Quotes about thrush

A collection of quotes on the topic of thrush, world, song, singing.

Quotes about thrush

“That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

"Home-Thoughts, from Abroad", line 14.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

Thinking, Singing

“In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

Source: The Rosemary Tree

World, Spring, Tree, Singing

““Are you still afraid?” I asked her.
“No,” she said, “I am thankful. The world has been threatened too long by the extraordinary, the supernatural and the monstrous. I shall be happy enough to smell the pines and hear the song of the thrush. And to be with you, Captain von Bek.”
“The world is still threatened,” I said to her, “but perhaps not by Lucifer. I held her hand tightly.”

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 18 (p. 166)

World, Happiness

“And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Meaning" (1991)

World, Sense, Night

“A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

"Having Misidentified a Wild-Flower"

World

“O thrush, your song is passing sweet
But never a song that you have sung,
Is half so sweet as thrushes sang
When my dear Love and I were young.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Other Days, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love

“Every morning during certain seasons of the year, the thrushes and blackbirds on all the lawns throughout the country draw out of their holes an astonishing number of worms; and this they could not do, unless they lay close to the surface.”

Charles Darwin book The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms

Source: The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881), Chapter 1: Habits of Worms, p. 16. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=31&itemID=F1357&viewtype=image

Drawing, Country, Season

“You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.”

Adam Zagajewski (1945) Poet

Try to Praise the Mutilated World, Try to Praise the Mutilated World, September 11, 2011, Adam Zagajewski, The New Yorker, September 24, 2001 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/09/24/010924po_poem_zagajewski,

World, Music, Autumn, Light