Quotes About Birds

If they embark on this course the difference between the old and the new education will be an important one. Where the old initiated, the new merely 'conditions'. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds- making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation-men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.

Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.

Do you know how the naturalist learns all the secrets of the forest, of plants, of birds, of beasts, of reptiles, of fishes, of the rivers and the sea? When he goes into the woods the birds fly before him and he finds none; when he goes to the river bank, the fish and the reptile swim away and leave him alone. His secret is patience; he sits down, and sits still; he is a statue; he is a log.

The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds—the birds were chickens and the flowers dried sunflowers rattling against a wall.

The fox when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off their heads.

Look how the smaller birds greet the sun, with so much merry chirruping and so much outpouring of song! It is their way of expressing worship for the only Light they can know, an outer one. But man can also know the inner Sun, the Light of the Overself. How much more reason has he to chirp and sing than the little birds! Yet how few man feel gratitude for such privilege.

Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.

The first time Calypso came to check on [Leo], it was to complain about the noise. “Smoke and fire,” she said. “Clanging on metal all day long. You’re scaring away the birds!” “Oh, no, not the birds!

It occurs to me one evening as I'm feeding the birds that all I did was put two birds in the aviary, some food and water and nothing else and now there are six of them. I know this is perfectly natural, it's one of the things life is all about, but to have it happen in my bedroom, under my own eyes, is magic.

All the birds love Touche Eclat. It's a (concealer) pen that gets rid of eye bags. But I'm quite happy otherwise. I train a lot.

The birds fly in the wrong places and there are too many stars in the sky.

Words are the birds that break cover and show your enemy where you're hiding.

From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

Then the Parson might preach, & drink, & sing, And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring; And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church, Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.

I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that the truth should be spoken at least once in the world. Because the world is a place of silence, the sky at night when the birds have gone is a vast silent place. Words will make the slightest difference to the sky at night. They will not brighten it or make it less strange. And the day too has its own deep indifference to anything that is said.

That first pregnancy is a long sea journey to a country where you don't know the language, where land is in sight for such a long time that after a while it's just the horizon - and then one day birds wheel over that dark shape and it's suddenly close, and all you can do is hope like hell that you've had the right shots.

Standing on the bridge, looking across at that empty city, everything in the compass of my gaze had been set there by a human hand. Somehow those pylons had been strung with wire, and those towers raised, and roofs tiled. There had been food and drink for millions of mouths. I don't cry easy, but my vision blurred as I stared on the ruins of what we had been, and I watched the small band of men in rags move toward it to pick at it like birds on the carcass of some giant.

Don't cry, you crybaby! When you think things are hard, that's the time you are maturing as a person. If you get over the darkness, a wonderful new day will come. The bright morning will be filled with light and the birds will be singing . There'll be white roses with a lovely fragrance.

The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain "indicator species" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections.

One of the bibles of my youth was 'Birds of the West Indies,' by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, 'My God, that's the dullest name I've ever heard,' so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one.

It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries.

Me and a mate picked up two darling birds and they took us back to their flat. I went into the bedroom with my bird and she started getting undressed. I was that drunk I was standing there wondering how to get undressed without letting go of the award. I went to sit on the bed, missed it by four feet and ended up lying on the floor. I remember the bird looking down at me, and saying, ‘Some player of the year.’ Then I fell asleep. I woke up still clutching my award and staggered out of the flat. I hadn’t a bloody clue where I was.

And I go out of Father's house and I walk down the street, and it is very quiet even thought it is the middle of the day and I can't hear any noise except birds singing and wind and sometimes buildings falling down in the distance, and if I stand very close to traffic lights I can hear a little click as the colors change.

Let us suppose that we have laid on the table... [a] piece of glass... and let us homologize this glass to a whole order of plants or birds. Let us hit this glass a blow in such a manner as but to crack it up. The sectors circumscribed by cracks following the first blow may here be understood to represent families. Continuing, we may crack the glass into genera, species and subspecies to the point of finally having the upper right hand corner a piece about 4 inches square representing a sub-species.

The sun rose yellow as a lemon.The sky was round and blue.The birds looped clear water songs in the air.Will and Jim leaned from their windows.Nothing had changed.Except the look in Jim's eyes.Last night. . . said Will. Did or didn't it happen?

Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening. To come to her directly from Dante, Spenser, Blake, and Baudelaire is to find her sadomasochism obvious and flagrant. Birds, bees, and amputated hands are the dizzy stuff of this poetry. Dickinson is like the homosexual cultist draping himself in black leather and chains to bring the idea of masculinity into aggressive visibility.

You don’t have a soul, so you can’t be baptized. All animals are like that. I think it’s unfair and sometimes I don’t believe it. After all, what would heaven be without birds or dogs or horses? And what about trees and flowers? They don’t have souls either. Does that mean heaven looks like a cement parking lot? I suppose this is what the nuns call a theological problem.

The deep parts of my life pour onward, as if the river shores were opening out. I feel closer to what language can't reach. With my senses, as with birds, I climb into the windy heaven... in the ponds broken off from the sky. . .

These are the saddest of possible words, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. Trio of Bear Cubs fleeter than birds, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble, Making a Giant hit into a double, Words that are weighty with nothing but trouble, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. This brief poem, immortalized the Chicago Cubs' double-play combination: Shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance.

He worked night and day. He made a coat that would transform him; he would be more than a man; a winged creature, beautiful as light. All the birds brought him feathers. Even the eagle. Even the swan.

If 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.

All primitive people are frightened of owls,' said Harley. 'The villagers here are scared to death of the gufo. Birds of ill omen. If they see one, they think they'll die. But they never do. See one, I mean, of course,' he added with a laugh.

The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives - all that was over.

Go to bed when summers ends, what a good idea; wake up bright and early when birds announce its spring.

Birds sing on a bare bough; O, believer, canst not thou?

I have drawn things since I was 6. All that I made before the age of 65 is not worth counting. At 73 I began to understand the true construction of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes, and insects. At 90 I will enter into the secret of things. At 110, everything - every dot, every dash - will live. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age, I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign myself 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing.'

The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness

Boredom!!! Shooting!!! Shelling!!! People being killed!!! Despair!!! Hunger!!! Misery!!! Fear!!! That's my life! The life of an innocent eleven-year-old schoolgirl!! A schoolgirl without a school, without the fun and excitement of school. A child without games, without friends, without the sun, without birds, without nature, without fruit, without chocolate or sweets, with just a little powdered milk. In short, a child without a childhood.

I walk through the seasons and always the birds are singing and screaming and keening for love When you're with me it seems so absurd that I should be jealous of the jay and the dove.

From across the woods, as if by common accord, birds left their trees and darted upward. I joined them, flew amount them, they did not recognize me as something apart from them, and I was happy, so happy, because for the first time in years, and forevermore, I had not killed, and never would.

I’m terrified of heights, but I think there’s something really beautiful about birds and soaring, having a bird’s-eye view of the world.

And now the lads and lasses, following the example of the birds, bill and coo together.

There are transitional forms between the metals and non-metals; between chemical combinations and simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals and birds [...]. The improbability may henceforth be taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage between all that is masculine on the one side and all that is feminine on the other; or that any living being is so simple in this respect that it can be put wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line.

Chickens are cheerless birds, I advise you to keep geese which can be taught to follow like dogs, one needs all the companionship one can get in these days.

Give me the old familiar walk, postoffice and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten. We'll go nutting once more. We'll pluck the nut of the world, and crack it in the winter evenings. Theaters and all other sightseeing are puppet-shows in comparison. I will take another walk to the Cliff, another row on the river, another skate on the meadow, be out in the first snow, and associate with the winter birds. Here I am at home. In the bare and bleached crust of the earth I recognize my friend.

If we are not personally engaged in God's great mission in the world, then we have missed the very thing he created us to do. We are like birds meant to fly but living in a cage; fish meant to swim but floundering on the beach. It makes sense when you think about it. If the Author of the universe created us to play a key role in his unfolding drama but we have failed to find our place in that story, then of course we would feel incomplete.

In Shakespeare the birds sing, the bushes are clothed with green, hearts love, souls suffer, the cloud wanders, it is hot, it is cold, night falls, time passes, forests and multitudes speak, the vast eternal dream hovers over all. Sap and blood, all forms of the multiple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity, the living and the life, solitudes, cities, religions, diamonds and pearls, dung-hills and charnelhouses, the ebb and flow of beings, the steps of comers and goers, all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare.

If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.