Birds Quotes

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

“The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.”
― J.M. Barrie, The Little White Bird

“Pan, who and what art thou?" he cried huskily.
"I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
― Willie Nelson

“The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.”
― Eric Berne

“She decided to free herself, dance into the wind, create a new language. And birds fluttered around her, writing “yes” in the sky.”
― Monique Duval

“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”
― Robert Lynd

“Two turtle doves will show thee
Where my cold ashes lie
And sadly murmuring tell thee
How in tears I did die”
― Nikolai Gogol

“It was my uncle who taught me about the birds and the bees. He sat me down one day and said, 'Remember this, George, the birds fuck the bees.' Then he told me he once banged a girl so hard her freckles came off.”
― George Carlin, Brain Droppings

“I don’t know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, ‘Why don’t you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?’ And I always say, well, when you say that, you’ve also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that’s got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate…”
― David Attenborough

“And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“The bird dares to break the shell, then the shell breaks open and the bird can fly openly. This is the simplest principle of success. You dream, you dare and and you fly.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“You'll think this is a bit silly, but I'm a bit--well, I have a thing about birds."
"What, a phobia?"
"Sort of."
"Well, that's the common term for an irrational fear of birds."
"What do they call a rational fear of birds, then?”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“When the Sun of compassion arises darkness evaporates and the singing birds come from nowhere.”
― Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power

“Let us speak less and say more. ( “Words flew away like birds” )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The day we decide to drop the flimsy makeshift scenarios in our cluttered mind and eschew the ‘alleluias’ of self-importance, life can become genuine, lucid and graceful, like a flow of wellness in the glow of a new morning. ("Words flew away like birds")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values....”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Ron seems to be enjoying the celebrations.” said Hermione. “Don’t pretend you didn’t see him. He wasn’t exactly hiding it, was — ?”
The door behind them burst open. To Harry’s horror, Ron came in, laughing, pulling Lavender by the hand.
“Oh,” he said, drawing up short at the sight of Harry and Hermione.
“Oops!” said Lavender, and she backed out of the room, giggling.
There was a horrible, swelling, billowing silence. Hermione was staring at Ron, who refused to look at her. She walked very slowly and erectly toward the door. Harry glanced at Ron, who was looking relieved that nothing worse had happened.
“Oppugno!” came a shriek from the doorway.
Harry spun around [...] The little flock of birds was speeding like a hail of fat golden bullets toward Ron, pecking and clawing at every bit of flesh they could reach.
“Gerremoffme!” he yelled, but with one last look of vindictive fury, Hermione wrenched open the door and disappeared through it. Harry thought he heard a sob before it slammed.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“It's a very small object to be capable of doing many wonderful things, don't you think?"
"It does much more that that," Valkyrie said, opening up a game and showing it to him.
His eyes widened. "What wonder is this?"
"It's called Angry Birds. Now do you believe me?”
― Derek Landy, Kingdom of the Wicked

“What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.”
― Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare Music

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.

Then, by the end of morning,
he's gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone.”
― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings: Poems

“The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagles own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.”
― Aesop

“I'm not prepared for Rue's family. Her parents, whose faces are still fresh with sorrow. Her fiver younger siblings, who resemble her so closely. The slight builds, the luminous brown eyes. They form a flock of small dark birds.”
― Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

“Soft feathers cannot make a cruel bird kind”
― Munia Khan

“It's time to make love, douse the glim; The fireflies twinkle and dim; The stars lean together Like birds of a feather, And the loin lies down with the limb.”
― Conrad Aiken

“In November, some birds move away and some birds stay. The air is full of good-byes and well-wishes. The birds who are leaving look very serious. No silly spring chirping now. They have long journeys and must watch where they are going. The staying birds are serious, too, for cold times lie ahead. Hard times. All berries will be treasures.”
― Cynthia Rylant, In November

“The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved Southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call!”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption