Quotes about birds (1136 quotes, page 12)

“Once a virus gets into an intensive poultry shed it can move quickly through the flock, constantly replicating itself. Any "errors" or changes to the genetic code during replication don't get repaired: this is how the virus mutates and new variant strains emerge. The tragedy is that while intensive farms provide ideal conditions for the emergence of new aggressive disease strains, wild birds can then become infected too. Experience from the 2005 outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) H5N1 suggests that the disease is more likely spread along major road and rail routes than on the flight routes of migratory birds.”

Philip Lymbery book Farmageddon

Farmageddon (2014)

Error , Disease , Change

“Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast city, where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner: now free,
Free as a bird to settle where I will.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Bk. I, l. 1
The Prelude (1799-1805)

Joy

“Contemporary slang reflects this animal state: children are "mice," "rabbits," "kittens," women are called "chicks," in England "birds," "hens," "dumb clucks," "silly geese," "old mares," "bitches."”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

Similar terminology is used about males as a defamation of character, or more broadly only about pressed males males: stud, wold, cat, stag, jack - and then it is used much more rarely, and often with a specifically sexual connotation.

Chapter Four
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Bitch , Children , Animals , Women

“Her wrath is a devastating flood which no one can withstand.
A great watercourse, she abases those whom she despises.
The mistress, a hurin bird who lets no one escape.
Inana, a falcon preying on the gods.”

Enheduanna Sumerian priestess and poet

About Inanna, Lines 29-38.
A Hymn to Inana (23rd century BCE)

God

“Attend me. How do you prove that there are eggs in a bird’s nest? Don’t strain your gray matter: go climb the tree and find out. There is no other way.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Time for the Stars

Source: Time for the Stars (1956), Chapter 8, “Relativity” (p. 82)

Way , Tree

“I remember the birds and the animals and going down to the river with my dog to play…My grandparents and uncles who farmed in Puerto de Luna were so beautiful, I wanted to keep them around, to contain them.”

Rudolfo Anaya (1937) Novelist, poet

On his childhood in “Rudolfo Anaya: Man of visions” https://www.abqjournal.com/1074636/man-of.html in Albuquerque Journal (2017 Oct 7)

Animals , Dogs , Beauty

“When in my residence in Carolina and Florida, I have seen vast flights of the house swallow (hirundo pelasgia) and bank martin (hirundo riparia) passing onward northward toward Pennsylvania, where they breed in the spring, about the middle of March, and likewise in the autumn in September or October, and large flights on their return southward. And it is observable that they always avail themselves of the advantage of high and favouralbe winds, which likewise do all birds of passage.”

William Bartram (1739–1823) American naturalist

[The travels of William Bartram, An American Bookshelf, volume 3, 236, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b281934&view=1up&seq=242]
Travels of William Bartram (1791)

Housing , Autumn , Spring

“We have no time, we have no space,
we are questions that love answers,
but the veil of truth don't lift.
In the edge of abyss,
people really meet themselves,
when they're staring at nothingness,
and then they understand
that we are, 'birds of passage'.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and consciousness

Time , Understanding , Question , People

“You know a dream is like a river,
Ever changin' as it flows.
And a dreamer's just a vessel
That must follow where it goes.
Trying to learn from what's behind you,
And never knowing what's in store
Makes each day a constant battle
Just to stay between the shores...andI will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry.
Like a bird upon the wind,
These waters are my sky.
I'll never reach my destination
If I never try.
So I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

The River, written by Victoria Shaw and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Ropin' the Wind (1991)

Dreams , Learning , Water , Making love

“When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"”

Joyce Kilmer Trees and Other Poems

Take by his grace a new and alien charm. </p><p> But in the city, like a wounded thing
That limps to cover from the angry chase,
He steals down streets where sickly arc-lights sing,
And wanly mock his young and shameful face;
And tiny gongs with cruel fervor ring
In many a high and dreary sleeping place.</p>
"Alarm Clocks"
Trees and Other Poems (1914)

Way , Life , Feeling

“To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Miscellaneous
Source: The Doctor Prescribed Violence https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/books/the-doctor-prescribed-violence.html, Adam Shatz Sept. 2, 2001, New York Times

Time

“Never have I been so much alone — I tried to think of my knowledge, but it was a squirrel's heap of winter nuts. There was no strength in my knowledge any more and I felt small and naked as a new-hatched bird — alone upon the great river, the servant of the gods.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

God , Knowledge , Thinking , Winter

“Who will find peace with the lands? The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things. Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land? As the long forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors. That is when the invaders of the North American continent will finally discover that for this land, God is red.”

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005) American writer

pg. ix
God Is Red (1973)

God , Peace , Tree , Waiting

“Morning has broken,
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the Word!”

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer

Morning Has Broken (1931)

Singing , Spring

“Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don't you have a slogan: ‘Kill a cat and save a bird?”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

Source: At a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965. https://www.womanandhome.com/life/news-entertainment/prince-philip-quotes-63435/

Cats , Men

“I don't know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, "Why don't you admit that the hummingbird, the butterfly, and the Bird-of-Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?" And I always say, "Well, when you say that, you've also got to think of a little boy sitting on a riverbank, like here, in West Africa, that's got a little worm, a living organism, that's in its eye and boring through its eyeballs and is slowly turning it blind. The creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm."”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate and so therefore [sic] when I make these films, I prefer to show what I know to be the facts, what I know to be true, and then people can deduce what they will from that.
"Sir David Attenborough" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sir-david-attenborough/, interview with Ed Bradley, CBS News (7 November 2002)

God , People , Boy , Thinking

“It happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 5. Upon some Verses of Virgil
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Despair

“It (marriage) happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 5
Essais (1595), Book III

Marriage , Despair

“Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The following information is from the following site: http://pt.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talento , the fourth entry, which gives the citation as (( Henry van Dyke quoted in "Handicapped Individuals Services and Training Act: hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Ninety-seventh Congress, second session, on HR 6820 … hearing held in St. Paul, Minn., and Loretto, Minn. on September 2, 1982. "-. 223 Page, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Education and Labor. Subcommittee on Select Education - USGPO, 1982 - 257 pages ))
Quoted by Tor Dahl in the document cited https://hdl.handle.net/2027/pur1.32754076335276?urlappend=%3Bseq=229.
A very similar quote appears in an essay entitled "Do What You Can" by "Little Home Body" in the The Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated, Volumes 62-63 (August 1876): "The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there but those that sang best" but states "I know not who said those beautiful words"
However, the quote may have been misattributed to Henry Van Dyke. In "The Two Vocations or the sisters of mercy at home" by Elizabeth Charles (1858) p.34 the following appears: "'Dear Jean', she said,'the woods would be very silent if no bird sang but those that sing best' "
Attributed

Beauty , Wise , Peaceful

“... Female song is uncommon in birds.”

David Lack (1910–1973) British ornithologist and biologist

[The Life of the Robin, https://books.google.com/books?id=wZs_AAAAYAAJ, 1943, H.F. & G. Witherby Limited] p. 28
The Life of the Robin (1943)

“Only a persuasive tone can kill two birds with one stone.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Life is like a bird. Whose purpose of life is only to keep flying in the open sky. Do not imprison him in the cage of your misery because he suffocates and he torments day and night in the cage. Release him to fly in the open sky because he has the courage to touch the heights of the sky. Imprisoned in a cage, he loses his confidence and forgets to fly.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Confidence , Flying , Courage , Night

“A bird's-eye view does not see the truth.”

Bernard MacLaverty (1942) Irish writer

Source: Novels, Lamb (1980), Ch.17 - p.145

Truth

“[Foxes have] their dens and birds have their nests, but human beings have no place to lay down and rest.”

Jesus (-7–30 BC) Jewish preacher and religious leader, central figure of Christianity

86
Gnostic Gospels, Gospel of Thomas (c. 2nd century AD manuscript)

“The most beautiful gift of nature is a pleasant morning whenever I see this beautiful sight of nature I fall in love with nature. A pleasant morning brings with it different colors of nature. Just like the green trees and plants that make my eyes feel relaxed, the blue color of the sky signifies ambition, the yellow color of the sun lights the lamp of hope in me, the red and pink colors of flowers fill me with love, these I am surprised to see all the colours. The scent of the wet soil in the morning along with the cool breeze fills me with freshness. When i hear the sweet chirping of birds, my heart starts humming.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Flowers , Nature , Love , Tree

“The leaves were still on the trees, but were becoming dry, perched like birds ready to fly off.”

Buchi Emecheta (1944–2017) author

Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen - https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/86920.Buchi_Emechet.

Tree , Flying

“Warriors speak of shamanism as a magical, mysterious bird which has paused in its flight for a moment in order to give man hope and purpose; warriors live under the wind of that bird, which they call the "bird of wisdom," the "bird of freedom."”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "The Power of Silence" (Chapter 18)

Freedom , Hope , Wisdom

“…and i am learning to hope
like a bird
learns
its first
affair
with wind
and sun
like an orange
learns
to take flight
into the mouth
of a boy
in summer…”

Andrés Montoya (1968–1999) American writer

Source: Excerpt from his poem “three thousand lost kisses” https://poets.org/poem/three-thousand-lost-kisses

Sun , Hope , Boy , Learning

“Most physicists enjoy the outdoors. They are mushroom gatherers, bird watchers, hikers, amateur mountaineers whose idea of weekend relaxation is to climb a mountain. Several physics summer schools and research centers are located in or near mountainous areas. I have not seen such uniform recreational impulses in other professions, an observation which prompts speculation on the connection between the nature of inquiry in physics and mountain climbing.”

Heinz R. Pagels (1939–1988) American physicist

Source: The Cosmic Code (1982), p. 271

Mountain , Idea , Nature , School