Quotes about birds (1136 quotes, page 6)

“Aesthetics is for painting as Ornithology is for the birds.”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Quote of Newman (1952), as cited in: C. Greig Crysler, ‎Stephen Cairns, ‎Hilde Heynen (2012). The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory. p. 123
1950 - 1960

Painting

“It's a bird … it's a plane … no, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue. Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat …”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Announcement for Linux 1.3.27, 1995-11-14, Torvalds, Linus, 2017-04-25 http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/alpha/9509.1/0006.html,
1990s, 1995-99

Speed

“If you find it hard to believe that there was an Intelligent Designer, give this some thought. Man, with all his genius, can’t make a rock, a leaf, a flower, a living singing bird, a croaking frog, or even a grain of dead sand from nothing. We can recreate, but we can’t create anything material from nothing, living or dead. Not a thing. Did you realize that if we could simply make one blade of grass without using existing materials, we could solve the world’s hunger problem? If we could make a blade of grass, we could then create a lot more grass, feed the green material through a machine that does what the common cow does, and have pure white full cream milk, then smooth cream, delicious yogurt, tasty cheese, and smooth butter. But we can’t make even one blade of grass from nothing, let alone giving it the ability to reproduce after its own kind, as regular grass does. We have no idea where to begin when it comes to creating. If that’s true, how intellectually dishonest is it to say that this entire incredible creation in which we live, came into existence with no Intelligent Designer?”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Hunger , World , Intelligence , Flowers

“The grand fauconnier of France was an officer of great eminence; his annual salary was four thousand florins; he was attended by fifty gentlemen, and fifty assistant falconers; he was allowed to keep three hundred hawks, he licensed every vender of hawks in France, and received a tax upon every bird sold in that kingdom, and even within the verge of the court; and the king never rode out upon any occasion of consequence without this officer attending upon him.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 28
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Hunting

“You do believe it,' he said. 'You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many shapes, beast against beast and bird against bird, and perhaps we shall strive for ever. But since we seek and need each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love. Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into God?”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

'No,' said Father Brown.
The Dagger with Wings (1926)

Love , Men , God , Feeling

“Jake Holman knew he was a strange bird and he was used to going aboard new ships.”

Richard McKenna book The Sand Pebbles

Source: The Sand Pebbles (1962), Ch. 1
Context: Jake Holman knew he was a strange bird and he was used to going aboard new ships. By the time they realized they were in a struggle Jake Holman would already have made for himself the place he wanted on their ship and they could never dislodge him. Or wish to.

“The dinosaurs are not extinct. The colorful and successful diversity of the living birds is a continuing expression of basic dinosaur biology.”

Robert T. Bakker (1945) American paleontologist

"Dinosaur Renaissance", Scientific American 232, no. 4 (April 1975), 58—78
Dinosaur Renaissance (1975)

Color , Success

“Ripples on a pond cannot touch a bird hovering above it.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 18, “Dream Storm” Section 14 (p. 250)

“It's me versus Mother Nature and me versus me. I want to see how far a human can fly with six kilograms of high-tech nylon over his head with no engine. Ultimately though, I love being able to fly like a bird.”

Godfrey Wenness (1967)

"SMH Article 3 Feb 2007" http://www.smh.com.au/news/new-south-wales/the-thriller-in-manilla/2007/02/01/1169919460467.html?page=3

Love , Nature , Flying

“The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by,
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Strange Lady http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page211, st. 6 (1835)

Love , Summer

“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!”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Morning Has Broken, was widely popularized by the Cat Stevens version on Teaser and the Firecat (1971), but was actually written by Eleanor Farjeon in 1931. · A performance by Cat Stevens (1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5sSEkZ86ts
Misattributed

Spring , Singing

“Live in the world like a waterfowl. The water clings to the bird, but the bird shakes it off. Live in the world like a mudfish. The fish lives in the mud, but its skin is always bright and shiny.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 472

World , Fish , Water

“Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary fu' o' care!
Thou'll break my heart, thou warbling bird,
That wantons thro' the flowering thorn!
Thou minds me o' departed joys,
Departed never to return.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

The Banks o' Doon, st. 1
Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1796)

Flowers , Heart , Joy

“He found me fascinating, in a wounded-bird kind of way. I found him wonderful, in a lifeline kind of way. It was mutual need that passed for love, and got married.”

Sarah Zettel (1966) American writer

Source: Bitter Angels (2009), Chapter 1 (p. 9)

Love , Way

“My observation of the flight of buzzards leads me to believe that they regain their lateral balance when partly overturned by a gust of wind, by a torsion of the tips of the wings. If the rear edge of the right wing tip is twisted upward and the left downward the bird becomes an animated windmill and instantly begins to turn, a line from its head to its tail being the axis. It thus regains its level even if thrown on its beam’s end, so to speak, as I have frequently seen them. I think the bird also in general retains its lateral equilibrium, partly by presenting its two wings at different angles to the wind, and partly by drawing in one wing, thus reducing its area. I incline to the belief that the first is the more important and usual method….
My business requires that my experimental work be confined to the months between September and January and I would be particularly thankful for advice as to a suitable locality where I could depend on winds of about 15 miles per hour without rain or too inclement weather. I am certain that such localities are rare.”

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) American aviation pioneer

Letter to Octave Chanute (13 May 1900)

Business , Thinking , Animals , Drawing

“Mathematicians tells us that it is easy to invent mathematical theorems which are true, but that it is hard to find interesting ones. In analyzing music or writing its history, we meet the same difficulty, and it is compounded by another. For whom is it interesting? To paraphrase a famous remark of Barnett Newman, musicology is for musicians what ornithology is for the birds.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 3 : Explaining the Obvious

Music , History , Mathematics

“One does not care for the cage when the bird has flown away from it. and when the bird of life flies away, no one cares for the body left behind.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 396

Life

“Pecking order in birds or other animals.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Living Systems: Basic Concepts (1969)

Animals

“Baine, what do you think of this?” Tossie said, indicating the bishop’s bird stump. “Don’t you agree it’s the most beautiful piece of art you’ve ever seen?”
Baine straightened and looked at it, blinking water out of his eyes.
There was a considerable pause while Baine wrung out his sleeve. “No.”
“No?” Tossie said, making it into a screamlet.
“No.”…
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean the sculpture is a hideous atrocity, vulgarly conceived, badly designed, and shoddily executed,” he said, folding the shawl carefully and bending to lay it back in the bundle.
“How dare you say that,” Tossie said, her cheeks very pink.
Baine straightened. “I beg you pardon, miss. I thought you were asking my opinion.”
“I was, but I expected you to tell me you thought it was beautiful.”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

He bowed slightly. “As you wish, miss.” He looked at it, his face impassive. “It is very beautiful.”
Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), Chapter 19 (p. 333; the ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Beauty , Art , Thinking , Water

“If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"Some of Degas' Views on Art" (p. 56)
Degas hated to paint outdoor and even to see landscape-paintings, like for instance the 'draughty' ones of Monet
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Nature , Painting

“O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.”

John Keats book La Belle Dame sans Merci

Stanza I
La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819)

Singing

“Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things – enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which.”

Barbara Pym (1913–1980) British writer

Jane and Prudence (1953), chapter 7

Love , Women , Men , Feeling

“An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a thousand things--as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were any common language between them. Happily, there is a common language between women and men, and so the bears can get taught.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Women , Men , Knowledge

“Let me say this to you very clearly and those of you who're watching over the internet: [holding up Bible] There is one God in this book, it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Allah is not God; Buddha is not God; Mary is not God; Mary Baker Eddy is not God; birds, animals and bugs are not God; Jehovah God is the God of all gods. He is a jealous God, and He demands that He be the Lord of all or not at all!”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

God , Books , Animals

“Now, that brings me to the Liberal Party. I gather that during the last few days there have been some ill-natured jokes about their new symbol, a bird of some kind, adopted by the Liberal Democrats at Blackpool. Politics is a serious business, and one should not lower the tone unduly. So I will say only this of the Liberal Democrat symbol and of the party it symbolises. This is an ex-parrot. It is not merely stunned. It has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker. It is a parrot no more. It has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is a late parrot. And now for something completely different.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108217. Partially quoting from Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus#Dead_Parrot_Sketch.
Third term as Prime Minister

Business , Nature

“I've been watchin birds more than insects recently, and the thing I've found with pigeons is: they've got wings but they walk a lot”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 3 Episode 3
On Nature

“The oldest girl [his daughter Maro, four and a half years old] did this. She paints like a little bird. And this, the young one [Natasha, two and a half] did. See, she paints on both sides of the canvas. She is more like a passionate plumber. I wish I could paint as freely as they do. There is a gravity of playfulness in their work. If they could only keep it – but they will lose it as they grow older.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

1942 - 1948, A Painter in a Glass House' (1948)

Girl , Passion , Painting , Daughters

“Heartbroken the dead bird’s mate cried – Your long feathers! Your tuneful songs. A bird hunter came from the forest holding a bow. Valmiki’s heart was pounding and he cursed the killer.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

Source: Ramayana, p. 7.

Heart , Dead

“Far away like frightened birds, the echo of our feet floated through the upper floors. We climbed three flights of stairs and proceeded the length of another hall. At the end was a door. The Negro opened it.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“He wandered for a long time along the canals and over the bridges... Steam rose from one boat where men were heating their tea water. He shouted to them and asked them to give him some tea. They asked who he was and he said that he was from Iceland, where Hell is. They invited him out to the boat and gave him something to drink and questioned him about Mount Hekla. He said that he was born and raised at the foot of the mountain and for that reason was called van Hekkenfeld. They asked whether a man could see down into Hell from the summit of Hekla, through the swarm of noxious birds that hovers eternally, shrieking and quarreling, over the crater. He said no, but added that he'd once caught one of these birds with a hooked pole that he'd brought with him up onto the mountain; they were similar to ravens, he said, except for their claws and beaks, which were iron. They asked whether such birds could be eaten and he laughed at their foolishness, but said on the other hand that one could use the claws for hooks and the beak for a pick.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Men , Mountain , Hell , Drink

“Abu Hurayra reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "People will enter the Garden [paradise] whose hearts are like the hearts of birds."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 77
Sunni Hadith

People , Peace , Heart

“I hied me off to Arcady—
The month it was the month of May,
And all along the pleasant way,
The morning birds were mad with glee,
And all the flowers sprang up to see,
As I went on to Arcady.”

Louise Chandler Moulton (1835–1908) American poet, story-writer and critic

The Secret of Arcady. Compare Henry Cuyler Bunner, The Way to Arcady.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Way , Flowers , Madness

“Don't believe all the absurdity that skeptics say about bats not being birds, other untruths such as the Bible saying that the world is flat, and the mockery of Israel's judicial system. Every one of these weak arguments has rational explanations for those who are prepared to soften their hearts and listen.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Nothing Created Everything: The Scientific Impossibility of Atheistic Evolution (2009)

World , Heart

“High in the sky is a bird on a wing
Please carry me with you
Far far away from the mad rushing crowd
Please carry me with you”

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

Song Island of Dreams.

Madness

“On a tree by a river a little tomtit
Sang "Willow, titwillow, titwillow"
And I said to him, "Dicky-bird, why do you sit
Singing ‘Willow, titwillow, titwillow?'.
"Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?" I cried,
"Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?"
With a shake of his poor little head he replied,
"Oh, Willow, titwillow, titwillow!"”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Suicide's Grave (from The Mikado).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Tree , Singing

“Right wing (definition): As with the left wing, half the propulsive force of a flightless bird.”

Richard Summerbell (1956) Canadian mycologist

Abnormally Happy: A Gay Dictionary (1985)

“I walk where once the grass was green
And mourn the lark that sings no more
What bird could sing whose eyes have seen
Broken blossoms on the field of war?”

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

Song Broken Blossoms.

War , Grass , Singing

“In missional churches, the baby birds have been pushed out of the nest and are learning to fly for themselves.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 193

Learning , Baby , Flying

“I'm reading a biography of St John Baptist de la Salle - Extraordinary what educational insights and experiments have existed already - and what has been forgotten!. That reformatory, for instance, which he founded on the most amazing principles somewhere around 1680…The young delinquents were detained in solitary confinement to begin with, being promoted later.. to community life.. But in their single cells they were given flowers and plants to cultivate and singing birds to breed! The prisoners took their meals together with the Brothers, and each of the boys in solitary confinement was entrusted to one particular Brother…The Jansenists were bitter opponents of the Brothers, for in all his schools de la Salle laid great stress on frequent Communion.. They did their best to oppose him personally and to hinder his work. The French Revolution wrecked his Institute, some of the Brothers were executed, others emigrated.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Life , Education , School , Boy

“The 81 days of detention were a nightmare. I am not unique; it happened to many people in China. Conditions were extreme, created by a system that thinks it is above the law and has become a kind of monstrous machine. There were so many moments when I felt desperate and hopeless. But still, the next morning, I heard the birds singing.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Living in Fear Is Worse Than Imprisonment, 2012

People , Law , Thinking , Singing

“He was laughing again. What was it about Bird that made him do that?”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 11-20, p. 73

“Dinosaurs are not lizards, and vice versa. Lizards are scaley reptiles of an ancient bloodline. The oldest lizards antedate the earliest dinosaurs by a full thirty million years. A few large lizards, such as the man-eating Komodo dragon, have been called "relicts of the dinosaur age", but this phrase is historically incorrect. No lizard ever evolved the birdlike characteristics peculiar to each and every dinosaur. A big lizard never resembled a small dinosaur except for a few inconsequential details of the teeth. Lizards never walk with the erect, long-striding gait that distinguishes the dinosaurlike ground birds today or the birdlike dinosaurs of the Mesozoic.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 22-23
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Age

“The snow fell solemnly, enlarging the silence; it came straight down from heaven, bringing an inexplicable mystery. Now and again a flake or two would alight on the windowpane, and those flakes were like little stars filled with light; other snowflakes would fall on the windowsill, slowly covering the crumbs that had been put out for the birds. I would ask: "Grandmama, would you tell me some things about heaven too?" And Grandmother would say: "Why do you say 'too'?"”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

"Because the snow comes from there, and it seems to be telling me that everything in heaven is white."
Les Tilleuls, p. 21
My Early Years (1968)

Star , Light , Silence

“When you are very young, you tend to accept standards for such momentous judgments as to whether a girl is beautiful; when you reach the age of experience you come to know beauty in the sense that “knowing” is to possess. Beauty does more than reflect light, it is the action of energy on form, glowing as a total function. This is singularly true of a grouse dog in his consecration to his bird.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Age , Beauty , Dogs , Girl

“As dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, even birds, as is stated on good authority, have vivid dreams, and this is shewn by their movements and voice, we must admit that they possess some power of imagination. … Few persons any longer dispute that animals possess some power of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", page 46 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=59&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Dogs , Dreams , Imagination , Cats

“Playing Godzilla for GODZILLA - KING OF THE MONSTERS was very difficult. Playing Rodan also was difficult because the legs of birds, unlike those of human beings, bend backward.”

Haruo Nakajima (1929–2017) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Haruo Nakajima Interview" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/nakajima.htm, Kaiju Conversations (March 1995)

“Now spread the night her spangled canopy,
And summoned every restless eye to sleep;
On beds of tender grass the beasts down lie,
The fishes slumbered in the silent deep,
Unheard were serpent's hiss and dragon's cry,
Birds left to sing, and Philomen to weep,
Only that noise heaven's rolling circles kest,
Sung lullaby to bring the world to rest.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Era la notte allor ch'alto riposo
Han l'onde e i venti, e parea muto il mondo,
Gli animai lassi, e quei che 'l mare ondoso,
O de' liquidi laghi alberga il fondo,
E chi si giace in tana, o in mandra ascoso,
E i pinti augelli nell’oblio giocondo
Sotto il silenzio de' secreti orrori
Sopían gli affanni, e raddolciano i cori.
Canto II, stanza 96 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Lie , World , Fish , Sleep

“Although some dinosaurs may have spent some time feeding in the water like moose or fishing cats, at most a few became strongly amphibious in the manner of hippos, much less marine as per seals and whales. The only strongly aquatic dinosaurs are some birds. The occasional statement that there were marine dinosaurs is therefore incorrect - these creatures of Mesozoic seas were various forms of reptiles that had evolved over the eons.”

Gregory Scott Paul book The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs

Gregory S. Paul (2010) The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Princeton University Press, p. 14
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs

Cats , Fish , Water , Time

“donlad trump reportedly says that normal type pokemon are a waste of time. they're just dirty birds & rats who have no right being a pokemon”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/615199946980110336]
Tweets by year, 2015

Time

“I have no idea whether my grandfather took notice of everything in it, or nothing. If he believed at all, he was just like those theologians who store their theology somewhere in a locked compartment of the brain, or rather, perhaps, like those travelers who carry a bottle of iodine in their luggage and take care to keep it tightly corked in case it leaks and ruins their belongings. To be honest, I think my grandfather Björn of Brekkukot would not have been significantly different if he had lived here in Iceland in pagan times, or if his home had been somewhere in the world where people never read from Vídalín's Book of Sermons but believed instead in the bull Apis, or the god Ra, or the bird Colibri.... "A Bible that costs half a hen? Pshaw!"”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

God , People , Books , World

“I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind blows soft through the springing grass,
And the river floats like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!”

Paul Laurence Dunbar Sympathy

Sympathy, in the 1913 collection of his work, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar; the poem inspired the title of Maya Angelou's book, Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Pain , Feeling , Spring , Grass

“It's going to take some time this time
To get myself in shape.
I really fell out of line this time,
I really missed the gate.
The birds on the telephone line, (next time)
Are cryin' out to me, (next time)
And I won't be so blind next time
And I'll find some harmony.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

It's Going to Take Some Time, co-written with Toni Stern
Song lyrics, Music (1971)

Time

“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

Julian Assange answers your questions, The Guardian, December 3, 2010, 2010-12-14 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/dec/03/julian-assange-wikileaks,

Change

“No bird can ever fly / like a heart can rise so high”

Mellin de Saint-Gelais (1495–1558) French poet

Original: Il n'est oiseau qui sût voler / Si haut comme un coeur peut aller
Source: Quatrains, LXXXIV

Heart , Flying

“Fair friend, in singing I call you:
Sleep no longer, for I hear the bird sing
Who goes seeking day through the wood
And I fear that the jealous one will attack you,
And soon it will be dawn!”

Giraut de Bornelh (1138–1220) French writer

Bel companho, en chantan vos apel!
No dormatz plus, qu'eu auch chantar l'auzel
Que vai queren lo jorn per lo boschatge
Et ai paor que.l gilos vos assatge
Et ades sera l'alba.
"Reis glorios", line 11; translation from Gale Sigal Erotic Dawn-Songs of the Middle Ages (1996) p. 148.

Fear , Sleep , Singing

“Create turf, save water. Those are the two main principles. And, you know, keep everything alive. Maintain a game habitat. That's important so that you have an entire system at work. Cattle are going to do better, oddly enough, if the birds are doing good and the deer are doing good. You try to manage the whole thing.”

Tommy Lee Jones (1946) American actor and film director

On his conservation principles.
Interview interview (1995)

Game , Water

“If my painting depicts faithfully and without over-refinement the simple and true character of the place you have frequented, if I succeed.... in giving its own life to that world of vegetation, then you will hear the trees moaning under the winter wind, the birds that call their young and cry after their dispersion; you will feel the old chateau tremble; it will tell you that, as the wife you loved, it too will.... disappear and be reborn in multiple forms.. One does not copy with mathematical precision what one sees, but one feels and interprets a real world, all of whose fatalities hold you fast bound.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote in a letter to M. Guizot, c. 1839-41; as cited by Charles Sprague Smith, in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye publisher, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, pp. 172-173
The Duke de Broglie had ordered of Rousseau a painting of the 'Chateau de Broglie', for his friend M. Guizot. Madame Guizot had died there, and The Duke de Broglie urged Rousseau to make the painting grave and sad.. The quote presents Rousseau’s responding
1830 - 1850

Love , Life , World , Feeling

“Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again.”

René Char (1907–1988) 20th-century French poet

A statement written soon after the end of World War II, as quoted in René Char : This Smoke That Carried Us : Selected Poems (2004) edited by Susanne Dubroff

Winter , Heart

“This textbook says "All the many forms of life on Earth today are descended from a common ancestor." What? You mean the birds and the bananas have a common ancestor?!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

100 Reasons Evolution is So Stupid! (2001)

Life

“I am a bird from mountains you don't know.
My throat feels itchy—so I start to chirp
when sings the morning wind among the leaves,
when dreams the moon at midnight in the blue.
Perched on a branch, the bird longs for its brook—
it will break into song and not know why.
Its ditties cannot make the fruits grow ripe;
its carols cannot help the flowers bloom.
It's profitless to sing, and yet the bird
will burst its throat and heart to sing its best.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Foreword to a book of poems", in An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems, trans. Huỳnh Sanh Thông (Yale University Press, 1996), <small>ISBN 978-0300064100</small>

Dreams , Feeling , Mountain , Flowers

“Last time I had my hands on you, you felt like a bird - struggling to escape. You'll never escape now…”

Agatha Christie book Towards Zero

MacWhirter
Towards Zero (1944)

Time

“You see life as a contrast between misery and pleasure, Jon; that is not a correct interpretation.”
“It’s a pretty good rule of thumb, I should have thought.”
“Thought and non-thought is the only valid line of comparison.”
“Bit of a bird’s-eye view, isn’t it? That puts us on the same level as the proles.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Exactly.”
“Man on Bridge” p. 89
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Life , Pleasure

“It occurred to me how very tired I sometimes feel as an outspoken feminist. … Trolls are trying to silence women, and I've installed a fiery declaration within myself to never give in, but it's incredibly hard, and gets harder as my platform as a writer grows. What didn’t occur to me initially is that West has spent years in the trenches fighting this endless, thankless fight, and maybe she needs a goddamn break. I had this revelation again, much more profoundly and emotionally, about my own mother while watching Greta Gerwig’s new film, Lady Bird. … Often, my mother and I clashed when she denied me freedom, but only because she had been harmed by the dangers she knew lay ahead for her daughter. I did so many risky, awful things, and then lied to her about them, because I never felt I could be honest with her. I should have known she wasn’t judging me. I should have known that she had done it all before, that even though she wouldn’t have used the word "feminist" to describe herself at the time, mostly she just didn’t want me to have to be so very tired. … Walking home from Lady Bird on the kind of night that New York fall fantasies are made of, I resisted the urge to call my mother, because I thought I might cry until the universe ripped apart at the seams. But then I called her anyway. I sobbed as I told her I had no idea how impossibly hard she had been trying.”

Lauren Duca (1991) American journalist

Sexism, Remembered and Forgotten (November 17, 2017)

Women , Feeling , Home , Idea

“Our planet, the Earth, is, as far as we know, unique in the universe. It contains life. Even in its most barren stretches, there are animals. Around the equator, where those two essentials for life, sunshine and moisture, are most abundant, great forests grow. And here plants and animals proliferate in such numbers that we still have not even named all the different species. Here, animals and plants, insects and birds, mammals and man live together in intimate and complex communities, each dependent on one another. Two thirds of the surface of this unique planet are covered by water, and it was here indeed that life began. From the oceans, it has spread even to the summits of the highest mountains as animals and plants have responded to the changing face of the Earth.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Opening narration
The Living Planet (1984)

Life , Mountain , Communication , Universe

“A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy: a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept
Or one could weep because another wept.”

W. H. Auden book The Shield of Achilles

The Shield of Achilles (1952)

World , Girl , Boy

“Musicians who have listened to birds believe [that birds derive pleasure from singing] much more than ornithologists, who are terrified of being accused of anthropomorphism… Having studied thousands of hours of birdsong from around the world, I am convinced some species possess an aesthetic sense, however limited compared to ours. It is part of human egotism to believe that only we have active minds.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

"A hundred years of thinking about God" (1998)

Pleasure , World , Sense , Study

“Hawks are better soarers than buzzards but more often resort to flapping because they wish greater speed. A damp day is unfavorable for soaring unless there is a high wind. No bird soars in a calm.
The object of the tail is to increase the spread of surface in the rear when the wings are moved forward in light winds and thus preserve the centre of pressure at about the same spot. It seems to be used as a rudder very little. In high winds it is folded up very narrow.”

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) American aviation pioneer

Wright's Notebook (1900)

Light , Speed

“Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea,
Why takest thou its melancholy voice,
And with that boding cry
Why o'er the waves dost fly?
O, rather, bird, with me
Through the fair land rejoice!”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882) United States author and lawyer

The Little Beach-Bird

Cry , Flying , Sea

“Which do you think came first—the blood or the heart—and why? Did the heart in all these different species of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals evolve before there were blood vessels throughout their bodies? When did the blood evolve? Was it before or after the vessels evolved? If it was before, what was it that carried blood to the heart, if there were no vessels? Did the heart beat before the blood evolved? Why was it beating if there was no blood to pump? If it wasn’t beating, why did it start when it had no awareness of blood? If the blood vessels evolved before there was blood, why did they evolve if there was no such thing as blood? And if the blood evolved before the heart evolved, what was it that caused it to circulate around the body? The marvelous human body (and the bodies of all the other creatures) consists of so many amazingly interdependent parts: a heart, lungs (to oxygenate the blood), kidneys (to filter wastes from the blood), blood vessels, arteries, blood, skin (to protect it all), etc. The intricate codependence of just the respiratory system and the circulatory system—not to mention all the other bodily systems—is difficult to explain.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Thinking , Fish , Heart , Parting

“It's strange that all birds don't fly in the same way... I've heard that the wings of aeroplanes all conform to the same formula, whereas birds each conform to a formula of their own... All birds are perhaps a little wrong, because an absolute once-and-for-all formula for a bird has never been found, just as all novels are bad because the correct formula for a novel has never been found.”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Way , Flying

“All things are hush'd, as Nature's self lay dead,
The Mountains seem to nod their drowsy head;
The little Birds in dreams their Songs repeat,
And sleeping Flowers, beneath the night-dew sweat;
Even Lust and Envy sleep.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

The Indian Emperor (1667), Act III, scene ii.

Dreams , Mountain , Flowers , Nature

“Pack, clouds, away! and welcome, day!
With night we banish sorrow.
Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft
To give my Love good-morrow!
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I'll borrow:
Bird, prune thy wing! nightingale, sing!”

Thomas Heywood (1574–1641) English playwright, actor, and author

Poem Matin Song http://www.bartleby.com/101/205.html

Love , Singing , Night

“What is this poetry? A mortal mind
Made visible; a caged bird?
Nay more:it is a spiritleft behind
Nailed by the piercing word.”

William Soutar (1898–1943) British poet

On a poem, XC Brief Words, The Moray Press, Edinburgh 1935.

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

Love , Life , Death , Pleasure

“[It's a] really smart, faithful adaptation of the book. The book is such a tight page-turner… The character I play is an extreme guy… He's a killer. He wants to be Jesse James. He grew up watching cowboy and Indian movies and wants to be that. Then he meets Mickey Rourke's character, who's named The Black Bird and he wants to partner up with him and be a criminal and kill people. He's a psychotic and very bad guy… The thing about him is, he's not the bad killer, the kind of guy that sits and stews and then has these rageful outbursts. He is this extreme extrovert who never shuts up and tells you ridiculously tall tales about himself and mythologizes everything… Hyperactive, hyper, hyper guy wearing cowboy boots.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

IGN, March 30, 2006 - about his role in Killshot

People , Books , Faith , Guy

“For what cause, youthful Sleep, kindest of gods, or what error have I deserved, alas to lack your boon? All cattle are mute and birds and beasts, and the nodding tree-tops feign weary slumbers, and the raging rivers abate their roar; the ruffling of the waves subsides, the sea is still, leaning against the shore.”
Crimine quo merui, juvenis placidissime divum, quove errore miser, donis ut solus egerem, Somne, tuis? tacet omne pecus volucresque feraeque et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos, nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus; occidit horror aequoris, et terris maria adclinata quiescunt.

Statius Silvae

iv, line 1
Silvae, Book V

God , Youth , Error , Sleep

“574. A feather in hand is better then a bird in the ayre.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“There is a bird in a poem by T. S. Eliot who says that mankind cannot bear very much reality; but the bird is mistaken. A man can endure the entire weight of the universe for eighty years. It is unreality that he cannot bear.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 11 (Orr)

Reality , Universe

“The photographer’s gesture as the search for a viewpoint onto a scene takes place within the possibilities offered by the apparatus. The photographer moves within specific categories of space and time regarding the scene: proximity and distance, bird- and worm’s-eye views, frontal- and side-views, short or long exposures, etc. The Gestalt of space–time surrounding the scene is prefigured for the photographer by the categories of his camera. These categories are an a priori for him. He must ‘decide’ within them: he must press the trigger.”

Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) Czech philosopher and photographer

Flusser, Vilém (2012) [1980], "Towards a Theory of Techno-Imagination", Philosophy of Photography (POP) 2 (2), p. 198.

Search , Time

“I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

In Herbert F. Vetter, " Not The Average Philosopher http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/hartshorne.html", Harvard Magazine, May/June 1997, Volume 99, Number 5. Vetter was surprised by this, given Hartshorne's dozens of substantial books on theology.

Books , World , Thinking , Singing

“We saw a raven very high above us. It called out, and the dome of the sky seemed to echo the sound. It called again and again as it flew onwards, and the mountains gave back the sound, seeming as if from their centre; a musical bell-like answering to the bird's hoarse voice.”

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855) English author, poet and diarist

July 27, 1800
Cf. Wordsworth's The Excursion, Book 4, lines 1175-87 http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww401.html.
Diaries

Music , Mountain

“Take the birds which you'll have noticed in so many of my recent paintings. I never thought them up, they just materialized of their own accord, they were born on the canvas; that is why it is absurd to read any sort of symbolic significance into them.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Reading , Painting

“The girl's mouth was chapped, tight and pinched, her skin dry. Mama would say she looked woebegone, but as Bird looked at her eyes, the word she thought of was desperate.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 21-29, p. 127

Girl

“They say that spring
Means just one thing
To little lovebirds.
We're not above birds,
Lets misbehave.”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"Lets Misbehave"
Paris (1928)

Spring

“He hit the water—impacted really is the word for it—at over six hundred miles an hour, with a report so loud that it made birds fly out of trees up to three miles away. At such a speed water effectively becomes a solid. I don’t believe Mr. Milton penetrated it at all, but just bounced off it about fifteen feet, limbs suddenly very loose, and then lay on top of it, still, like an autumn leaf, spinning gently.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 78

Autumn , Tree , Water , Speed

“… if you saw a baby tyrannosaur you would probably think it was a weird looking bird. A full grown one might have had feathers too, maybe not on its whole body though, maybe more of an ornamental display sort of feathers. So traits in the theropod dinosaurs were more birdlike than say, crocodiles.”

Mark Norell (1957) American paleontologist

As quoted in "How Dinosaurs Loved: An Interview with Dr. Mark Norell on Dino Relations" http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/t-rexxx-how-dinosaurs-lived-loved-and-tasted-q-a-with-dr-mark-norell-american-museum-of-natural-history, Vice (March 20, 2012)

Thinking , Baby

“Guys like Larry Bird -- he played so hard, he wants everybody else to play hard. That's not unreasonable. Any coach would want that and demand that.”

Larry Bird (1956) basketball player and coach

Magic Johnson — reported in David Steele (May 9, 1997) "Magic Says Bird Will Succeed", San Francisco Chronicle, p. B8.
About

Guy

“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)

Boy , Universe , Singing , Heart

“Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

"Everyone Sang" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57253/everyone-sang (1919)

Freedom , Singing

“Now, if the principle of toleration were once admitted into classical education — if it were admitted that the great object is to read and enjoy a language, and the stress of the teaching were placed on the few things absolutely essential to this result, if the tortoise were allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the enchanted and divine sources of Helicon — all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers, its beauty, and its coolness.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Source: Little Foxes (1865), Ch. 5.

Education , Beauty , Way , Flowers

“I travel through your waist as through a river,
I voyage your body as through a grove going,
as by a footpath going up a mountain
and suddenly coming upon a steep ravine
I go the straitened way of your keen thoughts
break through to daylight upon your white forehead
and there my spirit flings itself down, is shattered
now I collect my fragments one by one
and go on, bodiless, searching, in the dark…. you take on the likeness of a tree, a cloud,
you are all birds and now you are a star,
now you resemble the sharp edge of a sword
and now the executioner's bowl of blood,
the encroaching ivy that over grows and then
roots out the soul and divides it from itself”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Sun Stone (1957)

Way , Travel , Soul , Search

“When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Meaning" (1991)

World , Mountain

“Have you ever noticed flocks of swallows flying past between the lines of certain books, whole verses of trembling, pointed swallows? One must interpret the flights of those birds…”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“Spring” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/spring01.htm
His father, Books

Books , Past , Flying

“Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings
All desired and timely things.
All whom morning sends to roam,
Hesper loves to lead them home.
Home return who him behold,
Child to mother, sheep to fold,
Bird to nest from wandering wide:
Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

No. 24 ("Epithalamium"), st. 3.
Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

Love , Home , Time , Happiness

“I will try to explain what I mean by metamorphosis. For me no object can be tied down to any sort of reality. A stone may be part of a wall, a piece of sculpture, a lethal weapon, a pebble on a beach or anything else you like.... when you ask me whether a particular in one of my paintings depicts a woman's head, a fish, a vase, a bird, or all four at once, I can't give you a categorical answer, for this 'metamorphosic' confusion is fundamental to the poetry.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Reality , Fish , Parting , Painting

“The stars are dreaming
but they are laughing
I see myself in the smile of a polar bear
while turning the pages of an arctic sky
reading the delirious lines that
foretell the sovereignty of language
and the rule of invisible birds”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"
1970s

Smile , Dreams , Star , Reading

“In the highly improbable event of his being asked to nominate the one most un-Jewish thing he could think of, Sefton Goldberg would have been hard pressed to decide between Nature – that's to say birds, trees, flowers, and country walks – and football – that's to say beer, bikies, mud, and physical pain.”

Howard Jacobson (1942) British author and journalist

Source: Coming from Behind (1983), Ch. 3

Pain , Flowers , Beer , Nature

“All these relics gave… Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine to memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old-English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings, — all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane (Ch. 11)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Home , Flowers , Memory , Past

“English translation:
You will find no rest for the long years of Eternity
For you killed a bird in love and unsuspecting”

Vālmīki Ramayana

He expressed anguish in a poetic form when he found the hunter killing the male dove with his arrow.
Source: Ramayana translated by William Buck in: Ramayana https://books.google.co.in/books?id=vvuIp2kqIkMC&pg=PA7, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1 January 2000, p. 7.

Love

“Two women and a child in a glade beside a spring. Beyond them, the varnished wilderness wherein bright birds cry. The child is chalk, Europe's daughter. Her dusky attendants, a green Indian and a maroon slave.
The scene, from Democracy in America, is discovered by that most famous European traveler to the New World, Alexis de Tocqueville, aristocratic son of the Enlightenment, liberal, sickly, gray, violet, lacking the vigor of the experiment he has set himself to observe… His description intends to show the African and the Indian doomed by history in corresponding but opposing ways.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

History is a coat cut only to the European.
Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Women , World , Way , Travel

Quotes about birds page 6

Quotes about birds
page 6