“They did not hear Grimble, as he lay dying, chant in the true voice of the Boreal Owl, in tones like chimes in the night, an ancient owl prayer”
Source: The Capture
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Kathryn Lasky 20
American children's writer 1944Related quotes

“The owl of Minerva only flies abroad when the shades of night are gathering.”
Source: 'The Owl and the Bulldog: Reflections on Conservatism and Foreign Policy', Twentieth Century, Volume 155 (1954), p. 107
Context: Speaking for Conservatism, Hegel was right. And nothing proves it better than the post-war crop of Tory intellectuals, sprouting like mushrooms in the damp cellars of Abbey House. Not until the stimuli which originally conditioned Conservative reflexes have finally disappeared can the intellectual emerge to provide a rationale for Conservative behaviour. So Conservative theory must always base itself on some form of historical restorationism. The moderate seeks the world of Joseph Chamberlain—or if he is daring, of Disraeli. The really advanced radical looks still further back, to Prince Rupert, or the Middle Ages, particularly if he is a Catholic.

“The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.”
Preface xxx
Variant: When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.
As translated by T. M. Knox, (1952) <!-- p. 13 -->
Source: Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)
Context: Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.

“Like sending owls to Athens, as the proverb goes.”
Plato, 32.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 3: Plato

Afterword, p. 190
1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

“We are not afraid of the owl, we are the hawks.”
Source: Aşıkpaşoğlu History (Prepared: Atsız), 79

Poem: The Armadillo http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bishop.armadillo.html