Bird Song Quotes

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

The nightingale appear'd the first, And as her melody she sang, The apple into blossom burst, To life the grass and violets sprang.

Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From low hung branches; little space they stop; But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek; Then off at once, as in a wanton freak: Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings Pausing upon their yellow flutterings.

Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, “Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.” So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.

If I'm going to be a caged bird, I'll sing the best song I can.

I hear the mad song of a little bird and crush butterflies between my fingers.

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?

A mockingbird... was heard to blend the songs of 32 different kinds of birds into a 10 minute performance, a virtuoso display that served no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

And now everything has changed once again. The air of the Close each evening is full of bird song - I've never really noticed it before. Full of birdsong and summer perfumes, full of strange glimpses and intimations just out of the corner of my eye, of longings and sadness and undefined hopes.It has a name, this sweet disturbance. Its name is Lamorna.

A Mocking Bird regularly resorts to the south angle of a chimney top and salutes us with sweetest notes from the rising of the moon until about midnight.

Why do birds sing in the morning? It's the triumphant shout: 'We got through another night!'

A birdsong can even, for a moment, make the whole world into a sky within us, because we feel that the bird does not distinguish between its heart and the world's.

To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull Night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise.

And hear the pleasant cockoo, loud and long - The simple bird that thinks two notes a song.

This music that was supposed to only come from tapes like in any restaurant. Something would happened. One bird will start to do a little jazz thing, and another bird will start to answer.

The smell of death was thick in the city of Vara?asi. And in Tokyo as well. And yet the birds blissfully sang their songs.

Night was falling. Birds were singing. Birds were, it occurred to me to say, enacting a frantic celebration of day's end. They were manifesting as the earth's bright-colored nerve endings, the sun's descent urging them into activity, filling them individually with life nectar, the life nectar then being passed into the world, out of each beak, in the form of that bird's distinctive song, which was, in turn, an accident of beak shape, throat shape, breast configuration, brain chemistry: some birds blessed in voice, others cursed; some squeaking, others rapturous.

And now the herald lark Left his ground-nest, high tow'ring to descry The morn's approach, and greet her with his song.

Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day.

I know him, February's thrush, And loud at eve he valentines On sprays that paw the naked bush Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still; Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.