Herons Quotes

• When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Stars, Children

  Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.79, Counterpoint Press

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• God comes to each of us in the form we can best perceive Him. To you, just now, He was a heron. To someone else, He might come as a flower or even a breeze.

  Richard Zimler

  Religious, Flower, Religion

  Richard Zimler (2000). “The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon”, p.22, The Overlook Press

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• How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light

  Mary Oliver

  Eye, Light, Wings

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• For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

  Wendell Berry

  Grace, World, Still Waters

  Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.79, Counterpoint Press

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• It is never too late to go quietly to our lakes, rivers, oceans, even our small streams, and say to the sea gulls, the great blue herons, the bald eagles, the salmon, that we are sorry.

  Brenda Peterson

  Sorry, Ocean, Sea

  Brenda Peterson (2000). “Singing to the Sound: Visions of Nature, Animals & Spirit”, Newsage Press

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• A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down the river.

  John Steinbeck

  Air, Rivers

  John Steinbeck (2016). “Of Mice and Men”, p.2, Hamilton Books

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• When despair for the world grows in me...
  I come into the presence of still water.
  And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
  For a time I rest in the grace of the world,
  and am free.

  Wendell Berry

  Stars, Light, Water

  Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.79, Counterpoint Press

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• Like the air-invested heron, great persons should conduct themselves; and the higher they be, the less they should show.

  Philip Sidney

  Greatness, Air, Should

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• What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?

  Alfred Russel Wallace

  Bird, Bills

  Alfred Russel Wallace (2016). “Travels on the Amazon”, p.62, Library of Alexandria

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• Stalking along from log to log, or plunging their long legs in the oozy swamp, two large herons paid no attention to my presence, but occupied themselves with their own fishing arrangements, as if their wilderness were their own.

  William Cowper Prime

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

  William Cowper Prime (1876). “I Go A-fishing”, p.132

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• May your love be firm, and may your dream of life together be a river between two shores - by day bathed in sunlight, and by night illuminated from within. May the heron carry news of you to the heavens, and the salmon bring the sea's blue grace. May your twin thoughts spiral upward like leafy vines, like fiddle strings in the wind, and be as noble as the Douglas fir. May you never find yourselves back to back without love pulling you around into each other's arms.

  James Bertolino

  Dream, Night, Love Is

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• I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

  Wendell Berry

  Life, Grief, Generosity

  Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.79, Counterpoint Press

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• In a snowfall that covers the winter grass a white heron uses his own whiteness to disappear.

  Dogen

  Winter, White, Use

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• [I have] a heavenly vase full of autumn leaves today. They look so beautiful. How much closer to God can one get? And a beautiful blue heron flew over the brook. Nature can make me cry faster than anything.

  Lotte Lenya

  Beautiful, Autumn, Blue

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• The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop.

  Megan Whalen Turner

  Queens, Grace, Bed

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• A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shadows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically.

  John Steinbeck

  Snakes, Water, Shadow

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• Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron; I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side.

  Iain Banks

  Time, Auras, Sides

  Iain Banks (2008). “The Crow Road”, Macadam Cage Pub

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• I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp, - tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Nature, Blood

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.187, Graphic Arts Books

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• A black-crowned night heron stood on an apron of wet sand, looking across the channel. The feather plume at the back of his head lifted in a faint breeze. Out there the channel churned its cyclonic eddies counterclockwise. Schools of anchovies, halibut, and sea bass came and went: silver flashes, small storms that well up from the inside of the sea but are short-lived, like lightning.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Ocean, School, Night

  Gretel Ehrlich (1995). “A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning”, p.67, Penguin

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• The fox when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off their heads.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Bird, Looks, Mouths

  Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.459, GENERAL PRESS

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• To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, 'There. That taste. That's the taste of my childhood.'

  Pat Conroy

  Growing Up, Memories, Spring

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Prince of Tides: A Novel”, p.9, Open Road Media

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• Maybe the Snowy Heron is going to come off pretty badly when the planes come together. Maybe. But he's still proud and beautiful. His head is high, and he's got this sharp beak that's facing out to the world.He's okay for now.

  Gary D. Schmidt

  Beautiful, Together, World

  Gary D. Schmidt (2011). “Okay for Now”, p.202, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I am in the lineage of Gil Scott-Heron, great activist-type artists. But I'm also in the lineage of a Miles Davis - you know, that liked nice things also.

  Kanye West

  Nice, Artist, Lineage

  "Behind Kanye’s Mask". Interview with Jon Caramanica, www.nytimes.com. June 11, 2013.

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• The Bishop has a skin, God knows,
  Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,
  (All find safety in the tomb.)
  Nor can he hide in holy black
  The heron's hunch upon his back,
  But a birch-tree stood my Jack.

  William Butler Yeats

  Feet, Hypocrisy, Safety

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.260, Simon and Schuster

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• Whether the issue was black political power or nuclear power, Scott-Heron didn't mince words. His comeback record, "I'm New Here," doesn't mince words either, but instead of political battles, these songs suggest he's fighting personal ones.

  Will Hermes

  Song, Fighting, Issues

  "A Surprising Record From Gil Scott Heron". "All Things Considered" with Melissa Block and Michele Norris, www.npr.org. February 11, 2010.

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