The sound of birds stops the noise in my mind
Carly Simon
Izaak Walton:
Those little nimble musicians of the air,
that warble forth their curious ditties,
with which nature hath furnished them
to the shame of art.
Kurt Cobain:
Birds … scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage
every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth.
They know the truth.
Screaming bloody murder all over the world in our ears,
but sadly we don’t speak bird.
Chinese Proverb:
A bird does not sing because it has an answer;
it sings because it has a song
George Crumb:
In a broader sense, the rhythms of nature, large and small –
are the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects –
must inevitably find the analogues in music.
Katherine Catmull:
The bird music sank into her, like a song you used to know but
forgot long ago.
Eubie Blake:
Be grateful for luck.
Pay the thunder no mind –
Listen to the birds. And don’t hate nobody
Bob Dylan:
No one is free,
even the birds are chained to the sky.
John Webster:
We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.
Celia Thaxter:
No sadder sound salutes you
Than the clear, wild laughter of the loon.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Do you ne’er think what wondrous beings these?
Do you ne’er think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man e’er caught!
Thomas Carlyle:
Little dew-drops of celestial melody.
Laura Erickson:
When a group of people sing together, we make a chorus.
When birds do, it’s more like a whole symphony orchestra.
Pablo Picasso:
Why do you try to understand art?
Do you try to understand the song of a bird?
Percy Bysshe Shelley:
Hail to thee; blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thou full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
William Shakespeare:
The plain-song cuckoo grey,
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dares not answer nay.
Chinese Proverb:
If I keep a green bough in my heart,
The singing bird will come.
Terry Tempest Williams:
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.
Sylvia Plath:
If you dissect a bird
to diagram the tongue
you’ll cut the chord
articulating song
Victor Marie Hugo:
Be like the bird in flight … pausing awhile on boughs too slight,
feels them give way beneath her, yet sings knowing yet, that
she has wings.
Douglas Malloch:
You have to believe in happiness,
Or happiness never comes …
Ah, that is the reason a bird can sing –
On his darkest day, he believes in Spring.
Alfred Tennyson:
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.