quotations about birds
In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.
ROBERT LYND
Solomon in All His Glory
Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Birds of a feather will flock together.
MARTIAL
Epigrams
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
JESUS
Matthew 6:26
There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Blue Lion and Other Essays
O birds, your perfect virtues bring,
Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,
Your manners for your heart’s delight,
Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof,
Here weave your chamber weather-proof,
Forgive our harms, and condescend
To man, as to a lubber friend,
And, generous, teach his awkward race
Courage, and probity, and grace!
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
May-Day and Other Pieces
The early bird catches the worm.
WILLIAM CAMDEN
Remains
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator
Caged birds accept each other but flight is what they long for.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Camino Real
I saw a bird on a bough and wondered if he were dreaming. And then another came; the two sat long together and not a note they sang. The sun went down in the west, and the shadows wrapt their veils around the shivering earth; the moon arose behind the mountains, the full-faced harvest moon that turns all things to magic. The two birds on the bough were dark against the moon's gold face. And still no note they sang--their silence thrilled the world. And I forgot the meadows and the hills, the trees and the golden harvest; for I knew that those two dreaming birds were the heart of a miracle.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Proverbs of Hell
Just remember it's the birds that's supposed to suffer, not the hunter.
GEORGE W. BUSH
advice while quail hunting, Jan. 22, 2004
It is a foul bird that defileth his own nest.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
interview, 1974
The dinosaurs are not extinct. The colorful and successful diversity of the living birds is a continuing expression of basic dinosaur biology.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
"Dinosaur Renaissance", Scientific American, April 1975
The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.
J.M. BARRIE
The Little White Bird
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
JACQUES DEVAL
Afin de vivre bel et bien
A bird is three things:
Feathers, flight and song,
And feathers are the least of these.
MARJORIE ALLEN SEIFFERT
"The Shining Bird"
It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.
AESOP
Aesop's Fables
I'm lying in my room listening to the birds outside. I used to think they sang because they were happy. But then I learned on a nature show they're really showing off. Trying to lure in some other bird so they can mate with it. Or let the other birds know not to get too close to their turf. I wish I never watched that show, because now all I think about is what those pretty sounds mean. And how they're not pretty at all.
JO KNOWLES
Jumping Off Swings