Bird Quotes - Page 20

• The air is crowded with birds -- beautiful, tender, intelligent birds -- to whom life is a song.

  George Henry Lewes

  Beautiful, Song, Intelligent

  George Henry Lewes (1860). “Studies in animal life”, p.11

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• Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. the water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop.

  Elif Safak

  Children, Father, Ocean

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• I was a smoker for years. Occasionally I slip and have a cigarette. Remarkably, my voice has held up. I'm grateful, obviously. But I don't gargle with honey and ground-up bird eggs. I have no secrets.

  Loudon Wainwright III

  Grateful, Years, Eggs

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• I felt naked. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. I began to feel the need of fellowship. I wanted to question, wanted to speak, wanted to relate my experience. What is this spirit in man that urges him forever to depart from happiness, to toil and to place himself in danger?

  H. G. Wells

  Men, Knowing, Air

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• We need to walk, just as birds need to fly. We need to be around other people. We need beauty. We need contact with nature. And most of all, we need not to be excluded. We need to feel some sort of equality.

  Enrique Penalosa

  People, Needs, Walks

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• To the bird watcher, the suburbanite who derives joy from birds in his garden, the hunter, the fisherman or the explorer of wild regions, anything that destroys the wildlife of an area for even a single year has deprived him of pleasure to which he has a legitimate right. This is a valid point of view.

  Rachel Carson

  Garden, Views, Years

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.86, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The jungle which is presided over by Kudu, the sun, is a very different jungle from that of Goro, the moon. The diurnal jungle has its own aspect--its own lights and shades, its own birds, its own blooms, its own beasts ... The lights and shades of the nocturnal jungle are as different as one might imagine the lights and shades of another world to differ from those of our world.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Moon, Our World, Light

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• In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part. To sleep for a season and hear no word Of true love's truth or of light love's art, Only the song of a secret bird.

  Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Dream, Song, Art

  Algernon Charles Swinburne (2015). “Selected Verse”, p.291, Carcanet

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• Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

  Anne Lamott

  Mean, Writing, Creativity

  "Time Lost and Found". www.sunset.com.

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• Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, From Thee to nothing.

  Alexander Pope

  Nature, Eye, Angel

  An Essay on Man Epistle 1, l. 237 (1733)

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• No more my heart shall sob or grieve. My days and nights dissolve in God's own Light. Above the toil of life, my soul is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite.

  Sri Chinmoy

  Heart, Night, Grieving

  Sri Chinmoy (2015). “Beyond Within: A Philosophy for the Inner Life”, p.93, Aum Publications

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• Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.

  Anton Chekhov

  Creativity, Men, Animal

  "Uncle Vanya". Act I. Play by Anton Chekhov, 1897.

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• Everyone thinks I'm a wimp and even my own band hates me. Oh, well. I guess I'll just flip 'em the bird!

  Black Francis

  Hate, Thinking, Wimps

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• The busy chatter of the heat Shrilled like a parakeet; And shuddering at the noonday light The dust lay dead and white As powder on a mummy's face, Or fawned with simian grace Round booths with many a hard bright toy And wooden brittle joy: The cap and bells of Time the Clown That, jangling, whistled down Young cherubs hidden in the guise Of every bird that flies; And star-bright masks for youth to wear, Lest any dream that fare Bright pilgrim past our ken, should see Hints of Reality.

  Edith Sitwell

  Dream, Stars, Past

  Edith Sitwell (Dame) (1949). “The canticle of the rose: poems: 1917-1949”

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• Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Jesus, Fall, Home

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.37

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• More hearts are breaking in this world of ours Than one would say. In distant villages And solitudes remote, where winds have wafted The barbed seeds of love, or birds of passage Scattered them in their flight, do they take root, And grow in silence, and in silence perish.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Heart, Wind, Roots

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1849). “The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ; Complete in One Volume”, p.73

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• Think of your woods and orchards without birds! Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Dream, Thinking, Brain

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.743, Delphi Classics

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• When one speaks of increasing power, machinery, and industry there comes up a picture of a cold, metallic sort of world in which great factories will drive away the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the green fields. And that then we shall have a world composed of metal machines and human machines. With all of that I do not agree. I think that unless we know more about the machines and their use, unless we better understand the mechanical portion of life, we cannot have the time to enjoy the trees, and the birds, and the flowers, and the green fields.

  Henry Ford

  Flower, Thinking, Green Fields

  Henry Ford, Rose Wilder Lane, Samuel Crowther “The Story of Henry Ford - An American Dream Cone True”, Lulu.com

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• Who in their right mind wouldn't listen to what Larry Bird tells them? He knows what it takes to be a successful player, and he's letting us do the things to have the success.

  Larry Bird

  Successful, Player, Mind

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• Guys like Larry Bird -- he played so hard, he wants everybody else to play hard. That's not unreasonable. Any coach would want that and demand that.

  Larry Bird

  Play Hard, Guy, Demand

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• I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree; For sure then I should grow To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust Her household to me, and I should be just.

  George Herbert

  Tree, Wish, Shade

  'Affliction (1)' (1633) l. 55

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• Old age is
  a flight of small
  cheeping birds
  skimming
  bare trees
  above a snow glaze.
  Gaining and failing
  they are buffeted
  by a dark wind -
  But what?
  On harsh weedstalks
  the flock has rested -
  the snow
  is covered
  with broken
  seed husks
  and the wind tempered
  with a shrill
  piping of plenty.

  William Carlos Williams

  Dark, Wind, Snow

  "To Awaken an Old Lady". The Dial, August 1920.

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• The shivering birds beneath the eaves Have sheltered for the night.

  Claude McKay

  Night

  Claude McKay (2012). “Selected Poems”, p.49, Courier Corporation

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• The saddest birds a season find to sing,The roughest storm a calm may soon allay;Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,That men may hope to rise yet fear to fall.

  Robert Southwell

  Fall, Men, Storm

  Saint Robert Southwell (1856). “The poetical works of the Rev. Robert Southwell”, p.47

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• I avoid the carwash when I think it might rain anytime in the near future, which means I drive around the majority of the time in a pollen and bird poop covered car. This presents a stand off between Neat Freakshow and Practical Pennypincher, and Neat Freak usually triumphs. And then it rains.

  Kristin Armstrong

  Rain, Mean, Thinking

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