Popular quotes about Bird! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 4
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 LamottEven towards yourself you have to be tremendously loving, because you too are god's form. One has to love oneself, one has to love all. Love is prayer. And the more you love, the more you will feel your consciousness expanding, becoming bigger - because whomsoever we love becomes part of our being, we include him. Mm? A bird on the wing, and we look at the bird with great love - suddenly we are not two: the bird is inside us and we are inside the bird.
RajneeshMy father used to say: Every bird is one bird, and every book is one book, and every bird and every book is one thing too, under the words and the feathers." He finished with a flourish, as though the meaning of this was self-evident.
Clive BarkerPercy France told me, similarly, he and Bird used to hang out. They were good buddies. And he said, "Man, we'd just walk through town, sometimes with our horns. And we'd walk by past an Irish bar. And you'd stand outside and check out the music. And Bird would go in and sit in with these traditional Irish musicians. Then we'd past a Greek restaurant and we'd hear that. And Charles "Bird" Parker would go sit in with those guys. He was just listening to everything, reacting to everything.
Jon GordonThe cultural influences in our country are like the floo floo bird. I am referring to the peculiar and especial bird who always flew backward. To keep the wind out of its eyes? No. Just because it didn't give a darn where it was going, but just had to see where it had been.
Frank Lloyd WrightNo bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat; Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original.
Thomas Bailey AldrichThe intent of sincere humanitarians is to do good to society, just as the intent of the child who kills a bird by to much fondling is to do good to the bird.
Vilfredo ParetoI've been told that some members of Congress disagree with my tax cut proposal. Well, you know it's been said that taxation is the art of plucking feathers without killing the bird. It's time they realized the bird just doesn't have any feathers left.
Ronald ReaganSometimes 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 MartinA single note, held in an amber suspension of time, like a charcoal drawing of Icarus falling. It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity. It went on and on, until my own lungs were burning. โWhat bird are you calling?โ I asked finally, when I couldnโt stand it any longer. The Bird Man stopped whistling. He grinned, so that I could see all his pebbly teeth. โYou.
Karen RussellI believe I saw a woodcock. He had a long bill like putting a fire hydrant into a pencil sharpener, then pasting it onto a bird and letting the bird fly away in front of me with this thing on its face for no other purpose than to amaze me.
Richard BrautiganThe 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. LawrenceI describe the variety of different kinds of experiences I had, from seeing into the future to being inside the body of a bird and feeling the bird consciousness, to being in a plane of existence with beings that do not exist on this planet at all. And I described my experiences to shamans who started to laugh, saying, "Oh, we know those guys."
Fred Alan WolfSilence is the nest and music is the bird. The bird leaves the nest early in the morning and returns to the nest in the evening. Similarly, in the spiritual world, divine music comes from the inmost soul of Silence.
Sri ChinmoyPossibilities are like the wings of birds; they allow man to soar and to climb to the heavens. And facts are like the atmosphere against which those wings must beat, and without which the soaring bird will surely plummet back to earth.
Ivan PavlovThe fish in the water is silent, the animals on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.
Rabindranath TagorePrayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home.
Abraham Joshua HeschelI once got a huge, expensive flower arrangement from a person I didn't like, who sent it out of pure guilt. It had a hideous bird-of-paradise in the middle, and I thought it would never fade and die. I hated it.
Maeve BinchyBirds 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 McQueenThis is me apologizing. I am a fool, a bird-brain, a liar and a horse-thief. I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.
Dorothy ParkerWisdom 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 LindsayIt was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make ANYTHING all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting. - Amir
Khaled HosseiniThere's a flame of magic inside every stone & every flower, every bird that sings & every frog that croaks. There's magic in the trees & the hills & the river & the rocks, in the sea & the stars & the wind, a deep, wild magic that's as old as the world itself. It's in you too, my darling girl, and in me, and in every living creature, be it ever so small. Even the dirt I'm sweeping up now is stardust. In fact, all of us are made from the stuff of stars.
Kate ForsythPermitted to inhabit neither the realm of the ideal nor the realm of the real, to be neither aspiration nor companion, beauty comes to us like a fugitive bird unable to fly, unable to land.
Elaine ScarryI wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life - but there was no one to tell me.
George Washington CarverThelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.'
Charles MingusNon-Indian writers usually say "Great Spirit," "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four-Legged, and Winged." Mixed-blood writers usually say "Creator, "Mother Earth," "Two-Legged, Four- Legged, and Winged." Indian writers usually say "God," "Mother Earth," "Human Being, Dog, and Bird."
Sherman AlexieI think I've always had that bird's-eye view of myself. I think it's an actor trait... Sometimes it's best just to get lost out there, but other times you have to be aware of where the light's hitting you.
Allison WilliamsIf rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
Henry David ThoreauIf 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 MartelThe number of people displaced by dams is estimated at between 40 million and 80 million, most of them in China and India. The costs of dams were on average 50% above their original estimate. Some designed to reduce flooding made it worse, and there were many unexpected environmental disadvantages, including the extinction of fish and bird species. Half the world's wetlands had been lost because of dams.
Paul BrownWhat could thunderbirds want with us?" I wondered aloud [...] "We'll find out when Big Bird wakes up," Marc said. My father shook his head. "We'll find out now. Wake him up and make him sing.
Rachel VincentI 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 DayOur government is a bird with two right wings... They're devoted to the perpetuation & spread of corporate capitalism.
Lawrence FerlinghettiI think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song.
Charles HartshorneIt is somethingit can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below.
Wallace StegnerDisneyland's a mess. And it's not just the measles. Donald Duck has bird flu. Pocahontas has small pox. The Little Mermaid has crabs. And the Monorail? Mono.
Bill Maher"And when you had made sure of the poor little fool," said my aunt - "God forgive me that I should call her so, and she gone where YOU won't go in a hurry - because you had not done wrong enough to her and hers, you must begin to train her, must you? begin to break her, like a poor caged bird, and wear her deluded life away, in teaching her to sing YOUR notes?"
Charles DickensThere were plenty of women around who dressed smartly, and plenty more who dressed to impress, but this girl was different. Totally different. She wore her clothing with such utter naturalness and grace that she could have been a bird that had wrapped itself in a special wind as it made ready to fly off to another world. He had never seen a woman who wore her clothes with such apparent joy. And the clothes themselves looked as if, in being draped on her body, they had won new life for themselves.
Haruki Murakami