Popular quotes about Birds! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 34
The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds
Nassim Nicholas TalebThe writing I have in mind and sometimes indulge in myself is concerned, not with plants, mountains or birds as items of scientific description, but with experiences of nature that impinge upon our moods and emotions, enrich our imagination and reveries, and shape our sense of how we stand in relation to the environing world. In a broad sense of the term, this kind of writing is an exercise in phenomenology, an attempt to render the significance that birds, plants or whatever have for us.
David E. CooperYou would not think that birds who have no brain at all could become so friendly. I swear some of them are more intelligent than many humans, but that says more about our fellow beings than it does about the birds.
Elizabeth AstonThat is the earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of a hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upwards from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets, and winds, and birds
Orson Scott CardSeeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.
Charles DarwinLaistrygonians. Cannibals. Northern Giants. Sasquatch legend. Yep, yep. They are not birds. Not birds of North America.
Rick RiordanWhat is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.
Thomas Bailey AldrichOn consideration, it is not surprising that Darwin's finches should recognize their own kind primarily by beak characters. The beak is the only prominent specific distinction, and it features conspicuously both in attacking behaviour, when the birds face each other and grip beaks, and also in courtship, when food is passed from the beak of the male to the beak of the female. Hence though the beak differences are primarily correlated with differences in food, secondarily they serve as specific recognition marks, and the birds have evolved behaviour patterns to this end.
David LackLook 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.
Paul BruntonI speculate over some of the Anglo nomenclature of birds: Wilson's snipe, Forster's tern . . . : What natural images do these names conjure up in our minds? What integrity do we give back to the birds with our labels.
Terry Tempest WilliamsIt's like eight thousand birds, Charles! Charles! Isn't it like eight thousand birds?
Katherine RundellTurkeys, quails, and small birds, are here to be seen; but birds are not numerous in desart forests; they draw near to the habitations of men, as I have constantly observed in all my travels.
William BartramMy birthday began with the water - Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name.
Dylan Thomas.. to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, and love of the other birds.
Sharon OldsWhile I am watching the birds I believe I am comparatively immune from the assaults of life. The very indifference to humanity of these wild creatures affords me a certain safeguard. Where all else is dangerous, hostile and liable to inflict pain, they alone can do me no injury because, probably, they are not even aware of my existence. The birds are at once my refuge and my relaxation.
Anna KavanIt is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes, it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.
Daniel HandlerThere will be birds and if they write your name in the sky then you can get on the buses and if they don't you have to die on the floor.
Joe DunthorneBeautiful mind, tortured soul. I do have to figure out why I am attracted to these broken birds.
Katy PerryAlong 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 PyleI 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 ParkerDon'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.
Aya KitoA fine morning's killing, ay! All their necks wrung - all dead birds! Once they could fly - fly and swim! Fly and swim! All dead now - and sold cheap in the open market!
Marie CorelliI dreamed you a field of running horses, Selah. For you, Bianca, a balloon the size of the sky, my body a kite you can throw into the air.Pull me by string and horse.Tell me everything won't end in death. That everything doesn't end with February. Dead wildflowers wrapped around a crying baby's throat.I've slowed my heartbeat to three beats a minute. I've redrawn the clouds into birds, a fox chasing them into the mountains.I'm going to move my hand today.I vomit ice cubes.There's a ghost next to me.Get up, Dad.(Light Boxes)
Shane JonesRavens are the birds I'll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens.
Louise ErdrichI've been thinking... Maybe you're a mockingbird... Mockingbirds imitate the songs of other birds... No, I've never heard of any copyright problems.
Charles M. SchulzVIDEO 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 NixA bird maintains itself in the air by imperceptible balancing, when near to the mountains or lofty ocean crags; it does this by means of the curves of the winds which as they strike against these projections, being forced to preserve their first impetus bend their straight course towards the sky with divers revolutions, at the beginning of which the birds come to a stop with their wings open, receiving underneath themselves the continual buffetings of the reflex courses of the winds.
Leonardo da VinciAnd 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.
Mark HaddonShy gold begins to peep through the sombre green - the wattle's wedding dress - and Spring is near. Then suddenly it seems, one golden morning, the Bush awakes, a living thing. Flowers bloom, birds sing, and all the world puts on its gayest dress to greet the laughing Spring.
C. J. DennisDuring climbs into taller trees, I was occasionally able to look down on the backs of birds, which shine with reflected sunlight as they move through the green depths of the canopy, like schools of fish.
Richard PrestonI'm bored. I need to be entertained. Sam is moping. I may kill him with his own guitar. It would give me something to do and also make him say something. Two birds with one stone!
Maggie StiefvaterNot quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.
Elizabeth GoudgeThe 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 GoodallNinety-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 NewkirkWhen they turned off, it was still early in the pink and green fields. The fumes of morning, sweet and bitter, sprang up where they walked. The insects ticked softly, their strength in reserve; butterflies chopped the air, going to the east, and the birds flew carelessly and sang by fits and starts, not the way they did in the evening in sustained and drowsy songs.
Eudora WeltyFind a day for yourself-better yet, late at night. Go to the forest or to the field, or lock yourself in a room ... You will meet solitude there. There you will be able to listen attentively to the noise of the wind first, to birds singing, to see wonderful nature and to notice yourself in it ... and to come back to harmonic connection with the world and its Creator.
Nachman of BreslovIn the bare room under the old library on the hill in the town at the tip of the small peninsula on the cold island so far from everything else, I lived among strangers and birds.
Rebecca SolnitThere 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 JohnsonSeriously, many people have told me they can't eat turkeys anymore after getting to know them. I think in the wider world, when the stories air on the media, they help banish the idea that birds, other than parrots, are somehow lesser.
Karen DawnBirds sing even when the world is filled with sadness. I don't know why people can't do the same thing.
Michael GilbertI 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 EastonWhat a shame that Christianity had come here!If the white man had not intruded where he was not wanted, where he did not belong, even now protected by the mountains and the river,the village would have remained a last stronghold of a culture which was almost gone.Mark tried to say that no village,no culture can remain static. I have often thought that if this lively and magnificent land belongs to anyone,it's to the birds and the fish.They were here long before the first Indian and when the last man is gone from the Earth,it will be theirs again.
Margaret Craven