The shots had dispersed the birds; there remained only two marabous, standing between ten and twenty paces away and plunged in reverie. They were like two old men with bald heads pressed between the shoulders.
The United States is a big country but unfortunately it seems it has the brain of a little bird not befitting the greatness of the country.
Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly.
There can be many bars, wires that keep a person trapped. All of them don't have to have been created for the purpose of harming or caging the bird, but they still serve that function.
You're attracted to him," Kylie said. "And don't try to deny it. You've even admitted that much to me. " "Okay, I won't deny that. He's got that whole hard body, vampire magnetism going for him. But when I was young, I had a crush on Big Bird. That wouldn't have worked out either.
My Faith is larger than the Hills— So when the Hills decay— My Faith must take the Purple Wheel To show the Sun the way— 'Tis first He steps upon the Vane— And then — upon the Hill— And then abroad the World He go To do His Golden Will— And if His Yellow feet should miss— The Bird would not arise— The Flowers would slumber on their Stems— No Bells have Paradise— How dare I, therefore, stint a faith On which so vast depends— Lest Firmament should fail for me— The Rivet in the Bands
Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues. Be active in business, that temptation may miss her aim; the bird that sits is easily shot.
. . . as nervous as a bird in a coal mine.
I found myself wishing that we could live like the birds and move through nature without hurting it our ourselves.
Today I am sure no one needs to be told that the more birds a yard can support, the fewer insects there will be to trouble the gardener the following year.
Here every bird and fish knew its course. Every tree had its own place upon this earth. Only man had lost his way.
The beach has a language of its own, with its undulating ribbons of silt, the imponderable hieroglyphs of bird tracks. The receding waves catch on innumerable holes in the sand. Bubbles form and fade. A new language, with a new alphabet.
They who on meare curiositie (where no urgent necessitie requireth) try whether their children may not as birds be nourished without sucking, offend contrary to this dutie of breast feeding and reflect that meanes which God hath ordained as best; and so oppose their shallow wits to his unsearchable wisdom.
We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
One of the bibles of my youth was 'Birds of the West Indies,' by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, 'My God, that's the dullest name I've ever heard,' so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one.
If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages.
I would say seeing the original Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page at the old Fillmore was a pretty powerful influence on me.
Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.
A bird sings, a child prattles, but it is the same hymn; hymn indistinct, inarticulate, but full of profound meaning.