Swans Quotes - Page 3

• Death darkens his eyes, and unplumes his wings, Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings: Live so, my Love, that when death shall come, Swan-like and sweet it may waft thee home.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Sweet, Song, Eye

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• To be born in a duck's nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan's egg.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Ducks, Ugly Duckling, Eggs

  Hans Christian Andersen (1867). “Hans Andersen's fairy tales, a new tr. by mrs. Paull”, p.33

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• You never count your chickens before they hatch. I used to keep parakeets and I never counted every egg thinking I would get all eight birds. You just hoped they came out of the nest box looking all right. I'm like a swan at the moment. I look fine on top of the water but under the water my little legs are going mad.

  Ian Holloway

  Football, Thinking, Eight

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• He worked night and day. He made a coat that would transform him; he would be more than a man; a winged creature, beautiful as light. All the birds brought him feathers. Even the eagle. Even the swan.

  Catherine Fisher

  Beautiful, Night, Men

  Catherine Fisher (2010). “Sapphique”, p.180, Penguin

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• The swan murmurs sweet strains with a flattering tongue, itself the singer of its own dirge.

  Martial

  Sweet, Singers, Tongue

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• The Water Babies "Young and Old" When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away: Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day.

  Charles Kingsley

  Dog, Baby, Horse

  The Water Babies "Young and Old" l. 1 (1863)

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• Some moralist or mythological poet
  Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
  I am satisfied with that,
  Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
  Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Mirrors, Soul

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.177, Wordsworth Editions

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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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• Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day.

  Charles Kingsley

  Dog, Blood, Youth

  Charles Kingsley, “Young And Old”

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• Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.

  Thomas Harris

  Typhoid, Starlings

  Thomas Harris (2009). “The Silence of the Lambs”, p.22, Macmillan

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• Get my swan costume ready.

  Anna Pavlova

  Ballet, Dying, Costumes

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• The dying swan, when years her temples pierce, In music-strains breathes out her life and verse, And, chanting her own dirge, tides on her wat'ry hearse.

  Phineas Fletcher

  Years, Dying, Tides

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• No number of sightings of white swans can prove the theory that all swans are white. The sighting of just one black one may disprove it.

  Karl Popper

  White, Numbers, Black

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• I think it requires a bit of honesty, Swan Lake.

  Graeme Murphy

  Honesty, Thinking, Lakes

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• Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

  Matthew Arnold

  Long, Geese, Contention

  'The Last Word' (1867)

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• You cannot dance an arabesque in 'Swan Lake' and 'Nutcracker' the same way.

  Natalia Makarova

  Lakes, Nutcrackers, Way

  "Natalia Makarova, Kennedy Center honoree". Interview with Allan Ulrich, www.sfgate.com. December 5, 2012.

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• Swan Lake is the most difficult thing to portray for a female ballet dancer; it really requires such specific qualities of articulation, agility, strength, and the arm work is something that takes a lot of training.

  Benjamin Millepied

  Lakes, Dancer, Ballet

  "Black Swan Choreographer Benjamin Millepied on Teaching Natalie Portman to Have Swan Arms" by Rebecca Milzoff, www.vulture.com. December 3, 2010.

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• no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.

  Karl Popper

  White, Doe, May

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.4, Routledge

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• When I first started doing the quieter, more acoustic material in Swans, there was a lot of derision and outright hatred from the audience and press, just as in the early days of Swans when we were rejected outright because of the bludgeoning, single-minded violence of the music.

  Michael Gira

  Hatred, Violence, Firsts

  Interview with Michael Idov, pitchfork.com. May 22, 2005.

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• And swans seem whiter if swart crowes be by.

  Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

  Seems, Ifs

  Josuah Sylvester, Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (seigneur), Gui Du Faur de Pibrac, Odet de La Noue (seigneur de Téligny), Henry Smith (1967). “The Complete Works of Joshuah Sylvester: For the First Time Collected and Edited”

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• Sweet meat must have sour sauce.

  Ben Jonson

  Sweet, Meat, Sauce

  Ben Jonson (1756). “Poetaster; or, His arraignm[e]nt. Sejanus his fall. Volpone; or, The fox. Epicoene; or, The silent woman”, p.45

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• And over the pond are sailing Two swans all white as snow; Sweet voices mysteriously wailing Pierce through me as onward they go. They sail along, and a ringing Sweet melody rises on high; And when the swans begin singing, They presently must die.

  Heinrich Heine

  Sweet, Two, Voice

  Heinrich Heine (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Heinrich Heine (Illustrated)”, p.59, Delphi Classics

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• Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd, And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard: To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.

  William Cowper

  Giving, Age, Lamps

  William Cowper, Henry Stebbing, Giovanni Battista Andreini (1854). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper, Esq: Including the Hymns and Translations from Madame Guion, Milton, Etc., and Adam; a Sacred Drama”, p.40

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• The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud
  With white neck peering to the evening clowd.
  The weary rooks to distant woods are gone.
  With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on
  To neighbouring tree, and leaves the distant crow
  While small birds nestle in the edge below.

  John Clare

  Fall, White, Bird

  John Clare, “Autumn Birds”

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• It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

  Van Wyck Brooks

  Profound, Wells, Geese

  Van Wyck Brooks (1941). “Opinions of Oliver Allston”, New York, Dutton

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