It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.

Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC), The Jay and the Peacock

One swallow does not make a summer.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Nichomachean Ethics¹

How helpless we are, like netted birds, when we are caught by desire!

Belva Plain

I realized that If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

Charles Lindbergh (1902 - 1974), Interview shortly before his death, 1974

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.

Chinese Proverb

Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.

David Letterman (1947 - )

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.

Eric Berne (1910 - 1970)

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished² by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

Henry Van Dyke³

Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth⁴ their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.

Izaak Walton (1593 - 1683)

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.

Jacques Deval, Afin de vivre bel et bien

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement⁵ and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds -- how many human aspirations⁶ are realised in their free, holiday-lives -- and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!

John Burroughs (1837 - 1921), Birds and Poets, 1887

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly⁷ give them fruit for their songs.

Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719), 'The Spectator'

I know why the caged bird sings.

Maya Angelou (1928 - ), Quoting a lyric⁸ by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Cranes carry this heavy mystical baggage. They're icons⁹ of fidelity¹⁰ and happiness. The Vietnamese believe cranes cart our souls up to heaven on our wings.

Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, The Bad Seed, 1992

Our avian brothers are back to roost on the first leg of their annual sojourn¹¹ south. Why them and not us? Maybe it's because we humans are meant to be rooted in one spot.

Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, The Bad Seed, 1992

There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,

Tomorrow, just you wait and see.

Nat Burton, White Cliffs of Dover (song, 1941)

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

Robert Lynd (1879 - 1949), The Blue Lion and Other Essays

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains¹² to them?

Rose Kennedy (1890 - 1995)

Much talking is the cause of danger. Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about.

Saskya Pandita

I know of only one bird - the parrot - that talks; and it can't fly very high.

Wilbur Wright (1867 - 1912), declining to make a speech in 1908

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren¹³.

William Henry Hudson (1841 - 1922), Afoot in England, 1909