is a pretty bird; for an insect, pretty bird is an ugly enemy!
Mehmet Murat IldanWe are all pirates at heart. There is not one of us who hasn't had a little larceny in his soul. And which one of us wouldn't soar if God had thought there was merit in the idea? So, when we see one of those great widespread pirates soaring across the grain of sea winds we thrill, and we long, and, if we are honest, we curse that we must be men every day. Why not one day a bird! There's an idea, now, one day out of seven a pirate in the sky. What puny power a man can attain by comparison. Compare a 747 with a bird and blush!
Roger CarasI glance at the exit across the room. I want out. The bird in my chest is crashing up against its cage. I can feel the heavy thump, thump, thump of its feverish body inside and I open my mouth, not to speak, but to let the bird out so I can breathe.
Han NolanSometimes the early bird gets the worm, but sometimes the early bird gets frozen to death.
Myron ScholesIt wasn't until Hope fluttered over and landed at Alex's feet, peering questioningly up at him, that he finally tore his hands away from his eyes.Oh, my God, he said, sounding disgusted. Why is there a bird looking at me?That's Miss Oliviera's bird, Henry volunteered cheerfully. The captain gave it to her as a present.Kayla punched me in the arm. John's got his captain's license? she whispered. You are so lucky. Frank says he just loads cargo.I glanced at Frank. I wondered if Kayla would like him as much if she knew the cargo he loaded was human souls.
Meg CabotBird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to design a bird capable, say, of catching insects in mid-air, with the result that birds of similar habitats tend to have very similar anatomies, whatever their ancestry. For example, American vultures look and behave much like Old World vultures, but biologists have come to realize that the former are related to storks, the latter to hawks, and that their resemblances result from their common lifestyle.
Jared DiamondSometimes I see a bird fly by and I feel jealous. But then other times I see a bird fly into a closed window and I feel laughing.
Demetri MartinThe man who had died looked nakedly on life, and saw a vast resoluteness everywhere flinging itself up in stormy or subtle wave-crests.... always the man who had died saw not the bird alone, but the short, sharp wave of life of which the bird was the crest.
D. H. LawrenceWhen we three spoke ourselves into human existences the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitation that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird (a jay), whose nature it is to fly, choosing to only walk and remain grounded. He doesn't stop being a bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly.
William P. YoungWhen the rose is gone and the garden faded you will no longer hear the nightingale's song. The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil. The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing. If love withholds its strengthening care, the lover is left like a bird without care, the lover is left like a bird without wings. How will I be awake and aware if the light of the Beloved is absent? Love wills that this Word be brought forth.
RumiA bird painted not with beauty but with all the dirt and wounds collected in a long hard life, in battle, in love, with torn feathers and a busted leg and a chipped beak and one of its eyes half closed; and yet a bird of deeper loveliness for all of that.
Jeff NoonThey tell us sometimes that if we had only kept quiet, all these desirable things would have come about of themselves. I am reminded of the Greek clown who, having seen an archer bring down a flying bird, remarked, sagely: 'You might have saved your arrow, for the bird would anyway have been killed by the fall.'
Elizabeth Cady StantonThere are still many unsolved problems about bird life, among which are the age that birds attain, the exact time at which some birds acquire their adult dress, and the changes which occur in this with years. Little, too, is known about the laws and routes of bird migration, and much less about the final disposition of the untold thousands which are annually produced.
Paul BartschWhat has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFor if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, and that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.
Annie ProulxOnce I asked Teichman what he thought of Bird's chess: "Same as his health," he replied, "always alternating between being dangerously ill and dangerously well."
William Ewart NapierFor man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time.
D. H. LawrenceFor all his learning or sophistication, man still instinctively reaches towards that force beyond. Only arrogance can deny its existence, and the denial falters in the face of evidence on every hand. In every tuft of grass, in every bird, in every opening bud, there it is.
Hal BorlandBirds in flight fascinate me. I admire eagles and falcons. Iโm inspired by a feather but also its color, its graphics, its weightlessness and its engineering. Itโs so elaborate. In fact I try and transpose the beauty of a bird to women.
Alexander McQueenToday, candor compels us to admit that our vaunted two-party system is a snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation. Our two parties have become nothing but two wings of the same bird of prey.
Pat BuchananWisdom comes with all we see, God writes His lessons in each flower, And ev'ry singing bird or bee Can teach us something of His power.
Maud LindsayMen had reached into the scrub and along its boundaries, had snatched what they could get and had gone away, uneasy in that vast indifferent peace; for a man was nothing, crawling ant-like among the myrtle bushes under the pines. Now they were gone, it was as though they had never been. The silence of the scrub was primordial. The wood-thrush crying across it might have been the first bird in the world-or the last.
Marjorie Kinnan RawlingsPeople look at me as if I were some sort of monster, but I can't think why. In my macabre pictures, I have either been a monster-maker or a monster-destroyer, but never a monster. Actually, I'm a gentle fellow. Never harmed a fly. I love animals, and when I'm in the country I'm a keen bird-watcher.
Peter CushingIf you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go! - do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn't. Birds are not free. The people you've just evicted would sputter, With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We're calling the police, you scoundrel.
Yann MartelHomer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.
Henry David ThoreauYou make me smile like the sun, fall out bed, sing like a bird, dizzy in my head. Spin like a record crazy on a sunday night. You make me dance like a fool, forget how to breath, shine like the sun buzz like a bee, just the thought of you can drive me wild. Oh you make me smile.
Uncle KrackerI flipped the good doctor the bird. Snorting, Gideon caught my hand and pulled me back down the hall. "What is it with you and giving people the finger?" "What? It's a classic.
Sylvia DayLike a flying bird you came into my life. Your love was the strength that let me take the plunge. I didn't think that I would ever be this way but you have changed all things for me.
Kimberly JohnsonEveryone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.
Pablo PicassoOur government is a bird with two right wings... They're devoted to the perpetuation & spread of corporate capitalism.
Lawrence FerlinghettiI think hawking is the nearest thing to flying in this world. There you sit high up and poised light as air, the horse swift beneath you. You unhood your bird, let the jesses go and watch your falcon, its bells a-jingle, like some wild spirit take the air... and your own spirit goes with it.
Hilda LewisLike a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.
Robert Louis StevensonTo find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
John BurroughsAs you love your own body, so regard everyone as equal to your own body. When the Supreme Experience supervenes, everyone's service is revealed as one's own service. Call it a bird, an insect, an animal or a man, call it by any name you please, one serves one's own Self in every one of them.
Anandamayi MaIn my perfect imagination, with stern discipline I rise with the first bird, salute the dawn, have a healthy breakfast of fruits, wander over to my faux-oak desk, tap the On button on my Macbook Air, acknowledge the muse, and skip into the world where the story flows over the day and into the night.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor