“No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery.”

— William Wordsworth

To the Cuckoo, st. 4 (1804).

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William Wordsworth 306

English Romantic poet 1770–1850

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

“Heavenly bodies are nests of invisible birds.”

Dejan Stojanovic book The Creator

“Nests,” p. 55
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “The Whisper of Eternity”

“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible….”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

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

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

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

“"Pull yourself together," said the Voice, "for you have to do the job I've chosen for you."Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were round."I've chosen you," said the Voice. "You are the only man except some of those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing as an invisible man. You have to be my helper. Help me—and I will do great things for you. An invisible man is a man of power."”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 9: Mr. Thomas Marvel

“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)
Context: I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.

“Yet came there never voice nor sign;
But through my being stole
Sense of a Universe divine,
And knowledge of a soul
Perfected in the joy of things,
The star, the flower, the bird that sings.”

Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921) British poet

"The Chantry Of The Cherubim" in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917) by D. H. S. Nicholson.
Context: p>I buoyed me on the wings of dream,
Above the world of sense;
I set my thought to sound the scheme,
And fathom the Immense;
I tuned my spirit as a lute
To catch wind-music wandering mute.Yet came there never voice nor sign;
But through my being stole
Sense of a Universe divine,
And knowledge of a soul
Perfected in the joy of things,
The star, the flower, the bird that sings.Nor I am more, nor less, than these;
All are one brotherhood;
I and all creatures, plants, and trees,
The living limbs of God;
And in an hour, as this, divine,
I feel the vast pulse throb in mine.</p