Popular quotes about Birds! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 51
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.
C. S. LewisIt would be nice to find a 'planet of trees and birds' in the space; only trees and birds, millions of different trees and millions of different birds!
Mehmet Murat IldanSmoke says the beef is much better than the squawky white birds. Her expression changed from annoyed to dismayed. Squawky white birds? Chickens? You ate Mrs. Beale's chickens?Smoke whined apologetically.Saetan leaned back in his chair. Oh, it was so satisfying to see her thrown off stride. I'm sure Mrs. Beale was delighted to feed a guest - even if she wasn't aware of it, he added dryly, remembering too well his cook's reaction when she learned about the missing hens.
Anne BishopThe Admiral says that he never beheld so fair a thing: trees all along the river, beautiful and green, and different from ours, with flowers and fruits each according to their kind, many birds and little birds which sing very sweetly.
Christopher ColumbusSeeing 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 DarwinTo take advantage of the last precious minutes, you've got to stay afield as late as the birds do, regardless of a houseful of guests, the sanguine promises you've made the missus, or the overdraft bank notice at home. To heck with everybody and everything when birds are feeding and fish are biting. Stay late and lie like a dog if necessary.
Havilah BabcockThe first time Calypso came to check on [Leo], it was to complain about the noise. โSmoke and fire,โ she said. โClanging on metal all day long. Youโre scaring away the birds!โ โOh, no, not the birds!
Rick RiordanThirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
Anne LamottFifteen birds in five firtrees, their feathers were fanned in a fiery breeze! But, funny little birds, they had no wings! O what shall we do with the funny little things? Roast 'em alive, or stew them in a pot; fry them, boil them and eat them hot?
J. R. R. TolkienMy birthday began with the water - Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name.
Dylan ThomasZerts' are what I call desserts. 'Trรฉe-trรฉes' are entrรฉes. I call sandwiches 'sammies,' 'sandoozles,' or 'Adam Sandlers.' Air conditioners are 'cool blasterz' with a 'z' - I don't know where that came from. I call cakes 'big ol' cookies.' I call noodles 'long-ass rice.' Fried chicken is 'fry-fry chicky-chick.' Chicken parm is 'chicky-chicky-parm-parm.' Chicken cacciatore? 'Chicky-cacc.' I call eggs 'pre-birds,' or 'future birds.' Root beer is 'super water.' Tortillas are 'bean blankets.' And I call forks 'food rakes.'
Aziz AnsariShe told them simply and directly that the meadow was a place of peace and beauty, where indeed if one came to it in a quiet manner, the animals would not be disturbed; for there are lovely birds, and squirrels and field mice, and sometimes deer.
Kathryn LaskyFeathers! spluttered Sargatanas. Feathers are for the birds, my boy. Flaking, peeling, scale-ridden wings, now that's what real beings wear. I'll tell you a secret. He said, and drew me closer. The eternal pain at having known Paradise and lost it is priceless. I wouldn't swap it for anything.
George PendleBeing preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.
Pema ChodronAt the bottom of every leaf-stem is a cradle, and in it is an infant germ; the winds will rock it, the birds will sing to it all summer long, but the next season it will unfold and go alone.
Henry Ward BeecherI 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 ParkerOne particular aspect of Siddharthaโs revelation of the outside world has always struck me. Quite possibly he lived his first thirty years without any knowledge of number. How must he have felt, then, to see crowds of people mingling in the streets? Before that day he would not have believed that so many people existed in all the world. And what wonder it must have been to discover flocks of birds, and piles of stones, leaves on trees and blades of grass! To suddenly realise that, his whole life long, he had been kept at armโs length from multiplicity.
Daniel TammetZen 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 MertonIt couldn't be an all-bad world, could it, not with birds who warble and call? Maybe that was the secret - to find the few things that made life just a fraction better, and to focus on those. Bird warbles. Peach fuzz. Puppies barking as if they're full grown dogs. Nothing great, certainly nothing to justify the rest of it, but enough to keep you going.
Shalom AuslanderHuman beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate, but it's not quite the same thing.
Douglas CouplandIf 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 WagnerThe 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?
Ray BradburyI had the opportunity to learn more about what life is like for a soldier [in The Yellow Birds].
Alden EhrenreichThe salvation of birds and beasts, oneself included - this is the object of Shakyamuni's religious austerities.
IkkyuSuddenly 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 NabokovWhat exists beneath the sea?I'd always pictured it in colors of emerald and aquamarine, where black velvet fish with sequined eyes swim among plankton.But, when my eyes adjust, I see gray stones, lost anchors, wet wood, buttons, hooks, and eyes, the salem witches who wouldn't float, stars and stripes, missing vessels, windup toys, the souls of Romeo and Juliet, peaches, cream, pistons, screams, cages of ribs and birds, tunnels, nutcracker soldiers, satin bows, drugstore signs, Pandora box ripped open at its hinges.
Kelly EastonThe 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 RilkeShe swallowed and looked down at the artichoke petals piled neatly on the side of her plate. Her center certainly felt like it was melting, growing soft and wet just from the rasp of Mr. O'Connor's voice. Why should a man already devilishly handsome also have a voice that could charm birds from the sky? It simply wasn't fair.
Elizabeth HoytStanding 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 FormanHe 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.
Catherine FisherI had an awful joke about Auschwitz I drove everybody crazy with that joke. But that joke makes me feel good. You know what "cuit" means? When something is cooked. It's a joke like that: "What are the birds doing when they fly over Auschwitz? 'Cuit! Cuit!'" It's awful, but it's desacralizing. For me, it's good.
Chantal AkermanMan 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-BoignyAs long as there are flowers and children and birds in the world, have no fears: everything will be fine.
Nikos KazantzakisThe 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 LowryWhy did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?
Ernest HemingwayEverything was curved to fit the walls: the stove, the sink and the cupboards, and all of it had been painted with flowers, insects and birds in bright primary colours.
J. K. RowlingI hear hundreds of years of life. I hear wind and rain and fire and beetles. I hear the seasons changing and birds and squirrels. I hear the life of the trees this wood came from.
Garth SteinIโm terrified of heights, but I think thereโs something really beautiful about birds and soaring, having a birdโs-eye view of the world.
Lindy BoothAs I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.
Henry David ThoreauOne human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.
Ben OkriThe only clear thing is that we humans are the only species with the power to destroy the earth as we know it. The birds have no such power, nor do the insects, nor does any mammal. Yet if we have the capacity to destroy the earth, so, too, do we have the capacity to protect it.
Dalai LamaFor you who came so far; for you who held out, wearing a black scarf to signify grief; for you who believe true love can find you amidst this atlas of tears linking one town to its own memory of mortar, when it was still a dream to be built and people moved there, believing, and someone with sky and birds in his heart said this would be a good place for a park.
Naomi Shihab Nye