Caged Bird Quotes

The soul is like a caged bird, it waits for the right person to open the door and set it free. ~ Belinda Taylor

I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life ... her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing. ~ Maya Angelou

I know what the caged bird feels, alas! ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult. ~ Maya Angelou

One day I asked a wingless bird what will she do now. She replied, "If I can't fly than I shall run. If I can't run I shall walk. If I can't walk I shall crawl. But I will never be stuck in cage. ~ Joyce Guo

Even the caged bird flys out when someone opens the door for it ~ Andrea L'Artiste

The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice. Her eyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed for a moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened, the mist of a dream had passed across them. ~ Oscar Wilde

I look through the cage ... an absolute beauty of yours ... ~ Ankur Kumar Shah

There shall come a day when Birds shall be free ... and humans will see ... ~ K. Hari Kumar

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. ~ Maya Angelou

But, my dear friend Wildfire," said Carl Peterson laying his hand on the Indian's shoulder, "this is not a policy to live by."

"Then let it be a policy to die by," defiantly spoke the Indian. "If we cannot be free, let us die. What is life to a caged bird, threatened with death on all sides? ~ S. Alice Callahan

Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth. ~ Maya Angelou

Spring irises bloom.
The caged bird no longer sings -
the knee on his throat. ~ Kamand Kojouri

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,- When he beats his bars and would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings- I know why the caged bird sings! ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom. ~ Maya Angelou

The joy of a caged bird was in her voice. ~ Oscar Wilde

Tell me why the caged bird nutters against its prison bars, and I will tell you why the soul sickens of earthliness. The bird has wings, and wings were made to cleave the air, and soar in freedom in the sun. The soul is immortal it cannot feed upon husks. ~ Randolph Sinks Foster

Judging art is like caging a bird. Instead of seeing it soar, you can only watch it flutter. ~ Ron Brackin

I know why the caged bird sings. ~ Maya Angelou

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic admiration. ~ Maya Angelou

You know just as well as I do that Vikram's thread never budged," I said stonily.
Amar bowed his head. Good, I thought. At least he could fake some guilt.
"I know."
"Why couldn't I? Why did you made it sound like I could? All this talk about being a true ruler here, this…awakening of power. Or control. I had no control over that thread. I couldn't even pull it from one side to another."
"It takes time. But it's a start. It's a new beginning," he said. A chill ran up my spine. "For you and me."
He braced his elbows against his knees, the sleeves revealing the bracelet of my hair around his wrist. He had tethered a part of me to him, but I had nothing of his. He kept all his secrets from me.
"Trust me," said Amar. "And tonight, we shall celebrate. Where shall I take you, my queen? Your will is where I lay my head."
My mind twisted into a snarl.
"How can I trust you?"
Amar's grin slipped off his face and his eyes narrowed. "Have I not proven myself? I rescued you from death--"
"You don't know that," I retorted, my voice raising. "Perhaps I would've made a last-minute escape. Perhaps the kingdom would've changed its mind."
"But they didn't, did they?" said Amar coldly. "I'm the one who took you to safety. I'm the one who made you a queen."
"Queen? I'm no better than a caged bird," I bit out. The words tasted like bile.
"What would that make me? An owner? You have free rein, as always, over this kingdom. Much more fr ~ Roshani Chokshi

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice. ~ Maya Angelou

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective. ~ Maya Angelou

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us. ~ Maya Angelou

I am a caged bird,
rattling the bars of my cage,
with furious flutterings,
break my chains!
Free my spirit!
Let me fly with the wings you have drawn upon my soul
with heaven dipped ink ~ Steven James

I'd rather be a lone lioness, roaring and free, than a caged bird without even a name to call my own.

~Ai'sha ~ Sherry Jones

"And when you had made sure of the poor little fool," said my aunt - "God forgive me that I should call her so, and she gone where YOU won't go in a hurry - because you had not done wrong enough to her and hers, you must begin to train her, must you? begin to break her, like a poor caged bird, and wear her deluded life away, in teaching her to sing YOUR notes?" ~ Charles Dickens

If you're for the right thing, you do it without thinking. ~ Maya Angelou

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn't be taught to me at George Washington High School. ~ Maya Angelou

How terrible it must be to be a member of the noble class. So many rules. Such restraint. You must feel like a caged bird, battering its wings against the sides of its golden prison. ~ Fiona Paul

When a child is born in a jail and during their life all they know is the jail they were born into, the idea of freedom becomes so terrifying that they ridicule the very thought of being free, as a clinical illness. It is nothing like the song that a caged bird sings. ~ Alejandro C. Estrada

THE TAME BIRD WAS IN A CAGE

THE tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the forest.
They met when the time came, it was a decree of fate.
The free bird cries, "O my love, let us fly to the wood."
The cage bird whispers, "Come hither, let us both live in the cage."
Says the free bird, "Among bars, where is there room to spread one's wings?"
"Alas," cries the caged bird, "I should not know where to sit perched in the sky."

The free bird cries, "My darling, sing the songs of the woodlands."
The cage bird sings, "Sit by my side, I'll teach you the speech of the learned."
The forest bird cries, "No, ah no! songs can never be taught."
The cage bird says, "Alas for me, I know not the songs of the woodlands."

There love is intense with longing, but they never can fly wing to wing.
Through the bars of the cage they look, and vain is their wish to know each other.
They flutter their wings in yearning, and sing, "Come closer, my love!"
The free bird cries, "It cannot be, I fear the closed doors of the cage."
The cage bird whispers, "Alas, my wings are powerless and dead. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I can't wait to read it, because I want to know how someone who was abused and raped as a child could grow up to write poems about being phenomenal when something so disgusting and humiliating has happened to her. (Kendra's words upon learning about Maya Angelou and her books I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Phenomenal Woman) ~ Kamichi Jackson

You have a wild young heart. Right now, it is like a caged bird that batters itself against the bars. To struggle harder will only hurt you more. Wait, be patient. Your time will come to fly. And when it does, you must be strong, not bloodied and weary. ~ Robin Hobb

I wouldn't steal anything because stealing is wrong. If I had to, I'd steal a caged bird and set it free. ~ Arthur Darvill

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait. ~ Maya Angelou

She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy. ~ Maya Angelou

Be creative. Men only learnt how to fly when they stopped imitating birds. ~ Paulo Coelho

Not every winged Creature is considered a bird or a bat. Some wings are made of magic.

- Raani York – 2013 - ~ Raani York

True love is like a bird of many colours, at times, soft and comforting, at others, wild and intense. Yet, it is a fire we all desire.
Don't be afraid of its intense force. It is a spark that consumes the heart, but it quenches the thirst of the seeking soul. ~ Mona Soorma

Birds don't need bridges to cross precipices and honourable men with honesty wings to cross precipices of slander. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Pretty speech," he said.
"It's the only one I've got."
"I know what's really going on here. You're scared to step into my world. Afraid you can't hack it. Much better to hide here and be a big fish in a very small pond."
"If that's the way you see it, fine." I raised my chin. "I have nothing to prove to you, Rogan."
"But now I have something to prove to you," he said. "I promise you, I will win, and by the time I'm done, you won't walk, you'll run to jump into my bed."
"Don't hold your breath," I told him.
All of his civilized veneer was gone now. The dragon faced me, teeth bared, claws out, breathing fire. "You won't just sleep with me. You'll be obsessed with me. You'll beg me to touch you, and when that moment comes, we will revisit what happened here today."
"Never in a million years." I pointed at the doorway. "Exit is that - "
He grabbed me. His mouth closed on mine. His big body caged me in. His chest mashed my breasts. His arms pulled me to him, one across my back, the other cupping my butt. His magic washed over me in an exhilarating rush. My body surrendered. My muscles turned warm and pliant. My nipples tightened, my breasts ready to be squeezed, ready for his fingers and his mouth. An eager ache flared between my legs. My tongue licked his. God, I wanted him. I wanted him so badly.
He let me go, turned on his toes, and went out, laughing under his breath.
Aaargh! "That's right! Keep . . . walking!"
I threw t ~ Ilona Andrews

Love makes intellectual pretzels of us all. ~ Sarah Bird

She calls me 'bird boy' and Hawkeye every time she gets a chance. Last year she bought me a bow and arrow for my birthday and told me it was for when the Avengers were called into action. ~ Lila Felix

My love wants to change the world
she thinks she has so much to give
not realizing how much she takes from others
my love is loyal until she senses rejection of any kind
then she flies like a bird but has less memory
of where she came from
i would like to protect you from my love ~ Francesca Lia Block

You are quarter ghost on your mother's side.
Your heart is a flayed peach in a bone box.
Your hair comes away in clumps like cheap fabric wet.
A reflecting pool gathers around your altar
of plywood sub flooring and split wooden slats.
You are rag doll prone. You are contort,
angle and arc. Here you rot. Here
you are a greening abdomen, slipping skin,
flesh fly, carrion beetles.
This is where bullets take shelter,
where scythes find their function, breath loses
its place on the page. This is where the page is torn
out of every book before chapter's close,
this is slippage, this is a shroud of neglect
pulled over the body, this
is your chance to escape.
Little wraith,
bend light around your skin until it colors you clear,
disappear like silica in a kiln, become
glass and glass beads, become
the staggered whir of an exhaust fan:
something only noticed
when gone. Become
an origami swan. Fold yourself smaller
than ever before. Become less. More
in some ways but less
in the way a famine is less. They will
forgive you for not being satisfied
with fitting in their hands.
They will forgive you
for dying to be
a bird diminutive enough
to fit in a mouth and not be crushed. ~ Jamaal May

Get down, get down, little Henry Lee
And stay all night with me
You won't find a girl in this damn world
That will compare with me
And the wind did howl and the wind did blow
La la la la la
La la la la lee
A little bird lit down on Henry Lee ... ~ Nick Cave

Some sins have no season. We are as likely to be angry in November as to lose our rag in March ... There is, though, something autumnal about greed, apple-cheeked and wheat-crowned, purpled knee-high in grapes; something summery in sloth, as the hammock creaks in the fly-drowsy heat; and more than a tickle of spring in lust, as birds pair and the sap rises. Among these, ingratitude is winter, the worst of seasons. ~ Ann Wroe

A field of scarlet with nine hanged men in black and six yellow daggers in the upper left and lower right quadrants, respectively, while the upper right quandrant featured a shattered skull and the lower left boasted a bird astride a severed head. It might have been a raven. Or an eagle. ~ Glen Cook

He loved the extensive vaults where you could hear the night birds and the sea breeze; he loved the craggy ruins bound together by ivy, those dark halls, and any appearance of death and destruction. Having fallen so far from so high a position, he loved anything that had also fallen from a great height ~ Gustave Flaubert

He gave me a look of mingled anticipation, curiosity, and compassion, like a cat with a captive bird in its claws. ~ Walter Moers

Basic Instincts It's the way mother birds build nests, and build them high enough to elude ~ T.D. Jakes

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. ~ Jane Johnson

Was never secret history but birds tell it in the bowers. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think human beings are almost, by definition, religious people,in the sense that we ask questions of meaning, we anticipate future events, we deal with the issues of mortality from the first time we see a dead bird as a little child. ~ John Shelby Spong

Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams. ~ Haruki Murakami

No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat; Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original. ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

It's funny, but when I talk about this business of my father and Valentina with my women friends, they're absolutely appalled. They see a vulnerable old man who's being exploited. Yet all the men I talk to - without any exception, Mike" (I wag my finger) "they respond with these wry knowing smiles, these little admiring chuckles. Oh, what a lad he is. What an achievement, pulling this much younger bird. Best of luck to him. Let him have his bit of fun."
"You must admit, it's done him good."
"I don't admit anything."
(It's much less satisfying arguing with Mike than with Vera or Pappa. He's always so irritatingly reasonable.)
"Are you sure you're not just being a bit puritanical?"
"Of course I'm not!" (So what if I am?) "It's because he's my father - I just want him to be grown up."
"He is being grown up, in his way."
"No he's not, he's being a lad. An eighty-four-year-old lad. You're all being lads together. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. What a great pair of knockers. For goodness' sake!" My voice has risen to a shriek.
"But you can see it's doing him good, this new relationship. It's breathed new life into him. Just goes to show that you're never too old for love."
"You mean for sex."
"Well, maybe that as well. Your Dad is just hoping to fulfil every man's dream - to lie in the arms of a beautiful younger woman."
"Every man's dream?"
That night Mike and I sleep in separate beds. ~ Marina Lewycka

The sound of the sea, the curve of a horizon, wind in leaves, the cry of a bird leave manifold impression in us. And suddenly, without our wishing it at all, one of these memories spills from us and finds expression in musical language ... I want to sing my interior landscape with the simple artlessness of a child. ~ Claude Debussy

When the wind stops, kite falls but bird flies; because bird did not borrow the wind when rising! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. ~ Matthew McConaughey

The extracellular genesis of cells in animals seemed to me, ever since the publication of the cell theory [of Schwann], just as unlikely as the spontaneous generation of organisms. These doubts produced my observations on the multiplication of blood cells by division in bird and mammalian embryos and on the division of muscle bundles in frog larvae. Since then I have continued these observations in frog larvae, where it is possible to follow the history of tissues back to segmentation. ~ Robert Remak

At the end of the world is a great big mountain of granite rock a mile high,' she said. 'And every year, a tiny bird flies all the way to the rock and wipes its beak on it. Well, when the little bird has worn the mountain down to the size of a grain of sand . . . that's the day I'll marry you, Rob Anybody Feegle! ~ Terry Pratchett

Algebra applies to the clouds, the radiance of the star benefits the rose--no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who could ever calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by falling grains of sand? Who can understand the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abyss of being and the avalanches of creation? A mite has value; the small is great, the great is small. All is balanced in necessity; frightening vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations between beings and things, in this inexhaustible whole, from sun to grub, there is no scorn, each needs the other. Light does not carry terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths without knowing what it does with them; night distributes the stellar essence to the sleeping plants. Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's beak breaking the egg, and it guides the birth of the earthworm, and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has a greater view? Choose. A bit of mold is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an anthill of stars. The same promiscuity, and still more wonderful, between the things of the intellect and material things. Elements and principles are mingled, combined, espoused, multiplied one by another, ~ Victor Hugo

Despite the loud booing from Shari and Greg, Bird managed to punch the ball past the shortstop for a single.
"Lucky hit!" Greg yelled, cupping his hands into a megaphone.
Bird pretended not to hear him. ~ R.L. Stine

The Captain swallowed his capsules and lay down in the dark with pleasant anticipation. This quantity of the drug gave him a unique and voluptuous sensation; it was as though a great dark bird alighted on his chest, looked at him once with fierce, golden eyes, and stealthily enfolded him in his dark wings. ~ Carson McCullers

Looking at a sea bird flapping its wings against the full moon I wish I could grow wings and fly away from everything and be free. I wish I could lose myself in the vast ocean and float away from all this pain in my heart. ~ Monica James

Under no circumstances are you to butter your entire roll and, my God!" she cried suddenly, switching Lan's hand three times in rapid succession. "Never lick your knife!" "Ouch! Fine! Buggering fuck! Leave off with that beshitted thing!" The dead woman let out a sound like the chirping of a bird, staring at her with an indignation that was nearly horror. "Ladies," she sputtered at last. "Ladies do not say bugger or fuck!" "But beshitted's all right?" Lan asked cautiously. "No, it is not!" "You know, I may not be as mannered-up as you are, but in Norwood, it's rude to yell at the table. ~ R. Lee Smith

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. ~ Maya Angelou

I have found, whether you have a tiny business or a big business, if you don't jump on something right away, it's like a bird flying by-it flies off. ~ Barbara Corcoran

Some say that ever 'gainst the season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor wi ~ William Shakespeare

Now these remarks caused a great deal of resentment, hatred, misery, bloodshed, and death. The creatures began to quarrel, and then to wage war with one another. The owl families were continually in disagreement with the hawk families. Neither the hawk families nor the owl families would listen to the entreaties of the swan families to live in peace with them. The magpie quarrelled with every bird and with the smaller animals, especially the mouse and rat families. ~ W. Ramsay Smith

In a society that is essentially designed to organize, direct, and gratify mass impulses, what is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? Religion? Art? Nature? No, the church has turned religion into standardized public spectacle, and the museum has done the same for art. The Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls have been looked at so much that they've become effete, sucked empty by too many stupid eyes. What is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? How about a cold chicken bone on a paper plate at midnight, how about a lurid lipstick lengthening or shortening at your command, how about a Styrofoam nest abandoned by a 'bird' you've never known, how about a pair of windshield wipers pursuing one another futilely while you drive home alone through a downpour, how about something beneath a seat touched by your shoe at the movies, how about worn pencils, cute forks, fat little radios, boxes of bow ties, and bubbles on the side of a bathtub? Yes, these are the things, these kite strings and olive oil cans and Valentine hearts stuffed with nougat, that form the bond between the autistic vision and the experiential world, it is to show these things in their true mysterious light that is the purpose of the moon. ~ Tom Robbins

Upon walking into Eva's kitchen, something profound happened to Delphine. She experienced a fabulous expansion of being. Light-headed, she felt a swooping sensation and then a quiet, as though she'd settled like a bird. ~ Louise Erdrich

If you tell a teammate you're ready to play as tough as you're able to, you'd better go out there and do it. ~ Larry Bird