“The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.”

The Eagle and the Arrow.

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Aesop36

ancient Greek storyteller -620–-564 BC

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“So in the Libyan fable it is told
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten."”

Aeschylus (-525–-456 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Fragment 63 (trans. by E. H. Plumptre), reported in Theoi http://www.theoi.com/Text/AeschylusFragments2.html

“Like a young eagle who has lent his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,
See their own feathers pluck'd to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Corruption.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Which on the shaft that made him die
Espied a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

To a Lady singing a Song of his Composing; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). See also Eagles, for variations on this theme.

“To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more.”

Thomas Browne book Christian Morals

Part III, Section XII
Christian Morals (first pub. post. 1716)

“Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low:
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.”

George Gordon Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Line 826. A number of authors have addressed this common motif of an eagle shot with an eagle-feather arrow