Quotes about birds

„No empty handed man can lure a bird“

—  Geoffrey Chaucer, book The Canterbury Tales

Source: The Canterbury Tales

„Then swiftly, neatly, with the grace of the young man on the trapeze, he was gone from his body.
For an eternal moment he was still all things at once: the bird, the fish, the rodent, the reptile, and man.“

—  William Saroyan American writer 1908 - 1981

"The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze"
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)
Context: Then swiftly, neatly, with the grace of the young man on the trapeze, he was gone from his body.
For an eternal moment he was still all things at once: the bird, the fish, the rodent, the reptile, and man. An ocean of print undulated endlessly and darkly before him. The city burned. The herded crowd rioted. The earth circled away, and knowing that he did so, he turned his lost face to the empty sky and became dreamless, unalive, perfect.

„Like birds whose wings are broken, you live without direction!“

—  Andrew Biersack American singer-songwriter 1990

„I want to paint the way a bird sings.“

—  Claude Monet French impressionist painter 1840 - 1926

Variant: I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
Source: Monet By Himself

„Spring: trees flying up to their birds“

—  Paul Celan Romanian poet and translator 1920 - 1970

„It is extraordinary that nobody nowadays under the stress of great troubles is turned into stone or a bird or a tree or some inanimate object; they used to undergo such metamorphoses in ancient times (or so they say), though whether that is myth or a true story I know not. Maybe it would be better to change one's nature into something that lacks all feeling, rather than be so sensitive to evil. Had that been possible, these calamities would in all probability have turned me to stone“

—  Anna Comnena, book Alexiad

The Alexiad, Preface

„Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?“

—  Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy American philanthropist and mother of John F. Kennedy 1890 - 1995

„…I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.” (p.275)“

—  Mark Nepo American writer 1951

Source: Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives

„Perched up high on a rooftop,
like a bird I'm having evil thoughts,
A black hood covers my face
as death flows through my mind at its own pace.“

—  Eazy-E American rapper and producer 1963 - 1995

"Neighborhood Sniper", 5150: Home 4 tha Sick (1992).
1990s

„More often than not, the classes of objects encountered in the real physical world do not have precisely defined criteria of membership. For example, the class of animals clearly includes dogs, horses, birds, etc. as its members, and clearly excludes such objects as rocks, fluids, plants, etc. However, such objects as starfish, bacteria, etc. have an ambiguous status with respect to the class of animals. The same kind of ambiguity arises in the case of a number such as 10 in relation to the “class” of all real numbers which are much greater than 1.“

—  Lotfi A. Zadeh Electrical engineer and computer scientist 1921 - 2017

Source: 1960s, Fuzzy sets (1965), p. 338

„Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.“

—  Alberto Moravia Italian writer and journalist 1907 - 1990

„Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.“

—  Tennessee Williams American playwright 1911 - 1983

„God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.“

—  Jacques Deval French film director and writer 1890 - 1972

Quoted in Barbara K. Rodes and Rice Odell, A Dictionary of Environmental Quotations (1992), p. 22

„The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down on the box for a chat, the sun is shining on my face — and right before our eyes, mass murder. The whole thing is simply beyond comprehension.“

—  Etty Hillesum Jewish diarist 1914 - 1943

8 June 1943, p. 602

„If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.“

—  Walter Benjamin German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940) 1892 - 1940

Source: "The Storyteller" (1936), p. 91

„Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.“

—  Walter Benjamin German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940) 1892 - 1940

„You bird-brained baby. I ain't called anybody baby since Birdman; unless you're a swallow.“

—  Eminem American rapper and actor 1972

"Berzerk"
2010s, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013)

„I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.“

—  E.E. Cummings American poet 1894 - 1962

Collected Poems (1938) New Poems 22
Variant: I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

„Birds are the most accomplished aeronauts the world has ever seen. They fly high and low, at great speed, and very slowly. And always with extraordinary precision and control.“

—  David Attenborough British broadcaster and naturalist 1926

Opening narration
The Life of Birds (1998)