Flapping Quotes

• Jumping out a window five hundred feet above ground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I'm wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck.

  Rick Riordan

  Fun, Jumping, Wings

  6 Copy quote

• That's why ears have cartilage, to keep them from flapping.

  Bill Cosby

  Ears

  6 Copy quote

• Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place, but there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.

  E. L. Konigsburg

  Happiness, Happy, Littles

  E.L. Konigsburg (2015). “From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”, p.102, Pushkin Press

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rules and Things Number 63: Never, Ever Say Something Bad About Someone You Don't Know--Especially When You're Around a Bunch of Strangers. You Never Can Tell Who Might Be Kin to That Person or Who Might Be a Lip-Flapping, Big-Mouth Spy.

  Christopher Paul Curtis

  Numbers, Spy, Mouths

  Christopher Paul Curtis, Holt Rinehart & Winston (2002). “Bud, not Buddy: with connections”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I saw something once that I can't explain, that doesn't make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn't make them real. And if a madman says what's at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that's just one more reason not to believe.

  Charlie Huston

  Real, Believe, Dark

  Charlie Huston (2009). “My Dead Body: A Novel”, p.45, Del Rey

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Actresses can get outrageously precious about the way they look. That's not what life's about. If you starve yourself to the point where your brain cells shrivel, you will never do good work. And if you're overly conscious of your arms flapping in the wind, how can you look the other actor in the eye to respond to them?

  Cate Blanchett

  Eye, Cells, Wind

  10 Copy quote

• We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Princess, Tunnels, Media

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.34, Cosimo, Inc.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing is has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has no been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families, too, to keep us quiet.

  Lydia Davis

  Running, Morning, Taken

  16 Copy quote

• Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.

  Lauren Oliver

  Beautiful, Butterfly, Wind

  7 Copy quote

• Fractal litigation, whereby the flapping of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the world resulted in a massive compensation claim on the other.

  Steve Aylett

  Butterfly, Wings, World

  7 Copy quote

• A flapping tongue has killed more men than sudden storms ever did.

  Robert Jordan

  Men, Storm, Tongue

  Robert Jordan (2002). “The Dragon Reborn: Book Three of 'The Wheel of Time'”, p.232, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good fences make good neighbors.

  Robert Frost

  Alaska, Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder, Mind Your Own Business

  "MendingWall" l. 25 (1914)

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity.

  Angela Carter

  Humanity, Rags, Scarecrow

  Angela Carter (1984). “Nights at the circus”, Vintage

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Flapping my arms I began to cluck, look at me, I'm the disco duck.

  Rick Dees

  Ducks, Dancing, Looks

  36 Copy quote

• It is a distortion, with something profoundly disloyal about it, to picture the human being as a teetering, fallible contraption, always needing, watching and patching, always on the verge of flapping to pieces.

  Lewis Thomas

  Health, Pieces, Distortion

  Lewis Thomas (1972*). “Aspects of Biomedical Science Policy”, p.3, National Academies

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite and melting her all molten inside.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Running, Flames, Sensual

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “Lady chatterleys lover”, p.167, D. H. Lawrence

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Her mind is a bird that's trapped inside her skull, flapping and thrashing, never breaking free.

  Lauren DeStefano

  Skulls, Bird, Mind

  Lauren DeStefano (2012). “Fever”, p.89, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• A sentence starts out like a lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight, tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.

  Billy Collins

  Wind, Midnight, Tails

  Billy Collins (2011). “Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems”, p.9, Random House

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• As those who have seen Jurassic Park will know, this means a tiny disturbance in one place, can cause a major change in another. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause rain in Central Park, New York. The trouble is, it is not repeatable. The next time the butterfly flaps its wings, a host of other things will be different, which will also influence the weather. That is why weather forecasts are so unreliable.

  Stephen Hawking

  New York, Rain, Butterfly

  4 Copy quote

• The artificial intelligence approach may not be altogether the right one to make to the problem of designing automatic assembly devices. Animals and machines are constructed from entirely different materials and on quite different principles. When engineers have tried to draw inspiration from a study of the way animals work they have usually been misled; the history of early attempts to construct flying machines with flapping wings illustrates this very clearly.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Inspiration, Animal, Wings

  "Computers Then and Now". Journal of the ACM 15, Sect. 4, (pp. 1-7), January 1968.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Descendants of pigeons once fed by Keats, Byron, George Sand, Chopin and many other famous lovers are still being fed, and the sudden sound when they all rise together, frightened away, is like the sound of giant sails flapping.

  Anais Nin

  Venice, Together, Sound

  5 Copy quote

• All that changing of plates and flapping of napkins while you wait 40 minutes for your food.

  Hugh Casson

  Food, Waiting, Cooking

  6 Copy quote

• But the owls themselves are not hard to find, silent and on the wing, with their ear tufts flat against their heads as they fly and their huge wings alternately gliding and flapping as they maneuver through the trees. Athena's owl of wisdom and Merlin's companion, Archimedes, were screech owls surely, not this bird with the glassy gaze, restless on the bough, nothing but blood on its mind.

  Mary Oliver

  Blood, Wings, Bird

  Mary Oliver (2006). “Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays”, p.22, Beacon Press

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• We all ended up somewhere with our various uncertain lives flapping about us in tatters and our pockets full of foreign coins.

  Karen Elizabeth Gordon

  Adventure, Pockets, Coins

  8 Copy quote

• The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does.

  Ian Stewart

  Butterfly, Wings, Atmosphere

  3 Copy quote