Popular quotes about Birds! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 50
In my opinion, if most urban meat-eaters were to visit an industrial broiler house, to se how the birds are raised, and could see the birds being "harvested" and then being "processed" in a poultry processing plant, they would not be impressed and some, perhaps many of them would swear off eating chicken and perhaps all meat.
Peter CheekeAs I said in my last book, birds are mean. They're the only pet that, when they escape, the owners are relieved. You can tell a species is evil by doing this simple math. If my blond lab Molly was the size of T-Rex, that would just mean more kibble, more work for the gardener in the backyard, and a harder time moving her to my wife's side of the bed at night. If birds were the size of a T-Rex, the streets would be littered with human remains.
Adam CarollaTurkeys, 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 BartramWe do express our emotions, our reactions to events, breakups and infatuations, but the way we do that - the art of it - is in putting them into prescribed forms or squeezing them into new forms that perfectly fit some emerging context. Thatโs part of the creative process, and we do it instinctively; we internalize it, like birds do. And itโs a joy to sing, like the birds do.
David ByrneWhy are entire flocks of industrial birds dying at once? And what about the people eating those birds? Just the other day, one of the local pediatricians was telling me he's seeing all kinds of illnesses that he never used to see. Not only juvenile diabetes, but inflammatory and autoimmune diseases that a lot of the docs don't even know what to call. And girls are going through puberty much earlier; and kids are allergic to just about everything, and asthma is out of control. Everyone knows it's our foods... Kids today are the first generation to grow up on this stuff.
Jonathan Safran FoerHe made the boxes because he was lonely. He didn't have anyone to love, and he made the boxes so he could love them, and so people would know that he existed, and because birds are free and the boxes are hiding places for the birds so they will feel safe, and he wanted to be free and be safe. The boxes are for him so he can be a bird.
Audrey NiffeneggerAll 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.
Jason FlemyngI was terribly sure trees and flowers were the same as birds or people. That they thought things and talked among themselves. And we could hear them if we really tried. It was just a matter of emptying your head of all other sounds. Being very quiet and listening very hard. Sometimes I still believe that. But one can never get quiet enough.
Truman CapoteDon't evaluate your life in terms of achievements, trivial or monumental, along the way... Instead, wake up and appreciate everything you encounter along your path. Enjoy the flowers that are there for your pleasure. Tune in to the sunrise, the little children, the laughter, the rain, and the birds. Drink it all in... there is no way to happiness; happiness is the way.
Wayne DyerBasic Instincts It's the way mother birds build nests, and build them high enough to elude
T. D. JakesWe're not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds. We're protecting it for our own sake.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.I 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 MelvilleI wonder how, among the Fremont, mothers and daughters shared their world. Did they walk side by side along the lake edge? What stories did they tell while weaving strips of bulrush into baskets? How did daughters bury their mothers and exercise their grief? What were the secret rituals of women? I feel certain they must have been tied to birds.
Terry Tempest WilliamsYour 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.
RumiI don't see [the jungle] so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just - Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain.
Werner HerzogThe Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to shamanism of the Arctic. It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes it's teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of trees, and the cycles of the seasons.
StarhawkThe worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.
Jonathan SwiftBirds, it must be admitted, are the most exciting and most deserving of the vertebrates; they are perhaps the best entre into the study of natural history, and a very good wedge into conservation awareness.
Roger Tory PetersonNo shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds - November!
Thomas HoodIf you want to do a movie about aliens coming down to Earth nowadays, you need to do it with a smile. When Tim Burton did Mars Attacks, he tried to make it a little bit kitschy, because it's not scary for people anymore. It's not scary that birds will attack you anymore, but I'm sure it was when Alfred Hitchcock made it. And it still is when you watch it.
Sune Rose WagnerIt is a little known fact that much like birds, who can always find north, knitters can always find yarn.
Stephanie Pearl-McPheeWe are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him?
Ralph Waldo EmersonNot quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.
Elizabeth GoudgeThe white men in the East are like birds. They are hatching out their eggs every year, and there is not room enough in the East, and they must go elsewhere; and they come out West, as you have seen them coming for the last few years.
George CrookThe 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 GoodallThe miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.
Wendell BerryYou donโt have a soul, so you canโt be baptized. All animals are like that. I think itโs unfair and sometimes I donโt believe it. After all, what would heaven be without birds or dogs or horses? And what about trees and flowers? They donโt have souls either. Does that mean heaven looks like a cement parking lot? I suppose this is what the nuns call a theological problem.
Nancy FarmerEverybody loves birdsong. It's a human need... the sound of birds gives a deep, if sometimes almost unnoticed, pleasure
Simon BarnesEven 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 EisensteinThe 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. . .
Rainer Maria RilkeNinety-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 NewkirkIt is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms so different from each other and dependent on each other and so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us.
Charles DarwinStanding here, in this quiet house where I can hear the birds chirping out back, I think Iโm kind of getting the concept of closure. Itโs no big dramatic before-after. Itโs more like that melancholy feeling you get at the end of a really good vacation. Something special is ending, and youโre sad, but you canโt be that sad because, hey, it was good while it lasted, and thereโll be other vacations, other good times.
Gayle FormanMan has gone to the moon but he does not yet know how to make a flame tree or a bird song. Let us keep our dear countries free from irreversible mistakes which would lead us in the future to long for those same birds and trees.
Felix Houphouet-BoignyEvery year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.
Dorothy ParkerHe's bent over the strings tuning his guitar with such passionate attention I almost feel I should look away but I can't. In fact I'm full on gawking wondering what it would be like to be cool and casual and fearless and passionate and so freaking alive just like he is- and for a split second I want to play with him. I want to disturb the birds. Later as he plays and plays as all the fog burns away I think he's right. That's exactly it- I am crazy sad and somewhere deep inside all I want is to fly.
Jandy NelsonThe movements of some more little red birds in the garden, like animated rosebuds, appeared unbearably jittery and thievish. It was as though the creatures were attached by sensitive wires to his nerves.
Malcolm LowryThere's a feeling that feels like what I've been told is love. It has to do with what Louis Schwartzberg said today about beauty, love, whether it's squirrels outside my door, the rabbits, or the birds. They're not trying to impress me or anything, and me watching them isn't getting me or advancing me in anything. It's just beautiful. When I think of the relationship I'm in, there's a feeling that comes over me sometimes.
Daphne Zuniga[on going to Sunday school:] It looks like rain, and I hope it will rain cats and dogs and hammers and pitchforks and silver sugar spoons and hay ricks and paper-covered novels and picture frames and rag carpets and toothpicks and skating rinks and birds of paradise and roof gardens and burdocks and French grammars before Sunday school time.
Edna St. Vincent MillayHe imagines Owens' body dotted with saltwater reservoirs just below the skin. An entire wetland, populated with tiny fish and birds, thriving in his agitation. A species of dwarf crocodile lazing beside an artery.
Lisa LingGo to bed when summers ends, what a good idea; wake up bright and early when birds announce its spring.
Francis Norris, 1st Earl of BerkshireNow for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep.
Haruki MurakamiAfrica - You can see a sunset and believe you have witnessed the Hand of God. You watch the slope lope of a lioness and forget to breathe. You marvel at the tripod of a giraffe bent to water. In Africa, there are iridescent blues on the wings of birds that you do not see anywhere else in nature. In Africa, in the midday heart, you can see blisters in the atmosphere. When you are in Africa, you feel primordial, rocked in the cradle of the world.
Jodi Picoult