Best 71 quotes in «swans quotes» category

The obituary writers drew their incomplete sketches, touring through his life like travelers to England who do not ever see swans, sheep, bicycles, and blue eyes.

It doesn't matter if you're born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan's egg!

It's a wonder they can sit down at all, and when they walk, nothing touches their legs under the billowing skirts, except their shifts and stockings. They are like swans, drifting along on unseen feet; or else like the jellyfish in the waters of the rocky harbour near our house, when I was little, before I ever made the long sad journey across the ocean. They were bell-shaped and ruffled, gracefully waving and lovely under the sea; but if they washed up on the beach and dried out in the sun there was nothing left of them. And that is what the ladies are like: mostly water.

Silence is another element we find in classic fairy tales — girls muted by magic or sworn to silence in order to break enchantment. In "The Wild Swans," a princess is imprisoned by her stepmother, rolled in filth, then banished from home (as her older brothers had been before her). She goes in search of her missing brothers, discovers that they've been turned into swans, whereupon the young girl vows to find a way to break the spell. A mysterious woman comes to her in a dream and tells her what to do: 'Pick the nettles that grow in graveyards, crush and spin them into thread, then weave them into coats and throw them over your brothers' backs.' The nettles burn and blister, yet she never falters: picking, spinning, weaving, working with wounded, crippled hands, determined to save her brothers. All this time she's silent. 'You must not speak,' the dream woman has warned, 'for a single world will be like a knife plunged into your brothers' hearts.' You must not speak. That's what my stepfather said: don't speak, don't cry, don't tell. That's what my mother said as well, as we sat in hospital waiting rooms -- and I obeyed, as did my brothers. We sat as still and silent as stone while my mother spun false tales to explain each break and bruise and burn. Our family moved just often enough that her stories were fresh and plausible; each new doctor believed her, and chided us children to be more careful. I never contradicted those tales. I wouldn't have dared, or wanted to. They'd send me into foster care. They'd send my young brothers away. And so we sat, and the unspoken truth was as sharp as the point of a knife.

The fresco on one large wall was indeed the marvel Julian had promised. It was a Pre-Raphaelite portrayal of the Children of Lir, those four siblings cursed to remain swans for nine hundred years. Despite a ragged crack that was making its way down the plaster, the fresco was as pulsing with life as though one was actually looking out on a placid freshwater lake. When Marjan turned away from the painted wall, she saw its real-life inspiration outside the window. There, through floor-length panes, stood a pond complete with a flock of those gracious birds, the white-necked swans.

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.

There is nothing in nature which approximates to the idea of a hospice.

There, tonight. The eternity of that. Swan logic. Swan history.

After eighteen years of being utterly ordinary, I finally found that I can shine" -Bella Swan <3

Your heart plays a song like a broken music box, but nothing ever sounded quite so beautiful to me. Together, in the dance of wounded-wing swans we’ll rise above the ruins, melting into the golden light.

Adjustment, that synonym for conformity that comes more easily to the modern tongue, is the theme of our swan song, the piper's tune to which we dance on the brink of the abyss, the siren's melody that destroys our senses and paralyzes our wills.

Always praise your kid even if he/she is unresponsive to learning. By insulting them and putting them down, you will only push them away and make them feel inadequate around other kids. Have faith that your child's brain is an evolving planet that rotates at its own speed. It will naturally be attracted to or repel certain subjects. Be patient. Just as there are ugly ducklings that turn into swans, there are rebellious kids that turn into serious innovators and hardcore intellectuals.

And while we're on the subject of ducks, which we plainly are, the story, 'The Ugly Duckling' ought be banned as the central character wasn't a duckling or he wouldn't have grown up into a swan. He was a cygnet.

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

Coal-black is better than another hue In that it scorns to bear another hue; For all the water in the ocean Can never turn the swan's black legs to white, Although she lave them hourly in the flood.

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

I already know how strong you are. You didn't have to break the furniture." —Bella Swan

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

I always believed I was an ugly duckling in a family of swans, you know? I was such a black sheep, and it was the same way in high school... I was just kind of that awkward theater kid with a bunch of athletes... it was very Glee.

Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom. Bella Swan Stephenie Meyer

Merrily, merrily goes the bark On a breeze from the northward free, So shoots through the morning sky the lark, Or the swan through the summer sea.

I can't even listen to Swans anymore. It doesn't do it for me at all, but I absolutely adore the early records and, on that same token, I wouldn't in any way wish for them to come back and repeat themselves.

I had seen the ballet of Swan Lake as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.

I'm going to do 'The Social Network Two: The Electric Boogaloo.' And I have a part in 'Beige Swan.' I'm going to be the lead, but I don't dance. I just do a lot of sitting down. It's too tiring to get up and dance around. That should be coming out in 20-never.

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.

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.

Last year when "Black Swan," "True Grit" and "King's Speech" all grossed over $100 million, it gave studios and independent financiers the confidence to make daring movies. You know, and not do the same old you-know-what.

Millions of years ago, in my previous incarnations, I must have been related to swans... because I can still feel that affinity.

My mother is part albino." Bella Swan

My duchess,” James stated, his eyes sweeping the crowd with the air of a man who has ruled the waves. “She is not a swan, because that would imply she had once been an ugly duckling.

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.

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.

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

Shiva... is the only hunter that will ever catch the wild swan; The prey she will take last is the wild white swan of the beauty of things. Then she will be alone, pure destruction, achieved and supreme, Empty darkness under the death-tent wings. She will build a nest of the swan's bones and hatch a new brood, Hang new heavens with new birds, all be renewed.

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying.

Such as ne'er saw swans May think crows beautiful.

Swans live wherever there is water, and leave the place where water dries up; let not a man act so - and comes and goes as he pleases.

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

The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.

Notes for a ballet, The Spell: ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman - unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes.

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.

The raven once in snowy plumes was drest, White as the whitest dove's unsullied breast, Fair as the guardian of the Capitol, Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl His tongue, his prating tongue had changed him quite To sooty blackness from the purest white.

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

The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.

There was a sorry judge who lived at the Swan by himself. He got but little honor, and he got but little pelf [i.e. wealth], He drudged and judged from morn to night, no ass drudged more than he, And the more he drudged, and the more he judged, the sorrier judge was he.

The silver Swan, who, living, had no Note, when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat. Leaning her breast upon the reedy shore, thus sang her first and last, and sang no more: 'Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes! More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise.'

There was no reason for Bella Swan to cross paths with me. She would be avoided like the plague she was.

The Singing of Swans is a remarkable narrative calling--even compelling--us to connect with our own ancestral roots, to seek our own inner wisdom, and to reclaim our own inner voices!

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.