Bird Quotes - Page 32

• I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore,
  Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be,
  Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

  William Butler Yeats

  Flames, Sea, White

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.130, Penguin

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• You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure--because he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps;but otherwise he is just as much a human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman.

  Mark Twain

  Feelings, Humanity, Church

  Mark Twain (1994). “Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches”, p.163, Penguin

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• I have wished a bird would fly away,
  And not sing by my house all day.

  Robert Frost

  House, Fly Away

  Robert Frost, Robert Faggen (2006). “The Notebooks of Robert Frost”, p.732, Harvard University Press

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• A bird half wakened in the lunar noon
  Sang halfway through its little inborn tune.

  Robert Frost

  Tunes, Noon, Half

  Robert Frost (1936). “A Further Range”

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• The sea's vast depths lie open to the fish;
  Wherever the breezes blow the bird may fly;
  So to the brave man every land's a home.

  Ovid

  Lying, Home, Blow

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• Old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.

  George Santayana

  Memories, Self, Age

  George Santayana (2011). “The Life of Reason: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense”, p.172, MIT Press

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• Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Rose, Lilies

  Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.34, Northwestern University Press

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• A married guy is responsible for everything, no matter what. Women, thanks to their having been oppressed all these years, are blameless, free as birds, and all the dirt they do is the result of premenstrual syndrome or postmenstrual stress or menopause or emotional disempowerment by their fathers or low expectations by their teachers or latent unspoken sexual harassment in the workplace, or some other airy excuse. The guy alone is responsible for every day of marriage that is less than marvelous and meaningful.

  Garrison Keillor

  Meaningful, Teacher, Stress

  Garrison Keillor (1994). “The Book of Guys: Stories”, Penguin Group USA

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• There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, room, dress, and so on. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste.

  Blaise Pascal

  Beauty, Song, Strong

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.16, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Birds which are the same color as the foliage in which they nest are less likely to be disturbed by other birds who want to drop in and chat, and therefore last longer.

  Robert Benchley

  Color, Lasts, Nests

  Robert Benchley (1976). “Chips Off the Old Benchley”, Amereon Limited

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• Every time I get happy
  the Nana-hex comes through.
  Birds turn into plumber's tools,
  a sonnet turns into a dirty joke,
  a wind turns into a tracheotomy,
  a boat turns into a corpse.

  Anne Sexton

  Happiness, Depression, Dirty

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• There is no word for time.
  Today we will
  not think to number another summer
  or watch its white bird into the ground.

  Anne Sexton

  Summer, Time, Thinking

  Anne Sexton, “The Road Back”

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• The silence is death.
  It comes each day with its shock
  to sit on my shoulder, a white bird,
  and peck at the black eyes
  and the vibrating red muscle
  of my mouth.

  Anne Sexton

  Eye, White, Silence

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.181, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Man
  is a bird full of mud,
  I say aloud.
  And death looks on with a casual eye
  and scratches his anus.

  Anne Sexton

  Eye, Men, Scratches

  Anne Sexton (1975). “The Awful Rowing Toward God”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

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• It's hard to play with a bagpipe player. It's like an exotic bird. I love the sound, it's like strangling a goose.

  Tom Waits

  Art, Player, Sound

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• Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth, had need to remember what every name he uses stands for; and to place it accordingly; or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twigs; the more he struggles, the more belimed.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Truth, Struggle, Men

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

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• See the wild birds on the wing,
  Hear the bells that sweetly ring,
  When you feel like singin', sing--
  Keep a-goin'!

  Frank Lebby Stanton

  Perseverance, Wings, Singing

  Frank Lebby Stanton, “Keep A-Goin'!”

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• The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a bird-cage played with toasting-forks.

  Thomas Beecham

  Sound, Cages, Forks

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• When the bird of the heart begins to sing, too often will reason stop up her ears.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Heart, Ears, Reason

  Hans Christian Andersen, Jean Hersholt (1948). “Hans Christian Andersen's Shorter Tales”

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• War wreaked on you his hideous ravishment;
  We, we alone, Nereids inviolate,
  Remain to weep, with the sea-birds to chant:
  Corinth is lost, Corinth is desolate.

  Hilda Doolittle

  War, Loss, Sea

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.338, New Directions Publishing

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• No poetic phantasy
  but a biological reality,
  a fact: I am an entity
  like bird, insect, plant
  or sea-plant cell;
  I live; I am alive.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Life, Reality, Cells

  Hilda Doolittle (1988). “Selected Poems”, p.172, New Directions Publishing

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• I fear no man, no woman;
  flower does not fear
  bird, insect nor adder.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Fear, Flower, Men

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.295, New Directions Publishing

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• Once in a while, God sends a good white person my way, even to this day. I think it's God's way of keeping me from becoming too mean. And when he sends a nice one to me, then I have to eat crow. And honey, crow is a tough old bird to eat, let me tell you.

  Annie Elizabeth Delany

  Nice, Mean, Thinking

  Sarah Louise Delany, Annie Elizabeth Delany, Amy Hill Hearth (1993). “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years”, p.77, Kodansha America

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• ... when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information?

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Sex, Believe, Book

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• Every single song has its own individual character and you can't treat each song the same way, because it wants to be treated differently and there are songs that are like scared birds that you have to sneak up on over the course of months in the woods.

  Tom Waits

  Song, Character, Want

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