Bird Quotes - Page 31

• These are just the rules and regulations Of the birds, and the bees The earth, and the trees, Not to mention the gods, not to mention the gods.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Tree, Rules And Regulations, Earth

  Song: Rules and Regulations, 2007

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• Nobody has seen the trekking birds take their way towards such warmer spheres as do not exist, or rivers break their course through rocks and plains to run into an ocean which is not to be found. For God does not create a longing or a hope without having a fulfilling reality ready for them. But our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.

  Isak Dinesen

  Running, Ocean, Blessed

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard”, p.10, Vintage

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• We lived in places that we never knew. We could not name the birds perched on our sill, Or see the trees we cut down for our view. What we possessed we always chose to kill. "We claimed the earth but did not hear her claim, And when we died, they laid us on her breast, But she refuses us until we earn Forgiveness from the lives we dispossessed.

  Dana Gioia

  Cutting, Views, Names

  Dana Gioia (2016). “99 Poems: New & Selected”, p.49, Macmillan

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• The love-making of the bluebird is as beautiful as the bird itself, and normally as gentle, unless interrupted by some jealous rival who would steal his bride; then gentleness gives place to active combat. The male usually arrives a few days ahead of the female, selects what he considers to be a suitable summer home, and carols his sweetest, most seductive notes day after day until she appears in answer to his call.

  Arthur Cleveland Bent

  Beautiful, Summer, Home

  Arthur Cleveland Bent (1949). “Life histories of North American thrushes, kinglets, and their allies: order Passeriformes”

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• The perfume of the flowers and of the bay tree are wafted on high, like incense. The birds sing sweet songs of praise to their Creator. In the tops of the trees, the soughing of the wind is like the hushed prayers of the multitude in some vast cathedral. Here the heart of man becomes impressionable.

  William Wendt

  Song, Sweet, Prayer

  John Alan Walker, William Wendt (1992). “Documents on the Life and Art of William Wendt, 1865-1946, California's Painter Laureate of the Paysage Moralisé”

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• Well, before writing became all-consuming, I was a quilter, like Hattie and Perilee. I don’t do that anymore, but I do knit, garden and watch the birds in my backyard. I also take lots of walks, do yoga and talk my husband into taking me out to dinner as often as possible.

  Kirby Larson

  Husband, Yoga, Writing

  Hope Is the Word Interview, hopeisthewordblog.com. February 27, 2009.

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• Tell me why the caged bird nutters against its prison bars, and I will tell you why the soul sickens of earthliness. The bird has wings, and wings were made to cleave the air, and soar in freedom in the sun. The soul is immortal it cannot feed upon husks.

  Randolph Sinks Foster

  Air, Wings, Soul

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• With Wordsworth, indeed, the light of revelation did not fall upon human beings so unbrokenly as upon the face of the earth. He knew the birds of the countryside better than the old men, and the flowers far better than the children.

  Robert Wilson Lynd

  Children, Flower, Fall

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• Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.

  Robert Wilson Lynd

  Character, Body, Littles

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• In missional churches, the baby birds have been pushed out of the nest and are learning to fly for themselves.

  Alan Hirsch

  Baby, Church, Nests

  Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch (2011). “The Faith of Leap (Shapevine): Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure & Courage”, p.193, Baker Books

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• Night after night the nightingale came to beg for divine love, but though the rose trembled at the sound of his voice, her petals remained closed to him...Flower and bird, two species never meant to mate. Yet at length the rose overcame her fear and from that single, forbidden union was born the red rose that Allah never intended the world to know.

  Susan Kay

  Flower, Night, Two

  "Phantom". Book by Susan Kay, 1990.

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• I closed my eyes and listened to the occasional chirps of tiny birds hidden in the trees around us, the bubbling of water over rocks down below, cicadas rattling a chorus off in the distance. All sounds of the world carrying on like it always had. So much could change or be lost, and still, the rest of the world went on like it was nothing. It didn't seem wrong, but it didn't seem right either. I'd gone on today like it was nothing. I'd laughed and felt happy and forgotten for a little while that this was now a world without my brother in it.

  Jessi Kirby

  Brother, Distance, Eye

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• Ambition is frequently the only refuge which life has left to the denied or mortified affections. We chide at the grasping eye, the daring wing, the soul that seems to thirst for sovereignty only, and know not that the flight of this ambitious bird has been from a bosom or home that is filled with ashes.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Eye, Home, Ambition

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.74

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• For me pressure is bird flu. I'm serious. I'm feeling a lot of pressure with the problem in Scotland. It's not fun and I'm more scared of it than football. Football is nothing compared with life. For me bird flu is the drama of the last few days. I'll have to buy a mask.

  Jose Mourinho

  Soccer, Football, Fun

  "Mourinho cool despite Man Utd run". news.bbc.co.uk. April 7, 2006.

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• This music that was supposed to only come from tapes like in any restaurant. Something would happened. One bird will start to do a little jazz thing, and another bird will start to answer.

  John Hench

  Artist, Tape, Answers

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• Then the Parson might preach, & drink, & sing, And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring; And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church, Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.

  William Blake

  Children, Spring, Atheism

  'Songs of Experience' (1794) 'The Little Vagabond'

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• I never think about actual things when I'm painting. I'm not thinking, "I'm going to put a person here, a tree here and a bird there." The beginning stage is always the sound. From that, slowly, stories come about based on what I'm reading or thinking at the time, but if I didn't have that sound I don't know what I would do.

  Ali Banisadr

  Reading, Thinking, Tree

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• .. 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 Olds

  Love Is, Community, Self Love

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• Phoenix, n.
  The classical prototype of the modern 'small hot bird.'

  Ambrose Bierce

  Phoenix, Hot, Modern

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.181, University of Georgia Press

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• A gourmet can tell from the flavor whether a woodcock's leg is the one on which the bird is accustomed to roost.

  Lucius Beebe

  Gourmet, Flavor, Legs

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• A song is like a picture of a bird in flight; the bird was moving before the picture was taken, and no doubt continued after.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Moving, Taken

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• When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky....They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same....Look at them leaving in droves, despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong

  NoViolet Bulawayo

  Children, Fall, Escaping

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• Every living thing was shunning him. Poor little Peter Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for a bird, he was sitting on his wrong part. It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.

  James M. Barrie

  Blessing, Wings, Perfect

  James M. Barrie (2013). “The Little White Bird (Annotated Edition)”, p.85, Jazzybee Verlag

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• There's times when the crockery seems alive, an' flies out o' your hand like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands. What is to be broke will be broke.

  George Eliot

  Glasses, Hands, Cracks

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.162, Wordsworth Editions

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• Trust me, there are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no more fit to lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped.

  Frances Wright

  Leadership, Men, Way

  Frances Wright (1831). “A Few Days in Athens: Being the Translation of a Greek Manuscript Discovered in Herculaneum”, p.112

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