
“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”
“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”
Queen Victoria, concerned about the sparrows that had nested in the roof of the partly finished Crystal Palace, asked Wellington's advice as to how to get rid of them. Wellington’s reply was succinct and to the point, Sparrow-hawks, Ma'am. He was right, by the time the Crystal Palace was opened by the Queen in 1851, they had all gone!
Source: Historic UK http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Duke-of-Wellington/
“To the seeing eye life is mostly Sparrows.”
The Sparrow
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)
“Be cheerful, do good, and let the sparrows chirp.”
Source: http://www.jugendherberge.de/en/youth-hostels/benediktbeuern%20don%20bosco205/leisure%20activities
“The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.”
Talis...mihi uidetur, rex, vita hominum praesens in terris, ad conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniens unus passeium domum citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidue praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda videtur.
Book II, chapter 13
This, Bede tells us, was the advice given to Edwin, King of Northumbria by one of his chief men, at a meeting where the king proposed that he and his followers should convert to Christianity. It followed a speech by the chief priest Coifi, who also spoke in favor of conversion.
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People)