Peacock Quotes - Page 2

• There are eight different breeds of peacock. I have them all.

  Bidzina Ivanishvili

  Eight, Different

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• The sun fades like the spreading
  Of a peacock's tail, as though twilight
  Might be read as a warning to those desperate
  For easy solutions.

  John Ashbery

  Inspirational, Life, Twilight

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

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• We ask ourselves all kinds of questions, such as why does a peacock have such beautiful feathers, and we may answer that he needs the feathers to impress a female peacock, but then we ask ourselves, and why is there a peacock? And then we ask, why is there anything living? And then we ask, why is there anything at all? And if you tell some advocate of scientism that the answer is a secret, he will go white hot and write a book. But it is a secret. And the experience of living with the secret and thinking about it is in itself a kind of faith.

  Vaclav Havel

  Beautiful, Book, Writing

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• Men's clothes are becoming kind of mod. They're becoming more colorful and more flamboyant, and the male peacock is beginning to show his true plumage.

  Liberace

  Men, Clothes, Becoming

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• How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.

  Toni Morrison

  Giving Up, Vanity, Tails

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

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• As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Animal, Vanity, Vices

  Leonardo Da Vinci (2015). “Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci: Complete & Illustrated”, p.939, eKitap Projesi via PublishDrive

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• For all the feminist jabber about women being victimized by fashion, it is men who most suffer from conventions of dress. Every day, a woman can choose from an army of personae, femme to butch, and can cut or curl her hair or adorn herself with a staggering variety of artistic aids. But despite the Sixties experiments in peacock dress, no man can rise in the corporate world today, outside the entertainment industry, with long hair or makeup or purple velvet suits.

  Camille Paglia

  Fashion, Cutting, Army

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• At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Dog, Time, Men

  Baltasar Gracian, Baltasar Gracián y Morales (2004). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.158, Shambhala Publications

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• An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it's beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth... Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

  Pope Francis

  Life, Success, Beautiful

  "'Careerism and vanity: Sins of the Church'". Vatican Insider Interview, www.lastampa.it. February 24, 2012.

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• If you get bored of doing it (Peacock Pose) with two hands, try it with one.

  Dharma Mittra

  Yoga, Hands, Two

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• Le geai pare   des plumes du paon. A bluejay in peacock feathers.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Feathers

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• Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock. For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider: about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Food, Smell, Cooking

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, David Garnett, Richard Garnett (1994). “Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner/Garnett letters”, Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd

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• Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers’ breath, of ropes of pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine.

  Virginia Woolf

  Drama, Flower, Wine

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.56, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I designed collections around whatever struck my fancy ... fruits, vegetables, politics, or peacocks!

  Lilly Pulitzer

  Vegetables, Fancy, Fruit

  "Lilly Pulitzer, designer of trademark tropical dresses, dies aged 81", www.theguardian.com. April 7, 2013.

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• It's an awful stretcher to believe that a peacock's tail was thus formed but ... most people just don't get it - I must be a very bad explainer

  Charles Darwin

  Believe, People, Tails

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• It is reported of the peacock that priding himself in his gay feathers he ruffles them up; but spying his black feet he soon lets fall his plumes. So he that glories in his gifts and adornings should look upon his corruptions, and that will damp his high thoughts.

  Anne Bradstreet

  Fall, Gay, Pride

  Anne Bradstreet, Adrienne Rich, Jeannine Hensley (2010). “The works of Anne Bradstreet”, Belknap Pr

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• Peacock bass like to hide at ambush points, away from the strong canal currents. If you fish early and know those peacock hangouts, you will have little or no trouble catching peacocks on lures and live bait.

  Mark Hall

  Strong, Bait, Bass

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• Women are a source of energy in life. I've always wanted to be in a war or baseball movie, but the thought of having no women on set for six months - that's hell. I don't know if it's animalistic or what, but men become like peacocks with their feathers up when women are around.

  Bradley Cooper

  Baseball, War, Men

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• My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love is come to me. Raise me a daïs of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.

  Christina Rossetti

  Life, Work, Eye

  Christina Georgina Rossetti, “A Birthday”

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• Patterns drawn in ultraviolet might make those ordinary little petals into the exotic peacocks of the botanical world, and yet we cannot appreciate them.

  Victoria Finlay

  Appreciate, Ordinary, Exotic

  Victoria Finlay (2002). “Color: A Natural History of the Palette”

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• British men are peacocks. You see a lot more style on the streets here than you see anywhere else, on every level.

  Tom Ford

  Men, Style, Levels

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• I can live without it all - love with its blood pump, sex with its messy hungers, men with their peacock strutting, their silly sexual baggage, their wet tongues in my ear.

  Erica Jong

  Love, Sex, Silly

  Erica Jong (2013). “Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected”, p.238, Open Road Media

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• The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery; and I remember one rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the street was ablaze with scarlet umbrellas.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Morning, Cities, Clothes

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• I know exactly how strong he is... He is like a peacock, spreading his feathers and squawking loudly to distract you from the back that his body is but weak." -Jason to Mahiya

  Nalini Singh

  Strong, Jason, Body

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• The peacock in all his pride does not display half the colors that appear in the garments of a British lady when she is dressed.

  Joseph Addison

  Pride, Color, Doe

  Joseph Addison (1761). “The Works of the Late Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq;”, p.250

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