Birds (414 BC)
Context: Informer: My friend, I am asking you for wings, not for words.
Pisthetaerus: It's just my words that gives you wings.
Informer: And how can you give a man wings with your words?
Pisthetaerus: They all start this way. [... ]
Informer: So that words give wings?
Pisthetaerus: Undoubtedly; words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven. Thus I hope that my wise words will give you wings to fly to some less degrading trade.
(tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Birds+1436)
“Whoever invented the word ‘grace’ must have seen the wing-folding of the plover.”
“May: Back from the Argentine”, p. 34-35.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "May: Back from the Argentine," "June: The Alder Fork," "July: Great Possessions," and "July: Prairie Birthday"
“Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes;
And yet I pity those they torture not.”
Prometheus, Act I, l. 632
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)
“Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.”
"Sand Dabs, Six"
Winter Hours (1999)
Source: supanet.com/find/famous-quotes-by/axel-munthe/a-man-can-stand-a-lot-as-fqb50991/
As quoted in Eichmann Before Jerusalem by Bettina Stangneth (2015).
1840s, Letters from New York (1843)
Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/61/12261.html, vol. 1, letter 34
Source: Faust. Translation by Bayard Taylor
"Love the Wild Swan" (1935)
Context: This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your... self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
