1. “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.”
2. “The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.”
3. “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.”
4. “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
5. “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.”
6. “She decided to free herself, dance into the wind, create a new language. And birds fluttered around her, writing “yes” in the sky.”
7. “Two turtle doves will show thee, Where my cold ashes lie, And sadly murmuring tell thee, How in tears I did die”
8. “In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”
9. “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.”
10. “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.”
11. “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.”
12. “When the Sun of compassion arises darkness evaporates and the singing birds come from nowhere.”
13. “This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values….”
14. “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.”
15. “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.”
16. “Heavenly bodies are nests of invisible birds.”
17. “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.”
18. “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.”
19. “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.”
20. “And I said, ‘A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could’ve had you?’ And he said, ‘Because when he sings … even the birds stop to listen.”
21. “Soft feathers cannot make a cruel bird kind”
22. “It would have been hard for Fat Charlie to say exactly when the accumulation of birds on the wire mesh moved from interesting to terrifying. It was somewhere in the first hundred or so, anyway. And it was in the way they didn’t coo, or caw, or trill, or song. They simply landed on the wire, and they watched him.”
23. “…I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.”
24. “Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone’s horizon sweeps someone else’s. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.”
25. “Birds were created to record everything. They were not designed just to be beautiful jewels in the sky, but to serve as the eyes of heaven.”
26. “Somewhere a bird sang, its chant hanging plaintive and melancholy in the still air…I think it’s a sort of lark or something. Our tradition has it that they sing with the voices of lost lovers. If the stars are smiling on them, you will hear its mate call back in a moment.”
27. “The stork is voiceless because there is really nothing to say.”
28. “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!”
29. “He imagines a necessary joy in things that must fly to eat.”
30. “You got the eggs in you; the world is fully ready to celebrate the chicks out of your laying labour. Never give up. Go and breed! Go and breed great dreams.”
31. “Small birds throw seeds out of the feeder; large birds pick them up off the ground, but the squirrels try to muscle in.”
32. “O Heavenly Children, do not forget that God is here, there and everywhere. The birds are his eyes and the air is his ears. And as you sleep, your heart and soul rest naked before him. He can drink from the rivers of your thoughts, and even feel the wetness of your tears.”
33. “Birds are the eyes of Heaven.”
34. “though what bird in the best of circumstances does not look a little stricken?”
35. “There are stories in the air as thick as birds around me, he would say. I will save those stories from starving he would say. I have a great hunger for stories, he would say.”
36. “Here is the door of my mom’s house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house to a wooden pole, and some fat birds sitting together on the wires, five of them lined up like beads on an abacus.”
37. “The crow flew closer, as if to hear its praises.”
38. “Not every hen lay eggs. Not every hen that lays eggs gets them hatched. Not everyone born with greatness becomes as such. Go, hatch your eggs.”
39. “Eagle’s flight of loneliness soars so high. Around its sigh, no more alone the sky.Other birds remain away, clouds pass by. Between shrouds of life and haze sun rays die”
40. “The baloney weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door.”
41. “Scents were like rain, or birds. They left and came back.”
42. “From birds she learned how to sing; from cats she learned a form of dangerous independence.”
43. “Just as the bird needs wings to fly, a leader needs useful information to flow. Leaders learn.”
44. “Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”
45. “I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.”
46. “The freedom of birds is an insult to me.”
47. “I love the freedom of my wings. I love the empty space above the ground. I rejoice in my freedom. Freedom is my religion. Peace is my God. Love is my worship.”
48. “Love is not only the story of butterflies or birds; it is also the story of jackals and hounds”
49. “You are not too small. No one is ever too small to offer help.”
50. “A glimpse of my feathers. Show too much and they’ll tear you apart Bird of Paradise Born in the trenches Facing the mouth of a gun.”
51. “I speculate over some of the Anglo nomenclature of birds: Wilson’s snipe, Forster’s tern . . . : What natural images do these names conjure up in our minds? What integrity do we give back to the birds with our labels.”
52. “In winter, you fed the birds; and in summer, do the same thing! In winter, you gave them bread; and in summer, give them water!”
53. “Hey, ants!” she shouted. “Please help. Anteater is very hungry, but cannot find any food.”
54. “Unless you understand the pain and sufferings of the people, trees, birds and the nature, how can you understand God.”
55. “Wait,” Honey said to herself, as she realized something amazing. “I’m already an excellent flyer. Maybe I can fight crime too.”
56. “A male frigate bird blows up a wild red pouch on his neck. He can keep it puffed up for hours. It is his way of impressing the girls.”
57. “The call of the yellow-billed cuckoo of North America is often mistaken for a bloodhound drinking a bowl of milk. He goes coulp coulp coulp.”
58. “A goose flies by a chart the Royal Geographic Society could not improve.”
59. “That was the thing about Levantin: he loved the birds, but he really loved the places they brought him. When you spend your career in the confines of a gray suit, the pipits at dawn above timberline are even more wondrous.”
60. “No human ever lived in a birdless world.”
