Popular quotes about Bird! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 81
We 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 CarasIf I wanted to play the violin, I had to work. Because anything that one wants to do really, and one loves doing, one must do everyday. It should be as easy to the artist and as natural as flying is to a bird. And you canโt imagine a bird saying well, Iโm tired today, Iโm not going to fly!
Yehudi MenuhinI wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.
Benjamin FranklinTake a good rest, small bird," he said. "Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.
Ernest HemingwayBirth of the Cool' became a collector's item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird and Dizzy's music. Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren't a fast listener, you couldn't catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn't sweet, and it didn't have harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend trying to get over with a kiss.
Miles DavisEvery spring, this country will be reminded of the Lady from Texas. As trees bloom and flowers carpet our nation's capital, Lady Bird Johnson will be remembered. Only Lady Bird Johnson could, with her vision of a beautiful America, lay claim to spring as her memorial.
David MixnerYou needn't tell a bird it's a bird. Or remind a fish of its purpose. It's only us who lose our way. We have names because we must. - from Golden Tongue: The Poems of Steven Slaughter
Maggie StiefvaterHe watched a catbird hopping around in an azalea that was readying itself to bloom; he envied the bird for knowing nothing of what he knew; he would have swapped souls with it in a heartbeat. And then to take wing, to know the air's buoyancy even for an hour: the trad was a no-brainer, and the catbird, with its lively indifference to him, its sureness of physical selfhood, seemed well aware of how preferable it was to be the bird.
Jonathan FranzenLove consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of Divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly.
John of the CrossIn the deepest night of trouble and sorrow God gives us so much to be thankful for that we need never cease our singing. With all our wisdom and foresight we can take a lesson in gladness and gratitude from the happy bird that sings all night, as if the day were not long enough to tell its joy.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeCats too, with what silent stealthiness, with what light steps do they creep up to a bird!
Pliny the ElderDebt is to man what the serpent is to the bird; its eye fascinates, its breath poisons, its coil crushes sinew and bone, its jaw is the pitiless grave.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonWill urban sprawl spread so far that most people lose all touch with nature? Will the day come when the only bird a typical American child ever sees is a canary in a pet shop window? When the only wild animal he knows is a rat-glimpsed on a night drive through some city slum? When the only tree he touches is the cleverly fabricated plastic evergreen that shades his gifts on Christmas morning?
Frank N. IkardOnly to the rude ear of one who is quite indifferent does the song of a bird seem always the same.
Rosa LuxemburgWhen I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
Czeslaw MiloszBut the owls themselves are not hard to find, silent and on the wing, with their ear tufts flat against their heads as they fly and their huge wings alternately gliding and flapping as they maneuver through the trees. Athena's owl of wisdom and Merlin's companion, Archimedes, were screech owls surely, not this bird with the glassy gaze, restless on the bough, nothing but blood on its mind.
Mary OliverHark! o'er the dread abyss the sea-bird screams-- The rocks resound--again the lightning gleams!
John RamsayEveryone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did we would do things differently. Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, "Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?
Morrie SchwartzWhoever is related to me in the height of his aspirations will experience veritable ecstasies of learning; for I come from heights that no bird ever reached in its flight, I know abysses into which no foot ever strayed.
Friedrich NietzscheStaring at her face, she began to fancy her outer layer had begun to melt away while she wasn't paying attention, and something -- some new skeleton -- was emerging from beneath the softness of her accustomed self. With a deep, visceral ache, she wished her true form might prove to be a sleek and shining one, like a stiletto blade slicing free of an ungainly sheath. Like a bird of prey losing its hatchling fluff to hunt in cold, magnificent skies. That she might become something glittering, something startling, something dangerous.
Laini TaylorToday, 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 BuchananPermitted 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 CarverSleep in my arms. Like a baby bird. Like a broom among brooms... in a broom closet. Like a tiny parrot. Like a whistle. Like a little song. A song sung by a forest... within a forest... a thousand years ago.
Milan KunderaA bird without wings and a man without art are both condemned to wander in low places; they can never soar up to those unrivalled heights.
Mehmet Murat IldanNon-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 AlexiePeople come back from flights and tell you a story like it's a horror story. That's how bad they make it sound. They're like, 'It was the worst day of my life. We didn't board for 20 minutes and they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes.' Oh really? What happened next? Did you fly in the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight you non-contributing zero?'
Louis C. K.I'm alive inside. A bird is my heart. Mama and Daddy is not win. I'm winning. I'm drinking hot chocolate in the Village wif girls--all kind who love me. How that is so I don't know. How Mama and Daddy kknow me sixteen years and hate me, how a stranger meet me and love me. Must be what they already had in they pocket.
SapphireMy heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love is come to me. Raise me a daรฏs of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.
Christina RossettiLike bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.
Jose MartiThe 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 BrownI 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 DayEveryone 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 PicassoThe commonest forms of amateur natural history in the United States are probably gardening, bird watching, the maintenance of aquarium fish, and nature photography.
Marston BatesOut of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan, and sail 'round the high-pooped galleys... Dragons will wander about the waste places, and the phoenix will soar from her nest of fire into the air. We shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the toad's head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be.
Oscar WildeYou can't really appreciate a work of art until you can understand how difficult it was to create. And that's probably true of any work of art - a rock, a tree, a bird, a fish, a sunrise made of light and air.
Laurence OvermireThere 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 MurakamiThe Iraqi is really not whacky toady, perhaps, even tacky. When they gave him the word, he gave us the bird and joined with the Arabs, by cracky!
Dean AchesonPerhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, seperate, in the evening.
Rainer Maria RilkeThe ancients could communicate with the gods in two ways. First, it was (and is) possible to go into a trance and visit the gods in their celestial retreats, as the great shamans have always done. More easily, and less dangerously, they could let the gods speak through code, that is, divination, using dice, entrails, bird patterns, yarrow sticks, cards.
Rachel Pollack