Best 1556 quotes in «bird quotes» category

The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free.

The wild bird that flies so lone and far has somewhere its nest and brood. A little fluttering heart of love impels its wings, and points its course. There is nothing so solitary as a solitary man.

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.

The woods would be quiet if no bird sang but the one that sang best.

The witnessing soul is like the sky. The birds fly in the sky but they don't leave any footprints....[The] man who is awakened lives in such a way that he leaves no footprints.... He never looks ahead, he never looks back, he lives in the moment.

The wren and the nightingale sound nothing alike, but think how dull the world would be without the songs of both birds.-Miss Kanagawa

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

The wren-box problem is becoming more acute each year, for wrens now demand better housing conditions and labor-saving devices.

They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour's work as for a day's. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the lamb.

They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.

They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper.

They tell us sometimes that if we had only kept quiet, all these desirable things would have come about of themselves. I am reminded of the Greek clown who, having seen an archer bring down a flying bird, remarked, sagely: 'You might have saved your arrow, for the bird would anyway have been killed by the fall.'

They say the first of my kind was Alasdair, a human raised by hawks. She learned the languages of birds and was gifted with their form.

This autumn- why am I growing old? bird disappearing among clouds.

They who on meare curiositie (where no urgent necessitie requireth) try whether their children may not as birds be nourished without sucking, offend contrary to this dutie of breast feeding and reflect that meanes which God hath ordained as best; and so oppose their shallow wits to his unsearchable wisdom.

Think of your woods and orchards without birds! Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!

This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.

Thinking is to man what flying is to birds. Don’t follow the example of a chicken when you could be a lark.

This is Sesame Street. A place where people, birds, monsters all live in perfect harmony.

This is a marvel of the universe: To fling a thought across a stretch of sky-- Some weighty message, or a yearning cry, It matters not; the elements rehearse Man's urgent utterance, and his words traverse The spacious heav'ns like homing birds that fly Unswervingly, until, upreached on high, A quickened hand plucks off the message terse.

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

This new sport is comparable to no other. It is, in my opinion, one of the most intoxicating forms of sport, and will, I am sure, become one of the most popular. Many of us will perish before then, but that prospect will not dismay the braver spirits. . . . It is so delicious to fly like a bird!

Those ignoramuses who think that birds are happy in their cages know not a single thing about freedom!

This is what birds see. Only they're free and safe. The very opposite of me.

This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.

This music that was supposed to only come from tapes like in any restaurant. Something would happened. One bird will start to do a little jazz thing, and another bird will start to answer.

This wife you have, Bird said at last, deeply contemplative, did you pay a great deal for her? She cost me almost everything I had, he said, with a wry tone that made the others laugh. But worth it.

Those dull, unmusterious city unemployables, dressed in their grey, secondhand suits.

Those you love will not drown or burn. They will fly away.' ...'Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They're flying away still.

Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry Along the waves dost thou fly? Oh! rather, bird, with me Through this fair land rejoice!

Three things to never leave home without: your keys, birdseed for the birds, and your mala beads to chant through difficulties.

Throughout all of human history we have consumed the natural world. All creatures do. Birds do. Fish do. Earthworms do. We consume the natural world as a source of our survival. But no creature has ever consumed at the scale that humans have, and now there are seven billion of us. I think the good news is that a large percentage of those seven billion minds can work to make better decisions.

Thus drivers inching southward will see the phalanx of birds heading west as one spontaneous gesture.

Tiger Woods, Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky, a pitcher just before a game, I would imagine they all have nervous energy. But as you perform, the nervous energy dissipates and you start to relax and you start to do what you do best.

Time, as is well known, sometimes flies like a bird and sometimes crawls like a worm, but human beings are generally particularly happy when they don't notice whether it's passing quickly or slowly.

Tiny as a sparrow, fierce as an eagle, Lisbeth Salander is one of the great Scandinavian avengers of our time, an angry bird catapulting into the fortresses of power and wiping smiles off the faces of smug, predatory pigs.

To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.

.. to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, and love of the other birds.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.

Thoughts in your head are really no different than the sound of a bird outside. It is just that you decide that they are more or less relevant.

Through her, in microcosm, the wide earth sobbed. The starglobe sank in her; the colours faded. The death-dew rose and the wild birds in her breast climbed to her throat and gathered songless, hovering, all tumult, wing to wing, so ardent for those climes where all things end.

'Tis always morning somewhere, and aboveThe awakening continents, from shore to shore,Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.

Tis but a base, ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

To be worth making at all a journey has to be made in the mind as much as in the world of objects and dimensions. What value can there be in seeing or experiencing anything for the first time unless it comes as a revelation? And for that to happen, some previously held thought or belief must be confounded, or enhanced, or even transcended. What difference can it make otherwise to see a redwood tree, a tiger, or a humming bird?

Tobias asked. "Weird? Weird?" Marco crowed. "The talking bird wants to know if getting information on the location of an alien from a whale, that you've just saved from sharks, by turning into dolphins . . . You're suggesting that's weird?

Today, candor compels us to admit that our vaunted two-party system is a snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation. Our two parties have become nothing but two wings of the same bird of prey.

Today I am sure no one needs to be told that the more birds a yard can support, the fewer insects there will be to trouble the gardener the following year.

Today I will gratefully receive all the gifts that life has to offer me. I will receive the gifts of sunlight and the sound of birds singing and spring showers. I will also be open to receiving from others, whether it is in the form of a material gift, a compliment or a prayer.

To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.