Popular quotes about Birds! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 19
There was a deep silence, only scraped on its surfaces by the faint quiver of empty seed-plumes, and broken grass-blades trembling in small air-movements they could not feel. 'Not a bird!' said Sam mournfully. 'No, no birds,' said Gollum. 'Nice birds!' He licked his teeth. 'No birds here. There are snakeses, wormses, things in the pools. Lots of things, lots of nasty things. No birds,' he ended sadly. Sam looked at him with distaste.
J. R. R. TolkienYou'll think this is a bit silly, but I'm a bit--well, I have a thing about birds." "What, a phobia?" "Sort of." "Well, that's the common term for an irrational fear of birds." "What do they call a rational fear of birds, then?
Neil GaimanWhen you are happy you are ordinary, because to be happy is just to be natural. To be miserable is to become extraordinary. Nothing is special in being happy - trees are happy, birds are happy, animals are happy, children are happy. What is special in that? It is just the usual thing in existence. Existence is made of the stuff called happiness. Just look! - can't you see these trees?...so happy. Can't you see the birds singing?...so happily. Happiness has nothing special in it. Happiness is a very ordinary thing.
RajneeshIt is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?
Kurt VonnegutWisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it unless they are out of worms.
Mark TwainThere wasn't a cloud in the sky, no wind, and everything was quiet around us - all we could hear were birds chirping in the woods. The war seemed like something in a faraway land that had nothing to do with us. We sang songs as we hiked up the hill, sometimes imitating the birds we heard. Except for the fact that the war was still going on, it was a perfect morning.
Haruki MurakamiDevils are depicted with bats' wings and good angels with birds' wings, not because anyone holds that moral deterioration would be likely to turn feathers into membrane, but because most men like birds better than bats.
C. S. LewisIt was about the preciousness of that, and how they viewed those birds as art, as something valuable. I didn't care one way or another back then, but now, thinking about my grandparents - who are still alive but getting older - I see the birds as sort of time capsules. Now I go home during the holidays and they hold a lot of weight in terms of nostalgia and memory. Now they mean everything.
Nick CaveAs for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun.
Henry David ThoreauWe must force the government to stop the bird migration. We must shoot all birds, field all our men and troops... and force migratory birds to stay where they are.
Vladimir ZhirinovskyI continue to handpick the beetles, mosquitoes feast on me, birds eat the mosquitoes, something else eats the birds, and so on up and down the biotic pyramid.
William F. LonggoodNatural history is a matter of observation; it is a harvest which you gather when and where you find it growing. Birds and squirrels and flowers are not always in season, but philosophy we have always with us. It is a crop which we can grow and reap at all times and in all places and it has its own value and brings its own satisfaction.
John BurroughsIt's an attitude of superiority. We are superior to the rest of life. The Book of Genesis says: 'Increase and multiply and have dominion over the birds of the air and the animals and so forth.' You run it; it's yours; do what you like with it. I don't know how old that text is, but it represents an attitude that probably really got going with the beginning of agriculture. Before that, the hunter-gatherers were gentler people than the agriculture.
W. S. MerwinBasic Instincts It's the way mother birds build nests, and build them high enough to elude
T. D. JakesThe birds and I share a natural history. It is a matter of rootedness, of living inside a place for so long that the mind and imagination fuse.
Terry Tempest WilliamsAlong with rising and falling water, winter is the province of wind. When the sea-breath and mountain-roar bend the hemlocks of these hills, the birds hang on as best they can.
Robert PyleA sudden cloud formation of birds was swallowed up by the moon, and he was just as suddenly penned in by four walls-the demons' pen.
Mo YanBut look around at this world, how perfectly it's made. Flowers can't move, yet the insects come to them and spread their pollen. Trees can't move either, but birds and animals eat their fruit and carry their seeds far and wide.
Nahoko UehashiI went to Morocco, joined a band called Pegasus, ran out of money, went to Gibraltar and worked on the docks, writing songs about the sun and the morning and the birds.
Graham ParkerAnd tell him to paint me a sign, with-no suicides permitted here, and no smloing in the parlor; might as well kill both birds at once.
Herman MelvilleZen enriches no one. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the "nothing," the "no-body" that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey.
Thomas MertonThe birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.
Li BaiBirds 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 McQueenI liked the solitude and the silence of the woods and the hills. I felt there the sense of a presence, something undefined and mysterious, which was reflected in the faces of the flowers and the movements of birds and animals, in the sunlight falling through the leaves and in the sound of running water, in the wind blowing on the hills and the wide expanse of earth and sky.
Bede GriffithsThey say the first of my kind was Alasdair, a human raised by hawks. She learned the languages of birds and was gifted with their form.
Amelia Atwater-RhodesOne 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.
Ian FlemingThe rocks are where they are- and this is their will. The rivers flow- and this is their will. The birds fly- this is their will. Human beings talk- this is their will. The seasons change, heaven sends down rain or snow, the earth occasionally shakes, the waves roll, the stars shine- each of them follows its own will. To be is to will and so is to become.
D.T. SuzukiYour hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.
RumiVIDEO ARCHIVE- INTERVIEW 24768 . GOLD-EYE I like treesโฆ grassโฆ only birds in sky. People walking safe. Family No Creatures. Sleep all night safe. Walk under sun in own place. Grow plants. Build. Be father with mother. Have Children. A place like Petar told me. Home. After Change goes backโฆ I want home.
Garth NixMy dreams tend to be like dog dreams. I'm usually so tired that I hardly dream at all. In a way, I do think that the zone one performs in - without getting too ooga-booga about it - it's like that moment when you wake up in the morning and you're emerging from a dream state but you're not quite up. Where are you? Can you hear the birds? Or is that the traffic? It's that zone in which I perform. Itโs like one foot in reality and one foot in a dream state. I spend most of my life in that state!
Cate BlanchettSuddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.
Vladimir NabokovThe tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.
Jane GoodallEven in a less exaggerated description, any verbal account of a person is bound to find itself employing an assortment of waterfalls, lightning rods, landscapes, birds, etc.
Sergei EisensteinNinety-five percent of the eggs produced in America come from factory-farmed birds. Even if free-range farms were hugely more humane, the sheer number of animals raised to satisfy people's desire for eggs, meat, and milk makes it impossible for us to raise them all on small, free-range farms.
Ingrid NewkirkSo many want to be lifted by song and dancing, and this morning it is easy to understand. I write in the sound of chirping birds hidden in the almond trees, the almonds still green and thriving in the foliage.
Linda GreggHe regarded the world-objects right in front of his face-as if from a great distance. For when he moved on the earth he also moved in other realms. In certain seasons, in certain shades, memories alighted on him like sharp-taloned birds: a head turning in the foliage, lantern light flaring in a room.
Amanda CoplinBirds don't need bridges to cross precipices and honourable men with honesty wings to cross precipices of slander.
Mehmet Murat IldanOne day I'm going to write a book about osprey. It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask what else I do, I feel like this is part of what I do....is to watch these birds.
Alan LightmanThere is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
Samuel JohnsonHas it never occurred to us, when surrounded by sorrows, that they may be sent to us only for our instruction, as we darken the eyes of birds when we wish them to sing?
Jean PaulIโm terrified of heights, but I think thereโs something really beautiful about birds and soaring, having a birdโs-eye view of the world.
Lindy BoothI felt him there with me. The real David. My David. David, you are still here. Alive. Alive in me.Alive in the galaxy.Alive in the stars.Alive in the sky.Alive in the sea.Alive in the palm trees.Alive in feathers.Alive in birds.Alive in the mountains.Alive in the coyotes.Alive in books.Alive in sound.Alive in mom.Alive in dad.Alive in Bobby.Alive in me.Alive in soil.Alive in branches.Alive in fossils.Alive in tongues.Alive in eyes.Alive in cries.Alive in bodies.Alive in past, present and future. Alive forever.
Kelly EastonBoys flying kites haul in their white winged birds; You can't do that way when you're flying words. Careful with fire, is good advice we know Careful with words, is ten times doubly so. Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead; But God Himself can't kill them when they're said.
Will CarletonIt was a meditation on life, love, old age, death: ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them.
Gabriel Garcia MarquezKoschei, Koschei,โ she whispered. โWhat would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you.
Catherynne M. Valente