“A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.”

— Robert Burton , book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 3, subsection 6.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

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Robert Burton 111

English scholar 1577–1640

Tom Springfield (1934) English musician, songwriter and record producer

Song Morning Please Don't Come.

“There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the day long;
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream,
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.”

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

Part II.
Lalla Rookh http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/lallarookh/index.html (1817), Part I-III: The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan

“In the weightiest matters we must go to school to the animals, and learn spinning and weaving from the spider, building from the swallow, singing from the birds,—from the swan and the nightingale, imitating their art.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

“Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
Nor with a Stone —
A Whip so small you could not see it
I've known

To lash the Magic Creature
Till it fell,
Yet that Whip's Name
Too noble then to tell.

Magnanimous as Bird
By Boy descried —
Singing unto the Stone
Of which it died —

Shame need not crouch
In such an Earth as Ours —
Shame — stand erect —
The Universe is yours.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

1304: Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)

“I sing as the bird sings
That lives in the boughs.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt
Der in den Zweigen wohnet.
Bk. II, Ch. 11
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786–1830)

“It is quiet and peaceful here, the air is good, there are numerous gardens, and in them nightingales sing and spies lurk under the bushes.”

Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) Russian and Soviet writer

Letter to Anton Chekhov http://books.google.com/books?id=rXsdAAAAMAAJ&q="It+is+quiet+and+peaceful+here+the+air+is+good+there+are+numerous+gardens+and+in++them+nightingales+sing+and+spies+lurk+under+the+bushes"&pg=PA28#v=onepage

“No man had ever heard a nightingale,
When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred
To study and define — what is a bird.”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

Critic and Poet: an Epilogue http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/critic-and-poet-an-epilogue/

“The rose looks out in the valley,
And thither will I go,
To the rosy vale, where the nightingale
Sings his song of woe.”

Gil Vicente (1456–1536) Portuguese writer

En la huerta nasce la rosa:
quiérome ir allá
por mirar al ruiseñor cómo cantavá.
En la huerta nace la rosa — "The Nightingale", as translated by John Bowring in Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain (1824), p. 316

“Birds of prey don’t sing.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

Aphorism #7
Interglacial (2004)

“On the grave of this poor stranger, let there be neither lamp nor rose,
Let neither butterfly's wing burn nor nightingale sing.”

Nur Jahan (1577–1645) Padshah Begum of the Mughal Empire

epitaph on Nur Jahan's tomb, translated by Wheeler Thackston, quoted in "Nur Jahan", p. 275

“A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.”

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Robert Burton 111

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