Bird Songs Quotes

I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none. ~ Olivier Messiaen

The richer we get in a consumer society, the more acutely we become aware of how many grades of value--of both leisure and labor--we have climbed. The higher we are on the pyramid, the less likely we are to give up time to simple idleness and to apparently nonproductive pursuits. The joy of listening to the neighborhood finch is easily overshadowed by stereophonic recordings of "Bird Songs of the World," the walk through the park downgraded by preparations for a packaged bird-watching tour into the jungle. It becomes difficult to economize time when all commitments are for the long run. Staffan Linder points out that there is a strong tendency for us to over-commit to the future, so that when the future becomes present, we seem to be conscious all the time of having an acute scarcity, simply because we have committed ourselves to about thirty hours a day instead of twenty-four. In addition to the mere fact that time has competitive uses and high marginal utility in an affluent society, this overcommitment creates a sense of pressure and harriedness. ~ Ivan Illich

Letter 4

As I lay dreaming, Montezuma introduced himself and put his hand on my shoulder. The palm of the Aztec king felt like ancient papyrus.
When I looked up at him, I saw that his nose was chipped like that of a sphinx. His arms were like long ivory ropes that frayed into hands.
He led me down to the river, where we sat together and shared the river's silence. Then he spoke:
„Allow me to tell you my story. It may help you understand your own.
At dusk, in the year of one thousand rivers, the Spanish explorer Cortés arrived at the gates of my city. I welcomed him with open arms.
I showed Cortés hundreds of aviaries that had built in the city, and finally I took him to the most aviary of sighs. These birds carried only love letters.
Cortes laughed and said that all the bird songs made him feel like a virgin bride who is drunk with faith as she walks down the aisle of the church. On her wedding night, she undresses for her husband and he takes her in his arms. She believes everything is possible.
When Cortés stared straight into my eyes and said 'It is a night that is always colored in blood'." He paused for a long time before he spoke. Then he said, „Cortés returned with a small army of soldiers on horseback. When they ransacked the city, I was Cortes's own hand that lit the torch that set fire to the aviary of sighs.
The fires raged. The birds painted the blue sky black with the ashes of their wings. The gardens were redde ~ Gregory Colbert

The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.

My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation---in the shadow of a dim delight.

The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.

At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Even the song of birds, which we can bring under no musical rule, seems to have more freedom, and therefore more for taste, than a song of a human being which is produced in accordance with all the rules of music; for we very much sooner weary of the latter, if it is repeated often and at length. Here, however, we probably confuse our participation in the mirth of a little creature that we love, with the beauty of its song; for if this were exactly imitated by man (as sometimes the notes of the nightingale are) it would seem to our ear quite devoid of taste. ~ Immanuel Kant

Alone, I relished the bird songs, the drone of hushed conversation from neighboring tables, and the gentle lapping of waves sliding on the shore.

I didn't feel the passage of time. There was no destination propelling me forward, no past and no future. Each glorious moment was replaced by the next. ~ Marilyn Berman

And the time sundials tell
May be minutes and hours. But it may just as well
Be seconds and sparkles, or seasons and flowers.
No, I don't think of time as just minutes and hours.
Time can be heartbeats, or bird songs, or miles,
Or waves on a beach, or ants in their files
(They do move like seconds - just watch their feet go:
Tick-tick-tick, like a clock). You'll learn as you grow
That whatever there is in a garden, the sun
Counts up on its dial. By the time it is done
Our sundial - or someone's - will certainly add
All the good things there are. Yes, and all of the bad.
And if anyone's here for the finish, the sun
Will have told him - by sundial - how well we have done.
How well we have done, or how badly. Alas,
That is a long thought. Let me hope we all pass. ~ John Ciardi

As one sits here in summertime and listens to the cuckoo and all the other bird songs, the crackling and buzzing of insects, as one gazes at the shining colors of flowers, doth one become dumbstruck before the Kingdom of the Creator. ~ Carl Linnaeus

I can sit alone by an open window for hours if I like, and hear only bird songs, and the rustle of leaves. The trees are pure gold and orange, ~ Virginia Woolf

Right now the day length is exactly the same as in spring when birds key into it and begin singing. The birds are a little confused by it all and the singing isn't very intense. It only lasts a week or so each fall, but it's still cool to hear spring bird songs at this time of the year. ~ Craig Thompson

There are about five or six songs that were written in full or in part while I was in Iraq, and that was definitely a life-changing experience. There was no shortage of inspiration. ~ Bryan Hayes

I thought all pubescent humans dreamed of becoming heroes with songs sung about them. ~ K.M. Shea

Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? [ ... ] Will they feel what she felt in her life, will their memories have flickering strokes of her memories, will they recall that moment long ago when she stood by the window, guilt ridden and confused, and watched as the tadr bird circled the cistern? No, it is not possible. [ ... ] But I will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at that moment they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity. ~ Alan Lightman

I chose the songs for the music more than for the lyrical content and it wasn't until the end of the recording and when we were trying to decide running order that I realized how sad a lot of the songs could sound. ~ Vashti Bunyan

I don't know anyone who has described that terrible yearning for ecstasy and immolation through music as lucidly as Sean Madigan Hoen in Songs Only You Know. Only a thorough initiate of the scene who also had some genius with language could summon the demotic yet electric voice for the job. If there is ruefulness, now, for the way he treated his body, his girlfriends, and his family, he wisely reprises in his book, in neon detail, the fever that once placed him in the same drunken boat with Iggy Pop, Rimbaud and Artaud. ~ Jaimy Gordon

The little birds have God for their caterer. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

It's always a mixture of fiction and your own story. It's more I recreate atmospheres and moods through songs. ~ Keren Ann

The way I was singing the songs was jazz ~ Van Morrison

I love country music so much. I love all kinds of music. But when it comes down to it, I'm from East Tennessee, and country melodies and country songs have always just sliced me in the heart. ~ Ashley Monroe

In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. ~ Bruce Springsteen

Freedom, sir," I began unceremoniously, without greeting or inquiry, "freedom is the biggest thing for man. Nothing can be compared to it - nothing at all!" Surprised at my outburst, my master looked up at me in silence. "One can understand nothing from books," I went on. "We read in the scriptures that our desires are bonds, fettering us as well as others. But such words, by themselves, are so empty. It is only when we get to the point of letting the bird out of its cage that we can realize how free the bird has set us. Whatever we cage, shackles us with desire whose bonds are stronger than those of iron chains. I tell you, sir, this is just what the world has failed to understand. They all seek to reform something outside themselves. But reform is wanted only in one's own desires, nowhere else, nowhere else! ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Veronica: "Perhaps. If Sa'aw had but a male aspect, but recall the old, true worship of Sa'aw, male and female, bird, beast, and plant, earth, fire, air, and water are all honored in Sa'aw and Sa'aw manifests in all of them. If the Divine is also female and the female also divine, then she understands that woman is more than mother, more than daughter, more than wife. Those are the facets of a full life, but no single facet defines the jewel. ~ Robin Hobb

I never play all new stuff, because you got to "dance with the girl that brought you" what is that saying? You got to play the songs that got you there, so I love playing the songs from my very first record. ~ Mat Kearney

You know, all my songs are relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins. ~ David Coverdale

Feather's sake, you are so fucking annoying, I love you."
Warmth blossomed under Flit's skin, like a spark had been lit inside his heart and it had exploded in his chest, messy and wet and wonderful. "You love me?"
"It's that or indigestion," Talon replied gruffly. He peppered Flit's forehead and cheeks with kisses. ~ Agatha Bird

He whose inflowing thoughts are dried up, who is unattached to food, whose dwelling place is an empty and imageless release - the way of such a person is hard to follow, like the path of birds through the sky. ~ Gautama Buddha

how do i teach my ears to hear songs without the ghosts of you inside of them? ~ Sabrina Benaim

Everybody has a direct view of the person "behind" the art, so there is going to be a certain amount of awareness of who is making songs. But I like paintings where you can see the brush-strokes. ~ Jeffrey Lewis

The sunshine was delightful, the foliage gently astir, more from the activity of birds than from the breeze. One gallant little bird, doubtless lovelorn, was singing his heart out at the top of a tall tree. ~ Victor Hugo

The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. ~ Julian Assange

Then l learned to play guitar and l started writing songs and my mother formed for me a publishing business, so we started publishing and managing artists. ~ Tommy Rettig

Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. ~ Victor Hugo

The main focus for me is not trying to find duet partners. It's about just making great songs. I want most of my album to be in my voice, because it's my point of view. ~ John Legend

A nursery rhyme shapes your bones and nerves, and it shapes your mind. They are powerful, nursery rhymes, and immensely old, and not toys, even though they are for children." "But they make no sense!" Summer protested "Ah, well," said Ben. "Sometimes sense hides behind walls. You must find a window and stick your head right in before you can see it. ~ Katherine Catmull

She deserved it, the snake. After keeping my little golden bird locked up in her cage for so long. ~ Marissa Meyer

I probably spent more time listening to albums than writing songs. But I think that gave me all the tricks in terms of wordplay, from how I pronounced my words to the actual delivery. ~ Kendrick Lamar

No bird soars in a calm. ~ David McCullough

I once met an RAF pilot who told me of what he called a "bird strike". This, rather unfairly in my view, made it sound as if it was the bird's fault; as if the little feathered chap had deliberately tried to head-butt twenty tons of metal travelling in the opposite direction at just under the speed of sound, out of spite. ~ Hugh Laurie

I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I've written for people that have been hits, I don't know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path. ~ Chris Stapleton

Humans were the only creatures in the world that ate their food cooked. You'd never find a Gorilla frying up some bananas for dinner or a lion charcoal-broiling a zebra steak. Cats don't often run to the oven with a mouse or bird they've captured, and a dog wouldn't naturally prepare its rabbit dinner in a stew. ~ Dick Gregory

My favorite music to sing would be my own songs, my original songs, just because I know them, you know I write the tunes, so my favorite songs are the newest ones that I write. That's what I like to sing the most, because it means something, it's real, it comes from me. ~ Paul McDonald

She probably thinks Troye Sivan's songs are about girls. ~ Becky Albertalli

People try to make a big deal, like I don't want to play my old songs. That's not it. I don't want to play my old songs if that's my only option. That's a different thing. ~ Billy Corgan

My songs examine and explore little specific emotions or situations or stories ... They're kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and one other person. It's almost like an alien has been sent to get emotional samples from human beings and put it all together on a record. ~ KT Tunstall

When the whistling-thrush released
A deep sweet secret on the trembling air;
Blackbird on the wing, bird of the forest shadows,
Black rose in the long ago summer,
This was your song:
It isn't time that's passing by,
It is you and I. ~ Ruskin Bond

Sometimes I have the idea right away, like, "Oh, this is what this song's about. This is how I'm feeling." ~ Avey Tare

Is enjoyment the goal of life? Were it so, it would be a tremendous mistake to become a man at all. What man can enjoy a meal with more gusto than the dog or the cat ? Go to a menagerie and see the [wild animals] tearing the flesh from the bone. Go back and become a bird! ... What a mistake then to become a man! Vain have been my years - hundreds of years - of struggle only to become the man of sense-enjoyments. ~ Swami Vivekananda

For me, the focus are songs, which really get the audience moving. ~ Joe Cocker

As time goes by, I realize that I do trust the wind. And I often write my songs for myself. ~ David Friedman

There's too many songs and nothing to dance to
The future is putrid, I'm useless without you ~ Wesley Eisold