Quotes about birds
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Ernest Hemingway photo
Steven Wright photo

“A bird doesn't sing because he has an answer, he sings because he has a song”

Joan Walsh Anglund (1926) American poet and children's book author

The quote has been misattributed to Maya Angelou at times, including on U.S. postage.
This quote by Joan Walsh Anglund (1967 in her book, A Cup of Sun) has been widely used by Maya Angelou without attribution to Walsh Walsh Anglund, and wrongly misattributed to Maya Angelou many, many times, including on U.S. postage. However, the quote belongs to Joan Walsh Anglund, and is from her book "A Cup of Sun" published in 1967. However, Maya Angelou changed the pronoun "He" to "It" but quoted everything else of Joan Walsh Anglund. Why Maya Angelou never attributed her most famous quote as being Joan Walsh Anglund's is still a mystery to this day.
Source: A Cup of Sun: A Book of Poems (1967)

William Blake photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Eric Berne photo
Margaret Wise Brown photo
James Patterson photo
Haruki Murakami photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Lisa See photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.

Hans Christian Andersen photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Rick Riordan photo
James Joyce photo
Rick Riordan photo
Charles Bukowski photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Stephen King photo
Woody Allen photo

“I can levitate birds. No one cares.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
Elizabeth Gilbert photo
James Patterson photo

“I shot him the bird. (Get it? I shot him the—never mind.)”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Gabriel García Márquez photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo
Cassandra Clare photo

“This being-nice crap was for the
birds.”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: The Undead Next Door

Janet Fitch photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“A gun gives you the body, not the bird.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson http://books.google.com/books?id=IhA6AQAAIAAJ&q=%22A+gun+he+said+gives+you+the+body+not+the+bird%22&pg=PA86#v=onepage (1890) by Charles Johnson Woodbury

Louise Erdrich photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“If you're a bird… I'm a bird…”

Source: The Notebook

Walter Benjamin photo
Scott Lynch photo

“Nice bird, asshole!”

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Anaïs Nin photo
Walt Whitman photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Victor Hugo photo
James Patterson photo
Milan Kundera photo
Rick Riordan photo
Jack Kerouac photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo
Richard Brautigan photo

“the sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
i've never had it done so gently before.
you have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Source: Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar

Ernest Hemingway photo
Henry Van Dyke photo

“The woods would be quiet if no bird sang but the one 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
Variant: Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.

“Flutter like a hummingbird,
Dive like an eagle,
Ain't no bird that's my equal.
- Twilight”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

Source: The Capture

“A bird may love a fish but where would they build a home together?”

Joseph Stein (1912–2010) American playwright

Source: Fiddler on the Roof

Muhammad Ali photo

“It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

As quoted in "Ali's Quotes" at BBC Sport : Boxing (17 January 2007)

Philip K. Dick photo

“The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?”

Source: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Alejandra Pizarnik photo
Kohta Hirano photo

“The Bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame.”

Kohta Hirano (1973) Japanese manga artist

Source: Hellsing, Vol. 01

David Almond photo
Maya Angelou photo
Dorothy Parker photo
William Carlos Williams photo
Lawrence Durrell photo

“An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.”

The Avignon Quintet (1974–1985), Monsieur (1974)
Context: The art of prose governed by syncopated thinking; for thoughts curdle in the heart if not expressed. An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.

Louis De Bernières photo
Henry Miller photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Gustave Flaubert photo
Rick Riordan photo
Suzanne Collins photo

“Are you listening, little bird?”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Betrayals

Maggie Nelson photo
Harun Yahya photo
Diana Gabaldon photo
Pablo Neruda photo
Juliet Marillier photo
Kate Chopin photo
Daniel Handler photo

“It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.”

Source: Adverbs (2006), Truly
Context: If you follow the diamond in my mother's ring from Africa to Germany to California to Arizona to Wisconsin, in the heel of a grandmother, in the beak of a magpie, in the gravel of the path, in someone else's novel, in the center of the earth where the volcanoes are from, you would forget the miracle, the reason diamonds end up in people's fingers in the first place. it is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes, it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.

Suzanne Collins photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Pete Hamill photo