Swans Quotes

• There's a double beauty whenever a swan
  Swims on a lake with her double thereon.

  Thomas Hood

  Lakes, Swim, Swan Lake

  Thomas Hood (1861). “Poems ... Thirteenth edition”, p.159

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• Those who awaken never rest in one place. Like swans, they rise and leave the lake. On the air they rise and fly an invisible course. Their food is knowledge. They live on emptiness. They have seen how to break free. Who can follow them?

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Lakes, Air

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• Even if you enter the dirty water, stay neat like a white swan!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Dirty, White, Water

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• Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.

  Michael Gira

  Beautiful, Ugly, Majestic

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• The swan, like the soul of the poet, By the dull world is ill understood.

  Heinrich Heine

  Inspiring, Moving, Heart

  Heinrich Heine (1866). “The Poems of Heine: Complete”, p.17

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• Swans in the winter air
  A white perfection have

  W. H. Auden

  Winter, Air, White

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• But calm, white calm, was born into a swan.

  Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth

  White, Calm, Born

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• Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

  Robinson Jeffers

  Love, Wings, Thunder

  Robinson Jeffers, Tim Hunt (2001). “The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers”, p.500, Stanford University Press

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• In the story of Ugly Duckling, when did the Ugly Duckling stop feeling Ugly? When he realized that he was a Swan. Each of us has something Special, a swan of some sort, hidden inside somewhere. But until we recognize that it's there, what can we do but splash around, treading water? The Wise are Who They Are. They work with what they've got and do what they can do.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Wise, Ugly Duckling, Water

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• If swans weren't real myths'd make up.

  David Mitchell

  Real, Myth, Ifs

  "Black Swan Green".

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• No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.

  David Hume

  White, Black, Inference

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• swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail.

  Jan Struther

  Reading, Fans, Looks

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• Ugly ducklings don't turn into swans and glide off down the lake. Whether your sunglasses are on or off, you only see the world you make.

  Bonnie Raitt

  Lakes, Ugly Duckling, Games

  Song: Thing Called Love, Album: Nick of Time

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• Silence is a strange thing to us who live: we desire it, we fear it, we worship it, we hate it. There is a divinity about cats, as long as they are silent: the silence of swans gives them an air of legend.

  Keith Douglas

  Happiness, Hate, Cat

  Keith Douglas (2014). “Alamein to Zem Zem”, p.18, Faber & Faber

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• I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

  William Shakespeare

  Thinking, Crow, Thee

  William Shakespeare, Isaac Reed (1813). “The Plays of William Shakespeare”, p.800

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• If you're looking for monogamy, you'd better marry a swan.

  Nora Ephron

  Monogamy, Ifs

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• It is best to live with honor for just a day than with dishonor for many decades; better a short lived celestial swan than a century-lived crow.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Honor, Crow, Century

  FaceBook post by Sri Sathya Sai Baba from Apr 12, 2017

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• Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan's egg.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Ugly Duckling, Eggs, Ducks

  Hans Christian Andersen (2016). “Best Fairy Tales”, p.129, Pan Macmillan

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• For beauty with sorrow Is a burden hard to be borne: The evening light on the foam, and the swans, there; That music, remote, forlorn.

  Walter de La Mare

  Evening Light, Sorrow, Foam

  Walter De la Mare (1941). “Collected poems”

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• The night folds her trembling hands over a weary world. Out of a pale blue rises the shining moon. My thoughts are flying to the stars like lonely swans.

  Joseph Goebbels

  Lonely, Stars, Night

  "Michael: a German fate in diary notes". Book by Joseph Goebbels, 1926.

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• You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve.

  Socrates

  Knowledge, Thinking, Joy

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• Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were
  To see thee in our water yet appear.

  Ben Jonson

  Sweet, Sight, Water

  'To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr William Shakespeare' (1623)

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• The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way in the world.

  Arthur Golden

  Beautiful, Tree, Parent

  Arthur Golden (2008). “Memoirs Of A Geisha”, p.103, Random House

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• I'm telling you, the gorgeous of the world can actually look pretty intimidating when they scowl. Imagine a snow-white swan with a scary tattoo holding a chain saw. There's just no way to really prepare for that.

  Jim Benton

  Tattoo, White, Snow

  Jim Benton (2013). “Dear Dumb Diary #11: Okay, So Maybe I Do Have Superpowers”, p.53, Scholastic

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• The swan is not without cause dedicated to Apollo, because foreseeing his happiness in death, he dies with singing and pleasure.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Singing, Apollo, Causes

  "Tusculanarum Disputationum", I. 30, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 772-73,

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