Quotes about birds
page 9

“Had my eye never on the beauty dwelt
Of human face, and my ear never drank
The music of a human voice; I feel
My spirit would have pour'd itself in song,
Have learn'd a language from the rustling leaves,
The singing of the birds, and of the tide.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Erinna
The Golden Violet (1827)

Beauty, Music, Feeling, Singing

“So vivid is my recollection of the birth of Benjamin Black that surely, I feel, a cunning artificer has been at work, fashioning a surreally realistic picture of something that happened quite differently from what I seem to remember. Consider that light falling on the sea, how effulgent and steady it is; consider the trees, improbably full-leafed for the time of year – and look at those birds! Has Madam Memory really such a piercing eye for detail, are her powers of recall so comprehensive?”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

Feeling, Fashion, Birth, Tree

“6295. Birds of a Feather
Flock together.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Brambles, in particular, protect and nourish young fruit trees, and on farms bramble clumps (blackberry or one of its related cultivars) can be used to exclude deer and cattle from newly set trees. As the trees (apple, quince, plum, citrus, fig) age, and the brambles are shaded out, hoofed animals come to eat fallen fruit, and the mature trees (7 plus years old) are sufficiently hardy to withstand browsing. Our forest ancestors may well have followed some such sequences for orchard evolution, assisted by indigenous birds and mammals.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 12.7

Age, Tree, Animals

“It was a yellow voice, a high, shrill treble in the nursery
White always and high, I remember it so,
White cupboard, off-white table, mugs, dolls’ faces
And I was four or five. The garden could have been
Miles away. We were taken down to the green
Asparagus beds, the cut lawn, and the smell of it
Comes each summer after rain when white returns. Our bird,
A canary called Peter, sang behind bars. The black and white cat
Curled and snoozed by the fire and danger was far away.”

Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001) poet

" A Bird in the House" in Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1987)

Cats, Summer

“Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men—carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Begin it when the two men first contending
broke with one another—the Lord Marshal
Agamémnon, Atreus' son, and Prince Akhilleus.
Among the gods, who brought this quarrel on?
The son of Zeus by Lêto. Agamémnon
angered him, so he made a burning wind
of plague rise in the army: rank and file
sickened and died for the ill their chief had done
in despising a man of prayer.”

Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985) American poet, critic and translator

opening lines
The Iliad (1974)

Men, God, Dogs, Soul

“Charles Darwin's evolution theory states that the strong eat the weak. According to Darwin's evolution theory we are the worst people. But it is actually not so. It is a natural universal law. If we take Darwin's evolution theory literally then God is the worst kind of being. Because God planned creation in a certain way. When love is involved there is no evil. Even mother birds sacrifice their own lives for the sake of their babies.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

TRUE DAY OF ALL THINGS AND THE INITIATOR OF HARMONY http://www.unification.net/1997/970605.html, June 5, 1997

Love, God, People, Law

“A bird is safe in its nest - but that is not what its wings are made for.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

World Peace: The Voice of a Mountain Bird (2014) https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KkYtBgAAQBAJ,

“Well I woke up this mornin' it was Christmas Day
And the birds were singing the night away
I saw my stocking lying on the chair
Looked right to the bottom but you weren't there”

Adrian Henri (1932–2000) British poet

"Adrian Henri's Talking After Christmas Blues", from The Mersey Sound (1967).

Lying, Singing, Christmas, Night

“And they tried to rag me in the smoking room about not being able to hit a bird at five yards, a sort of bovine ragging that suggested cows buzzing round a gadfly and thinking they were teasing it. So I got up the next morning at early dawn – I know it was dawn, because there were lark-noises in the sky, and the grass looked as if it had been left out all night.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald on House-Parties"
Reginald (1904)

Thinking, Grass, Night

“Contemplation The shining forth of That which is Unconditioned is as a fair mirror wherein shines the Eternal Light of God. It has no attributes, And here all the works of Reason fail. It is not God, But it is the Light whereby we see Him. Those who walk in the Divine Light discover in themselves the UnwalledEven though the eagle, king of birds, can with his powerful sight gaze steadfastly upon the brightness of the sun; yet do the weaker eyes of the bat fail and falter in the same It is neither thus nor thus, neither here nor there; for that which is Unconditioned hath enveloped all…Behold! such a following of the Way that is WaylessThe Love of God is a consuming Fire, which draws us out of ourselves and swallows us up in unity with God This revelation of the Father lifts the soul above the reason into the Imageless Nudity. There the soul is simple, pure, spotless, Empty of all things; And it is in this state of perfect emptiness that the Father manifests His Divine radiance is a knowing that is unconditioned,
For ever dwelling above the Reason.
Never can it sink down into the Reason,
And above it can the Reason never climb.
The shining forth of That which is Unconditioned is as a fair mirror.
Wherein shines the Eternal Light of God.
It has no attributes,
And here all the works of Reason fail.
It is not God, But it is the Light whereby we see Him.
Those who walk in the Divine Light of it
Discover in themselves the Unwalled.
That which Unconditioned,
Is above the Reason, not without it:
It beholds all things without amazement.
Amazement is far beneath it:
The contemplative life is without amazement.
That which is Unconditioned, it knows not what;
For it is above all, and is neither This nor That.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

Love, Life, God, Way

“These are just the rules and regulations
Of the birds, and the bees
The earth, and the trees,
Not to mention the gods, not to mention the gods.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

Rules and Regulations
Song lyrics, Release the Stars (2007)

God, Tree, Bee

“Hither, thither, masterless
Ship upon the sea,
Wandering through the ways of air,
Go the birds like me.
Bound am I by ne’er a bond,
Prisoner to no key,
Questing go I for my kind,
Find depravity.”
Feror ego veluti sine nauta navis, ut per vias aeris vaga fertur avis, non me tenent vincula, non me tenet clavis, Quęro mihi similes, et adiungor pravis.

Archpoet (1130–1165) 12th century poet

Feror ego veluti
sine nauta navis,
ut per vias aeris
vaga fertur avis,
non me tenent vincula,
non me tenet clavis,
Quęro mihi similes,
et adiungor pravis.
Source: "Confession", Line 17

Way, Sea

“To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", p. 186
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Wolf, Sun

“I do not believe birds deserve to be put in a taxonomic class separate from dinosaurs.”

Robert T. Bakker (1945) American paleontologist

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

“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)

Singing

“For me, pressure is bird flu. I'm feeling a lot of pressure with the problem in Scotland. It's not fun and I'm more scared of it than football.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://www.goal.com/en/news/1716/champions-league/2009/02/23/1122426/italy-v-england-10-classic-jose-mourinho-quotes 2006

Feeling, Problem, Football

“It is surprising that modern textbooks teach the ridiculous idea that birds are the descendents of dinosaurs! What a silly idea! There are many thousands of anatomical differences between reptiles and birds. Reptiles have four perfectly good legs that function just fine. Birds have two legs and two wings which also work fine as they are. If a reptile were to try to evolve into a bird, at some point it would have halfleg and half-wing. Now, it can no longer walk or run; yet, it cannot fly. This creature is doomed to extinction.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: Are you being brainwashed?: Propaganda in science textbooks (2007), p. 19

Idea, Flying

“The blue distance, the mysterious Heavens, the example of birds and insects flying everywhere —are always beckoning Humanity to rise into the air.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory

from "The Successes of Air Balloons in the XIX Century", 1901 http://www.informatics.org/museum/tsilbio.html

Flying

“We were high above fields, and there far, far below, was a small shadow as of a great bird tearing along the neatly marked off fields. It gave me the most tremendous shock to realize for the first time the terrific speed we were going at and that that shadow meant us — us, like a mirror! That "bird"”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

it was us.
On her first flight.
Bring Me a Unicorn (1971)

Tear, Time, Speed

“In their evolution, we see that the earliest pterosaurs were small, and yet still unnecessarily heavy and clumsy, both in the air and on the ground, but 160 million years of refinement has honed their abilities to the limit of incidental engineering. Despite their enormity, they were unbelievably lightweight; even the biggest ones were estimated at less than 500 lbs. They had hollow pneumatic bones of large diameter but only millimeters thick, making a strut-supported tubular frame that's surprisingly strong and highly resistant to the stresses of aeronautics. They also had extraordinarily powerful wing muscles, and this made them capable of vaulting airborne in a single bolt. Once in the air, muscle strands and tendons in the membrane of the wing itself worked with a network of pycnofibres to give them all the data they needed for subtle adjustments to the shape of the wing. The portions of the brain which were dedicated to flight, balance and visual gaze stabilization in birds are all larger and more adapted in pterosaurs. In fact, scientists are now convinced that these animals had such a mastery of flight, that the larger ones could even cross oceans, going 80 mph at 15,000 feet for thousands of miles on a single launch.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Pterosaurs are Terrible Lizards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_htQ8HJ1cA (December 3, 2013)

Support, Strong, Animals

“You can have a team of unconventional thinkers, as well as conventional thinkers. If you don't have the support of others you cannot achieve anything altogether on your own. It's like a cry in the wilderness. In each instance there were others who could see the same thing, and there were others who could not. It's an obvious difference we see in those who you might say have a bird's eye view, and those who have a worm's eye view. I've come to realize that we all have a different mind set, we all see things differently, and that's what the human condition is really all about.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

Support, Cry

“I hear always the sad voices
of summer
passing like red winged birds
over the high grass”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Red Winged Birds (1917)

Sadness, Grass, Summer

“I have known a handful of producers who actually were equal or superior to the writers with whom they worked. These producers were a new kind of nonwriting writer hatched by the movies—as Australia produced wingless birds. They wrote without pencils or even words. Using a sort of mime-like talent, they could make up things like writers.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

from "Elegy for Wonderland", by Ben Hecht, Esquire Magazine, March 1959

“There is a bird who by his coat,
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

The Jackdaw (translation from Vincent Bourne).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog?”

John L. Lewis (1880–1969) American labor leader

When asked about the presence of communists and other radicals working as organizers for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee; quoted in Life magazine, October 25, 1954

Dogs

“My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
When immelodious winds but made thee move,
And birds their ramage did on thee bestow.”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

To His Lute http://www.bartleby.com/40/198.html

“The Birds could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Movie trailer for the 1960s film The Birds.

“Really the best way to understand anything about dinosaurs is by looking at living animals. You look at birds and then look at the closest living ancestor of birds, which is the crocodile. If you look at characteristics that birds and crocodiles have in common, the explanation is that the trait was in the common ancestor that birds and crocodiles had at one time.”

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)

Way, Understanding, Time, Animals

“My closing statement to the senate and the council is…youth need art this truth is, not hard to swallow. I see many artistic people wallow in sorrow off belief. They aren't good enough to be. Give us a chance let us write our own histories. In a world conforming us instead of conforming for us. Kids ain't dumb just bored of the same old junk. Formulated highlight text, define learning. Is it confined to enclosed spaces eight hours a day? If it is I know why the caged bird sings.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Fate
20s A Difficult Age (2017)

People, Truth, Youth, World

“Now therefore while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)

Youth, Soul, Sport, Time

“Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant King,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu wee, to witta woo!”

Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) English Elizabethan pamphleteer and poet

Source: Summer's Last Will and Testament http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/summ1.htm (1600), lines 161-164.

Spring, Singing, Dance

“Poor captive bird! Who, from thy narrow cage,
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Epipsychidion

Source: Epipsychidion (1821), l. 9

Music, Heart

“I’m going to go ahead and go boldly
Cuz a little bird told me
That jumping is easy
That falling is fun
Right up ‘til you hit the sidewalk
Shivering and stunned.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Swan Dive
Song lyrics

“One rainy day in Cologne on the Rhine, the catalogue of a teaching aids company caught my attention. It was illustrated with models of all kind – mathematical, geometrical, anthropological, zoological, botanical, anatomical, mineralogical, paleontological, and so forth- elements of of such a diverse nature that the absurdity of the collection confused the eye and mind, producing hallucinations and lending the objects depicted new and rapidly changing meanings. I suddenly felt my 'visionary faculties' so intensified that I began seeing the newly emerged objects against a new background. To capture it, a little paint or a few lines were enough, a horizon, a sky, a wooden floor, that sort of things. My hallucination had been fixed. Now it was a matter of interpreting the hallucination in a few words or sentences Such as: 'Above the clouds midnight passes. Above midnight glides the invisible bird of day..”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote in 'Biographical Notes. Tissue of truth, Tissue of Lies', 1929; as cited in Max Ernst. A Retrospective, Munich, Prestel, 1991, p. 290
1910 - 1935

Mathematics, Nature, Change, Painting

“Here, in the company of the mindless trees, the free-flying birds, the bugs and frogs that passed from stimulus directly to response without the interval of consciousness between, did I hope to lose myself in the living mandala of evolution’s less self-tortured forms.”

Norman Spinrad book The Void Captain's Tale

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 10 (pp. 117-118)

Hope, Tree, Flying

“The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

1872(?), page 92
John of the Mountains, 1938

Love, Soul, Mountain, Flowers

“With Big Bird we knew we wanted to do a large, a great big character. He should represent a child so he can make the kinds of mistakes that kids make, and talk about it and be out front about that.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Interview with Associated Press (1986)

“Calico Pie,
The little Birds fly
Down to the calico tree,
Their wings were blue,
And they sang "Tilly-loo!"
Till away they flew,—
And they never came back to me!”

Edward Lear (1812–1888) British artist, illustrator, author and poet

Calico Pie http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/calico.html, st. 1 (1871).

Tree, Flying

“Grouse shooting is what it is for you, not for someone in some fabulous faraway place. Grouse gunning can be either a game of numbers or identification with a live bird somewhere ahead. It can be a mindless urge to wipe out a string of birds, or it can be the instant when one bird and the dog and the gun exist in unity.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Dogs, Game

“With each tentative tiptoe and stumble, I had to inwardly assure myself that I was a good comedian and that my life was not pointless. “I am addicted to comfort,” I thought as I tumbled into the wood chips. I have become divorced from nature; I don’t know what the names of the trees and birds are. I don’t know what berries to eat or which stars will guide me home. I don’t know how to sleep outside in a wood or skin a rabbit. We have become like living cutlets, sanitized into cellular ineptitude. They say that supermarkets have three days’ worth of food. That if there was a power cut, in three days the food would spoil. That if cash machines stopped working, if cars couldn’t be filled with fuel, if homes were denied warmth, within three days we’d be roaming the streets like pampered savages, like urban zebras with nowhere to graze. The comfort has become a prison; we’ve allowed them to turn us into waddling pipkins. What is civilization but dependency? Now, I’m not suggesting we need to become supermen; that solution has been averred before and did not end well. Prisoners of comfort, we dread the Apocalypse. What will we do without our pre-packed meals and cozy jails and soporific glowing screens rocking us comatose? The Apocalypse may not arrive in a bright white instant; it may creep into the present like a fog. All about us we may see the shipwrecked harbingers foraging in the midsts of our excess. What have we become that we can tolerate adjacent destitution? That we can amble by ragged despair at every corner? We have allowed them to sever us from God, and until we take our brothers by the hand we will find no peace.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Life, God, Peace, Food

“Welcome, with your lovely greenwood choir, summery month of May for which I long! Like a potent knight, an amorous boon, the green-entangled lord of the wildwood, comrade of love and of the birds, whom lovers remember, and their friend, herald of nine score trysts, fond of exalted colloquies.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Hawddamor, glwysgor glasgoed,
Fis Mai haf, canys mau hoed.
Cadarn farchog serchog sâl,
Cadwynwyrdd feistr coed anial;
Cyfaill cariad ac adar,
Cof y serchogion a'u câr;
Cennad nawugain cynnadl,
Caredig urddedig ddadl.
"Mis Mai a Mis Ionawr" (To May and January), line 1; translation from Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (ed. and trans.) A Celtic Miscellany (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1951] 1975) p. 75.

Love, Lovers

“This morn of spring in bed I'm lying,
Not to awake till birds are crying.
After one night of wind and showers,
How many are the fallen flowers!”

Meng Haoran poet from the Tang Dynasty

"Spring Morning" (《春晓》), trans. Yuanchong Xu

Spring, Flowers, Lying, Cry

“And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird's first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare.”

Cormac McCarthy book Outer Dark

Outer Dark (1968)

World

“Often I think the Almighty is like a snow bunting abandoned in all weathers. Such a bird is about the weight of a postage stamp. Yet he does not blow away when he stands in the open in a tempest... He wields this fragile head against the gale, with his beak to the ground, wings folded close to his sides and his tail pointing upwards; and the wind can get no hold on him, and cleaves.”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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

Thinking, Weather

“A thousand Marys lured me,
To feathered beds and fields of glover,
Bird with crooked wing cast,
Its wicked shadow over,
A bauble moon did mock,
And trinket stars did smile,
Your funeral, my trial.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Your Funeral… My Trial (1986), Your Funeral… My Trial

Smile, Star

“It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

A Sunset of the City

Thinking, Singing, Sun, Summer

“I believe in you and me. I'm like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life – in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God. But I don't believe in a personal God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice.”

Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American singer and film actor

Playboy interview (1963)

Life, God, Nature, Personality

“All animals copulate but only humans osculate. Parakeets rub beaks? Sure they do, but only little old ladies who murder schoolchildren with knitting needles to steal their lunch money so that they can buy fresh kidneys to feed overweight kitty cats would place bird billing in the realm of the true kiss.”

Tom Robbins book Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Wild Ducks Flying Backward (2005)

Money, Cats, Kiss, Animals

“The raven is the bird of all the gods. It was the bird of Odin and the bird of Jesus Christ. It will also be the bird of the god Skandilán, who has yet to be born. Whomever the raven rends attains salvation.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

the poet at the Ölfus River
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Christ, God

“It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Anecdote of the Jar"

“Thomas: Hey Victor! I'm sorry 'bout your dad.
Victor: How'd you hear about it?
Thomas: I heard it on the wind. I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. And your mom was just in here cryin.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Smoke Signals (1998)

Moms

“We got winners, we got losers
Chain smokers and boozers
And we got yuppies, we got bikers
We got thirsty hitchhikers.
And the girls next door dress up like movie stars.
Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm I love this bar.We got cowboys, we got truckers
Broken-hearted fools and suckers
And we got hustlers, we got fighters
Early-birds and all-nighters
And the veterans talk about their battle scars.
Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm I love this bar.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

I Love This Bar, written with Scotty Emerick
Song lyrics, Shock'n Y'all (2003)

Love, Fools, Girl, Star

“In that Macondo forgotten even by the birds, where the dust and the heat had become so strong that it was difficult to breathe, secluded by solitude and love and by the solitude of love in a house where it was almost impossible to sleep because of the noise of the red ants, Aureliano, and Amaranta Úrsula were the only happy beings, and the most happy on the face of the earth.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), p. 404

Love, Solitude, Sleep, Strong

“When April winds
Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush
Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up,
Opened in airs of June her multitude
Of golden chalices to humming-birds
And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.”

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

The Fountain http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page227, st. 3 (1839)

Flowers, Tree

“Spring passes
and the birds cry out—tears
in the eyes of fishes”

Bashō Matsuo book Oku no Hosomichi

行く春や
鳥啼き魚の
目は泪
yuku haru ya
tori naki uo no
me wa namida
Matsuo Bashō, Narrow Road to the Interior and other writings, Boston, 2000, p. 4 (Translation: Sam Hamill)
Spring is passing by!
Birds are weeping and the eyes
Of fish fill with tears.
Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to Oku, Tokyo, 1996, p. 23 (Translation: Donald Keene)
The passing of spring—
The birds weep and in the eyes
Of fish there are tears.
Donald Keene, Travelers of a Hundred Ages, New York, 1999, p. 310 (Translation: Donald Keene)
Oku no Hosomichi

Spring, Fish, Tear, Cry

“They knew all about the Flood—knew that God, with the exception of eight, drowned all his children—the old and young—the bowed patriarch and the dimpled babe—the young man and the merry maiden—the loving mother and the laughing child—because his mercy endureth forever. They knew too, that he drowned the beasts and birds—everything that walked or crawled or flew—because his loving kindness is over all his works.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)

Love, God, Children

“Without quality in life, there is only Death waiting at the end for all of us, like the bird. Being one of those fortunate men whose existence burns more brightly because of gunning grouse, I have learned that the place to look for quality is within yourself.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Life, Death, Men, Learning

“You said in our old ash-tree a bird had built its nest;
Perhaps this very linnet has there its place of rest.
Now who will keep his little ones when night begins to fall?
They have no other shelter, and they will perish all.
There'll be no more sweet singing within that lonely grove;
Now, Henry, free your prisoner, I pray you, for my love.
Our father is a soldier, and in some distant war
He too might be a prisoner in foreign lands afar.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Prisoner
Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Love, War, Tree, Distant

“willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky, course of a journey among the densities
of the days of the future and the fateful
brilliance of misery shining like a bird
that petrifies the forest with its singing
and the annunciations of happiness
among the branches which go disappearing,
hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand, an actual presence like a burst of singing,
like the song of the wind in a burning building,
a long look holding the whole world suspended,
the world with all its seas and all its mountains,
body of light as it is filtered through agate,
the thighs of light, the belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock and the cloud-colored body,
color of day that goes racing and leaping,
the hour glitters and assumes its body,
now the world stands, visible through your body,
and is transparent through your transparency”

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

Sun Stone (1957)

Fate, World, Color, Mountain

“No other language than some soft sweet sounds
She had caught from the voices of the birds
When singing to the morning, and the notes
Sent from the waterfall, when, like a harp,
It held discourse in music with the wind.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Music, Singing

“I hadn't heard the door open, but the man was on the spot once more. My private belief, as I think I have mentioned before, is that Jeeves doesn't have to open doors. He's like one of those birds in India who bung their astral bodies about--the chaps, I mean, who having gone into thin air in Bombay, reassemble the parts and appear two minutes later in Calcutta. Only some such theory will account for the fact that he's not there one moment and is there the next. He just seems to float from Spot A to Spot B like some form of gas.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Thinking, Appearance, Parting

“If we and the rest of the backboned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if they were to disappear, the land's ecosystems would collapse. The soil would lose its fertility. Many of the plants would no longer be pollinated. Lots of animals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals would have nothing to eat. And our fields and pastures would be covered with dung and carrion. These small creatures are within a few inches of our feet, wherever we go on land – but often, they're disregarded. We would do very well to remember them.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)

World, Animals

“When I behold the skylark move in perfect joy towards its love the sun, when I behold the skylark, growing drunk with joy, forget the use of wings, so that it topples from the height of heavens, I envy the bird's fate.”

Bernart de Ventadorn troubador

Can vei la lauzeta mover
De joi sas alas contra·l rai,
Que s'oblid'e·s laissa chazer
Per la doussor c'al cor li vai,
Ai, tan grans enveya m'en ve
De cui qu'eu veya jauzïon.
"Can vei la lauzeta mover", line 1; translation from James Branch Cabell The Cream of the Jest ([1917] 1972) p. 33.

Love, Fate, Sun, Joy

“He bought a bird in its own cage, with a sheet over it so no one could see the bird and the bird couldn't see anyone, and the whole thing was a secret bird… Everything he said was tinged with the unreadability of someone who would bring a bird on cruise ship.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Often

Secret

“The holy man, persuaded that they belonged to some idolatrous people and that in their own language they gave adherence to the Christian faith, invited them to receive baptism.
"I think," said he to them, "that you bathe often, for all the hollows of the rocks are full of pure water, and as I came to your assembly I saw several of you plunging into these natural baths. Now purity of body is the image of spiritual purity."
And he taught them the origin, the nature, and the effects of baptism.
"Baptism," said he to them, "is Adoption, New Birth, Regeneration, Illumination."
And he explained each of these points to them in succession.
Then, having previously blessed the water that fell from the cascades and recited the exorcisms, he baptized those whom he had just taught, pouring on each of their heads a drop of pure water and pronouncing the sacred words.
And thus for three days and three nights he baptized the birds.”

Anatole France book Penguin Island

Book I : The Beginnings, Ch. V : The Baptism Of The Penguins
Penguin Island (1908)

People, Faith, Birth, Nature

“Two birds on a wire
One tries to fly away
And the other watches him close from that wire
He says he wants to as well
But he is a liar”

Regina Spektor (1980) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Two Birds
Far (2009)

Flying

“How strong the expression, "She is become the habitation of demons, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." How true it is, that the most execrable of society seek and wear the garb of Christian profession and ceremonialism, in some of the various quarters (sects) of Babylon. Every impure principle and doctrine, somehow and somewhere, finds representation in her. And she is a "cage" which holds securely not only the Lord's meek and gentle doves, but also many unclean and hateful birds. Of all the defaulters, and deceivers of men and of women, how many are professedly members of Christ's Church! and how many even use their profession as a cloak under which to forward evil schemes! It is well known that a majority of even the most brutal criminals executed die in the Roman Catholic communion.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 162.

Women, Men, Hate, Strong

“If I could shoot a game bird and still not hurt it, the way I can take a trout on a fly and release it, I doubt if I would kill another one. This is a strange statement coming from a man whose life is dedicated to shooting and gun dogs. For me, there is almost no moment more sublime than when I pull the trigger and see a grouse fall. Yet, as the bird is retrieved I feel a sense of remorse for taking a courageous life. About the time I passed fifty I noticed this conflict becoming more pronounced…”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

The Upland Shooting Life (1971)

Life, Dogs, Way, Feeling

“She had trapped the bird of salvation, sung to it, tamed it and wrung its neck.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 32 (p. 168).

“Such was the man who was sent on an embassy to Ajmir, in order that the Rai (Pithaura) of that country might see the right way without the intervention of the sword, and that he might incline from the track of opposition into the path of propriety, leaving his airy follies for the institutes of the knowledge of Allah, and acknowledging the expediency of uttering the words of martyrdom and repeating the precepts of the law, and might abstain from infidelity and darkness, which entails the loss of this world and that to come, and might place in his ear the ring of slavery to the sublime Court (may Allah exalt it!) which is the centre of justice and mercy, and the pivot of the Sultans of the worldand by these means and modes might cleanse the fords of good life from the sins of impurity'…'The army of Islam was completely victorious, and 'an hundred thousand grovelling Hindus swiftly departed to the fire of hell'… After this great victory, the army of Islam marched forward to Ajmir, where it arrived at a fortunate moment and under an auspicious bird, and obtained so much booty and wealth, that you might have said that the secret depositories of the seas and hills had been revealed….'While the Sultan remained at Ajmir, he destroyed the pillars and foundations of the idol temples, and built in their stead mosques and colleges, and the precepts of Islam, and the customs of the law were divulged and established”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the conquest of Ajmer (Rajasthan) Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 213-216. Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Life, Secret, World, Justice

“Suspicions amongst thoughts, are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight. Certainly they are to be repressed, or at least well guarded: for they cloud the mind; they leese friends; and they check with business, whereby business cannot go on currently and constantly. They dispose kings to tyranny, husbands to jealousy, wise men to irresolution and melancholy. They are defects, not in the heart, but in the brain; for they take place in the stoutest natures.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Suspicion
Essays (1625)

Men, Jealousy, Business, Nature

“If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

"Is Civilization Progress?" in Reader's Digest (July 1964)

“For an author Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking, most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Pigs Have Wings

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

Question, Fish, Appearance

“We planted our crops in the spring, and they came up, and were looking nicely, and we were cheered with the hopes of having a very abundant harvest. But alas! it very soon appeared as if our crops were going to be swallowed up by a vast horde of crickets, that came down from these mountains-crickets very different to what I used to be acquainted with in the State of New York. They were crickets nearly as large as a man's thumb. They came in immense droves, so that men and women with brush could make no headway against them; but we cried unto the Lord in our afflictions, and the Lord heard us, and sent thousands and tens of thousands of a small white bird. I have not seen any of them lately. Many called them gulls, although they were different from the seagulls that live on the Atlantic coast. And what did they do for us? They went to work, and by thousands and tens of thousands, began to devour them up, and still we thought that even they could not prevail against so large and mighty an army. But we noticed, that when they had apparently filled themselves with these crickets, they would go and vomit them up, and again go to work and fill themselves, and so they continued to do, until the land was cleared of crickets, and our crops were saved. There are those who will say that this was one of the natural courses of events, that there was no miracle in it. Let that be as it may, we esteemed it as a blessing from the hand of God; miracle or no miracle, we believe that God had a hand in it, and it does not matter particularly whether strangers believe or not.”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 21:276-277 (June 20,1880)
Pratt describes the event in which seagulls disposed of swarms of crickets that were destroying their crops.
Miracle of the seagulls and crickets

Women, Men, God, Hope

“The state flower of New Jersey is the common violet,” she explained, smirking, “the state bird is the eastern goldfinch, and the state fragrance is unrefined petroleum.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 14 (p. 319)

Flowers

“Although he was completely illiterate, if he looked at a book which was incorrect, which contained some false statement, or which aimed at deceiving the reader, he immediately put his finger on the offending passage. If you asked him how he knew this, he said that a devil first pointed out the place with its finger…When he was harried beyond endurance by these unclean spirits, Saint John’s Gospel was placed on his lap, and then they all vanished immediately, flying away like so many birds. If the Gospel were afterwards removed and the History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth put there in its place, just to see what would happen, the demons would alight all over his body, and on the book, too, staying there longer than usual and being even more demanding.”
Librum quoque mendosum, et vel falso scriptum, vel falsum etiam in se continentem inspiciens, statim, licet illiteratus omnino fuisset, ad locum mendacii digitum ponebat. Interrogatus autem, qualiter hoc nosset, dicebat daemonem ad locum eundem digitum suum primo porrigere…Contigit aliquando, spiritibus immundis nimis eidem insultantibus, ut Evangelium Johannis ejus in gremio poneretur: qui statim tanquam aves evolantes, omnes penitus evanuerunt. Quo sublato postmodum, et Historia Britonum a galfrido Arthuro tractata, experiendi causa, loco ejusdem subrogata, non solum corpori ipsius toti, sed etiam libro superposito, longe solito crebrius et taediosius insederunt.

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Book 1, chapter 5, pp. 117-18.
Itinerarium Cambriae (The Journey Through Wales) (1191)

Books, History, Falseness, Flying

“In a herber green, asleep where I lay,
The birds sang sweet in the mids of the day;
I dreamed fast of mirth and play.
In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.”

Robert Wever (1500) English poet

Lusty Juventus http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/drama/juventus.txt (1557)

Pleasure, Youth, Dreams

“There are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others who love them so much they cage them.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 3, Ch. 4
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

Love, People

“For the roar of Godzilla, I took out the lowest string of a contrabass and then ran a glove that had resin on it across the string. The different kinds of roars were created by playing the recording of the sound that I'd made at different speeds. Toho's sound engineers previously had tried to use the roars of many different animals for Godzilla's roar. They went to a zoo and recorded the roars of many different mammals, but no matter how the sounds were manipulated, they seemed too much like the roars of each of the animals. The sound engineers also tried to alter the call of a night heron bird, but that also was not successful.”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1992)

Success, Animals, Speed, Night

“Heaven above is softer blue
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen
Birds with gladder songs o'erflow
Flowers with deeper beauties shine. Since I know, as now I know, I am His, and He is mine.”

George Wade Robinson (1838–1877) Irish poet

"Loved with Everlasting Love," Baptist Hymn Book (Pasalms and & Hymns Trust, London, 1962)

Beauty, Flowers

“The gunner tends to live with Death without giving thought to dying, the shot heard so deeply it is not heard at all. The gunner is the grouse while the grouse is living; he dies a little when the grouse is dead. They have that in common, the bird and he, and he had better know if he is worthy to terminate that glorious life. It is a responsibility not easy to face, yet he doesn't dare not face it.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

Grouse Along the Tramroad (1986)

Life, Death, Dead

“The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Article "Abortion", The Sunday Times, 21 May 1972

Love, Singing

“O Soul come back to watch the birds in flight!
He who has found such manifold delights
Shall feel his cheeks aglow
And the blood-spirit dancing through his limbs.”

Qu Yuan (-343–-278 BC) ancient Chinese poet

Source: "The Great Summons" (trans. Arthur Waley), Lines 144–147

Feeling, Soul, Dance

“Ok, I said to myself as I sighted the bird down the end of the gun. This time, my fine feathered friend, there is no escape.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Friends, Voters, Countrymen p59
2000s, 2001

Time

“The outlook of a Bruno, a Kepler, or a Galileo is determined by the idea of a comprehensive, all-embracing unity of the physical world. The same law governs the courses of the stars, the falling of stones, and the flight of birds. This homogenization of the physical world with respect to the validity of law deprives the division of physical objects into rigid abstractly defined classes of the critical significance it had for Aristotelian physics, in which membership in a certain conceptual class was considered to determine the physical nature of an object.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 10 as cited in: Coleman Roberts Griffith (1943) Principles of systematic psychology. p. 215.

World, Law, Star, Idea

“And you can cage the songbird,
But you can't make her sing.
And you can trap the free bird,
But you'll have to clip her wings.
`Cause she'll soar like a hawk when she flies,
But she'll dive like an eagle when she dies.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Cage the Songbird, written by Elton John, Bernie Taupin, and Davey Johnstone
Song lyrics, Blue Moves (1976)

Singing

“A Stellar’s jay hopped along behind him, watching closely for dropped crumbs. “It’s dark,” he told the bird. “Go to sleep. I've eaten already. Where were you? No food now.” The bird persisted, however; it knew humans were liars.”

Greg Bear book The Forge of God

Source: The Forge of God (1987), Chapter 54 (p. 362)

Food, Sleep

“This is how we go on: one day a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root canal at a time; boat builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Bag of Bones (1998)

Men, Pain, Books, Fear

“The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night.”

Claude McKay (1889–1948) Jamaican American writer, poet

After the Winter l. 3-4

Night

“The world is full of signals that we don't perceive. Tiny creatures live in a different world of unfamiliar forces. Many animals of our scale greatly exceed our range of perception for sensations familiar to us. […] What an imperceptive lot we are. Surrounded by so much, so fascinating and so real, that we do not see (hear, smell, touch, taste) in nature, yet so gullible and so seduced by claims for novel power that we mistake the tricks of mediocre magicians for glimpses of a psychic world beyond our ken. The paranormal may be a fantasy; it is certainly a haven for charlatans. But “parahuman” powers of perception lie all about us in birds, bees, and bacteria.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Natural Attraction: Bacteria, the Birds, and the Bees", p. 313
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

Lie, World, Nature, Bee

“I've got five big years ahead of me now, and I guess I'll have five more after that. What's the use of going further along than that? I haven't even thought of quitting the game. I feel like I was just starting in to begin. 'Course baseball is different from anything else. Look at those birds sitting across the lobby. They are business men, getting 'fit' for the season, too. But they are middle-aged, and gray and in what you birds call the prime of life. I'll be 33 when my new contract ends and a lot of people are reading me out of the game already. I'm going to be a business man, too, in baseball. Experience helps you a lot in this game, just as in any other.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in 'Have to Get More of 'Em,' Says Babe Ruth When He Hears of the Income Tax"

Life, Men, People, Age

“Both birds and crocs have the identical plan to their specialized gizzard apparatus, and this type of internal food processor is absent in the other "reptiles"”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

lizards, snakes, and turtles.
The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 127
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Food

“You know, everything about these feathered dinosaurs has been proven baloney. But guess what, they're still teaching it. […] All this feathered dinosaur stuff is baloney. It's all baloney. […] they say, "Birds are descendants of dinosaurs." Well, kids, in case you don't know, there are a few differences between a dinosaur and a bird. You don't just put a few feathers on them and say, "Come on, man, give it a try. It won't hurt too bad." It's just not that easy. See, reptiles have four perfectly good legs. Birds have two legs and two wings. So if his front legs are going to change to wings, somewhere along the line, they're going to be half-leg and half-wing. Which means, on that particular day, he can't run anymore, and he still can't fly yet, so he's got a real problem. A serious problem.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Lies in the textbooks

Problem, Change, Hurt, Flying

“As best demonstrated by Nature in the case of the aerofoil maple-seed, today's propeller is a pressure-screw and therefore a braking screw, whose purpose is to allow the heavy maple-seed to fall parachute-like slowly towards the ground and to be carried away sideways by the wind in the process. No bird has such a whirling thing on its head, nor a fish on its tail. Only man made use of this natural brake-screw for forward propulsion. As the propeller rotates, so does the resistance rise by the square of the rotational velocity. This is also a sign that this supposed propulsive device is unnaturally constructed and therefore out of place.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Implosion Magazine, No. 112, p. 52 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Nature, Fish

“Larry Bird is what keeps me going. He's my measuring stick. I don't think I would be as interested in the game if I weren't trying to play better than him.”

Larry Bird (1956) basketball player and coach

Magic Johnson — reported in Alan Goldstein (February 7, 1988) "Five at the Top of Their Game; Bird, Johnson aren't alone anymore as best players in the NBA", Baltimore Sun, p. 19.
About

Game, Thinking

“All the efforts of several hundred thousand people, crowded in a small space, to disfigure the land on which they lived; all the stone they covered it with to keep it barren; how so diligently every sprouting blade of grass was removed; all the smoke of coal and naphtha; all the cutting down of trees and driving off of cattle could not shut out the spring, even from the city. The sun was shedding its light; the grass, revivified, was blooming forth, where it was left uncut, not only on the greenswards of the boulevard, but between the flag-stones, and the birches, poplars and wild-berry trees were unfolding their viscous leaves; the limes were unfolding their buds; the daws, sparrows and pigeons were joyfully making their customary nests, and the flies were buzzing on the sun-warmed walls. Plants, birds, insects and children were equally joyful. Only men—grown-up men—continued cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. People saw nothing holy in this spring morning, in this beauty of God's world—a gift to all living creatures—inclining to peace, good-will and love, but worshiped their own inventions for imposing their will on each other.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 1

Love, Men, God, Children

“The saddest birds a season find to sing,
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay;
Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
That men may hope to rise yet fear to fall.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

Source: Times Go by Turns, Line 15; p. 47.

Men, God, Fear, Hope

“I think there is a total equality for me between painting a literary figure or Kate Moss or my Mum or a dog or a bird. To me, they are all absolutely equal.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Honigman, Ana Finel. "Stella Vine in conversation with Ana Finel Honigman" http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2007/07/stella_vine_in_conversation_wi.php, Saatchi Gallery (2007-07-25). On the subjects she paints.

Dogs, Thinking, Painting

“We may have learned to fly like birds and swim like fish, but we have forgotten how to live like human beings. It seems we have to relearn that skill. How can we do this? It is only possible if we learn about ourselves. We have to subject ourselves to self-analysis. Why? Because it is not outer space, not the wind, not the ocean, not the seasons, nature or animals that are the cause of this world’s problems, but we human beings—our minds.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Practice Spiritual Values & Save the World (2013)

World, Nature, Problem, Fish

Quotes about birds page 9

Quotes about birds
page 9