TERMS STARTING WITH
birdbolt ::: n. --> A short blunt arrow for killing birds without piercing them.
Anything which smites without penetrating.
birdcage ::: n. --> A cage for confining birds.
bird cage ::: n. --> Alt. of Birdcage
birdcall ::: n. --> A sound made in imitation of the note or cry of a bird for the purpose of decoying the bird or its mate.
An instrument of any kind, as a whistle, used in making the sound of a birdcall.
birdcatcher ::: n. --> One whose employment it is to catch birds; a fowler.
birdcatching ::: n. --> The art, act, or occupation or catching birds or wild fowls.
bird cherry ::: --> A shrub (Prunus Padus ) found in Northern and Central Europe. It bears small black cherries.
birder ::: n. --> A birdcatcher.
bird-eyed ::: a. --> Quick-sighted; catching a glance as one goes.
bird fancier ::: --> One who takes pleasure in rearing or collecting rare or curious birds.
One who has for sale the various kinds of birds which are kept in cages.
birdie ::: n. --> A pretty or dear little bird; -- a pet name.
birdikin ::: n. --> A young bird.
birding ::: n. --> Birdcatching or fowling.
birdlet ::: n. --> A little bird; a nestling.
birdlike ::: a. --> Resembling a bird.
birdlime ::: n. --> An extremely adhesive viscid substance, usually made of the middle bark of the holly, by boiling, fermenting, and cleansing it. When a twig is smeared with this substance it will hold small birds which may light upon it. Hence: Anything which insnares. ::: v. t. --> To smear with birdlime; to catch with birdlime; to
birdling ::: n. --> A little bird; a nestling.
birdman ::: n. --> A fowler or birdcatcher.
bird ::: n. --> Orig., a chicken; the young of a fowl; a young eaglet; a nestling; and hence, a feathered flying animal (see 2).
A warm-blooded, feathered vertebrate provided with wings. See Aves.
Specifically, among sportsmen, a game bird.
Fig.: A girl; a maiden. ::: v. i.
bird of paradise
bird of paradise ::: --> The name of several very beautiful birds of the genus Paradisea and allied genera, inhabiting New Guinea and the adjacent islands. The males have brilliant colors, elegant plumes, and often remarkable tail feathers.
bird pepper ::: --> A species of capsicum (Capsicum baccatum), whose small, conical, coral-red fruit is among the most piquant of all red peppers.
birdseed ::: n. --> Canary seed, hemp, millet or other small seeds used for feeding caged birds.
bird's eye: a slang term for fermata, which instructs the performer to hold a note or chord as long as they wish
birds, knows the past and can foretell the future.”
birds. [Rf. Schwab, Vocabulaire de I’Angelologie.]
bird ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa.” *The Secret of the Veda
bird ::: “The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa.” The Secret of the Veda
bird, white-fire dragon-bird.
bird, white-fire dragon-bird
bird-witted ::: a. --> Flighty; passing rapidly from one subject to another; not having the faculty of attention.
Bird-Meertens Formalism "theory, programming" (BMF) (Or "Squiggol") A calculus for derivation of {functional programs} from a specification. It consists of a set of {higher-order functions} that operate on lists including {map}, {fold}, {scan}, {filter}, inits, tails, {cross product} and {function composition}. ["A Calculus of Functions for Program Derivation", R.S. Bird, in Res Topics in Fnl Prog, D. Turner ed, A-W 1990]. ["The Squiggolist", ed Johan Jeuring, published irregularly by CWI Amsterdam]. (1995-05-01)
Bird-Meertens Formalism ::: (theory, programming) (BMF) (Or Squiggol) A calculus for derivation of functional programs from a specification. It consists of a set of higher-order functions that operate on lists including map, fold, scan, filter, inits, tails, cross product and function composition.[A Calculus of Functions for Program Derivation, R.S. Bird, in Res Topics in Fnl Prog, D. Turner ed, A-W 1990].[The Squiggolist, ed Johan Jeuring, published irregularly by CWI Amsterdam]. (1995-05-01)
Bird of God—a term used by Dante to denote
Birds Birds are regarded as originating from certain families of reptiles: “They of the long necks in the water, became the progenitors of the fowls of the air. . . . This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation are in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition process between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot, . . .
Birds have always had a prominent place in symbology, associated, for instance, with the deities of the ancient pantheons, generally as celestial messengers; and with the human and spiritual souls (buddhi and manas). Sometimes the bird in symbolism represented the atman. The ancient Persians at times also symbolized the human mind-soul as a bird, Karshipta.
Birds Of a Feather ::: (BOF) (From the saying Birds of a feather flock together) An informal discussion group, scheduled on a conference program or formed ad hoc, to at DECUS conferences and is reported to have been common at SHARE meetings as far back as the early 1960s. (1994-10-11)
Birds Of a Feather (BOF) (From the saying "Birds of a feather flock together") An informal discussion group, scheduled on a conference program or formed ad hoc, to consider a specific issue or subject. It is not clear where or when this term originated, but it is now associated with the {USENIX} conferences for {Unix} techies and was already established there by 1984. It was used earlier than that at {DECUS} conferences and is reported to have been common at {SHARE} meetings as far back as the early 1960s. (1994-10-11)
Birds of Wonder
Bird ; Symbol of the individual soul. Usually a symbol of some soul-power when it is not the soul itself. Birds often indi- cate cither mind-powers or soul-powers.
BIRD, v/dtf Symbol.
TERMS ANYWHERE
accentor ::: n. --> One who sings the leading part; the director or leader.
A genus of European birds (so named from their sweet notes), including the hedge warbler. In America sometimes applied to the water thrushes.
accipiter ::: n. --> A genus of rapacious birds; one of the Accipitres or Raptores.
A bandage applied over the nose, resembling the claw of a hawk.
accipitres ::: pl. --> of Accipiter ::: n. pl. --> The order that includes rapacious birds. They have a hooked bill, and sharp, strongly curved talons. There are three families, represented by the vultures, the falcons or hawks, and the owls.
“A darkness stooping on the heaven-bird’s wings”
aepyornis ::: n. --> A gigantic bird found fossil in Madagascar.
aerie ::: n. --> The nest of a bird of prey, as of an eagle or hawk; also a brood of such birds; eyrie. Shak. Also fig.: A human residence or resting place perched like an eagle&
agami ::: n. --> A South American bird (Psophia crepitans), allied to the cranes, and easily domesticated; -- called also the gold-breasted trumpeter. Its body is about the size of the pheasant. See Trumpeter.
air cell ::: --> A cavity in the cellular tissue of plants, containing air only.
A receptacle of air in various parts of the system; as, a cell or minute cavity in the walls of the air tubes of the lungs; the air sac of birds; a dilatation of the air vessels in insects.
air sac ::: --> One of the spaces in different parts of the bodies of birds, which are filled with air and connected with the air passages of the lungs; an air cell.
air vessel ::: --> A vessel, cell, duct, or tube containing or conducting air; as the air vessels of insects, birds, plants, etc.; the air vessel of a pump, engine, etc. For the latter, see Air chamber. The air vessels of insects are called tracheae, of plants spiral vessels.
a large group of rather pretty birds, chiefly of Australasia, popularly called Honey-eaters, having a bill and tongue adapted for extracting the sweet juices of many flowers.
albatross ::: n. --> A web-footed bird, of the genus Diomedea, of which there are several species. They are the largest of sea birds, capable of long-continued flight, and are often seen at great distances from the land. They are found chiefly in the southern hemisphere.
albuminin ::: n. --> The substance of the cells which inclose the white of birds&
alcedo ::: n. --> A genus of perching birds, including the European kingfisher (Alcedo ispida). See Halcyon.
alectorides ::: n. pl. --> A group of birds including the common fowl and the pheasants.
alight ::: v. i. --> To spring down, get down, or descend, as from on horseback or from a carriage; to dismount.
To descend and settle, lodge, rest, or stop; as, a flying bird alights on a tree; snow alights on a roof.
To come or chance (upon). ::: a.
allantoid ::: a. --> Alt. of Allantoidal ::: n. --> A membranous appendage of the embryos of mammals, birds, and reptiles, -- in mammals serving to connect the fetus with the parent; the urinary vesicle.
allantoidea ::: n. pl. --> The division of Vertebrata in which the embryo develops an allantois. It includes reptiles, birds, and mammals.
“All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.”
"All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.” ::: "The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings" or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined"? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see"?” Letters on Savitri
alpia ::: n. --> The seed of canary grass (Phalaris Canariensis), used for feeding cage birds.
altitude ::: n. --> Space extended upward; height; the perpendicular elevation of an object above its foundation, above the ground, or above a given level, or of one object above another; as, the altitude of a mountain, or of a bird above the top of a tree.
The elevation of a point, or star, or other celestial object, above the horizon, measured by the arc of a vertical circle intercepted between such point and the horizon. It is either true or apparent; true when measured from the rational or real horizon,
altrices ::: n. pl. --> Nursers, -- a term applied to those birds whose young are hatched in a very immature and helpless condition, so as to require the care of their parents for some time; -- opposed to praecoces.
amadavat ::: n. --> The strawberry finch, a small Indian song bird (Estrelda amandava), commonly caged and kept for fighting. The female is olive brown; the male, in summer, mostly crimson; -- called also red waxbill.
Amal: “The ‘Bird of Wonder’ is the unimaginably beautiful carrier of the higher consciousness.”
ambulator ::: n. --> One who walks about; a walker.
A beetle of the genus Lamia.
A genus of birds, or one of this genus.
An instrument for measuring distances; -- called also perambulator.
amnion ::: n. --> A thin membrane surrounding the embryos of mammals, birds, and reptiles.
amniota ::: n. pl. --> That group of vertebrates which develops in its embryonic life the envelope called the amnion. It comprises the reptiles, the birds, and the mammals.
anaconda ::: n. --> A large South American snake of the Boa family (Eunectes murinus), which lives near rivers, and preys on birds and small mammals. The name is also applied to a similar large serpent (Python tigris) of Ceylon.
anhima ::: n. --> A South American aquatic bird; the horned screamer or kamichi (Palamedea cornuta). See Kamichi.
anhinga ::: n. --> An aquatic bird of the southern United States (Platus anhinga); the darter, or snakebird.
anisodactylous ::: a. --> Characterized by unequal toes, three turned forward and one backward, as in most passerine birds.
anisodactyls ::: n. pl. --> A group of herbivorous mammals characterized by having the hoofs in a single series around the foot, as the elephant, rhinoceros, etc.
A group of perching birds which are anisodactylous.
annotine ::: n. --> A bird one year old, or that has once molted.
anomaliped ::: a. --> Alt. of Anomalipede ::: n. --> One of a group of perching birds, having the middle toe more or less united to the outer and inner ones.
ano ::: n. --> A black bird of tropical America, the West Indies and Florida (Crotophaga ani), allied to the cuckoos, and remarkable for communistic nesting.
anseres ::: n. pl. --> A Linnaean order of aquatic birds swimming by means of webbed feet, as the duck, or of lobed feet, as the grebe. In this order were included the geese, ducks, auks, divers, gulls, petrels, etc.
anseriformes ::: n. pl. --> A division of birds including the geese, ducks, and closely allied forms.
ant bird ::: --> See Ant bird, under Ant, n.
antestomach ::: n. --> A cavity which leads into the stomach, as in birds.
antiae ::: n. pl. --> The two projecting feathered angles of the forehead of some birds; the frontal points.
antitrochanter ::: n. --> An articular surface on the ilium of birds against which the great trochanter of the femur plays.
ant thrush ::: --> One of several species of tropical birds, of the Old World, of the genus Pitta, somewhat resembling the thrushes, and feeding chiefly on ants.
See Ant bird, under Ant.
aplustre ::: n. --> An ornamental appendage of wood at the ship&
apode ::: n. --> One of certain animals that have no feet or footlike organs; esp. one of certain fabulous birds which were said to have no feet.
apposed ::: a. --> Placed in apposition; mutually fitting, as the mandibles of a bird&
apteria ::: n. pl. --> Naked spaces between the feathered areas of birds. See Pteryliae.
apteryges ::: n. pl. --> An order of birds, including the genus Apteryx.
apteryx ::: n. --> A genus of New Zealand birds about the size of a hen, with only short rudiments of wings, armed with a claw and without a tail; the kiwi. It is allied to the gigantic extinct moas of the same country. Five species are known.
aracari ::: n. --> A South American bird, of the genus Pleroglossius, allied to the toucans. There are several species.
arboricole ::: a. --> Tree-inhabiting; -- said of certain birds.
archaeopteryx ::: n. --> A fossil bird, of the Jurassic period, remarkable for having a long tapering tail of many vertebrae with feathers along each side, and jaws armed with teeth, with other reptilian characteristics.
a religious official among the Romans, whose duty it was to predict future events and advise upon the course of public business, in accordance with omens derived from the flight, singing, and feeding of birds. Hence extended to: A soothsayer, diviner, or prophet, generally; one that foresees and foretells the future. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.) augured.
argala ::: n. --> The adjutant bird.
articulary ::: n. --> A bone in the base of the lower jaw of many birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes.
aucupation ::: n. --> Birdcatching; fowling.
augur ::: n. --> An official diviner who foretold events by the singing, chattering, flight, and feeding of birds, or by signs or omens derived from celestial phenomena, certain appearances of quadrupeds, or unusual occurrences.
One who foretells events by omens; a soothsayer; a diviner; a prophet. ::: v. i.
augur ::: Tehmi: “In Latin augur is a bird and they would prophesy by the flight of birds; hence, augury.
augury ::: n. --> The art or practice of foretelling events by observing the actions of birds, etc.; divination.
An omen; prediction; prognostication; indication of the future; presage.
A rite, ceremony, or observation of an augur.
auk ::: n. --> A name given to various species of arctic sea birds of the family Alcidae. The great auk, now extinct, is Alca (/ Plautus) impennis. The razor-billed auk is A. torda. See Puffin, Guillemot, and Murre.
auriculars ::: n. pl. --> A circle of feathers surrounding the opening of the ear of birds.
auspicate ::: a. --> Auspicious. ::: v. t. --> To foreshow; to foretoken.
To give a favorable turn to in commencing; to inaugurate; -- a sense derived from the Roman practice of taking the auspicium, or inspection of birds, before undertaking any important
auspice ::: a. --> A divining or taking of omens by observing birds; an omen as to an undertaking, drawn from birds; an augury; an omen or sign in general; an indication as to the future.
Protection; patronage and care; guidance.
automaton ::: v. i. --> Any thing or being regarded as having the power of spontaneous motion or action.
A self-moving machine, or one which has its motive power within itself; -- applied chiefly to machines which appear to imitate spontaneously the motions of living beings, such as men, birds, etc.
autophagi ::: n. pl. --> Birds which are able to run about and obtain their own food as soon as hatched.
avernian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Avernus, a lake of Campania, in Italy, famous for its poisonous vapors, which ancient writers fancied were so malignant as to kill birds flying over it. It was represented by the poets to be connected with the infernal regions.
aves ::: n. pl. --> The class of Vertebrata that includes the birds.
avian ::: a. --> Of or instrument to birds.
aviary ::: n. --> A house, inclosure, large cage, or other place, for keeping birds confined; a bird house.
avicula ::: n. --> A genus of marine bivalves, having a pearly interior, allied to the pearl oyster; -- so called from a supposed resemblance of the typical species to a bird.
avicular ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a bird or to birds.
avicularia ::: n. pl. --> See prehensile processes on the cells of some Bryozoa, often having the shape of a bird&
aviculture ::: n. --> Rearing and care of birds.
avifauna ::: n. --> The birds, or all the kinds of birds, inhabiting a region.
avoset ::: n. --> A grallatorial bird, of the genus Recurvirostra; the scooper. The bill is long and bend upward toward the tip. The American species is R. Americana.
Same as Avocet.
babbler ::: n. --> An idle talker; an irrational prater; a teller of secrets.
A hound too noisy on finding a good scent.
A name given to any one of family (Timalinae) of thrushlike birds, having a chattering note.
baccivorous ::: a. --> Eating, or subsisting on, berries; as, baccivorous birds.
baltimore bird ::: --> Alt. of Baltimore oriole
baltimore oriole ::: --> A common American bird (Icterus galbula), named after Lord Baltimore, because its colors (black and orange red) are like those of his coat of arms; -- called also golden robin.
barbet ::: n. --> A variety of small dog, having long curly hair.
A bird of the family Bucconidae, allied to the Cuckoos, having a large, conical beak swollen at the base, and bearded with five bunches of stiff bristles; the puff bird. It inhabits tropical America and Africa.
A larva that feeds on aphides.
batfowling ::: n. --> A mode of catching birds at night, by holding a torch or other light, and beating the bush or perch where they roost. The birds, flying to the light, are caught with nets or otherwise.
baya ::: n. --> The East Indian weaver bird (Ploceus Philippinus).
birdbolt ::: n. --> A short blunt arrow for killing birds without piercing them.
Anything which smites without penetrating.
birdcage ::: n. --> A cage for confining birds.
bird cage ::: n. --> Alt. of Birdcage
birdcall ::: n. --> A sound made in imitation of the note or cry of a bird for the purpose of decoying the bird or its mate.
An instrument of any kind, as a whistle, used in making the sound of a birdcall.
birdcatcher ::: n. --> One whose employment it is to catch birds; a fowler.
birdcatching ::: n. --> The art, act, or occupation or catching birds or wild fowls.
bird cherry ::: --> A shrub (Prunus Padus ) found in Northern and Central Europe. It bears small black cherries.
birder ::: n. --> A birdcatcher.
bird-eyed ::: a. --> Quick-sighted; catching a glance as one goes.
bird fancier ::: --> One who takes pleasure in rearing or collecting rare or curious birds.
One who has for sale the various kinds of birds which are kept in cages.
birdie ::: n. --> A pretty or dear little bird; -- a pet name.
birdikin ::: n. --> A young bird.
birding ::: n. --> Birdcatching or fowling.
birdlet ::: n. --> A little bird; a nestling.
birdlike ::: a. --> Resembling a bird.
birdlime ::: n. --> An extremely adhesive viscid substance, usually made of the middle bark of the holly, by boiling, fermenting, and cleansing it. When a twig is smeared with this substance it will hold small birds which may light upon it. Hence: Anything which insnares. ::: v. t. --> To smear with birdlime; to catch with birdlime; to
birdling ::: n. --> A little bird; a nestling.
birdman ::: n. --> A fowler or birdcatcher.
bird ::: n. --> Orig., a chicken; the young of a fowl; a young eaglet; a nestling; and hence, a feathered flying animal (see 2).
A warm-blooded, feathered vertebrate provided with wings. See Aves.
Specifically, among sportsmen, a game bird.
Fig.: A girl; a maiden. ::: v. i.
bird of paradise
bird of paradise ::: --> The name of several very beautiful birds of the genus Paradisea and allied genera, inhabiting New Guinea and the adjacent islands. The males have brilliant colors, elegant plumes, and often remarkable tail feathers.
bird pepper ::: --> A species of capsicum (Capsicum baccatum), whose small, conical, coral-red fruit is among the most piquant of all red peppers.
birdseed ::: n. --> Canary seed, hemp, millet or other small seeds used for feeding caged birds.
bird ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa.” *The Secret of the Veda
bird ::: “The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa.” The Secret of the Veda
*bird, white-fire dragon-bird.
bird, white-fire dragon-bird.
bird, white-fire dragon-bird
bird-witted ::: a. --> Flighty; passing rapidly from one subject to another; not having the faculty of attention.
beak ::: n. --> The bill or nib of a bird, consisting of a horny sheath, covering the jaws. The form varied much according to the food and habits of the bird, and is largely used in the classification of birds.
A similar bill in other animals, as the turtles.
The long projecting sucking mouth of some insects, and other invertebrates, as in the Hemiptera.
The upper or projecting part of the shell, near the hinge of a bivalve.
beambird ::: n. --> A small European flycatcher (Muscicapa gricola), so called because it often nests on a beam in a building.
beard ::: n. --> The hair that grows on the chin, lips, and adjacent parts of the human face, chiefly of male adults.
The long hairs about the face in animals, as in the goat.
The cluster of small feathers at the base of the beak in some birds
The appendages to the jaw in some Cetacea, and to the mouth or jaws of some fishes.
The byssus of certain shellfish, as the muscle.
becard ::: n. --> A South American bird of the flycatcher family. (Tityra inquisetor).
beccafico ::: n. --> A small bird. (Silvia hortensis), which is highly prized by the Italians for the delicacy of its flesh in the autumn, when it has fed on figs, grapes, etc.
bee-eater ::: n. --> A bird of the genus Merops, that feeds on bees. The European species (M. apiaster) is remarkable for its brilliant colors.
An African bird of the genus Rhinopomastes.
beefeater ::: n. --> One who eats beef; hence, a large, fleshy person.
One of the yeomen of the guard, in England.
An African bird of the genus Buphaga, which feeds on the larvae of botflies hatched under the skin of oxen, antelopes, etc. Two species are known.
belime ::: v. t. --> To besmear or insnare with birdlime.
bellbird ::: n. --> A South American bird of the genus Casmarhincos, and family Cotingidae, of several species; the campanero.
The Myzantha melanophrys of Australia.
bevy ::: n. --> A company; an assembly or collection of persons, especially of ladies.
A flock of birds, especially quails or larks; also, a herd of roes.
biauriculate ::: a. --> Having two auricles, as the heart of mammals, birds, and reptiles.
Having two earlike projections at its base, as a leaf.
bicalcarate ::: a. --> Having two spurs, as the wing or leg of a bird.
billed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Bill ::: a. --> Furnished with, or having, a bill, as a bird; -- used in composition; as, broad-billed.
bill ::: n. --> A beak, as of a bird, or sometimes of a turtle or other animal.
The bell, or boom, of the bittern
A cutting instrument, with hook-shaped point, and fitted with a handle; -- used in pruning, etc.; a billhook. When short, called a hand bill, when long, a hedge bill.
A weapon of infantry, in the 14th and 15th centuries. A common form of bill consisted of a broad, heavy, double-edged,
Birds of Wonder
Bird ; Symbol of the individual soul. Usually a symbol of some soul-power when it is not the soul itself. Birds often indi- cate cither mind-powers or soul-powers.
BIRD, v/dtf Symbol.
bittern ::: n. --> A wading bird of the genus Botaurus, allied to the herons, of various species. ::: a. --> The brine which remains in salt works after the salt is concreted, having a bitter taste from the chloride of magnesium which it contains.
blackbird ::: n. --> In England, a species of thrush (Turdus merula), a singing bird with a fin note; the merle. In America the name is given to several birds, as the Quiscalus versicolor, or crow blackbird; the Agelaeus phoeniceus, or red-winged blackbird; the cowbird; the rusty grackle, etc. See Redwing.
blackcap ::: n. --> A small European song bird (Sylvia atricapilla), with a black crown; the mock nightingale.
An American titmouse (Parus atricapillus); the chickadee.
An apple roasted till black, to be served in a dish of boiled custard.
The black raspberry.
bloodbird ::: n. --> An Australian honeysucker (Myzomela sanguineolata); -- so called from the bright red color of the male bird.
bluebird ::: n. --> A small song bird (Sialia sialis), very common in the United States, and, in the north, one of the earliest to arrive in spring. The male is blue, with the breast reddish. It is related to the European robin.
bluebreast ::: n. --> A small European bird; the blue-throated warbler.
bluethroat ::: n. --> A singing bird of northern Europe and Asia (Cyanecula Suecica), related to the nightingales; -- called also blue-throated robin and blue-throated warbler.
boatbill ::: n. --> A wading bird (Cancroma cochlearia) of the tropical parts of South America. Its bill is somewhat like a boat with the keel uppermost.
A perching bird of India, of the genus Eurylaimus.
boatswain ::: n. --> An officer who has charge of the boats, sails, rigging, colors, anchors, cables, cordage, etc., of a ship, and who also summons the crew, and performs other duties.
The jager gull.
The tropic bird.
boat-tail ::: n. --> A large grackle or blackbird (Quiscalus major), found in the Southern United States.
bobolink ::: n. --> An American singing bird (Dolichonyx oryzivorus). The male is black and white; the female is brown; -- called also, ricebird, reedbird, and Boblincoln.
booby ::: n. --> A dunce; a stupid fellow.
A swimming bird (Sula fiber or S. sula) related to the common gannet, and found in the West Indies, nesting on the bare rocks. It is so called on account of its apparent stupidity. The name is also sometimes applied to other species of gannets; as, S. piscator, the red-footed booby.
A species of penguin of the antarctic seas.
boreal ::: a. --> Northern; pertaining to the north, or to the north wind; as, a boreal bird; a boreal blast.
bower bird ::: --> An Australian bird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus / holosericeus), allied to the starling, which constructs singular bowers or playhouses of twigs and decorates them with bright-colored objects; the satin bird.
bow net ::: --> A trap for lobsters, being a wickerwork cylinder with a funnel-shaped entrance at one end.
A net for catching birds.
brachypteres ::: n.pl. --> A group of birds, including auks, divers, and penguins.
bramble net ::: --> A net to catch birds.
breviped ::: a. --> Having short legs. ::: n. --> A breviped bird.
brevipen ::: n. --> A brevipennate bird.
brevipennate ::: a. --> Short-winged; -- applied to birds which can not fly, owing to their short wings, as the ostrich, cassowary, and emu.
brid ::: n. --> A bird.
broadmouth ::: n. --> One of the Eurylaimidae, a family of East Indian passerine birds.
broiler ::: n. --> One who excites broils; one who engages in or promotes noisy quarrels.
One who broils, or cooks by broiling.
A gridiron or other utensil used in broiling.
A chicken or other bird fit for broiling.
brood ::: v. t. --> The young birds hatched at one time; a hatch; as, a brood of chickens.
The young from the same dam, whether produced at the same time or not; young children of the same mother, especially if nearly of the same age; offspring; progeny; as, a woman with a brood of children.
That which is bred or produced; breed; species.
Heavy waste in tin and copper ores.
To sit over, cover, and cherish; as, a hen broods her
brown thrush ::: --> A common American singing bird (Harporhynchus rufus), allied to the mocking bird; -- also called brown thrasher.
brush turkey ::: --> A large, edible, gregarious bird of Australia (Talegalla Lathami) of the family Megapodidae. Also applied to several allied species of New Guinea.
buceros ::: n. --> A genus of large perching birds; the hornbills.
bulbul ::: n. --> The Persian nightingale (Pycnonotus jocosus). The name is also applied to several other Asiatic singing birds, of the family Timaliidae. The green bulbuls belong to the Chloropsis and allied genera.
bullen-bullen ::: n. --> The lyre bird.
bullfinch ::: n. --> A bird of the genus Pyrrhula and other related genera, especially the P. vulgaris / rubicilla, a bird of Europe allied to the grosbeak, having the breast, cheeks, and neck, red.
bunchy ::: a. --> Swelling out in bunches.
Growing in bunches, or resembling a bunch; having tufts; as, the bird&
bunting ::: n. --> A bird of the genus Emberiza, or of an allied genus, related to the finches and sparrows (family Fringillidae).
Alt. of Buntine
burbolt ::: n. --> A birdbolt.
burgomaster ::: n. --> A chief magistrate of a municipal town in Holland, Flanders, and Germany, corresponding to mayor in England and the United States; a burghmaster.
An aquatic bird, the glaucous gull (Larus glaucus), common in arctic regions.
burniebee ::: n. --> The ladybird.
bustard ::: n. --> A bird of the genus Otis.
butterbird ::: n. --> The rice bunting or bobolink; -- so called in the island of Jamaica.
buzzard ::: n. --> A bird of prey of the Hawk family, belonging to the genus Buteo and related genera.
A blockhead; a dunce. ::: a. --> Senseless; stupid.
cageling ::: n. --> A bird confined in a cage; esp. a young bird.
cage ::: n. --> A box or inclosure, wholly or partly of openwork, in wood or metal, used for confining birds or other animals.
A place of confinement for malefactors
An outer framework of timber, inclosing something within it; as, the cage of a staircase.
A skeleton frame to limit the motion of a loose piece, as a ball valve.
A wirework strainer, used in connection with pumps and pipes.
calcific ::: a. --> Calciferous. Specifically: (Zool.) of or pertaining to the portion of the oviduct which forms the eggshell in birds and reptiles.
callings ::: 1. (i.e. an animal or bird) that calls. 2. Things or voices that announce or address in a clear and often authoritative voice.
calliope ::: n. --> The Muse that presides over eloquence and heroic poetry; mother of Orpheus, and chief of the nine Muses.
One of the asteroids. See Solar.
A musical instrument consisting of a series of steam whistles, toned to the notes of the scale, and played by keys arranged like those of an organ. It is sometimes attached to steamboat boilers.
A beautiful species of humming bird (Stellula Calliope) of California and adjacent regions.
campanero ::: n. --> The bellbird of South America. See Bellbird.
canary ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the Canary Islands; as, canary wine; canary birds.
Of a pale yellowish color; as, Canary stone. ::: n. --> Wine made in the Canary Islands; sack.
A canary bird.
canary bird ::: --> A small singing bird of the Finch family (Serinus Canarius), a native of the Canary Islands. It was brought to Europe in the 16th century, and made a household pet. It generally has a yellowish body with the wings and tail greenish, but in its wild state it is more frequently of gray or brown color. It is sometimes called canary finch.
cap ::: n. --> A covering for the head
One usually with a visor but without a brim, for men and boys
One of lace, muslin, etc., for women, or infants
One used as the mark or ensign of some rank, office, or dignity, as that of a cardinal.
The top, or uppermost part; the chief.
A respectful uncovering of the head.
The whole top of the head of a bird from the base of the bill
caracara ::: n. --> A south American bird of several species and genera, resembling both the eagles and the vultures. The caracaras act as scavengers, and are also called carrion buzzards.
cariama ::: n. --> A large, long-legged South American bird (Dicholophus cristatus) which preys upon snakes, etc. See Seriema.
carina ::: n. --> A keel
That part of a papilionaceous flower, consisting of two petals, commonly united, which incloses the organs of fructification
A longitudinal ridge or projection like the keel of a boat.
The keel of the breastbone of birds.
carinatae ::: n. pl. --> A grand division of birds, including all existing flying birds; -- So called from the carina or keel on the breastbone.
carinated ::: a. --> Shaped like the keel or prow of a ship; having a carina or keel; as, a carinate calyx or leaf; a carinate sternum (of a bird).
carpintero ::: n. --> A california woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus), noted for its habit of inserting acorns in holes which it drills in trees. The acorns become infested by insect larvae, which, when grown, are extracted for food by the bird.
caruncula ::: n. --> A small fleshy prominence or excrescence; especially the small, reddish body, the caruncula lacrymalis, in the inner angle of the eye.
An excrescence or appendage surrounding or near the hilum of a seed.
A naked, flesh appendage, on the head of a bird, as the wattles of a turkey, etc.
cassican ::: n. --> An American bird of the genus Cassicus, allied to the starlings and orioles, remarkable for its skillfully constructed and suspended nest; the crested oriole. The name is also sometimes given to the piping crow, an Australian bird.
cassowary ::: n. --> A large bird, of the genus Casuarius, found in the east Indies. It is smaller and stouter than the ostrich. Its head is armed with a kind of helmet of horny substance, consisting of plates overlapping each other, and it has a group of long sharp spines on each wing which are used as defensive organs. It is a shy bird, and runs with great rapidity. Other species inhabit New Guinea, Australia, etc.
catbird ::: n. --> An American bird (Galeoscoptes Carolinensis), allied to the mocking bird, and like it capable of imitating the notes of other birds, but less perfectly. Its note resembles at times the mewing of a cat.
catch ::: v. t. --> To lay hold on; to seize, especially with the hand; to grasp (anything) in motion, with the effect of holding; as, to catch a ball.
To seize after pursuing; to arrest; as, to catch a thief.
To take captive, as in a snare or net, or on a hook; as, to catch a bird or fish.
Hence: To insnare; to entangle.
To seize with the senses or the mind; to apprehend; as,
cere ::: n. --> The soft naked sheath at the base of the beak of birds of prey, parrots, and some other birds. See Beak. ::: v. t. --> To wax; to cover or close with wax.
ceroma ::: n. --> The unguent (a composition of oil and wax) with which wrestlers were anointed among the ancient Romans.
That part of the baths and gymnasia in which bathers and wrestlers anointed themselves.
The cere of birds.
cervix ::: n. --> The neck; also, the necklike portion of any part, as of the womb. See Illust. of Bird.
chaffinch ::: n. --> A bird of Europe (Fringilla coelebs), having a variety of very sweet songs, and highly valued as a cage bird; -- called also copper finch.
chalaza ::: n. --> The place on an ovule, or seed, where its outer coats cohere with each other and the nucleus.
A spiral band of thickened albuminous substance which exists in the white of the bird&
chalder ::: n. --> A kind of bird; the oyster catcher.
chatterer ::: n. --> A prater; an idle talker.
A bird of the family Ampelidae -- so called from its monotonous note. The Bohemion chatterer (Ampelis garrulus) inhabits the arctic regions of both continents. In America the cedar bird is a more common species. See Bohemian chatterer, and Cedar bird.
chebec ::: n. --> See Chebacco.
A small American bird (Empidonax minimus); the least flycatcher.
cheep ::: v. i. --> To chirp, as a young bird. ::: v. t. --> To give expression to in a chirping tone. ::: n.
chenomorphae ::: n. pl. --> An order of birds, including the swans, ducks, geese, flamingoes and screamers.
chewink ::: n. --> An american bird (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) of the Finch family, so called from its note; -- called also towhee bunting and ground robin.
chickadee ::: n. --> A small bird, the blackcap titmouse (Parus atricapillus), of North America; -- named from its note.
chicken ::: n. --> A young bird or fowl, esp. a young barnyard fowl.
A young person; a child; esp. a young woman; a maiden.
chickweed ::: n. --> The name of several caryophyllaceous weeds, especially Stellaria media, the seeds and flower buds of which are a favorite food of small birds.
chin ::: n. --> The lower extremity of the face below the mouth; the point of the under jaw.
The exterior or under surface embraced between the branches of the lower jaw bone, in birds.
chipping bird ::: --> The chippy.
chippy ::: a. --> Abounding in, or resembling, chips; dry and tasteless. ::: n. --> A small American sparrow (Spizella socialis), very common near dwelling; -- also called chipping bird and chipping sparrow, from its simple note.
chirk ::: v. i. --> To shriek; to gnash; to utter harsh or shrill cries.
To chirp like a bird.
Lively; cheerful; in good spirits. ::: v. t. --> To cheer; to enliven; as, to chirk one up.
chirm ::: v. i. --> To chirp or to make a mournful cry, as a bird. ::: n. --> Clamor, or confused noise; buzzing.
chirp ::: v. i. --> To make a shop, sharp, cheerful, as of small birds or crickets. ::: n. --> A short, sharp note, as of a bird or insect.
chitter ::: v. i. --> To chirp in a tremulous manner, as a bird.
To shiver or chatter with cold.
choir ::: 1. An organized company of singers. 2. Fig. The songs of angels, birds, etc. choirs.
chough ::: n. --> A bird of the Crow family (Fregilus graculus) of Europe. It is of a black color, with a long, slender, curved bill and red legs; -- also called chauk, chauk-daw, chocard, Cornish chough, red-legged crow. The name is also applied to several allied birds, as the Alpine chough.
cirrous ::: a. --> Cirrose.
Tufted; -- said of certain feathers of birds.
clamatores ::: n. pl. --> A division of passerine birds in which the vocal muscles are but little developed, so that they lack the power of singing.
clape ::: n. --> A bird; the flicker.
clavicle ::: n. --> The collar bone, which is joined at one end to the scapula, or shoulder blade, and at the other to the sternum, or breastbone. In man each clavicle is shaped like the letter /, and is situated just above the first rib on either side of the neck. In birds the two clavicles are united ventrally, forming the merrythought, or wishbone.
claw ::: n. **1. A sharp, usually curved, nail on the foot of an animal, as on a cat, dog, or bird. v. 2. To tear, scratch, seize, pull, etc., with or as if with claws. clawed.**
claw ::: n. --> A sharp, hooked nail, as of a beast or bird.
The whole foot of an animal armed with hooked nails; the pinchers of a lobster, crab, etc.
Anything resembling the claw of an animal, as the curved and forked end of a hammer for drawing nails.
A slender appendage or process, formed like a claw, as the base of petals of the pink.
To pull, tear, or scratch with, or as with, claws or nails.
climber ::: n. --> One who, or that which, climbs
A plant that climbs.
A bird that climbs, as a woodpecker or a parrot. ::: v. i. --> To climb; to mount with effort; to clamber.
cloaca ::: n. --> A sewer; as, the Cloaca Maxima of Rome.
A privy.
The common chamber into which the intestinal, urinary, and generative canals discharge in birds, reptiles, amphibians, and many fishes.
coccinella ::: n. --> A genus of small beetles of many species. They and their larvae feed on aphids or plant lice, and hence are of great benefit to man. Also called ladybirds and ladybugs.
cockatoo ::: n. --> A bird of the Parrot family, of the subfamily Cacatuinae, having a short, strong, and much curved beak, and the head ornamented with a crest, which can be raised or depressed at will. There are several genera and many species; as the broad-crested (Plictolophus, / Cacatua, cristatus), the sulphur-crested (P. galeritus), etc. The palm or great black cockatoo of Australia is Microglossus aterrimus.
cockatrice ::: n. --> A fabulous serpent whose breath and look were said to be fatal. See Basilisk.
A representation of this serpent. It has the head, wings, and legs of a bird, and tail of a serpent.
A venomous serpent which which cannot now be identified.
Any venomous or deadly thing.
cock ::: n. --> The male of birds, particularly of gallinaceous or domestic fowls.
A vane in the shape of a cock; a weathercock.
A chief man; a leader or master.
The crow of a cock, esp. the first crow in the morning; cockcrow.
A faucet or valve.
The style of gnomon of a dial.
coïl ::: a large bird belonging to the cuckoo family, native to India, with a characteristic call reminiscent of the sound of its name. coïl"s
columbae ::: n. pl. --> An order of birds, including the pigeons.
coly ::: n. --> Any bird of the genus Colius and allied genera. They inhabit Africa.
commissure ::: n. --> A joint, seam, or closure; the place where two bodies, or parts of a body, meet and unite; an interstice, cleft, or juncture.
The point of union between two parts, as the angles of the lips or eyelids, the mandibles of a bird, etc.
A collection of fibers connecting parts of the brain or spinal marrow; a chiasma.
The line of junction or cohering face of two carpels, as in the parsnip, caraway, etc.
communistic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to communism or communists; as, communistic theories.
Living or having their nests in common, as certain birds.
compsognathus ::: n. --> A genus of Dinosauria found in the Jurassic formation, and remarkable for having several birdlike features.
condor ::: n. --> A very large bird of the Vulture family (Sarcorhamphus gryphus), found in the most elevated parts of the Andes.
conirostres ::: n. pl. --> A tribe of perching birds, including those which have a strong conical bill, as the finches.
coot ::: n. --> A wading bird with lobate toes, of the genus Fulica.
The surf duck or scoter. In the United States all the species of (/demia are called coots. See Scoter.
A stupid fellow; a simpleton; as, a silly coot.
coquette ::: n. --> A vain, trifling woman, who endeavors to attract admiration from a desire to gratify vanity; a flirt; -- formerly sometimes applied also to men.
A tropical humming bird of the genus Lophornis, with very elegant neck plumes. Several species are known. See Illustration under Spangle, v. t.
coracoid ::: a. --> Shaped like a crow&
cormorant ::: n. --> Any species of Phalacrocorax, a genus of sea birds having a sac under the beak; the shag. Cormorants devour fish voraciously, and have become the emblem of gluttony. They are generally black, and hence are called sea ravens, and coalgeese.
A voracious eater; a glutton, or gluttonous servant.
corncrake ::: n. --> A bird (Crex crex or C. pratensis) which frequents grain fields; the European crake or land rail; -- called also corn bird.
corniplume ::: n. --> A hornlike tuft of feathers on the head of some birds.
coronated ::: a. --> Having or wearing a crown.
Having the coronal feathers lengthened or otherwise distinguished; -- said of birds.
Girt about the spire with a row of tubercles or spines; -- said of spiral shells.
Having a crest or a crownlike appendage.
cotinga ::: n. --> A bird of the family Cotingidae, including numerous bright-colored South American species; -- called also chatterers.
courlan ::: n. --> A South American bird, of the genus Aramus, allied to the rails.
courser ::: n. --> One who courses or hunts.
A swift or spirited horse; a racer or a war horse; a charger.
A grallatorial bird of Europe (Cursorius cursor), remarkable for its speed in running. Sometimes, in a wider sense, applied to running birds of the Ostrich family.
covey ::: n. --> A brood or hatch of birds; an old bird with her brood of young; hence, a small flock or number of birds together; -- said of game; as, a covey of partridges.
A company; a bevy; as, a covey of girls.
A pantry. ::: v. i.
cowbird ::: n. --> The cow blackbird (Molothrus ater), an American starling. Like the European cuckoo, it builds no nest, but lays its eggs in the nests of other birds; -- so called because frequently associated with cattle.
cragsman ::: n. --> One accustomed to climb rocks or crags; esp., one who makes a business of climbing the cliffs overhanging the sea to get the eggs of sea birds or the birds themselves.
crake ::: v. t. & i. --> To cry out harshly and loudly, like the bird called crake.
To boast; to speak loudly and boastfully. ::: n. --> A boast. See Crack, n.
Any species or rail of the genera Crex and Porzana; -- so
crane ::: any of various large wading birds of the family Gruidae, having a long neck, long legs, and a long bill.
crane ::: n. --> A measure for fresh herrings, -- as many as will fill a barrel.
A wading bird of the genus Grus, and allied genera, of various species, having a long, straight bill, and long legs and neck.
A machine for raising and lowering heavy weights, and, while holding them suspended, transporting them through a limited lateral distance. In one form it consists of a projecting arm or jib of timber or iron, a rotating post or base, and the necessary tackle, windlass,
crankbird ::: n. --> A small European woodpecker (Picus minor).
craw ::: n. --> The crop of a bird.
The stomach of an animal.
creeper ::: n. --> One who, or that which, creeps; any creeping thing.
A plant that clings by rootlets, or by tendrils, to the ground, or to trees, etc.; as, the Virginia creeper (Ampelopsis quinquefolia).
A small bird of the genus Certhia, allied to the wrens. The brown or common European creeper is C. familiaris, a variety of which (var. Americana) inhabits America; -- called also tree creeper and creeptree. The American black and white creeper is Mniotilta varia.
crepusculous ::: a. --> Pertaining to twilight; glimmering; hence, imperfectly clear or luminous.
Flying in the twilight or evening, or before sunrise; -- said certain birds and insects.
crest ::: n. --> A tuft, or other excrescence or natural ornament, growing on an animal&
crissum ::: n. --> That part of a bird, or the feathers, surrounding the cloacal opening; the under tail coverts.
crop ::: n. --> The pouchlike enlargement of the gullet of birds, serving as a receptacle for food; the craw.
The top, end, or highest part of anything, especially of a plant or tree.
That which is cropped, cut, or gathered from a single felld, or of a single kind of grain or fruit, or in a single season; especially, the product of what is planted in the earth; fruit; harvest.
crossbill ::: --> A bill brought by a defendant, in an equity or chancery suit, against the plaintiff, respecting the matter in question in that suit. ::: n. --> A bird of the genus Loxia, allied to the finches. Their mandibles are strongly curved and cross each other; the crossbeak.
crow ::: v. i. --> To make the shrill sound characteristic of a cock, either in joy, gayety, or defiance.
To shout in exultation or defiance; to brag.
To utter a sound expressive of joy or pleasure.
A bird, usually black, of the genus Corvus, having a strong conical beak, with projecting bristles. It has a harsh, croaking note. See Caw.
A bar of iron with a beak, crook, or claw; a bar of iron
crypturi ::: n. pl. --> An order of flying, drom/ognathous birds, including the tinamous of South America. See Tinamou.
cubilose ::: n. --> A mucilagenous secretion of certain birds found as the characteristic ingredient of edible bird&
cuckoo ::: n. --> A bird belonging to Cuculus, Coccyzus, and several allied genera, of many species.
cucullated ::: a. --> Hooded; cowled; covered, as with a hood.
Having the edges toward the base rolled inward, as the leaf of the commonest American blue violet.
Having the prothorax elevated so as to form a sort of hood, receiving the head, as in certain insects.
Having a hoodlike crest on the head, as certain birds, mammals, and reptiles.
culmen ::: n. --> Top; summit; acme.
The dorsal ridge of a bird&
cultirostres ::: n. pl. --> A tribe of wading birds including the stork, heron, crane, etc.
cultrated ::: a. --> Sharp-edged and pointed; shaped like a pruning knife, as the beak of certain birds.
curassow ::: n. --> A large gallinaceous bird of the American genera Crax, Ourax, etc., of the family Cracidae.
curlew ::: n. --> A wading bird of the genus Numenius, remarkable for its long, slender, curved bill.
dabchick ::: n. --> A small water bird (Podilymbus podiceps), allied to the grebes, remarkable for its quickness in diving; -- called also dapchick, dobchick, dipchick, didapper, dobber, devil-diver, hell-diver, and pied-billed grebe.
dactylotheca ::: n. --> The scaly covering of the toes, as in birds.
darter ::: n. --> One who darts, or who throw darts; that which darts.
The snakebird, a water bird of the genus Plotus; -- so called because it darts out its long, snakelike neck at its prey. See Snakebird.
A small fresh-water etheostomoid fish. The group includes numerous genera and species, all of them American. See Etheostomoid.
dasypaedes ::: n. pl. --> Those birds whose young are covered with down when hatched.
daw ::: n. --> A European bird of the Crow family (Corvus monedula), often nesting in church towers and ruins; a jackdaw. ::: v. i. --> To dawn. ::: v. t.
day-net ::: n. --> A net for catching small birds.
deathbird ::: n. --> Tengmalm&
decomposed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Decompose ::: a. --> Separated or broken up; -- said of the crest of birds when the feathers are divergent.
dentiroster ::: n. --> A dentirostral bird.
dentirostral ::: a. --> Having a toothed bill; -- applied to a group of passerine birds, having the bill notched, and feeding chiefly on insects, as the shrikes and vireos. See Illust. (N) under Beak.
dertrotheca ::: n. --> The horny covering of the end of the bill of birds.
desmognathous ::: a. --> Having the maxillo-palatine bones united; -- applied to a group of carinate birds (Desmognathae), including various wading and swimming birds, as the ducks and herons, and also raptorial and other kinds.
devil bird ::: n. --> A small water bird. See Dabchick.
devil-diver ::: n. --> Alt. of Devil bird
diatryma ::: n. --> An extinct eocene bird from New Mexico, larger than the ostrich.
dichromatic ::: a. --> Having or exhibiting two colors.
Having two color varieties, or two phases differing in color, independently of age or sex, as in certain birds and insects.
dinornis ::: n. --> A genus of extinct, ostrichlike birds of gigantic size, which formerly inhabited New Zealand. See Moa.
dinosauria ::: n. pl. --> An order of extinct mesozoic reptiles, mostly of large size (whence the name). Notwithstanding their size, they present birdlike characters in the skeleton, esp. in the pelvis and hind limbs. Some walked on their three-toed hind feet, thus producing the large "bird tracks," so-called, of mesozoic sandstones; others were five-toed and quadrupedal. See Illust. of Compsognathus, also Illustration of Dinosaur in Appendix.
diomedea ::: n. --> A genus of large sea birds, including the albatross. See Albatross.
disclosed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Disclose ::: p. a. --> Represented with wings expanded; -- applied to doves and other birds not of prey.
dishwasher ::: n. --> One who, or that which, washes dishes.
A European bird; the wagtail.
displayed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Display ::: a. --> Unfolded; expanded; exhibited conspicuously or ostentatiously.
With wings expanded; -- said of a bird of pray, esp. an eagle.
ditokous ::: a. --> Having two kinds of young, as certain annelids.
Producing only two eggs for a clutch, as certain birds do.
diver ::: n. --> One who, or that which, dives.
Fig.: One who goes deeply into a subject, study, or business.
Any bird of certain genera, as Urinator (formerly Colymbus), or the allied genus Colymbus, or Podiceps, remarkable for their agility in diving.
dodo ::: n. --> A large, extinct bird (Didus ineptus), formerly inhabiting the Island of Mauritius. It had short, half-fledged wings, like those of the ostrich, and a short neck and legs; -- called also dronte. It was related to the pigeons.
dotterel ::: a. --> Decayed. ::: v. i. --> A European bird of the Plover family (Eudromias, / Charadrius, morinellus). It is tame and easily taken, and is popularly believed to imitate the movements of the fowler.
A silly fellow; a dupe; a gull.
doughbird ::: n. --> The Eskimo curlew (Numenius borealis). See Curlew.
dove ::: 1. Any bird of the family Columbid, esp. the smaller species with pointed tails. 2. A pure white member of this species, used as a symbol of innocence, gentleness, tenderness, and peace. dove"s, doves.
dovetail ::: n. --> A flaring tenon, or tongue (shaped like a bird&
down ::: n. --> Fine, soft, hairy outgrowth from the skin or surface of animals or plants, not matted and fleecy like wool
The soft under feathers of birds. They have short stems with soft rachis and bards and long threadlike barbules, without hooklets.
The pubescence of plants; the hairy crown or envelope of the seeds of certain plants, as of the thistle.
The soft hair of the face when beginning to appear.
That which is made of down, as a bed or pillow; that which
dragon-bird ::: see **bird.**
drawnet ::: n. --> A net for catching the larger sorts of birds; also, a dragnet.
drome ::: n. --> The crab plover (Dromas ardeola), a peculiar North African bird, allied to the oyster catcher.
drongo ::: n. --> A passerine bird of the family Dicruridae. They are usually black with a deeply forked tail. They are natives of Asia, Africa, and Australia; -- called also drongo shrikes.
dunbird ::: n. --> The pochard; -- called also dunair, and dunker, or dun-curre.
An American duck; the ruddy duck.
dunlin ::: n. --> A species of sandpiper (Tringa alpina); -- called also churr, dorbie, grass bird, and red-backed sandpiper. It is found both in Europe and America.
eagle ::: Any of several large, soaring birds of prey belonging to the hawk family. The strength, keen vision, graceful and powerful flight of the eagle are proverbial, and have given to him the title of the king of birds. eagle’s, eagles, eagle-peaks, eagle-poised, eagle-winged, she-eagle. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
eagle ::: any of several large, soaring birds of prey belonging to the hawk family. The strength, keen vision, graceful and powerful flight of the eagle are proverbial, and have given to him the title of the king of birds. eagle"s, eagles, eagle-peaks, eagle-poised, eagle-winged, she-eagle. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
eagle ::: Jhumur: “The eagle is a bird of force, of power. In the ultimate analysis omniscience and omnipotence are the same, a power that is knowledge, knowledge that is power. The eagle is the all-conquering power.”
eagle ::: n. --> Any large, rapacious bird of the Falcon family, esp. of the genera Aquila and Haliaeetus. The eagle is remarkable for strength, size, graceful figure, keenness of vision, and extraordinary flight. The most noted species are the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetus); the imperial eagle of Europe (A. mogilnik / imperialis); the American bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus); the European sea eagle (H. albicilla); and the great harpy eagle (Thrasaetus harpyia). The figure of the eagle, as the king of birds, is commonly used as an heraldic
early ::: adv. --> Soon; in good season; seasonably; betimes; as, come early.
In advance of the usual or appointed time; in good season; prior in time; among or near the first; -- opposed to late; as, the early bird; an early spring; early fruit.
Coming in the first part of a period of time, or among the first of successive acts, events, etc.
ectobronchium ::: n. --> One of the dorsal branches of the main bronchi in the lungs of birds.
egg-bird ::: n. --> A species of tern, esp. the sooty tern (Sterna fuliginosa) of the West Indies. In the Bahama Islands the name is applied to the tropic bird, Phaethon flavirostris.
eggery ::: n. --> A place where eggs are deposited (as by sea birds) or kept; a nest of eggs.
egg ::: n. --> The oval or roundish body laid by domestic poultry and other birds, tortoises, etc. It consists of a yolk, usually surrounded by the "white" or albumen, and inclosed in a shell or strong membrane.
A simple cell, from the development of which the young of animals are formed; ovum; germ cell.
Anything resembling an egg in form. ::: v. t.
emu ::: n. --> A large Australian bird, of two species (Dromaius Novae-Hollandiae and D. irroratus), related to the cassowary and the ostrich. The emu runs swiftly, but is unable to fly.
emu wren ::: --> A small wrenlike Australian bird (Stipiturus malachurus), having the tail feathers long and loosely barbed, like emu feathers.
endaspidean ::: a. --> Having the anterior scutes extending around the tarsus on the inner side; -- said of certain birds.
entobronchium ::: n. --> One of the main bronchi in the lungs of birds.
epicleidium ::: n. --> A projection, formed by a separate ossification, at the scapular end of the clavicle of many birds.
epimachus ::: n. --> A genus of highly ornate and brilliantly colored birds of Australia, allied to the birds of Paradise.
epiornis ::: n. --> One of the gigantic ostrichlike birds of the genus Aepiornis, only recently extinct. Its remains have been found in Madagascar.
epithema ::: n. --> A horny excrescence upon the beak of birds.
erythrochroism ::: n. --> An unusual redness, esp. in the plumage of birds, or hair of mammals, independently of age, sex, or season.
essorant ::: a. --> Standing, but with the wings spread, as if about to fly; -- said of a bird borne as a charge on an escutcheon.
etiolated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Etiolate ::: a. --> Having a blanched or faded appearance, as birds inhabiting desert regions.
euornithes ::: n. pl. --> The division of Aves which includes all the typical birds, or all living birds except the penguins and birds of ostrichlike form.
eurhipidurous ::: a. --> Having a fanlike tail; belonging to the Eurhipidurae, a division of Aves which includes all living birds.
exaspidean ::: a. --> Having the anterior scute/ extending around the tarsus on the outer side, leaving the inner side naked; -- said of certain birds.
eyas ::: n. --> A nesting or unfledged bird; in falconry, a young hawk from the nest, not able to prey for itself. ::: a. --> Unfledged, or newly fledged.
eyrie ::: the nest of an eagle or other bird of prey, built in a high inaccessible place.
eyry ::: n. --> The nest of a bird of prey or other large bird that builds in a lofty place; aerie.
facies ::: n. --> The anterior part of the head; the face.
The general aspect or habit of a species, or group of species, esp. with reference to its adaptation to its environment.
The face of a bird, or the front of the head, excluding the bill.
falconer ::: n. --> A person who breeds or trains hawks for taking birds or game; one who follows the sport of fowling with hawks.
falconet ::: n. --> One of the smaller cannon used in the 15th century and later.
One of several very small Asiatic falcons of the genus Microhierax.
One of a group of Australian birds of the genus Falcunculus, resembling shrikes and titmice.
falcon ::: n. --> One of a family (Falconidae) of raptorial birds, characterized by a short, hooked beak, strong claws, and powerful flight.
Any species of the genus Falco, distinguished by having a toothlike lobe on the upper mandible; especially, one of this genus trained to the pursuit of other birds, or game.
An ancient form of cannon.
fancier ::: n. --> One who is governed by fancy.
One who fancies or has a special liking for, or interest in, a particular object or class or objects; hence, one who breeds and keeps for sale birds and animals; as, bird fancier, dog fancier, etc.
fantail ::: n. --> A variety of the domestic pigeon, so called from the shape of the tail.
Any bird of the Australian genus Rhipidura, in which the tail is spread in the form of a fan during flight. They belong to the family of flycatchers.
fauvette ::: n. --> A small singing bird, as the nightingale and warblers.
feather ::: n. --> One of the peculiar dermal appendages, of several kinds, belonging to birds, as contour feathers, quills, and down.
Kind; nature; species; -- from the proverbial phrase, "Birds of a feather," that is, of the same species.
The fringe of long hair on the legs of the setter and some other dogs.
A tuft of peculiar, long, frizzly hair on a horse.
One of the fins or wings on the shaft of an arrow. html{color:
“Feeling, a heaven-bird poised on dreaming wings,”
feetless ::: a. --> Destitute of feet; as, feetless birds.
feral ::: a. --> Wild; untamed; ferine; not domesticated; -- said of beasts, birds, and plants.
Funereal; deadly; fatal; dangerous.
figeater ::: n. --> A large beetle (Allorhina nitida) which in the Southern United States destroys figs. The elytra are velvety green with pale borders.
A bird. See Figpecker.
finch ::: n. --> A small singing bird of many genera and species, belonging to the family Fringillidae.
finfoot ::: n. --> A South American bird (heliornis fulica) allied to the grebes. The name is also applied to several related species of the genus Podica.
firebird ::: n. --> The Baltimore oriole.
fish- or insect-eating birds that have a large head and a long, stout bill and are usually crested and brilliantly coloured.
fissirostres ::: n. pl. --> A group of birds having the bill deeply cleft.
fist ::: n. --> The hand with the fingers doubled into the palm; the closed hand, especially as clinched tightly for the purpose of striking a blow.
The talons of a bird of prey.
the index mark [/], used to direct special attention to the passage which follows. ::: v. t.
flacker ::: v. i. --> To flutter, as a bird.
flamingo ::: n. --> Any bird of the genus Phoenicopterus. The flamingoes have webbed feet, very long legs, and a beak bent down as if broken. Their color is usually red or pink. The American flamingo is P. ruber; the European is P. antiquorum.
flatbill ::: n. --> Any bird of the genus Flatyrynchus. They belong to the family of flycatchers.
fledgeling ::: n. --> A young bird just fledged.
flesh ::: n. --> The aggregate of the muscles, fat, and other tissues which cover the framework of bones in man and other animals; especially, the muscles.
Animal food, in distinction from vegetable; meat; especially, the body of beasts and birds used as food, as distinguished from fish.
The human body, as distinguished from the soul; the corporeal person.
flexure ::: n. --> The act of flexing or bending; a turning or curving; flexion; hence, obsequious bowing or bending.
A turn; a bend; a fold; a curve.
The last joint, or bend, of the wing of a bird.
The small distortion of an astronomical instrument caused by the weight of its parts; the amount to be added or substracted from the observed readings of the instrument to correct them for this distortion.
flight ::: n. --> The act or flying; a passing through the air by the help of wings; volitation; mode or style of flying.
The act of fleeing; the act of running away, to escape or expected evil; hasty departure.
Lofty elevation and excursion;a mounting; a soa/ing; as, a flight of imagination, ambition, folly.
A number of beings or things passing through the air together; especially, a flock of birds flying in company; the birds
flit ::: 1. To move lightly and swiftly; fly, dart, or skim along. 2. To flutter, as a bird. 3. To pass quickly, as time. flitting.
flit ::: v. i. --> To move with celerity through the air; to fly away with a rapid motion; to dart along; to fleet; as, a bird flits away; a cloud flits along.
To flutter; to rove on the wing.
To pass rapidly, as a light substance, from one place to another; to remove; to migrate.
To remove from one place or habitation to another.
To be unstable; to be easily or often moved.
flocculent ::: a. --> Clothed with small flocks or flakes; woolly.
Applied to the down of newly hatched or unfledged birds.
floccus ::: n. --> The tuft of hair terminating the tail of mammals.
A tuft of feathers on the head of young birds.
A woolly filament sometimes occuring with the sporules of certain fungi.
flock ::: n. --> A company or collection of living creatures; -- especially applied to sheep and birds, rarely to persons or (except in the plural) to cattle and other large animals; as, a flock of ravenous fowl.
A Christian church or congregation; considered in their relation to the pastor, or minister in charge.
A lock of wool or hair.
Woolen or cotton refuse (sing. / pl.), old rags, etc., reduced to a degree of fineness by machinery, and used for stuffing
-flocks ::: groups of animals or birds that live, travel, or feed together. moon-flocks.
flop ::: v. t. --> To clap or strike, as a bird its wings, a fish its tail, etc.; to flap.
To turn suddenly, as something broad and flat. ::: v. i. --> To strike about with something broad abd flat, as a fish with its tail, or a bird with its wings; to rise and fall; as, the brim
flown ::: --> p. p. of Fly; -- often used with the auxiliary verb to be; as, the birds are flown. ::: a. --> Flushed, inflated. ::: p. p.
flush ::: v. i. --> To flow and spread suddenly; to rush; as, blood flushes into the face.
To become suddenly suffused, as the cheeks; to turn red; to blush.
To snow red; to shine suddenly; to glow.
To start up suddenly; to take wing as a bird. ::: v. t.
flutter ::: v. t. --> To vibrate or move quickly; as, a bird flutters its wings.
To drive in disorder; to throw into confusion. ::: n. --> The act of fluttering; quick and irregular motion; vibration; as, the flutter of a fan.
flycatcher ::: n. --> One of numerous species of birds that feed upon insects, which they take on the wing.
fly ::: v. i. --> To move in or pass thorugh the air with wings, as a bird.
To move through the air or before the wind; esp., to pass or be driven rapidly through the air by any impulse.
To float, wave, or rise in the air, as sparks or a flag.
To move or pass swiftly; to hasten away; to circulate rapidly; as, a ship flies on the deep; a top flies around; rumor flies.
To run from danger; to attempt to escape; to flee; as, an enemy or a coward flies. See Note under Flee.
fold (s) ::: v. 1. To envelope or clasp; enfold. 2. To bring (the wings) close to the body, as a bird on alighting. folding. *n. 3. The doubling of any flexible substance, as cloth; one part turned or bent and laid on another. Also fig. *4. A coil of a serpent, string, etc.
forficate ::: a. --> Deeply forked, as the tail of certain birds.
fork-tailed ::: a. --> Having the outer tail feathers longer than the median ones; swallow-tailed; -- said of many birds.
forktail ::: n. --> One of several Asiatic and East Indian passerine birds, belonging to Enucurus, and allied genera. The tail is deeply forking.
A salmon in its fourth year&
forty-spot ::: n. --> The Tasmanian forty-spotted diamond bird (Pardalotus quadragintus).
fossa ::: n. --> A pit, groove, cavity, or depression, of greater or less depth; as, the temporal fossa on the side of the skull; the nasal fossae containing the nostrils in most birds.
foul ::: n. --> A bird.
An entanglement; a collision, as in a boat race.
See Foul ball, under Foul, a. ::: superl. --> Covered with, or containing, extraneous matter which is injurious, noxious, offensive, or obstructive; filthy; dirty; not
fourchette ::: n. --> A table fork.
A small fold of membrane, connecting the labia in the posterior part of the vulva.
The wishbone or furculum of birds.
The frog of the hoof of the horse and allied animals.
An instrument used to raise and support the tongue during the cutting of the fraenum.
The forked piece between two adjacent fingers, to which
fowl ::: n. --> Any bird; esp., any large edible bird.
Any domesticated bird used as food, as a hen, turkey, duck; in a more restricted sense, the common domestic cock or hen (Gallus domesticus). ::: v. i. --> To catch or kill wild fowl, for game or food, as by
frill ::: v. i. --> To shake or shiver as with cold; as, the hawk frills.
To wrinkle; -- said of the gelatin film.
A ruffing of a bird&
fringilla ::: a. --> A genus of birds, with a short, conical, pointed bill. It formerly included all the sparrows and finches, but is now restricted to certain European finches, like the chaffinch and brambling.
frogmouth ::: n. --> One of several species of Asiatic and East Indian birds of the genus Batrachostomus (family Podargidae); -- so called from their very broad, flat bills.
frontlet ::: n. --> A frontal or brow band; a fillet or band worn on the forehead.
A frown (likened to a frontlet).
The margin of the head, behind the bill of birds, often bearing rigid bristles.
frostbird ::: n. --> The golden plover.
frugivorous ::: a. --> Feeding on fruit, as birds and other animals. html{color:
fulmar ::: n. --> One of several species of sea birds, of the family procellariidae, allied to the albatrosses and petrels. Among the well-known species are the arctic fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) (called also fulmar petrel, malduck, and mollemock), and the giant fulmar (Ossifraga gigantea).
furculum ::: n. --> The wishbone or merrythought of birds, formed by the united clavicles.
gadwall ::: n. --> A large duck (Anas strepera), valued as a game bird, found in the northern parts of Europe and America; -- called also gray duck.
galley-bird ::: n. --> The European green woodpecker; also, the spotted woodpecker.
gallinacean ::: n. --> One of the Gallinae or gallinaceous birds.
gallinae ::: n. --> An order of birds, including the common domestic fowls, pheasants, grouse, quails, and allied forms; -- sometimes called Rasores.
gallinule ::: n. --> One of several wading birds, having long, webless toes, and a frontal shield, belonging to the family Rallidae. They are remarkable for running rapidly over marshes and on floating plants. The purple gallinule of America is Ionornis Martinica, that of the Old World is Porphyrio porphyrio. The common European gallinule (Gallinula chloropus) is also called moor hen, water hen, water rail, moor coot, night bird, and erroneously dabchick. Closely related to it is the Florida gallinule (Gallinula galeata).
gambet ::: n. --> Any bird of the genuis Totanus. See Tattler.
gannet ::: n. --> One of several species of sea birds of the genus Sula, allied to the pelicans.
gaper ::: n. --> One who gapes.
A European fish. See 4th Comber.
A large edible clam (Schizothaerus Nuttalli), of the Pacific coast; -- called also gaper clam.
An East Indian bird of the genus Cymbirhynchus, related to the broadbills.
gape ::: v. i. --> To open the mouth wide
Expressing a desire for food; as, young birds gape.
Indicating sleepiness or indifference; to yawn.
To pen or part widely; to exhibit a gap, fissure, or hiatus.
To long, wait eagerly, or cry aloud for something; -- with for, after, or at.
gapeworm ::: n. --> The parasitic worm that causes the gapes in birds. See Illustration in Appendix.
garrulous ::: a. --> Talking much, especially about commonplace or trivial things; talkative; loquacious.
Having a loud, harsh note; noisy; -- said of birds; as, the garrulous roller.
gastornis ::: n. --> A genus of large eocene birds from the Paris basin.
gaviae ::: n. pl. --> The division of birds which includes the gulls and terns.
gemitores ::: n. pl. --> A division of birds including the true pigeons.
gena ::: --> The cheek; the feathered side of the under mandible of a bird.
The part of the head to which the jaws of an insect are attached.
gier-eagle ::: n. --> A bird referred to in the Bible (Lev. xi. 18and Deut. xiv. 17) as unclean, probably the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus).
gigerium ::: n. --> The muscular stomach, or gizzard, of birds.
gizzard ::: n. --> The second, or true, muscular stomach of birds, in which the food is crushed and ground, after being softened in the glandular stomach (crop), or lower part of the esophagus; the gigerium.
A thick muscular stomach found in many invertebrate animals.
A stomach armed with chitinous or shelly plates or teeth, as in certain insects and mollusks.
gnathidium ::: n. --> The ramus of the lower jaw of a bird as far as it is naked; -- commonly used in the plural.
gnathotheca ::: n. --> The horney covering of the lower mandible of a bird.
goatsucker ::: n. --> One of several species of insectivorous birds, belonging to Caprimulgus and allied genera, esp. the European species (Caprimulgus Europaeus); -- so called from the mistaken notion that it sucks goats. The European species is also goat-milker, goat owl, goat chaffer, fern owl, night hawk, nightjar, night churr, churr-owl, gnat hawk, and dorhawk.
godwit ::: n. --> One of several species of long-billed, wading birds of the genus Limosa, and family Tringidae. The European black-tailed godwit (Limosa limosa), the American marbled godwit (L. fedoa), the Hudsonian godwit (L. haemastica), and others, are valued as game birds. Called also godwin.
goldfinch ::: n. --> A beautiful bright-colored European finch (Carduelis elegans). The name refers to the large patch of yellow on the wings. The front of the head and throat are bright red; the nape, with part of the wings and tail, black; -- called also goldspink, goldie, fool&
gonydial ::: a. --> Pertaining to the gonys of a bird&
gonys ::: n. --> The keel or lower outline of a bird&
goose ::: n. --> Any large web-footen bird of the subfamily Anserinae, and belonging to Anser, Branta, Chen, and several allied genera. See Anseres.
Any large bird of other related families, resembling the common goose.
A tailor&
gorgelet ::: n. --> A small gorget, as of a humming bird.
grackle ::: n. --> One of several American blackbirds, of the family Icteridae; as, the rusty grackle (Scolecophagus Carolinus); the boat-tailed grackle (see Boat-tail); the purple grackle (Quiscalus quiscula, or Q. versicolor). See Crow blackbird, under Crow.
An Asiatic bird of the genus Gracula. See Myna.
gradient ::: a. --> Moving by steps; walking; as, gradient automata.
Rising or descending by regular degrees of inclination; as, the gradient line of a railroad.
Adapted for walking, as the feet of certain birds. ::: n. --> The rate of regular or graded ascent or descent in a
graduated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Graduate ::: a. --> Marked with, or divided into, degrees; divided into grades.
Tapered; -- said of a bird&
graduation ::: n. --> The act of graduating, or the state of being graduated; as, graduation of a scale; graduation at a college; graduation in color; graduation by evaporation; the graduation of a bird&
grallae ::: n. pl. --> An order of birds which formerly included all the waders. By later writers it is usually restricted to the sandpipers, plovers, and allied forms; -- called also Grallatores.
granivorous ::: a. --> Eating grain; feeding or subsisting on seeds; as, granivorous birds.
grebe ::: n. --> One of several swimming birds or divers, of the genus Colymbus (formerly Podiceps), and allied genera, found in the northern parts of America, Europe, and Asia. They have strong, sharp bills, and lobate toes.
greenfinch ::: n. --> A European finch (Ligurinus chloris); -- called also green bird, green linnet, green grosbeak, green olf, greeny, and peasweep.
The Texas sparrow (Embernagra rufivirgata), in which the general color is olive green, with four rufous stripes on the head.
greenlet ::: n. --> l. (Zool.) One of numerous species of small American singing birds, of the genus Vireo, as the solitary, or blue-headed (Vireo solitarius); the brotherly-love (V. Philadelphicus); the warbling greenlet (V. gilvus); the yellow-throated greenlet (V. flavifrons) and others. See Vireo.
Any species of Cyclorhis, a genus of tropical American birds allied to the tits.
gressorious ::: a. --> Adapted for walking; anisodactylous; as the feet of certain birds and insects. See Illust. under Aves.
grouse ::: n. sing. & pl. --> Any of the numerous species of gallinaceous birds of the family Tetraonidae, and subfamily Tetraoninae, inhabiting Europe, Asia, and North America. They have plump bodies, strong, well-feathered legs, and usually mottled plumage. The group includes the ptarmigans (Lagopus), having feathered feet. ::: v. i.
guacharo ::: n. --> A nocturnal bird of South America and Trinidad (Steatornis Caripensis, or S. steatornis); -- called also oilbird.
guan ::: n. --> Any one of many species of large gallinaceous birds of Central and South America, belonging to Penelope, Pipile, Ortalis, and allied genera. Several of the species are often domesticated.
guidguid ::: n. --> A South American ant bird of the genus Hylactes; -- called also barking bird.
guillemot ::: n. --> One of several northern sea birds, allied to the auks. They have short legs, placed far back, and are expert divers and swimmers.
guitguit ::: n. --> One of several species of small tropical American birds of the family Coerebidae, allied to the creepers; -- called also quit. See Quit.
gular ::: a. --> Pertaining to the gula or throat; as, gular plates. See Illust. of Bird, and Bowfin.
gulaund ::: n. --> An arctic sea bird.
gull ::: v. t. --> To deceive; to cheat; to mislead; to trick; to defraud. ::: n. --> A cheating or cheat; trick; fraud.
One easily cheated; a dupe.
One of many species of long-winged sea birds of the genus Larus and allied genera.
guttatrap ::: n. --> The inspissated juice of a tree of the genus Artocarpus (A. incisa, or breadfruit tree), sometimes used in making birdlime, on account of its glutinous quality.
gymnopaedic ::: a. --> Having young that are naked when hatched; psilopaedic; -- said of certain birds.
gymnorhinal ::: a. --> Having unfeathered nostrils, as certain birds.
hagberry ::: n. --> A plant of the genus Prunus (P. Padus); the bird cherry.
hagdon ::: n. --> One of several species of sea birds of the genus Puffinus; esp., P. major, the greater shearwarter, and P. Stricklandi, the black hagdon or sooty shearwater; -- called also hagdown, haglin, and hag. See Shearwater.
hairbird ::: n. --> The chipping sparrow.
hallier ::: n. --> A kind of net for catching birds.
hallux ::: n. --> The first, or preaxial, digit of the hind limb, corresponding to the pollux in the fore limb; the great toe; the hind toe of birds.
halones ::: n. pl. --> Alternating transparent and opaque white rings which are seen outside the blastoderm, on the surface of the developing egg of the hen and other birds.
hammerkop ::: n. --> A bird of the Heron family; the umber.
hangbird ::: n. --> The Baltimore oriole (Icterus galbula); -- so called because its nest is suspended from the limb of a tree. See Baltimore oriole.
hangdog ::: n. --> A base, degraded person; a sneak; a gallows bird. ::: a. --> Low; sneaking; ashamed.
hangnest ::: n. --> A nest that hangs like a bag or pocket.
A bird which builds such a nest; a hangbird.
harrier ::: n. --> One of a small breed of hounds, used for hunting hares.
One who harries.
One of several species of hawks or buzzards of the genus Circus which fly low and harry small animals or birds, -- as the European marsh harrier (Circus aerunginosus), and the hen harrier (C. cyaneus).
hautein ::: a. --> Haughty; proud.
High; -- said of the voice or flight of birds.
hawk moth ::: --> Any moth of the family Sphingidae, of which there are numerous genera and species. They are large, handsome moths, which fly mostly at twilight and hover about flowers like a humming bird, sucking the honey by means of a long, slender proboscis. The larvae are large, hairless caterpillars ornamented with green and other bright colors, and often with a caudal spine. See Sphinx, also Tobacco worm, and Tomato worm.
hawk ::: n. --> One of numerous species and genera of rapacious birds of the family Falconidae. They differ from the true falcons in lacking the prominent tooth and notch of the bill, and in having shorter and less pointed wings. Many are of large size and grade into the eagles. Some, as the goshawk, were formerly trained like falcons. In a more general sense the word is not infrequently applied, also, to true falcons, as the sparrow hawk, pigeon hawk, duck hawk, and prairie hawk.
An effort to force up phlegm from the throat, accompanied
hawkweed ::: n. --> A plant of the genus Hieracium; -- so called from the ancient belief that birds of prey used its juice to strengthen their vision.
A plant of the genus Senecio (S. hieracifolius).
haybird ::: n. --> The European spotted flycatcher.
The European blackcap.
*heaven-bird, heaven-bird"s.
heaven-bird
“heaven-bird’s view from unimagined peaks, The”
“heaven-bird upon jewelled wings of wind, A”
hematocrya ::: n. pl. --> The cold-blooded vertebrates, that is, all but the mammals and birds; -- the antithesis to Hematotherma.
hematotherma ::: n. pl. --> The warm-blooded vertebrates, comprising the mammals and birds; -- the antithesis to hematocrya.
hemipode ::: n. --> Any bird of the genus Turnix. Various species inhabit Asia, Africa, and Australia.
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
Jhumur: Here you have the beginnings of the mind opening onto other planes of experience. Because mindhas no experience. This is the kingdom of the greater mind where it opens on to another phase of vision or experience or feeling. The heaven-bird is the feeling of poise that hasn’t taken off. It reminds me that in a certain place, the goal of the mental search is where ultimately the mind abdicates in light and one enters into what Shelley calls ‘thought wildernesses’. Before that concrete abdication there must be some sensation, some feeling of something other that is waiting for us, that has come from elsewhere. The mind has not quite yet abdicated but begins to pursue intuition, perception, feeling.”
Jhumur: “ I think Amal and many others have talked about it. Sri Aurobindo is talking about the mind. Two powers and yet it is the same bird. At a certain level of our mental approach we perceive by opposites, we only see half the truth and only understand this half in relation only to the other. If this is white, this has to be black. And yet, it is one bird. It is fundamentally one truth, that is the mystic truth. Beyond the opposition there is the wholeness which sometimes we don’t perceive. We are so busy looking at the black head or the white tail and finding opposites.”
Jhumur: “It is perhaps a conscious plane of existence which is freely moving on the heights without any obligation to a downward pull. It lives on the heights freely like a bird can freely move. It is a level of existence.”
Jhumur: “It is simply a darkness—the heaven-bird perhaps is a divine force, a grace that comes down.”
Jhumur: “Of all the creatures the eagle is the one bird that can stare straight at the sun. It lives on the heights. Here is its counterpart, the bird at its full power with enormous strength usually climbing straight into the sun or at the sun and here into the abyss. It is a bird of tremendous power, the king of birds.. It is fearless and it is very, very strong. Instead of the bird that leads you up to the sun it is the bird that leads you down into the darkness with the same force, with the same dynamism.”
Jhumur: “The creative force, the poet, the creator. It is the bird of eternity.”
Jhumur: “There are moments when something calls to us—those magical inspirations. The birds move freely through the wind, they are the symbols of the freedom of movement and they are singers who link the worlds together in their song.”
Jupiter is usually thought to have originated as a sky god. His identifying implement is the thunderbolt, and his primary sacred animal is the eagle,[1] which held precedence over other birds in the taking of auspices[2] and became one of the most common symbols of the Roman army (see Aquila). The two emblems were often combined to represent the god in the form of an eagle holding in its claws a thunderbolt, frequently seen on Greek and Roman coins.[3] As the sky-god, he was a divine witness to oaths, the sacred trust on which justice and good government depend. Many of his functions were focused on the Capitoline (“Capitol Hill”), where the citadel was located. He was the chief deity of the early Capitoline Triad with Mars and Quirinus.[4] In the later Capitoline Triad, he was the central guardian of the state with Juno and Minerva. His sacred tree was the oak.
Kartikeya and Peacock ::: The peacock is the bird of Victojy and Kartikeya the leader of the divine forces.
“Like a great heaven-bird on a motionless sea”
liquid ::: 1. Shining, transparent, or brilliant. 2. Smooth and flowing in quality, as a bird song; entirely free of harshness.
long-bills ::: birds having long bills, e.g. snipes.
Madhav: “Aswapathy is in the mid-world. He is neither in the nether realms of struggle and obscurity nor in the brighter worlds above of power and rapture. He is in realms of Beauty that point to still happier altitudes. The Birds of Wonder are the marvellous beings of that region, the angels, who call upon the higher worlds of Light to manifest in their world.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Aswapathy steps into a veritable wonderland of the Glory of God. The Glory is pictured as a huge Bird whose wings are brooding over the new creation to come. Just as a hen broods over its egg, these Wings enfold and incubate the new truth in the offing.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Gold represents Truth, Divinity. The Hawk is the high soaring bird, the soul embodied in higher nature.”
Madhav: “the dragon bird, the vast enveloping bird of bliss; white to signify purity and fire to indicate the intensity of bliss.” Sat-Sang Vol. VIII
mate ::: n. 1. A good friend or companion. 2. A counterpart. 3. A husband or wife; spouse. 4. The partner of a bird or an animal; one of a pair. 5. An equal in reputation; peer. v. 6. To fit or join with or to. 7. To match or marry. 8. To connect or link. mates, mated.
nest ::: 1. A place or structure in which birds, fishes, insects, reptiles, mice, etc., lay eggs or give birth to young and rear its young. 2. A snug retreat or refuge; resting place; home. Also fig. **nests.**
nestling ::: lying close and snug, like a bird in a nest.
net ::: 1. A bag or other contrivance of strong thread or cord worked into an open, meshed fabric, for catching fish, birds, or other animals. 2. Anything serving to catch or ensnare. cloud-net, drag-net.
Nolini: “A composite bird from Sri Aurobindo—not mythology.”
Nolini: “Usually the first spiritual experience comes as wonder. The birds symbolise the forces at play in this level of Wonder, beings in that consciousness of Wonder.”
Peacock ::: Bird of victory.
peacock ::: “The peacock is the bird of Victory.” Letters on Yoga
plumage ::: the covering of feathers on a bird. rich-plumaged.
Seraphim ::: “Hybrid celestial beings [including Cherubim] with human, animal, or birdlike characteristics that are depicted in Jewish, Christian and Islamic literature. They act as throne bearers or throne guardians of the deity. In later theology Cherubim is an angel of the second order, and Seraphim of the first. They correspond, according to Sri Aurobindo, to the Gandharvas and Venas of India tradition. (Enc. Br). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
seraphim ::: "Hybrid celestial beings [including Cherubim] with human, animal, or birdlike characteristics that are depicted in Jewish, Christian and Islamic literature. They act as throne bearers or throne guardians of the deity. In later theology Cherubim is an angel of the second order, and Seraphim of the first. They correspond, according to Sri Aurobindo, to the Gandharvas and Venas of India tradition. (Enc. Br.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
siren ::: Classical Mythol. One of several fabulous sea nymphs, part woman, part bird, who were supposed to lure sailors to destruction by their enchanting singing. Fig. One who, or that which, sings sweetly, charms, allures, or deceives, like the Sirens. (Sri Aurobindo uses the word in its adjectival sense: Seductive, tempting.)
siren ::: classical Mythol. One of several fabulous sea nymphs, part woman, part bird, who were supposed to lure sailors to destruction by their enchanting singing. Fig. One who, or that which, sings sweetly, charms, allures, or deceives, like the Sirens. (Sri Aurobindo uses the word in its adjectival sense: Seductive, tempting.)
snare ::: n. 1. A trapping device, often consisting of a noose, used for capturing birds and small mammals. 2. Fig. Anything serving to entrap or entangle unawares; trap. snares. v. 2. To trap with or as if with a snare. Also fig. snares.
songster ::: a song-bird. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.)
spring ::: n. 1. A small stream of water flowing naturally from the earth. 2. Fig. A source, origin, or beginning. 3. The season of the year, occurring between winter and summer, during which the weather becomes warmer and plants revive. 4. The act or an instance of jumping or leaping. 5. Fig. An actuating force or factor; a motive. Spring, springs, spring-bird"s, master-spring. v. 6. To rise, leap, move, or act suddenly and swiftly, as by a sudden dart or thrust forward or outward, or being suddenly released from a coiled or constrained position. 7. To proceed or originate from a specific source or cause. 8. To come into being by growth, as from a seed or germ, bulb, root, etc.; grow, as plants. springs.
Sri Aurobindo: "The peacock is the bird of Victory.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Yes: the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing repetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white fire.” *Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: “Yes: the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing repetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white fire.” Letters on Savitri
suntracks ::: A word coined by Sri Aurobindo. Lines of travel, passage, or motion; the actual courses or routes followed (which need not be any beaten or visible path, or leave any traces, as the paths of ships, birds in the air, comets, etc.).
suntracks ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. Lines of travel, passage, or motion; the actual courses or routes followed (which need not be any beaten or visible path, or leave any traces, as the paths of ships, birds in the air, comets, etc.).
talons ::: the claws of a bird of prey.
(Technically)** **Any of various birds of the family Paradisaeidae, native to New Guinea and adjacent islands, usually having brilliant plumage and long tail feathers in the male.
“The epithet ‘wide-winged’ then does not belong to the wind and is not transferred from it, but is proper to the voice of the wind which takes the form of a conscious hymn of aspiration and rises ascending from the bosom of the great priest, as might a great-winged bird released into the sky and sinks and rises again, aspires and fails and aspires again on the ‘altar hills’. Letters on Savitri
“The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings’ or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined’? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see’?” Letters on Savitri
vulture ("s) ::: any of various large birds of prey that generally feed on carrion.
"We see that the Absolute, the Self, the Divine, the Spirit, the Being is One; the Transcendental is one, the Cosmic is one: but we see also that beings are many and each has a self, a spirit, a like yet different nature. And since the spirit and essence of things is one, we are obliged to admit that all these many must be that One, and it follows that the One is or has become many; but how can the limited or relative be the Absolute and how can man or beast or bird be the Divine Being? But in erecting this apparent contradiction the mind makes a double error. It is thinking in the terms of the mathematical finite unit which is sole in limitation, the one which is less than two and can become two only by division and fragmentation or by addition and multiplication; but this is an infinite Oneness, it is the essential and infinite Oneness which can contain the hundred and the thousand and the million and billion and trillion. Whatever astronomic or more than astronomic figures you heap and multiply, they cannot overpass or exceed that Oneness; for, in the language of the Upanishad, it moves not, yet is always far in front when you would pursue and seize it. It can be said of it that it would not be the infinite Oneness if it were not capable of an infinite multiplicity; but that does not mean that the One is plural or can be limited or described as the sum of the Many: on the contrary, it can be the infinite Many because it exceeds all limitation or description by multiplicity and exceeds at the same time all limitation by finite conceptual oneness.” The Life Divine
“We see that the Absolute, the Self, the Divine, the Spirit, the Being is One; the Transcendental is one, the Cosmic is one: but we see also that beings are many and each has a self, a spirit, a like yet different nature. And since the spirit and essence of things is one, we are obliged to admit that all these many must be that One, and it follows that the One is or has become many; but how can the limited or relative be the Absolute and how can man or beast or bird be the Divine Being? But in erecting this apparent contradiction the mind makes a double error. It is thinking in the terms of the mathematical finite unit which is sole in limitation, the one which is less than two and can become two only by division and fragmentation or by addition and multiplication; but this is an infinite Oneness, it is the essential and infinite Oneness which can contain the hundred and the thousand and the million and billion and trillion. Whatever astronomic or more than astronomic figures you heap and multiply, they cannot overpass or exceed that Oneness; for, in the language of the Upanishad, it moves not, yet is always far in front when you would pursue and seize it. It can be said of it that it would not be the infinite Oneness if it were not capable of an infinite multiplicity; but that does not mean that the One is plural or can be limited or described as the sum of the Many: on the contrary, it can be the infinite Many because it exceeds all limitation or description by multiplicity and exceeds at the same time all limitation by finite conceptual oneness.” The Life Divine
white-fire dragon-bird ::: see **bird.**
wide-winged ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The epithet ‘wide-winged" then does not belong to the wind and is not transferred from it, but is proper to the voice of the wind which takes the form of a conscious hymn of aspiration and rises ascending from the bosom of the great priest, as might a great-winged bird released into the sky and sinks and rises again, aspires and fails and aspires again on the ‘altar hills". Letters on Savitri
wing ::: n. **1. Either of the two forelimbs of most birds and of bats, corresponding to the human arms, that are specialized for flight. 2. Something likened to a bird"s wing. 3. Theatr. The space offstage to the right or left of the acting area in a theatre. 4. In one"s care or tutelage. wings, god-wings, moth-wings, soul-wings. v. 5. To travel on or as if on wings, fly; soar. 6. Fig. To enable to fly, move rapidly, etc.; lend speed or celerity to. wings, winged, far-winging.**
KEYS (10k)
6 Matsuo Basho
5 Buson
4 Kobayashi Issa
3 Ogawa
2 Rabindranath Tagore
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
1 Tosei
1 Swami Saradananda
1 Sora
1 Rotsu
1 Roshi So
1 Rilke Rainer Maria
1 Maya Angelou
1 Koran
1 Jacques Maritain
1 George Eliot
1 Friedrich Nietzsche
1 Franz Kafka
1 Eicho
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Sri Aurobindo
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
47 Jeanne Birdsall
36 Andrew Bird
34 Mehmet Murat ildan
24 Anonymous
19 Lady Bird Johnson
19 Harper Lee
16 Brad Bird
15 Rumi
12 Stephen King
10 Victor Hugo
10 Henry David Thoreau
9 William Shakespeare
8 Sarah Bird
8 Haruki Murakami
8 Birdman
7 Tahereh Mafi
7 Suzy Kassem
7 Sue Bird
7 Leigh Bardugo
7 Charles Bukowski
1:I am a cage, in search of a bird. ~ Franz Kafka, #KEYS
2:The bird of paradise lands only on the hand that does not grasp ~ Roshi So, #KEYS
3:A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. ~ Maya Angelou, #KEYS
4:And if you are not a bird, then beware of coming to rest above an abyss. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #KEYS
5:Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, [T5],#KEYS
6:Poetic Knowledge is as natural to the spirit of man as the return of the bird to his nest. ~ Jacques Maritain, #KEYS
7:A caged bird
now flying among
the clouds of heaven
~ Eicho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
8:Make my heart, o heart of the universe, a divine bird that nests only on the throne of god. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #KEYS
9:as autumn deepens
a black bird rests
in a harvested field
~ Tosei, @BashoSociety#KEYS
10:my heart
wanders like a
migrating bird
~ Ogawa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
11:Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~ George Eliot, #KEYS
12:This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. ~ Rilke Rainer Maria, #KEYS
13:Bare your forehead, waiting for the first blessing of light, and sing with the bird of the morning in glad faith. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit Gathering, #KEYS
14:a bird's voice
carried over
the water
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
15:There is no beast on the earth, no bird flying on its wings that do not form a community like us ~ Koran, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
16:alone
an orphan bird
in the autumn dusk
~ Kobayashi Issa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
17:a bird perched
on a bare branch
autumn evening
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
18:A bird lives
in my bedroom wall
spring evening
~ Kobayashi Issa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
19:a bird
singing a lullaby
to the spirit of the willow
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
20:nowhere to perch
in the middle of a field
a bird sings
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
21:a flash of lightning
towards the darkness
a bird's voice
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
22:Let Him do what He thinks best. True resignation comes only after hard struggle. Only when the wings tired, does a bird sit on the mast of a ship to rest. ~ Swami Saradananda, #KEYS
23:When you sit in meditation, be wholly absorbed in God. During a perfect meditation one would not know if a bird were to perch upon one. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
24:The land is sacred. These words are at the core of our being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies." ~ Mary Brave Bird, #KEYS
25:It is impossible to think about the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is impossible for a bird to fly on only one wing. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
26:A caged bird is not freed merely by opening the door. Until the fear of the unknown subsides, until the desire arises to fly away, the bird remains where it is, preferring the known to the unknown. ~ Wu Hsin, #KEYS
27:Come Fill The Cup :::
Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of spring
Your winter garment of repentance fling.
The bird of time has but a little way
To flutter - and the bird is on the wing. ~ Omar Khayyam,#KEYS
28:As a bird of the waters, such as the pelican, can dive into the waves and his plumage is not wetted, the liberated soul lives in the world, but is not affected by the world. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
29:O Thou who art the sole reality of our being, O sublime Master of love, Redeemer of life, let me have no longer any other consciousness than of Thee at every instant and in each being. When I do not live solely with Thy life, I agonise, I sink slowly towards extinction; for Thou art my only reason for existence, my one goal, my single support. I am like a timid bird not yet sure of its wings and hesitating to take its flight; let me soar to reach definitive identity with Thee.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations,#KEYS
30:I think what you ought to do is start by thinking about the simplest things and go from there. For example, you could stand on a street corner somewhere day after day and look at the people who come by there. You're not in any hurry to decide anything. It may be tough, but sometimes you've got to just stop and take time. You ought to train yourself to look at things with your own eyes until something comes clear. And don't be afraid of putting some time into it. Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge. ~ Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, #KEYS
31:Jordan Peterson's Book List
1. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
2. 1984 - George Orwell
3. Road To Wigan Pier - George Orwell
4. Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Beyond Good And Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
7. Ordinary Men - Christopher Browning
8. The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski
9. The Rape of Nanking - Iris Chang
10. Gulag Archipelago (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, & Vol. 3) - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
11. Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
12. Modern Man in Search of A Soul - Carl Jung
13. Maps Of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief - Jordan B. Peterson
14. A History of Religious Ideas (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3) - Mircea Eliade
15. Affective Neuroscience - Jaak Panksepp ~ Jordan Peterson,#KEYS
32:Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara. Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things. ~ Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, #KEYS
33:fruits of the release :::
For even before complete purification, if the strings of the egoistic heart and mind are already sufficiently frayed and loosened, the Jiva can by a sudden snapping of the main cords escape, ascending like a bird freed into the spaces or widening like a liberated flood into the One and Infinite. There is first a sudden sense of a cosmic consciousness, a casting of oneself into the universal; from that universality one can aspire more easily to the Transcendent. There is a pushing back and rending or a rushing down of the walls that imprisoned our conscious being; there is a loss of all sense of individuality and personality, of all placement in ego, a person definite and definable, but only consciousness, only existence, only peace or bliss; one becomes immortatlity, becomes eternity, becomes infinity. All that is left of the personal soul is a hymn of peace and freedom and bliss vibrating somewhere in the Eternal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Ego, 363,#KEYS
34:The tide of materialistic thoughts is always on the watch, waiting for the least weakness, and if we relax but one moment from our vigilance, if we are even slightly negligent, it rushes in and invades us from all sides, submerging under its heavy flood the result sometimes of numberless efforts. Then the being enters a sort of torpor, its physical needs of food and sleep increase, its intelligence is clouded, its inner vision veiled, and in spite of the little interest it really finds in such superficial activities, they occupy it almost exclusively. This state is extremely painful and tiring, for nothing is more tiring then materialistic thoughts, and the mind, worn out, suffers like a caged bird which cannot spread its wings and yet longs to be able to soar freely.
But perhaps this state has its own use which I do not see.... In any case, I do not struggle; and like a child in its mother's arms, like a fervent disciple at the feet of his master, I trust myself to Thee and surrender to Thy guidance, sure of Thy victory.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, January 4th, 1914,#KEYS
35:So the devotion must be accompanied by another movement, that is, gratitude. This feeling of gratitude that the Divine exists, this gratefulness, full of wonder, that truly fills your heart with a sublime delight, because the Divine exists, because there is something in the universe that is the Divine, and there is not merely the monstrosity that we see—because there is the Divine, because the Divine is there.
And each time any least thing puts you in contact with this sublime reality of the Divine existence, your heart is filled with so intense and wonderful a delight, such gratefulness as is of all things the most delectable in taste.
Nothing can give you a delight equal to that of gratitude. You hear a bird singing, you see a flower, you look at a child, you witness an act of generosity, you read a beautiful sentence, you stand before a sunset, it does not matter what the thing is— all on a sudden it comes upon you, a kind of emotion, but so deep, so intense, because the world manifests the Divine, because there is something behind the world which is the Divine. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
36:John Ruskin did not go to school. Nor did Queen Victoria, nor John Stuart Mill, George Eliot or Harriet Martineau. It would be absurd to suggest that Disraeli, Dickens, Newman or Darwin, to name four very different figures, who attended various schools for short spells in their boyhood, owed very much to their schooling. Had they been born in a later generation, school would have loomed much larger in their psychological stories, if only because they would have spent so much longer there, and found themselves preparing for public examinations. It is hard not to feel that a strong 'syllabus', or a school ethos, might have cramped the style of all four and that in their different ways - Disraeli, comparatively rich, anarchically foppish, indiscriminately bookish; Darwin, considered a dunce, but clearly - as he excitedly learned to shoot, to fish and to bird-watch - beginning his revolutionary relationship with the natural world; Newman, imagining himself an angel; Dickens, escaping the ignominy of his circumstances through theatrical and comedic internalized role-play - they were lucky to have been born before the Age of Control. For the well-meaning educational reforms of the 1860s were the ultimate extension of those Benthamite exercises in control which had begun in the 1820s and 1830s. Having exercised their sway over the poor, the criminals, the agricultural and industrial classes, the civil service and - this was next - the military, the controllers had turned to the last free spirits left, the last potential anarchists: the children. ~ A N Wilson, #KEYS
37:In the name of Him Who created and sustains the world, the Sage Who endowed tongue with speech.
He attains no honor who turns the face from the doer of His mercy.
The kings of the earth prostate themselves before Him in supplication.
He seizes not in haste the disobedient, nor drives away the penitent with violence. The two worlds are as a drop of water in the ocean of His knowledge.
He withholds not His bounty though His servants sin; upon the surface of the earth has He spread a feast, in which both friend and foe may share.
Peerless He is, and His kingdom is eternal. Upon the head of one He placed a crown another he hurled from the throne to the ground.
The fire of His friend He turned into a flower garden; through the water of the Nile He sended His foes to perdition.
Behind the veil He sees all, and concealed our faults with His own goodness.
He is near to them that are downcast, and accepts the prayers of them that lament.
He knows of the things that exist not, of secrets that are untold.
He causes the moon and the sun to revolve, and spreads water upon the earth.
In the heart of a stone hath He placed a jewel; from nothing had He created all that is.
Who can reveal the secret of His qualities; what eye can see the limits of His beauty?
The bird of thought cannot soar to the height of His presence, nor the hand of understanding reach to the skirt of His praise.
Think not, O Saadi, that one can walk in the road of purity except in the footsteps of Mohammed (Peace and Blessings be Upon Him)
~ Saadi, The Bustan of Sa'di,#KEYS
38:In the Indian spiritual tradition, a heart's devotion to God, called Bhakti, is regarded as the easiest path to the Divine. What is Bhakti? Is it some extravagant religious sentimentalism? Is it inferior to the path of Knowledge? What is the nature of pure and complete spiritual devotion to God and how to realise it?
What Is Devotion?
...bhakti in its fullness is nothing but an entire self-giving. But then all meditation, all tapasya, all means of prayer or mantra must have that as its end... [SABCL, 23:799]
Devotion Is a State of the Heart and Soul
Bhakti is not an experience, it is a state of the heart and soul. It is a state which comes when the psychic being is awake and prominent. [SABCL, 23:776]
...Worship is only the first step on the path of devotion. Where external worship changes into the inner adoration, real Bhakti begins; that deepens into the intensity of divine love; that love leads to the joy of closeness in our relations with the Divine; the joy of closeness passes into the bliss of union. [SABCL, 21:525]
Devotion without Gratitude Is Incomplete
...there is another movement which should constantly accompany devotion. ... That kind of sense of gratitude that the Divine exists; that feeling of a marvelling thankfulness which truly fills you with a sublime joy at the fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not just the monstrosity we see, that there is the Divine, the Divine exists. And each time that the least thing puts you either directly or indirectly in contactwith this sublime Reality of divine existence, the heart is filled with so intense, so marvellous a joy, such a gratitude as of all things has the most delightful taste.
There is nothing which gives you a joy equal to that of gratitude. One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely flower, looks at a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly this comes upon you, this kind of emotion-indeed so deep, so intense-that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine.
So I find that devotion without gratitude is quite incomplete, gratitude must come with devotion. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
39:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.
The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.
The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.
It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.
As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.
And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.
It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!
This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.
My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?
A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.
Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.
If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.
First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!
Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"
I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.
Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.
These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."
Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.
If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'
The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passage
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae.
Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?
And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?
And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.
I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!
"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,
'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'
Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,
Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vain
Upon the axis of its pain,
Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,
Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."
Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.
But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!
'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:I am a cage, in search of a bird. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 2:I know why the caged bird sings. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 3:Answer: That is bird poop, too." ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 4:A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. ~ a-a-milne, @wisdomtrove 5:A foolish dog barks at a flying bird ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 6:If you're a bird... I'm a bird. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 7:I want to paint the way a bird sings. ~ claude-monet, @wisdomtrove 8:Bird in hand makes it harder to blow nose. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 9:No empty handed man can lure a bird ~ geoffrey-chaucer, @wisdomtrove 10:A bird in a cage is not half a bird. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 11:Faith is the bird that sings while it is yet dark. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 12:The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 13:The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 14:The shell must break before the bird can fly. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 15:Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove 16:No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 17:God gave a loaf to every bird, But just a crumb to me. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 18:I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 19:My shoe is off. My foot is cold. I have a bird I like to hold. ~ dr-seuss, @wisdomtrove 20:We must be careful what we say. No bird resumes its egg. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 21:How can a bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 22:Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives. ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove 23:Bird and bear and hare and fish, give my love her fondest wish. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 24:Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 25:He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 26:The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird. ~ jules-renard, @wisdomtrove 27:Love is a bird and it loves to be free. It needs the whole sky to grow. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 28:The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 29:Oh, bird of my soul, fly away now, For I possess a hundred fortified towers. ~ rumi, @wisdomtrove 30:The bird thinks it a favor to give the fish a lift in the air ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 31:A bird is safe in its nest - but that is not what its wings are made for. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 32:The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 33:A fish and a bird may indeed fall in love, but where shall they live? ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 34:Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 35:I have wished a bird would fly away, And not sing by my house all day... . ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 36:A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 37:I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don’t know what to feed it. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 38:A good servant is a real godsend, but truly this is a rare bird in the land. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 39:Set the bird's wings with gold and it will never again soar in thesky. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 40:As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 41:Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird? ~ pablo-picasso, @wisdomtrove 42:Surely no child, and few adults, have ever watched a bird in flight without envy. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 43:A bird half wakened in the lunar noon Sang halfway through its little inborn tune. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 44:Like a bird she seems to wear gay plumage unconsciously, as if it grew upon her. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 45:Why does a silly bird go on saying "chiff-chaff" all day long? Is it happiness or hiccups? ~ a-a-milne, @wisdomtrove 46:My soul-bird loves my body-cage Only when it is kept fit, Pure and absolutely immaculate. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 47:Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 48:The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 49:Faith is a bird that can see the light when it is dawn and starts singing in the dark. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 50:I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 51:These are the days when birds come back, a very few, a Bird or two, to take a backward look. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 52:I once asked a bird, how is it that you fly in this gravity of darkness? She responded, ‘love lifts me. ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 53:Girdles and wire stays should have never been invented. No man wants to hug a padded bird cage. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 54:Environmental extremists ... wouldn't let you build a house unless it looked like a bird's nest. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 55:When you teach a child that a bird is named ‘bird,’ the child will never see the bird again. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 56:The canary bird in the coal mine theory of the arts: artists should be treasured as alarm systems. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 57:For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 58:The soul helps the body, and at certain moments raises it. It is the only bird that sustains its cage. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 59:Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 60:What is joy? It is a bird That we all want to catch. It is the same bird That we all love to see flying. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 61:In relationship be blissful, in alone-ness be aware, and they will help each other, like two wings of a bird. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 62:Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water. ~ d-t-suzuki, @wisdomtrove 63:Take a good rest, small bird," he said. "Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 64:For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 65:For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 66:magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth! ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 67:No ladder needs the bird but skies To situate its wings, Nor any leaders grim baton Arraigns it as it sings. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 68:Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 69:How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five? ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 70:A bird sings, a child prattles, but it is the same hymn; hymn indistinct, inarticulate, but full of profound meaning. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 71:Say I'm a bird! Say it! Say it now!" "You're a bird." "Now say you're a bird too." "If you're a bird, I'm a bird. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 72:The sea's vast depths lie open to the fish; Wherever the breezes blow the bird may fly; So to the brave man every land's a home. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 73:On the holy boughs of the Celestial Tree High up in the heavenly fields, beyond terrestrial desire My soul-bird a warm nest has built. ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 74:This is what things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. ~ rainer-maria-rilke, @wisdomtrove 75:Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 76:Beware the Jabberwock, my son The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch! ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 77:I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 78:This is me apologizing. I am a fool, a bird-brain, a liar and a horse-thief. I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 79:The true self is not aware that it is a self. A bird, as it sings, sings itself. But not according to a picture. It has no idea of itself. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 80:Time is swift, it races by; Opportunities are born and die... Still you wait and will not try - A bird with wings who dares not rise and fly. ~ a-a-milne, @wisdomtrove 81:Thoughts in your head are really no different than the sound of a bird outside. It is just that you decide that they are more or less relevant. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 82:I cannot help esteem The & 83:Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 84:Always keep a big bottle of booze at your side. If a bird starts talking nonsense to you in the middle of the night pour yourself a stiff drink. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 85:Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 86:In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 87:Every bird that sings, sings for you. Every breeze that blows, blows for you. Every sunray shines for you. If you only knew how loved you are. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 88:A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 89:How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring? ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 90:No more my heart shall sob or grieve. My days and nights dissolve in God's own Light. Above the toil of life, my soul is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 91:It is impossible to think about the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is impossible for a bird to fly on only one wing. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 92:Praise is the beauty of a Christian. What wings are to a bird, what fruit is to the tree, what the rose is to the thorn, that is praise to a child of God. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 93:The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 94:A bird in the open never looks Like its picture in the birdie books - Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage, And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove 95:Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder & 96:A girl doesn't always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels like being nasty& 97:Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly-and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing. ~ omar-khayyam, @wisdomtrove 98:Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, & 99:Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue? ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 100:If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 101:Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 102:The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into lustre. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 103:Oh, nature's noblest gift, my grey goose quill, Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from the parent bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 104:The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang. ~ leonardo-da-vinci, @wisdomtrove 105:If you were a bird, and lived on high, You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by, You'd say to the wind when it took you away: & 106:Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 107:While I am compassed round With mirth, my soul lies hid in shades of grief, Whence, like the bird of night, with half-shut eyes, She peeps, and sickens at the sight of day. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 108:Once you develop the practice of smiling, you may not need a reminder. You will smile as soon as you hear a bird singing or see the sunlight streaming through the window. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 109:The incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon, are always blowing evil‚Äôs whole structure away. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 110:Even the evil-looking bird perched on a rod in the bar had stopped screeching out the names and addresses of local contract killers, which was a service it provided for free. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 111:He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 112:Anon, to sudden silence won, In fancy they pursue The dream-child moving through the land Of wonders wild and new, In friendly chat with bird or beast - And half believe it true. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 113:And as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay, Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 114:Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 115:A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 116:I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 117:When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 118:Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 119:Live in the world like a waterfowl. The water clings to the bird, but the bird shakes it off. Live in the world like a mudfish. The fish lives in the mud, but its skin is always bright and shiny. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 120:The fish in the water is silent, the animals on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 121:I have a very great fear of love. It is so personal. Let each bird fly with its own wings, and each fish swim its own course.& 122:The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 123:If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 124:Old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 125:Silence is the nest and music is the bird. The bird leaves the nest early in the morning and returns to the nest in the evening. Similarly, in the spiritual world, divine music comes from the inmost soul of Silence. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 126:We attain freedom as we let go of whatever does not reflect our magnificence. A bird cannot fly high or far with a stone tied to its back. But release the impediment, and we are free to soar to unprecedented heights. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove 127:As musician, Nature is maestro to ten thousand bird songs, chirping crickets, howl and roar of wild beasts, buzz of insects, trumpeting of elephants, organ music of the surf& 128:These false answers such as, I am stone, I am bird, I am animal, I am man, I am woman, I am great, I am small are, in turn, received, tested and discarded until the Question arrives at the right and Final Answer, I AM GOD. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 129:I don't know if this is true to you but for me sometimes it gets so bad that anything else say like looking at a bird on an overhead power line seems as great as a Beethoven symphony. then you forget it and you're back again. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 130:The Yogi conquers the body by the practice of asanas, making the body a fit vehicle for the spirit. The Yogi knows that it is a necessary vehicle for the spirit, for a soul without a body is like a bird deprived of its power to fly. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 131:Don Quixote thought he could have made beautiful bird-cages and toothpicks if his brain had not been so full of ideas of chivalry. Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 132:That little bird has chosen his shelter. Above it are the stars and the deep heaven of worlds. Yet he is rocking himself to sleep without caring for tomorrow's lodging, calmly clinging to his little twig, and leaving God to think for him. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 133:I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 134:When we meditate we expand, spreading our wings like a bird, trying to enter consciously into Infinity, Eternity and Immortality, welcoming them into our aspiring consciousness. We see, feel and grow into the entire universe of Light-Delight. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 135:Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door; Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shore Where neither piping bird nor peeping dawn Disturbs the eternal sleep, But in the stillness far withdrawn Our dreamless rest for evermore we keep. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 136:All day I have been tossed and whirled in a preposterous happiness; was it an elf in the blood? Or a bird in the brain? Or even part of the cloudily crested, fifty-league-long, loud, uplifted wave of a journeying angels transit over and through my heart? ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 137:I've been told that some members of Congress disagree with my tax cut proposal. Well, you know it's been said that taxation is the art of plucking feathers without killing the bird. It's time they realized the bird just doesn't have any feathers left. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 138:You shall find books and sermons everywhere, in the land and in the sea, in the earth and in the skies, and you shall learn from every living beast, and bird, and fish, and insect, and from every useful or useless plant that springs from the ground. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 139:The man who had died looked nakedly on life, and saw a vast resoluteness everywhere flinging itself up in stormy or subtle wave-crests... . always the man who had died saw not the bird alone, but the short, sharp wave of life of which the bird was the crest. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 140:I look at the bird in the cage and see the air, not only the air that is around the bird when it flies, but I see and feel the formative tendency of air in its form. When I do all this, then what lives in the forms becomes enlivened and spiritualized for me. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 141:True success is therefore the experience of the miraculous. It is the unfolding of the divinity within us. It is the perception of divinity wherever we go, in whatever we perceive — in the eyes of a child, in the beauty of a flower, in the flight of a bird. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 142:No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 143:The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, thought you know that it probably will not be. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 144:The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 145:Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. In effect, the people who change our lives the most begin to sing to us while we are still in darkness. If we listen to their song, we will see the dawning of a new part of ourselves. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 146:Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 147:Truth is complete in itself. Truth has a strong foundation in itself. It is bold, it has no fears. It has no limit of space or time. It is a fearless, free bird in the sky. It does not care for status. It is wealth in itself. Truth stands even when there is no public support. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 148:How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 149:Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 150:To feel the anguish of waiting for the next moment and of taking part in the complex current (of affairs) not knowing that we are headed toward ourselves, through millions of stone beings - of bird beings - of star beings - of microbe beings - of fountain beings toward ourselves. ~ frida-kahlo, @wisdomtrove 151:There seems to be a necessity in Spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali pre-exist in necessary ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections in the world of Spirit. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove 152:In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 153:As you love your own body, so regard everyone as equal to your own body. When the Supreme Experience supervenes, everyone's service is revealed as one's own service. Call it a bird, an insect, an animal or a man, call it by any name you please, one serves one's own Self in every one of them. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 154:As you love your own body, so regard everyone as equal to your own body. When the Supreme Experience supervenes, everyone’s service is revealed as one’s own service. Call it a bird, an insect, an animal or a man, call it by any name you please, one serves one’s own Self in every one of them. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 155:As flowers carry dewdrops, trembling on the edges of the petals, and ready to fall at the first waft of wind or brush of bird, so the heart should carry its beaded words of thanksgiving; and at the first breath of heavenly flavor, let down the shower, perfumed with the heart's gratitude. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 156:The deeper men go into life, the deeper is their conviction that this life is not all. It is an unfinished symphony. A day may round out an insect's life, and a bird or a beast needs no tomorrow. Not so with him who knows that he is related to God and has felt the power of an endless life. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 157:If you love a person, you say to that person, "Look, I love you, whatever that may be. I've seen quite a bit of it and I know there's lots that I haven't seen, but still it's you and I want you to be what you want to be. And I won't be happy if I've got you in a cage. You'd be a bird without song." ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 158:My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes. They are the cradle of the morning, they are the kingdom of the stars. My songs are lost in their depths. Let me but soar in that sky, in its lonely immensity. Let me but cleave its clouds and spread wings in its sunshine. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 159:Fa√´rie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 160:There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of woman is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on only one wing. There is no hope for that family or country where there is no estimation of women, where they live in sadness. For this reason, they have to be raised first. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 161:I have wished a bird would fly away, And not sing by my house all day; Have clapped my hands at him from the door When it seemed as if I could bear no more. The fault must partly have been in me. The bird was not to blame for his key. And of course there must be something wrong In wanting to silence any song. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 162:The church that is not jealously protected by mighty intercession and sacrificial labors will before long become the abode of every evil bird and the hiding place for unsuspected corruption. The creeping wilderness will soon take over that church that trusts in its own strength and forgets to watch and pray. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 163:Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire... . Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 164:Some minds corrode and grow inactive under the loss of personal liberty; others grow morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and imaginative in the loneliness of confinement. He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 165:Let us not try to understand music with our mind. Let us not even try to feel it with our heart. Let us simply and spontaneously allow the music-bird to fly in our heart-sky. While flying, it will unconditionally reveal to us what it has and what it is. What it has, is Immortality's message. What it is, is Eternity's passage. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 166:There are things you can’t reach. But You can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open. ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove 167:A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 168:Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 169:Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore- Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore- Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 170:Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chilliest land And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 171:Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 172:& 173:If you want to nourish a bird, you should let it live any way it chooses. Creatures differ because they have different likes and dislikes. Therefore the sages never require the same ability from all creatures. . . concepts of right should be founded on what is suitable. The true saint leaves wisdom to the ants, takes a cue from the fishes, and leaves willfulness to the sheep. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 174:But the owls themselves are not hard to find, silent and on the wing, with their ear tufts flat against their heads as they fly and their huge wings alternately gliding and flapping as they maneuver through the trees. Athena's owl of wisdom and Merlin's companion, Archimedes, were screech owls surely, not this bird with the glassy gaze, restless on the bough, nothing but blood on its mind. ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove 175:For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 176:Not a single star will be left in the night. The night will not be left. I will die and, with me, the weight of the intolerable universe. I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions, the continents and faces. I shall erase the accumulated past. I shall make dust of history, dust of dust. Now I am looking on the final sunset. I am hearing the last bird. I bequeath nothingness to no one. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 177:God's terrible face brighter than a spoon collects the image of one fatal word;so that my life(which liked the sun and the moon)resembles something that has not occurred:i am a birdcage without any bird a collar looking for a dog a kisswithout lips;a prayer lacking any kneesbut something beats within my shirt to provehe is undead who living noone is.I have never loved you dear as now i love. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 178:It proved you had survived another year with its wars, inflation, unemployment, smog, presidents. It was a grand neurotic gathering of clans: loud drunks, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, screaming children, would-be suicides. And don't forget indigestion. I wasn't different from anyone else: There sat the 18-pound bird on my sink, dead, plucked, totally disemboweled. Iris would roast it for me. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 179:Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 180:Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that ofttimes hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 181:He spent a lot of time flying. He learnt to communicate with birds and discovered that their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with wind speed, wing spans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries. Unfortunately, he discovered, once you have learnt birdspeak you quickly come to realize that the air is full of it the whole time, just inane bird chatter. There is no getting away from it. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 182: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, @wisdomtrove 183:Then she took my hand and touched it to the wound beside her eye. I caressed the half-inch scar. As I did so, the waves of her consciousness pulsed through my fingertips and into me - a delicate resonance of longing. Probably someone should take this girl in his arms and hold her tight, I thought. Probably someone other than me. Someone qualified to give her something. "Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. See you again sometime. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 184:It was a narrow world, a world that was standing still. But the narrower it became, the more it betook of stillness, the more this world that enveloped me seemed to overflow with things and people that could only be called strange. They had been there all the while, it seemed, waiting in the shadows for me to stop moving. And every time the wind-up bird came to my yard to wind its spring, the world descendedmore deeply into chaos. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 185:The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpended the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a fingerprint of a shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 186:With all humility, I think, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 187:There was a deep silence, only scraped on its surfaces by the faint quiver of empty seed-plumes, and broken grass-blades trembling in small air-movements they could not feel. & 188:Life is precious. Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird. To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, and support. Life and death are connected by vulnerability. The newborn child and the dying elder both remind us of the preciousness of our lives. Let's not forget the preciousness and vulnerability of life during the times we are powerful, successful, and popular. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 189:Saints are like trees. They do not call to anyone, neither do they send anyone away. They give shelter to whoever cares to come, be it a man, woman, child, or an animal. If you sit under a tree it will protect you from the weather, from the scorching sun as well as from the pouring rain, and it will give you flowers and fruit. Whether a human being enjoys them or a bird tastes of them matters little to the tree; its produce is there for anyone who comes and takes it. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 190:Equally, there are no such things as rights in biology. There are only organs, abilities and characteristics. Birds fly not because they have a right to fly, but because they have wings. And it’s not true that these organs, abilities and characteristics are ‘unalienable’. Many of them undergo constant mutations, and may well be completely lost over time. The ostrich is a bird that lost its ability to fly. So ‘unalienable rights’ should be translated into ‘mutable characteristics’. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 191:There were plenty of women around who dressed smartly, and plenty more who dressed to impress, but this girl was different. Totally different. She wore her clothing with such utter naturalness and grace that she could have been a bird that had wrapped itself in a special wind as it made ready to fly off to another world. He had never seen a woman who wore her clothes with such apparent joy. And the clothes themselves looked as if, in being draped on her body, they had won new life for themselves. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 192:A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims there is no end to the water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies there is no end to the air. However the fish and the bird have never left their elements. Thus each of them totally covers its full range, and each of them totally experiences its realm... Know that water is life and air is life. The bird is life and the fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish... practice, enlightenment and people are like this. ~ dogen, @wisdomtrove 193:Well, a funny thing, there are three that I like all for the same reason, golf, fishing, and shooting, and I do because first, they take you into the fields. There is mild exercise, the kind that an older individual probably should have. And on top of it, it induces you to take at any one time 2 or 3 hours, if you can, where you are thinking of the bird or that ball or the wily trout. Now, to my mind it is a very healthful, beneficial kind of thing, and I do it whenever I get a chance, as you well know. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 194:You can lead a truly spiritual life while remaining a householder. You will be able to enjoy the bliss of the Self, but your mind has to be on God all the time. Then you can easily attain bliss. A mother bird will be thinking of the young ones in the nest, even when she is out looking for food. Similarly, you have to keep your mind on God, while engaged in all worldly actions. The important thing is to be completely dedicated to God or the Guru. Once you have that dedication, the goal will not be far away. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 195:The kakapo is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it's about to trip over something - but flying is out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 196:On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree, and bird, might have better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown, have been violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair as a purification for the Temple, and have then been carried off highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was quite steamed out of me ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 197:Those five fingers and that palm were like a display case crammed full of everything I wanted to know& 198:Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns; for, ion ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. Since he is gone where he feels no pain, let us not indulge in too much grief. The soul is incapable of death. And he, like a bird not long enough in his cage to become attached to it, is free to fly away to a purer air. . . . Since we cherish a trust like this, let our outward actions be in accord with it, and let us keep our hearts pure and our minds calm. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 199:There is a beautiful spirit breathing now Its mellowed richness on the clustered trees, And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, Pouring new glory on the autumn woods, And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds. Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down By the wayside a-weary. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 200:In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 201:Then I noticed that my shadow was crying too, shedding clear, sharp shadow tears. Have you ever seen the shadows of tears, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? They’re nothing like ordinary shadows. Nothing at all. They come here from some other, distant world, especially for our hearts. Or maybe not. It struck me then that the tears my shadow was shedding might be the real thing, and the tears that I was shedding were just shadows. You don’t get it, I’m sure, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. When a naked seventeen-year-old girl is shedding tears in the moonlight, anything can happen. It’s true. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 202:When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in her breast, One bird begins to close a faded eye; Or overtaken too far from his nest, Hurrying low above the grove, some waif Swoops just in time to his remembered tree. At most he thinks or twitters softly, & 203:Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sound or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 204:The most famous lenders in nature are vampire bats. These bats congregate in the thousands inside caves, and every night fly out to look for prey. When they find a sleeping bird or careless mammal, they make a small incision in its skin, and suck its blood. But not all vampire bats find a victim every night. In order to cope with the uncertainty of their life, the vampires loan blood to each other. A vampire that fails to find prey will come home and ask a more fortunate friend to regurgitate some stolen blood. Vampires remember very well to whom they loaned blood, so at a later date if the friend returns home hungry, he will approach his debtor, who will reciprocate the favour. However, unlike human bankers, vampires never charge interest. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:green T-Bird. When ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
2:house at Otowi Bridge. ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
3:Nice bird, asshole! ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
4:free as a bird, ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
5:the relations were of a ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
6:Bird’s Custard Powder. ~ Ian Sansom, #NFDB
7:I am a bird of God's garden ~ Rumi, #NFDB
8:A bird is joy incarnate. ~ Myrtle Reed, #NFDB
9:Nearly never kills a bird ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
10:Just take it bird by bird ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
11:I have a Bird in spring ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
12:Nor bird nor beast ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
13:The bird loves her nest. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
14:THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE WORM ~ Ben Carson, #NFDB
15:Bird of Wide Experience I ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
16:Every bird will follow it's specie. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
17:Little red bird. Don't go. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
18:little red bird. Don’t go. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
19:Fly for me, Bird of the Sun. ~ Wilbur Smith, #NFDB
20:I like pressure. I thrive on it. ~ Sue Bird, #NFDB
21:Little red bird, let me go. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
22:As for me, I used to be a bird ~ Alda Merini, #NFDB
23:if your a bird, I'm a bird ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
24:I don't look like no kiwi bird ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
25:I'll play until my knees fall off. ~ Sue Bird, #NFDB
26:I'm a terrible Scrabble player. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
27:I was not a big comic-book reader. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
28:I would I were thy bird. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
29:Just remember you’re not a bird, ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
30:Understand the power of asking. ~ Drayton Bird, #NFDB
31:I am a cage, in search of a bird. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
32:I know why the caged bird sings. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
33:about a bird, wasn’t there, Mike? ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
34:A forest bird never wants a cage. ~ Henrik Ibsen, #NFDB
35:Don't the wounded bird still sing? ~ Sheryl Crow, #NFDB
36:Farre shooting never kild bird. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
37:I am a cage, in search of a bird. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
38:I'm a jencel bird," Kalen told her. ~ Cate Rowan, #NFDB
39:I’m the bird and I’m flying away. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
40:Nina, little red bird. Don't go. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
41:A Fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
42:A foolish dog barks at a flying bird ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
43:CHAPTER XXVII ‘WONDERFUL BIRD! ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
44:If you're a bird... I'm a bird. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
45:No news at 4:30 a.m. is good. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
46:The early bird catches the worm. ~ William Camden, #NFDB
47:Are you listening, little bird? ~ Lilith Saintcrow, #NFDB
48:Brad Bird, fresh off The Incredibles, ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
49:I rarely find motive in bird vomit. ~ Jack Hodgins, #NFDB
50:A blue bird flew in through the window. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
51:I admit I'm enthusiastically demanding. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
52:I am no bird, no net ensnares me. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
53:If you're a bird... I'm a bird... ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
54:I have wished a bird would fly away, ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
55:Jealous of a bitty bird, he was. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer, #NFDB
56:A bird half wakened in the lunar noon ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
57:I have wished a bird would fly away, ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
58:I want to paint the way a bird sings. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
59:My heart is like a singing bird ~ Christina Rossetti, #NFDB
60:No bird ever looked at a plane in envy ~ Iain Thomas, #NFDB
61:O lyric love! half angel half bird ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
62:On our way over to see the bird, ~ Elizabeth Kolbert, #NFDB
63:You are nothing but a bird with attitude. ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
64:A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. ~ Benjamin Hoff, #NFDB
65:Art is the window to man's soul. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
66:...as nervous as a bird in a coal mine. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
67:High in the sky is a bird on a wing ~ Tom Springfield, #NFDB
68:In a lot of ways, Mom is kind of badass. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
69:I want to be the bird that flies away. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
70:London is a roost for every bird. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
71:Love is a bird... she needs to fly. ~ Madonna Ciccone, #NFDB
72:My heart is like a singing bird. ~ Christina Rossetti, #NFDB
73:Sometimes the word dictated the melody. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
74:Somewhere, a bird sang a song that ached. ~ T J Klune, #NFDB
75:The early worm deserves the bird. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
76:Where flowers bloom so does hope. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
77:Bird in hand makes it harder to blow nose. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
78:Do you like the sunset I ordered for you? ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
79:Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant. ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
80:Even big-bird gets sad sometimes ~ Andrew VanWyngarden, #NFDB
81:I am no bird and no net ensnares me ~ Charlotte Bronte, #NFDB
82:I'm like a bird, I'll only fly away... ~ Nelly Furtado, #NFDB
83:No empty handed man can lure a bird ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, #NFDB
84:spring comes, flowers fragrant, bird sings. ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
85:Us way down to the body. There the bird ~ Andre Norton, #NFDB
86:A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
87:A. Lamott, Bird by Bird (Anchor Books, 1994 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
88:But cow well you ass therefore my bird ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
89:Each bird must sing with his own throat. ~ Henrik Ibsen, #NFDB
90:I am no bird; and no net ensnares me. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
91:Jay-bird don't rob his own nes'. ~ Joel Chandler Harris, #NFDB
92:Mr. Bird was an avid hiker, lover of reggae ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
93:Only a foolish dog barks at a flying bird. ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
94:You are nothing but a bird with an attitude. ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
95:Your thoughts are as free as any bird ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
96:A bird in the hand is worth more than a Bush. ~ Ice Cube, #NFDB
97:A little bird told me," said the Lion. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
98:Love makes intellectual pretzels of us all. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
99:Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog? ~ John L Lewis, #NFDB
100:A bird in a cage is not half a bird. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
101:I can’t believe I’m being coerced by a bird. ~ Cate Rowan, #NFDB
102:No bird soars in a calm. WILBUR WRIGHT ~ David McCullough, #NFDB
103:Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant.
~ Guy Kawasaki,#NFDB
104:Egg is ego, and bird is the liberated Self. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
105:I would like to paint the way a bird sings. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
106:Maurice Maeterlinck’s play The Blue Bird. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
107:plummeting like a grouse full of bird shot. ~ Paula McLain, #NFDB
108:We had a delicious dinner of too much. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
109:Wildflowers are the stuff of my heart! ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
110:A pink fluttering bird flew across her mind. ~ Anne Mallory, #NFDB
111:A precipice cannot challenge the bird! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
112:Does the bird feel the weight of its wings? ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
113:Free as a bird to settle where I will. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
114:is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame, ~ Veronica Rossi, #NFDB
115:It is a foul bird that filleth his own nest. ~ John Heywood, #NFDB
116:The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey. ~ Andy Warhol, #NFDB
117:There is no bird flu in commercial stocks. ~ Michael E Mann, #NFDB
118:A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird. ~ Truman Capote, #NFDB
119:A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, ~ Glynn Stewart, #NFDB
120:Bird by bird buddy. Just take it bird by bird. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
121:Bird Poop in the mouth is always a surprise. ~ Craig Benzine, #NFDB
122:A bird, music and food -desert island items ~ Michael Johnson, #NFDB
123:A traveler without knowledge is a bird without wings. ~ Saadi, #NFDB
124:Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
125:Bird cage is nice only when it is empty! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
126:Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
127:Men fear to lose as much as they hope to gain. ~ Drayton Bird, #NFDB
128:One bird sits still Watching the work of God: ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
129:Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal. ~ Jasmin Darznik, #NFDB
130:The early bird gets the worm, the rest starve. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
131:There is no beast on the earth, no bird flying on its ~ Koran, #NFDB
132:a bird is one egg’s way of becoming other eggs. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
133:But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
134:He guides me and the bird. In His good time! ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
135:I know what the caged bird feels, alas! ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar, #NFDB
136:You don't have to chase every bird that you see. ~ Helen Ellis, #NFDB
137:You have a humming dodo bird," I said stupidly. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
138:A person isn't a bird. You can't cage a person. ~ Sharon Creech, #NFDB
139:Faith is the bird that sings while it is yet dark. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
140:He that will take the bird, must not skare it. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
141:Nineteen and a pampered bird in a gilded cage. ~ Chanel Cleeton, #NFDB
142:The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
143:The shell must break before the bird can fly. ~ Alfred Tennyson, #NFDB
144:When a bird crapped on my window, he called 911. ~ Lee Goldberg, #NFDB
145:A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
146:A gun will give you the body, not the bird ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
147:Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
148:Everyone in me is a bird I am beating all my wings ~ Anne Sexton, #NFDB
149:I am lost in your eyes like a broken wings bird. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
150:I don't, for the record, have a Tweety Bird fetish. ~ Brian Lamb, #NFDB
151:I'll always be a word man, better than a bird man ~ Jim Morrison, #NFDB
152:In mourning the plumage, he forgot the dying bird ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
153:Love is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame. ~ Veronica Rossi, #NFDB
154:Oh, I'm just Ego's assistant. It's not anything big. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
155:Our bird when he found the cage open would not fly ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
156:The bird's delirium does not interest the trees. ~ Henri Michaux, #NFDB
157:Call me names, dearest! Call me thy bird ~ Frances Sargent Osgood, #NFDB
158:If I was a bird, Kline Brooks could go fuck himself. ~ Max Monroe, #NFDB
159:The patient bird breakfasts on the
juiciest worm. ~ Karen Rose,#NFDB
160:You must be crazy, after all, if a bird loves you. ~ Andrew Smith, #NFDB
161:You're just an empty cage girl, if you kill the bird. ~ Tori Amos, #NFDB
162:Argentina has the best bird shooting in the world. ~ W E B Griffin, #NFDB
163:The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
164:The shell must be broken before the bird can fly. ~ Jennifer Worth, #NFDB
165:A fish may love a bird, but where would they live? ~ Drew Barrymore, #NFDB
166:A hungry cat does no favour to a trapped bird! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
167:Each has to enter the nest made by the other imperfect bird. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
168:Everyone in me is a bird
I am beating all my wings ~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
169:I work as often as I want and yet I'm free as a bird ~ Ethel Merman, #NFDB
170:Luck y duck. She rolled her beady little bird eye. ~ Kelly Barnhill, #NFDB
171:To be fair, her hat did look like Big Bird's arse. ~ Rachel Hawkins, #NFDB
172:A bird in The Strand is worth two in Shepherds Bush ~ Spike Milligan, #NFDB
173:come over and get that omelet before some bird flies ~ Brett Battles, #NFDB
174:If you hold a bird too tightly, you'll crush its wings ~ V C Andrews, #NFDB
175:I spend a lot of time learning about bird watching. ~ Nikki Giovanni, #NFDB
176:Oh yeah, I'm still employed at Pixar and I love it here. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
177:Silence is love just as your raspy voice is a bird. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
178:The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
179:The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
180:the shell must break before the bird can fly. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
181:A bird who can gobble is qualified to teach crowing. ~ Edmond Rostand, #NFDB
182:A feather in hand is better then a bird in the ayre. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
183:A heart without dreams is like a bird without feathers. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
184:A rare bird upon the earth and very much like a black swan. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
185:Intelligence without ambition is a bird without winds. ~ Salvador Dal, #NFDB
186:Kindly remember that the obvious is always overlooked. ~ Drayton Bird, #NFDB
187:Let the bird sing without deciphering the song. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
188:No matter. The dead bird does not leave the nest. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
189:Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skywards. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
190:People habitat has to take priority over bird habitat. ~ Byron Dorgan, #NFDB
191:The bird that flutters least is longest on the wing. ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
192:Better a bird in hand than hell knows what in the bush. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
193:Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings. ~ Salvador Dali, #NFDB
194:Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
195:No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
196:One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather. ~ Paul Val ry, #NFDB
197:She walked along beneath a sky of bird’s-egg blue, ~ Stephen R Lawhead, #NFDB
198:The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing? ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
199:You have to be emotionally attached to what you are doing. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
200:Communities need to hear the liberating power of the gospel ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
201:I love Washington, but it is a self-important town. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
202:One should be light like a bird and not like a feather. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
203:The way I work, I'm not a confessional singer-songwriter. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
204:A man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
205:Every bird that upwards swings Bears the Cross upon its wings. ~ Martial, #NFDB
206:God gave a loaf to every bird, But just a crumb to me. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
207:Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country. ~ Bill Ayers, #NFDB
208:How can you live without everything touching you? ~ Lauren Bird Horowitz, #NFDB
209:I carry Sorrow, a grey
bird, sluggish, in my chest. ~ Osip Mandelstam,#NFDB
210:I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird. ~ Coco Chanel, #NFDB
211:I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
212:Just don't let the human factor fail to be a factor at all ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
213:Music as a social conduit has always been important to me. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
214:The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation. ~ Abdul Kalam, #NFDB
215:The demented strutting of a dumb bird in the moonlight. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
216:the flying fish and the diving bird had been netted. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
217:Then you are the bird, and the bird, and the bird. ~ Genevieve Valentine, #NFDB
218:Why not invite him in and show him your African bird? Oh, ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
219:A bird alone could have extricated himself from that place. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
220:Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
221:How lucky we are to have such a treasure of memories. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
222:Marriage, as an institution, is as dead as the dodo bird. ~ Joan Fontaine, #NFDB
223:My shoe is off. My foot is cold. I have a bird I like to hold. ~ Dr Seuss, #NFDB
224:One feather is of no use to me, I must have the whole bird. ~ Jacob Grimm, #NFDB
225:The rusted-out VW bug is the national bird of Waitressland. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
226:This is not a lament, it's the cry of a bird of prey. ~ Clarice Lispector, #NFDB
227:What’s the fastest migratory bird on Earth?” “An airplane. ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
228:A gush of bird song, a patter of dew ~ Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford, #NFDB
229:A rare bird on this earth, like nothing so much as a black swan. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
230:If a bird flies straight at you, prepare for a bad day. ~ Kelley Armstrong, #NFDB
231:It's so Quite around here, I'm sure I heard a Bird Fart! ~ Dorothy Garlock, #NFDB
232:Its sweet bird's nest is full of pain in a distant place ~ Laura Kasischke, #NFDB
233:There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
234:We must be careful what we say. No bird resumes its egg. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
235:You put a big bird in a small cage, it'll sing you a song ~ Patrick Watson, #NFDB
236:He was like a damaged bird. And they always die, she thought. ~ Sadie Jones, #NFDB
237:How can a bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? ~ William Blake, #NFDB
238:If you hold a bird too tightly, you'll crush its wings ~ Virginia C Andrews, #NFDB
239:I knew I would be able to come back from the injury 100 percent. ~ Sue Bird, #NFDB
240:I shot him the bird. (Get it? I shot him the—never mind.) ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
241:named Tom Bird, a half-breed who took a sentimental turn ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
242:Once a bird kid, always a bird kid. - maximum ride series ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
243:Rumor, that wingless bird, had shadowed over the town. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, #NFDB
244:When the bird and the book disagree, believe the bird. ~ John James Audubon, #NFDB
245:Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives. ~ Mary Oliver, #NFDB
246:Brown bird welcomes white wave. Wander no more, dear traveler. ~ Ann Aguirre, #NFDB
247:Death only breaks the cage, but it does not hurt the bird. ~ Qais Akbar Omar, #NFDB
248:God is an early bird; satan is a night owl. Everyone knows that. ~ Jon Acuff, #NFDB
249:Her heart was a broken-winged bird that staggered in circles. ~ Ilana C Myer, #NFDB
250:Little Bird if you do not sing for me, I will wait for you ~ Ieyasu Tokugawa, #NFDB
251:Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers. ~ Robert Henri, #NFDB
252:There's a lot of interesting words, nomenclatures, in science. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
253:When Beethoven went deaf, the mynah bird just used to mime. ~ Graham Chapman, #NFDB
254:A bird in a cage is safe but God didn't create birds for that. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
255:Being a bird ain't all about flying and shitting from high places. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
256:Do we ask what profit the little bird hopes for in singing? ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
257:I am neither left wing nor right wing. I am middle-of-the-bird. ~ Pat Paulsen, #NFDB
258:I think life is a wondrous thing. I'm happy to try pretty hard. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
259:Reese was a bird landing softly in the rough seas of my life, ~ Kandi Steiner, #NFDB
260: Maybe I will die today.
Maybe a bird will fly today. ~ Tahereh Mafi,#NFDB
261:Some of my earlier songs are kind of more about mental illness. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
262:Bird and bear and hare and fish, give my love her fondest wish. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
263:How can a bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing? ~ William Blake,#NFDB
264:It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
265:Little Bird if you don't sing for me I will make you sing ~ Toyotomi Hideyoshi, #NFDB
266:My kids love anime, but I don't show them the really graphic stuff ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
267:People who want to be tattooed don't always have good taste. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
268:Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages. ~ Spiro T Agnew, #NFDB
269:The Bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame. ~ Kohta Hirano, #NFDB
270:Agnes like she was a baby bird. Dabney felt a combination of ~ Elin Hilderbrand, #NFDB
271:Ah, that’s the Jaguar-Chevrolet 2251 T-bird, the convertible ~ Peter F Hamilton, #NFDB
272:Bird life aplenty is found in the sunny air, not all of it significant. ~ Homer, #NFDB
273:Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
274:He who frees a bird from its cage is surely a holy person! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
275:I have to be more assertive-I have take more control at crunch time. ~ Sue Bird, #NFDB
276:I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
277:I would soar like a bird, solitary, unmated, but untrammeled. ~ Phyllis T Smith, #NFDB
278:Not a single bird makes its first leap from a tree without faith. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
279:We all have impossible dreams and we do what we can to pursue them. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
280:A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing. ~ Bret Harte, #NFDB
281:A chicken doesn’t fly like other birds, but it is still a bird. ~ Jessica Khoury, #NFDB
282:Bird memories are therefore a tree's dream of the future. ~ David George Haskell, #NFDB
283:Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
284:He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
285:O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering voice? ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
286:The early bird gathers no moss! The rolling stone catches the worm. ~ Jim Carrey, #NFDB
287:What is a bird if it can't fly? It might as well be a cockroach. ~ Eleanor Morse, #NFDB
288:Dirk Nowitzki will be better than Larry Bird. I'm a legend killer. ~ Mark Jackson, #NFDB
289:Even a hunter cannot kill a bird which flies to him for refuge. ~ Chiune Sugihara, #NFDB
290:In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm. ~ Alan Perlis, #NFDB
291:This autumn- why am I growing old? bird disappearing among clouds. ~ Matsuo Basho, #NFDB
292:Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
293:Although all poets aspire to be birds, no bird aspires to be a poet. ~ Mary Ruefle, #NFDB
294:Anything that makes movie-going a magnificent experience, I'm all for. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
295:for the bird that cannot soar, God has provided low branches. ~ Louis de Berni res, #NFDB
296:God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest. ~ P D James, #NFDB
297:He who is not a bird should not build his nest over abysses. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
298:If you cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen. ~ Nikita Khrushchev, #NFDB
299:Jonas Haines of Broken Bird Marries Model Adriana Rivera in Vegas ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
300:Lend me your wings, bird. I'll spread them and fly on the thermals. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
301:The early bird often gets the worm; but slow and steady wins the race. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
302:The idea of the nest in the bird's mind, where does it come from? ~ Joseph Joubert, #NFDB
303:A bird & a fish can fall in love, but where do they make a home? ~ Dolly Parton, #NFDB
304:absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird ~ Audrey Niffenegger, #NFDB
305:Did every step feel like the running leap a bird takes before flight? ~ Jesmyn Ward, #NFDB
306:Fish gotta swim Bird gotta fly Man gotta sit and say Why why why ~ Thomas McEvilley, #NFDB
307:God, I wish I was free. I wish I was a bird floating in the breeze. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
308:If God were an object to the bird, he would be a winged being[.] ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
309:I just pay attention to what's in my head. That's my number-one rule. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
310:Investment is a flighty bird which needs to be controlled. ~ Sir John Richard Hicks, #NFDB
311:It’s okay,” Patricia told the bird. “I’ve got you. It’s okay. ~ Charlie Jane Anders, #NFDB
312:Oh, bird of my soul, fly away now, For I possess a hundred fortified towers. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
313:The bird thinks it a favor to give the fish a lift in the air ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
314:The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. ~ Willie Nelson, #NFDB
315:The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes. ~ John Coltrane, #NFDB
316:A bird is safe in its nest - but that is not what its wings are made for. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
317:can this bird have to do with the kidnapping?” Kate asked. The ~ Trenton Lee Stewart, #NFDB
318:Guitars are kind of just, you know, sexy, especially old vintage ones. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
319:I am a song bird, I am a meek song bird, I offer my prayer to the Lord. ~ Guru Nanak, #NFDB
320:Just because a bird builds a nest doesn’t mean its wings are clipped, ~ Chris Colfer, #NFDB
321:Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
322:Man is a bird without wings and a bird is a man without sorrow. ~ Louis de Berni res, #NFDB
323:No, Kramisha, he's not black. He's a killer bird with evil for his Daddy. ~ P C Cast, #NFDB
324:The early bird gets the worm. The early worm... gets eaten. ~ Norman Ralph Augustine, #NFDB
325:The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
326:We didn't have a generation gap, we had a generation Grand Canyon. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
327:are more like Dog and Cat and Bird than like Lassie and Fido and Spot. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
328:I should learn to be a bird on the outside and a tiger within. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz, #NFDB
329:It's all up to you, kid. The dinosaurs are dying out. Become a Bird... ~ Scott Snyder, #NFDB
330:The woods would be quiet if no bird sang but the one that sang best. ~ Henry Van Dyke, #NFDB
331:A bird in a cage is never as beautiful as a bird that is free [...]. ~ Sylvain Reynard, #NFDB
332:A fish does not swim it is SWUM. A bird does not FLY it is flown. ~ Viktor Schauberger, #NFDB
333:I am both a night owl and an early bird. So I am wise and I have worms. ~ Steve Carell, #NFDB
334:I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg. ~ James M Barrie, #NFDB
335:Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil! - prophet still, it bird or devil! ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
336:Sweet bird, that shun the noise of folly, most musical, most melancholy! ~ John Milton, #NFDB
337:The feelings trembled and flapped in his chest like a bird newly put in a cage. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
338:The ox feels the yoke, but does the bird feel the weight of its wings? ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
339:This autumn-
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds. ~ Matsuo Bash,#NFDB
340:what I preferred
was not statues but the bird in the statue's hair. ~ Derek Walcott,#NFDB
341:Festo, for one example, has created a robot that flies like a bird. ~ Peter H Diamandis, #NFDB
342:For a taste that's a bit more distinct, eat a bird before it's extinct. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
343:He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
344:He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
345:Japan offers as much novelty perhaps as an excursion to another planet. ~ Isabella Bird, #NFDB
346:Might as well go out flipping the bird to the powers that be killing us. ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
347:People only buy when they're ready to buy. Not when you're ready to sell ~ Drayton Bird, #NFDB
348:She said every bird in the air came from a thought of God, and so did I. ~ Lisa Wingate, #NFDB
349:The coach has turned into a pumpkin and the mice have all run away. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
350:...you have torn my life all to pieces.. made me a victim, a caged bird! ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
351:Comparing yourself to somebody else is like comparing yourself to a bird. ~ Willow Smith, #NFDB
352:How do you catch a beautiful bird without killing it? By becoming the sky. ~ Antero Alli, #NFDB
353:I got my heroes secondhand, from television and movies, to a certain extent. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
354:Larry Bird is like a basketball god to me for what he's done for my career. ~ Jalen Rose, #NFDB
355:Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! — ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
356:Shamans wear bird costumes and they fly. Somehow they experience flying. ~ Russell Hoban, #NFDB
357:She will lie down and sleep inside her own heart like a bird in the night. ~ Jenni Fagan, #NFDB
358:When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
359:A fish and a bird may indeed fall in love, but where shall they live? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
360:Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
361:I feel like a tiny bug, and the world is a hungry bird looking down at me. ~ Shannon Hale, #NFDB
362:I have brightness in my soul, which strains toward Heaven. I am like a bird! ~ Jenny Lind, #NFDB
363:It’s bad enough being ignored by the abbot, but to be ignored by a bird… ~ Edoardo Albert, #NFDB
364:One bird's an eagle born— FALK. And one a hen. ~ Henrik Ibsen, #NFDB
365:Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly. ~ Ivan Pavlov, #NFDB
366:The 'almighty dollar' is the true divinity, and its worship is universal. ~ Isabella Bird, #NFDB
367:While still in the cage of your being behold the spirit bird before it flies away. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
368:..and me holding this moment that was as fragile as a bird in my hands ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
369:Bird’s mother-in-law sat quite still, the world’s most forlorn ventriloquist. ~ Kenzabur e, #NFDB
370:Five o’clock does not say stamina. Five o’clock screams early-bird special. ~ Brynne Asher, #NFDB
371:in a paradise with sweet laughs for bird-notes, and blue eyes for a heaven. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
372:I write a lot more when I'm happy, because you're hopeful, you're motivated. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
373:Kjell is right. You are a dangerous little bird. But I think I will keep you. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
374:That’s a geometric figure, that bird, he don’t exist without an angle. ~ Donald E Westlake, #NFDB
375:A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
376:Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
377:Fire at will! And for the love of the Great Bird of the Galaxy, hit something! ~ David Mack, #NFDB
378:Fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly, werewolf gotta have a pack?” I said wryly. ~ Carrie Vaughn, #NFDB
379:I dined upon a bird, and radishes from the garden, and homemade plum jam. ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
380:I feel like a bird who has been wounded with an arrow and now cannot fly. ~ Tracy Chevalier, #NFDB
381:I'm catholic in the same way, that if a cow was born in a tree, it's a bird! ~ Richard Jeni, #NFDB
382:I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don’t know what to feed it. ~ Steven Wright, #NFDB
383:Limmershin is a very odd little bird, but he knows how to tell the truth. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
384:The poor child felt like a little bird that is placed in a glittering cage. ~ Johanna Spyri, #NFDB
385:With digital sound just becomes simply information, not the sum of its parts. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
386:A good servant is a real godsend, but truly this is a rare bird in the land. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
387:Fari vagnari a pizzu.” Pizzu means the beak of any small bird such as a canary. ~ Mario Puzo, #NFDB
388:I am an owl, bird of the night. I see everything. I know everything. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
389:I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
390:In the street, your mouth's a beak, big like a bird, and your future's bleak. ~ Kool Moe Dee, #NFDB
391:Moral power is always more dangerous to an oppressor than political force. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
392:Set the bird's wings with gold and it will never again soar in thesky. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
393:souls shriveled by public sins, each holding office like a bird in its cage ~ George Seferis, #NFDB
394:the bird sings as if to say that delight is easy, for those who desire it ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
395:When I'm onstage, I'm completely comfortable, and I feel very vital and alive. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
396:You're a lunatic in a bird suit. And I was done playing nice a long time ago. ~ Scott Snyder, #NFDB
397:Everyone's sort of the same height when you're looking from bird's eye view. ~ Marcus Dunstan, #NFDB
398:I’m being practical. Bird flu is twice as deadly as bubonic plague.” “What’s ~ Matthew Mather, #NFDB
399:I prefer empty cages, Sabina, until I find a unique bird I once saw in my dreams. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
400:I prefer empty cages, Sabina, until I find a unique bird I once saw in my dreams. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
401:Tell your little mascot to get out of here, cause I have no problem flippin' the bird. ~ Edge, #NFDB
402:The bird and the fish may fall in love but where will they build their nest? ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
403:The sight of a cage is only frightening to the bird that has once been caught. ~ Rachel Field, #NFDB
404:They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
405:though what bird in the best of circumstances does not look a little stricken? ~ Lorrie Moore, #NFDB
406:And if you are not a bird, then beware of coming to rest above an abyss. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
407:Don't roust your faith bird-high an' you won't do no crawlin' with the worms. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
408:For the inactive windmills, even the winds from the bird wings is a hope! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
409:If I saw an ugly bird but she was a celebrity, she wouldn't attract me at all. ~ Rio Ferdinand, #NFDB
410:into the moth that haunts my memories: black wings, blue body—the size of a bird. ~ A G Howard, #NFDB
411:Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
412:like some unholy bird of prey was swooping down on him. Preacher saw the ~ William W Johnstone, #NFDB
413:O lyric Love, half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
414:Tis but a base, ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
415:We're seriously going to drive to Jersey with a bird wearing a bra in the backseat? ~ H M Ward, #NFDB
416:When a bird gets free, it does not go back for remnants left on the bottom of the cage. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
417:Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird? ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
418:You jumped like a frog.
You touched like a dog.
You kissed like a bird. ~ Santosh Kalwar,#NFDB
419:Alright, the next pretty bird that walks through that door is up for grabs. ~ Ilsa Madden Mills, #NFDB
420:And if you are not a bird, then beware of coming to rest above an abyss. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
421:But that bird can fly to Africa and back. Powered by bugs and worms and desire. ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
422:Every bird you downed bore pebbles in its gizzard from a land the maps ignored. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
423:Her heart was beating wildly, like a frightened bird, begging to be set free. ~ Taylor Sullivan, #NFDB
424:I’d had two fights in the past couple of hours; won one, lost one (to a bird) ~ W Bruce Cameron, #NFDB
425:I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh. ~ Isabella Bird, #NFDB
426:periodic bouts of depression. Some of these episodes were brought on by his family’s ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
427:several South American countries actually went to war over these piles of bird shit. ~ Sam Kean, #NFDB
428:The cockroach and the bird were both here long before we were. Both could. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch, #NFDB
429:The early bird may get the worm, but its the second mouse that gets the cheese. ~ Jeremy Paxman, #NFDB
430:The early bird may get the worm, but it's the second mouse who gets the cheese. ~ Steven Wright, #NFDB
431:What wings are to a bird, and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul.
~ Corrie ten Boom,#NFDB
432:You cannot save every fallen bird," said Woolsey. "One will do," said Magnus. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
433:You're buying for the benefit of the cottage experience at a fraction of the price. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
434:are more like Dog and Cat and Bird than like Lassie and Fido and Spot. Therefore, ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
435:Careful, Sandi. You're about to let your bulldog mouth overload your bird-dog bite. ~ Peggy Webb, #NFDB
436:I found a wounded bird,” Patricia said. “It can’t fly, its wing is ruined. ~ Charlie Jane Anders, #NFDB
437:It is of no account; after all, the old bird does not fly far from his nest. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
438:It's true that the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. ~ Steve Berry, #NFDB
439:McCarthyite hysteria that had enveloped Washington. Equating dissent with disloyalty, ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
440:Poor bird! Thou ’dst never fear the net nor lime, The pitfall nor the gin. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
441:Surely no child, and few adults, have ever watched a bird in flight without envy. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
442:The Cheyenne Indians: their history and lifeways : edited and illustrated ~ George Bird Grinnell, #NFDB
443:Without just one nest
A bird can call the world home
Life is your career ~ Chuck Palahniuk,#NFDB
444:A bird doesn't sing because he has an answer-he sings because he has a song. ~ Joan Walsh Anglund, #NFDB
445:In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
446:I've changed my mind. I don't want to be a squirrel any more. I'd rather be a bird! ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
447:Jan. ‘64
Witnessed this day by:
James Ensor
Charlie `Bird' Parker.
~ Adrian Henri,#NFDB
448:Opportunity is not a rock, it is a bird! You either catch it or you miss it! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
449:She liked it? 'I love it--the way you'd love an orphan, or a bird with a broken foot. ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
450:The bird, the bee, the running child are all the same to the sliding glass door. ~ Demetri Martin, #NFDB
451:The early bird gets the worm but the late bird doesn't even get the late worm. ~ Charles M Schulz, #NFDB
452:To feel free like a bird, some things on our minds must be left in the past. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
453:turning as it looked for prey. Though the bird’s shadow whipped over her face, ~ Elizabeth Lowell, #NFDB
454:utterly human moan started from him, and it grew and grew until it became a bird ~ China Mi ville, #NFDB
455:What is Aunt Margaret made of? Bird bones and tissue paper, spun glass and straw. ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
456:You're my bird," I tell him. "You're my bird and you're going to help me fly away. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
457:You’re my bird,” I tell him. “You’re my bird and you’re going to help me fly away. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
458:A heart without dreams is like a bird without feathers. - Rise Up and Salute the Sun ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
459:Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, [T5],#NFDB
460:God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into the nest. J. G. HOLLAND ~ Dave Ramsey, #NFDB
461:I'd rather be a success as a fish than a failure as a fish trying to be a bird. ~ Eva Le Gallienne, #NFDB
462:I hear the mad song of a little bird and crush butterflies between my fingers. ~ Clarice Lispector, #NFDB
463:I shot at a great bird which I saw sitting upon a tree on the side of a great wood. ~ Daniel Defoe, #NFDB
464:It's like you don't know you're making a record unless you're half-killing yourself. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
465:I was an exotic bird traversing an earth ravaged by humanity’s poverty of spirit. I ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
466:Make my heart, O heart of the universe, a divine bird that nests only on the throne of God. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
467:The motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
468:You can chase a bird from your porch, but you can not take away its ability to fly. ~ Myles Munroe, #NFDB
469:You cannot save every fallen bird," said Woolsey.
"One will do," said Magnus. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
470:And a bird who was on a crooked branch is suddenly gone without my even hearing him. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
471:Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy, and Bess, they all went together to find a bird's nest... ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
472:Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
473:Most copywriters are like engines. They take a while to warm up to get to the point. ~ Drayton Bird, #NFDB
474:my typewriter is
tombstone
still. and I am
reduced to bird
watching. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
475:Professor,” Harry gasped. “Your bird — I couldn’t do anything — he just caught fire — ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
476:This is why I keep telling Ash to get you a cat or a bird. Guns aren't proper pets. ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
477:Without just one nest,
A bird can call the world home,
Life is your career. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,#NFDB
478:Without naming names, I think other movies look more realistic but they feel less real. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
479:You put his brain in a bird, the bird would fly backwards" -Secret Life of the Bees ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
480:A bird in the hand is worth plucking, frying, and sticking between two bits of bread. ~ Edward Burns, #NFDB
481:Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wings and removing its ability to fly. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
482:Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings and removing its ability to fly. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
483:Our Father, grant us humility, that in our lowliness we behold your exalted grace. Amen. ~ Chad Bird, #NFDB
484:People say that, but I think the NBA was bigger than Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. ~ Oscar Robertson, #NFDB
485:Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn? ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
486:The presence of a single bird can change everything for one who appreciates them. ~ Julie Zickefoose, #NFDB
487:We weep for a bird’s cry, but not for a fish’s blood. Blessed are those with a voice. ~ Mamoru Oshii, #NFDB
488:Every bird has a style and each style has its own fate, just as it is in humans! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
489:Like a bird she seems to wear gay plumage unconsciously, as if it grew upon her. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
490:We are a water-drinking people, and we are allowing every brook to be defiled. ~ George Bird Grinnell, #NFDB
491:What were you trying to do? Did you think you were a bird? Did you think you could fly? ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
492:Without a single thought on their mind, an ant, a bird, and a bee all just know what to do. ~ Sadguru, #NFDB
493:You have had a good deal of pain in your life, and you have been a good steward of it.”13 ~ Chad Bird, #NFDB
494:A fish may love a bird, but where would they live?
- Then I shall build you wings. ~ Drew Barrymore,#NFDB
495:Every birdcage deserves to be annihilated because every bird deserves to be free! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
496:Find the bird, find the loop, Yakob vai don't you understand you goddamned stupid yutzi ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
497:How do you get a boyfriend?” I asked.
“If I knew that, I’d have one,” Bird said. ~ Rachel Hawthorne,#NFDB
498:I find it hard to hate a man who brings you exactly what you didn't even know you craved. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
499:I put a lot into my records, and I won't release anything I'm not totally thrilled with. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
500:Naniniwala ako na may tatlong decision making bodies ang mga tao. Utak, puso at bird. ~ Ramon Bautista, #NFDB
501:Parents do not, indeed, live by bread alone. We feast daily on banquets of our own words. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
502:The earth is moved from its position by the weight of a tiny bird resting upon it. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
503:The fenman gazed at Wimsey with a slow pity for his bird-witted feebleness of mind. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
504:Why does a silly bird go on saying "chiff-chaff" all day long? Is it happiness or hiccups? ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
505:And still the bird sings as if to say that delight is easy, for those who desire it. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
506:Hellooo Pelican, come in, come in? No? Okay. You just be that way, you petulant bird. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
507:Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. ~ Langston Hughes, #NFDB
508:How does a bird feel when it dies? A fish, a bug...the infinite worm? I think it weeps. ~ Dalton Trumbo, #NFDB
509:I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing. ~ Richard Peck, #NFDB
510:If only the bird with the loveliest song sang, the forest would be a lonely place. ~ John James Audubon, #NFDB
511:... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild. ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
512:My soul-bird loves my body-cage Only when it is kept fit, Pure and absolutely immaculate. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
513:The bird of Jove, stoop'd from his aery tour, Two birds of gayest plume before him drove. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
514:The bird which has no knowledge of pure water, has his beak in salt water all year round. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
515:The gloom encroaches upon my mind, and my heart flutters like a bird held fast in a fist. ~ Hannah Kent, #NFDB
516:When I no longer thrill to the first snow of the season, I'll know I'm growing old. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
517:Aeduan bundled her up and stood. She was so light, so fragile. A bird in his demon arms. ~ Susan Dennard, #NFDB
518:And hear the pleasant cockoo, loud and long - The simple bird that thinks two notes a song. ~ W H Davies, #NFDB
519:butternut Yank. One of those who’d fought to save the Union. A slave-owning Union, that is. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
520:Do you feel in this letter my love for you today - It is as warm as a bird's nest. ~ Katherine Mansfield, #NFDB
521:Every nation needs two wings to fly. Any bird torn at the wings will never soar the skies. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
522:If the bird was made, it chose to be made. It's here because it chooses to be with you. ~ Alethea Kontis, #NFDB
523:If you become a bird and fly away from me, I will be a tree that you come home to. ~ Margaret Wise Brown, #NFDB
524:The earth almost looks like it's packed down and dense from so many feet treading over it. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
525:The first notes I still play when I start a sound check are classical. Those are my roots. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
526:The Love bird is one hundred percent faithful to his mate-who is locked into the same cage. ~ Will Cuppy, #NFDB
527:When you have teammates just as talented as you, it's kind of weird to get all the attention. ~ Sue Bird, #NFDB
528:A bird only flies. It does not turn to another bird and ask, am I doing this right? ~ Mary Anne Radmacher, #NFDB
529:But now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird. ~ Audrey Niffenegger, #NFDB
530:Flutter like a hummingbird, Dive like an eagle, Ain't no bird that's my equal. - Twilight ~ Kathryn Lasky, #NFDB
531:For us, a pretty bird is a pretty bird; for an insect, pretty bird is an ugly enemy! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
532:I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
533:If you dissect a bird / to diagram the tongue, / you'll cut the chord / articulating song. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
534:Late in the afternoon his canary bird, in its gilt cage just over his head, began to sing. ~ Frank Norris, #NFDB
535:No bird can fly without opening its wings, and no one can love without exposing their hearts. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
536:Noboru Wataya,
Where are you?
Did the wind-up bird
Forget to wind your spring? ~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
537:No,” the bird said. “Please! Don’t lock me up. I would prefer you just kill me now. ~ Charlie Jane Anders, #NFDB
538:Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, seperate, in the evening. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
539:Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
540:Step up and move ahead, life is all about moving on and traveling all along like a bird. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB
541:The bird that would soar above the plane of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. ~ Kate Chopin, #NFDB
542:The early bird might catch the worm, but I bet it also needs a ton of under eye concealer ~ Nicole Richie, #NFDB
543:A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough / without ever having felt sorry for itself. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
544:I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will. ~ Charlotte Bronte, #NFDB
545:I don't like to disappear between records. I like to play shows while I'm making the record. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
546:I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
547:I really believe there's more honesty in one live show than there may be in my whole output. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
548:I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance. ~ E E Cummings, #NFDB
549:Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
550:That old saw about the early bird just proves that the worm should have stayed in bed. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
551:The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
552:You, little bird, are welcome to any and all of my cookies. I’d even share my cake with you. ~ Lauren Dane, #NFDB
553:A little bird whispers in my ear: "Be fair! Nobody, no country, has a monopoly of untruth. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
554:Even though Christmas can be a lot of work, we all know the bustle is worth the bother. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
555:...every piece of the laughing was a tiny bird come tumbling out to fly around the room. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
556:I sought the bird of bliss and she flew away, I sought my neighbor's good and bliss came my way ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
557:The bird that hath been limed in a bush, with trembling wings misdoubteth every bush. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
558:The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
559:The power that makes grass grow, fruit ripen, and guides the bird in flight is in us all. ~ Anzia Yezierska, #NFDB
560:Two birds went for dating. The male bird was killed and the female bird is being murdered. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB
561:Would a bird build its nest if it did not have its instinct for confidence in the world? ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
562:Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can't create it if you don't have one. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
563:Appropriately, his bird was the vulture. The dog was wronged by being chosen as his animal. ~ Edith Hamilton, #NFDB
564:Cats too, with what silent stealthiness, with what light steps do they creep up to a bird! ~ Pliny the Elder, #NFDB
565:Faith is a bird that can see the light when it is dawn and starts singing in the dark. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
566:His dagger was out, poised at her throat. “Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
567:How do migrating birds know which one to follow? What if the lead bird just wants to be alone? ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
568:I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance ~ E E Cummings,#NFDB
569:I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
570:I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
571:I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song. ~ Charles Hartshorne, #NFDB
572:Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free!! ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
573:No, it's not dissatisfaction that inspires me to tinker with my songs, it's just restlessness. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
574:People who are thinking about your music almost as much as you are, that almost never happens. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
575:Saying of the Prophet
Oppression
When oppression exists, even the bird dies in its nest. ~ Idries Shah,#NFDB
576:When the bird of the heart begins to sing, too often will reason stop up her ears. ~ Hans Christian Andersen, #NFDB
577:Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don't you have a slogan: 'Kill a cat and save a bird?' ~ Prince Philip, #NFDB
578:Fly silly sea bird, no dreams can possess you, no voices can blame you for sun on your wings. ~ Joni Mitchell, #NFDB
579:God will snatch away the forgiveness which our repentance, humility, and obedience made possible. ~ Chad Bird, #NFDB
580:I feel my strange, beautiful bird in my heart, and the unflooded world all around me. ~ Maria Dahvana Headley, #NFDB
581:I think it's the most extraordinary studio around. I would love to do my next project with Pixar. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
582:Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song. ~ Joseph Joubert, #NFDB
583:our cage
We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird,
And sing our bondage freely. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
584:That is when I realize that I have the same gift he does: We can give each other back our youth. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
585:The bird that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing, they say,' grumbled Tackleton. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
586:the pilot wound the engine up to full speed, sucking the metal and glass bird into the sky. ~ Andrew J Morgan, #NFDB
587:Everyone needs time to develop their dreams. An egg in the nest doesn't become a bird overnight. ~ Lois Ehlert, #NFDB
588:Every relationship needs two wings to fly. Any bird torn at the wings will never soar the skies. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
589:I never know which is worse: the sorrow when you hit the bird or the shame when you miss it. ~ Julian Fellowes, #NFDB
590:These are the days when birds come back, a very few, a Bird or two, to take a backward look. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
591:Your heart is not a fragile, delicate bird, but a resilient, powerful hawk learning to fly. ~ HeatherAsh Amara, #NFDB
592:Almost every person, from childhood, has been touched by the untamed beauty of wildflowers. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
593:BANG! The bird dropped the millstone right on his head. And it sang, What a beautiful bird am I! ~ Adam Gidwitz, #NFDB
594:Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
595:I am like a bird buried deep in a dark forest of possibility and finding their way by echolocation. ~ Ned Hayes, #NFDB
596:If you look at a lot of animated movies, they don't pay attention to how things move through space. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
597:Safe. Right beside mine, right where it belongs. You’re not lost, little bird, and you won’t be. ~ Shelly Crane, #NFDB
598:She had the bone structure of a bird. Wolf probably could have crushed her with his fingertips. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
599:Some death is as silent as the flight of a bird, some prey as unprotesting as a knot of rags. The ~ Sue Grafton, #NFDB
600:Soon the Mississippi night hummed by outside his windows, bug, bird, frog, the wind on his face. ~ Tom Franklin, #NFDB
601:That bird was a phoenix,” Demerara said. “You’ll know about them from those Henry Porter books. ~ Kate Saunders, #NFDB
602:The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. ~ Kate Chopin, #NFDB
603:When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset. ~ Czeslaw Milosz, #NFDB
604:A frigate bird with a seven-foot wingspan has a skeleton that weighs less than its feathers. ~ Jennifer Ackerman, #NFDB
605:A good quote is a beautiful bird! Wherever you meet with it, you will start flying with it! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
606:A little stress and adventure is good for you, if nothing else, just to prove you are alive. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
607:And Loplop, bird superior, has transformed himself into flesh without flesh and will dwell among us. ~ Max Ernst, #NFDB
608:But I remember thinking it seemed cruel that a bird should be punished for believing it could fly. ~ Kyo Maclear, #NFDB
609:Environmental extremists ... wouldn't let you build a house unless it looked like a bird's nest. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
610:For why trap what is already trapped? It is only in flight that we know the freedom of the bird ~ Josephine Hart, #NFDB
611:Girdles and wire stays should have never been invented. No man wants to hug a padded bird cage. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
612:He was cold, standing in a wood, talking to a big black bird who was currently brunching on Bambi. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
613:Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly. ~ Langston Hughes,#NFDB
614:I once asked a bird, how is it that you fly in this gravity of darkness? She responded, 'love lifts me.' ~ Hafez, #NFDB
615:It’s the cutest damn laugh I’ve ever heard. Like a tweety bird mated with an evil cartoon villain. ~ Pippa Grant, #NFDB
616:Never been to Sesame Street but I flip a Big Bird. And I know "stealers" and they not from Pittsburgh. ~ Cam ron, #NFDB
617:The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
618:The early bird who gets the worm works for somebody who comes in late and owns the worm farm. ~ John D MacDonald, #NFDB
619:Then came such a melodious whistle, I looked about thinking that a bird had flown into the room. ~ Gloria Whelan, #NFDB
620:And it's not only films, I'm pretty unaware of anything that's going on in popular culture right now. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
621:I don't mind being 65, but nobody is gonna tell me to come in at 5:30 to have the early bird special. ~ Alan King, #NFDB
622:If standing for liberty and the Constitution makes you a Wacko Bird, then count me a proud Wacko Bird. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
623:I still play solo shows. And some of those shows are still some of the best, most gratifying shows. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
624:My longest relationship was nine days, and even I know that you don’t keep shit from your bird. But ~ Lucy Parker, #NFDB
625:The tunnel was the place where vision narrows and the investigator sees only the bird in hand. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
626:Watch the sunset without speaking, just like a bird watching the sunset in complete silence! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
627:What was a cage to a lobster was a home to a bird. Regardless though, the lobsters do not understand. ~ Jon Acuff, #NFDB
628:You are the consciousness of your unhappy family. Its bird sent flying through the purgatorial flame. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
629:A bird does not sing
because he has an answer.
He sings
because he has a song. ~ Joan Walsh Anglund,#NFDB
630:A heart of compassion is just as hard to hold within you as one of indifference" -the Truth Bird ~ Tony DiTerlizzi, #NFDB
631:And Loplop, bird superior, has transformed himself into flesh without flesh and will dwell among us... ~ Max Ernst, #NFDB
632:At heart I am a librarian, a bird-watcher, a transcendentalist, a gardener, a spinster, a monk. ~ Juliana Hatfield, #NFDB
633:Its impossible to explain creativity. It's like asking a bird, 'How do you fly?' You just do. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey, #NFDB
634:Just as the bird needs wings to fly, a leader needs useful information to flow. Leaders learn. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
635:She deserved it, the snake. After keeping my little golden bird locked up in her cage for so long. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
636:The swan is also a liminal bird, able to live in two worlds, land and water, or matter and spirit. ~ Wendy Doniger, #NFDB
637:You can't stop a bird from landing on your head. But you can keep it from building a nest. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
638:You gave her your heart, and she gave you the bird.” Nïx sighed. “Songs will be written about this. ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
639:And one of the other routes we looked at crosses a wetlands. The bird lovers would be out in force. ~ Margaret Coel, #NFDB
640:Being with boys is more dangerous for me than killing a cricket or having a bird fly into the house. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
641:Bird 1: This is the wrong story.
Bird 2: All stories are the wrong story when you are impatient. ~ Richard Siken,#NFDB
642:Encourage & support your kids because "Children are apt to live up to what you believe of them. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
643:For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
644:Good or bad, happy or sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
645:I never thought I'd be on Sesame Street with Elmo and Big Bird. I'm still thrilled. I'm on a high. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
646:Never be without remembrance of Him, for His remembrance gives strength and wings to the bird of the Spirit. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
647:Only to the rude ear of one who is quite indifferent does the song of a bird seem always the same. ~ Rosa Luxemburg, #NFDB
648:Today, when I stepped outside, I got shit on by a bird. But I'm still going back outside tomorrow. ~ Christie Craig, #NFDB
649:Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
650:a bird no one wants. he’s mine. my bird of pain. he doesn’t sing. that bird swaying on the bough. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
651:Did y’all arrest Uncle Bob’s turkey? It was just criminal what he did to that bird, wasn’t it? You ~ Kwame Alexander, #NFDB
652:Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
653:Of course you shall set the bird free because you know that the wings need nothing but freedom! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
654:Oh, bird of my soul, fly away now, for I possess a hundred fortified towers. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi #poetry #mysticpoetry, #NFDB
655:Religion is consciousness-raising. It raises you higher than the problem, it gives you a bird's-eye view. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
656:The soul helps the body, and at certain moments raises it. It is the only bird that sustains its cage. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
657:This bird looks at me with obsidian eyes. They glimmer, small black lights in the gloom. I do not blink. ~ Ned Hayes, #NFDB
658:...winter crescent resting in the high pine bough - you fly through the woods like a lone snow bird... ~ John Geddes, #NFDB
659:You're chasing the dragon, you're chasing the high. A bird with one wing, who's still trying to fly. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
660:Flutter like a hummingbird,
Dive like an eagle,
Ain't no bird that's my equal.
- Twilight ~ Kathryn Lasky,#NFDB
661:Going beyond sarcasm straight to out-and-out insult is delicious, like wriggling out of a pair of Spanx. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
662:He who knows all the answers, but none of the questions is like a large gobbling bird on Thanksgiving. ~ Jayce O Neal, #NFDB
663:Holy shit, Bird," I whispered through my teeth. "At least try to be normal. You have to at least try. ~ Nicole Krauss, #NFDB
664:I still kind of believe this absurd line that if you have to write it down, it's not worth remembering. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
665:I think statues are great; they show what great people would look like if a bird sh*t all over them. ~ Demetri Martin, #NFDB
666:My heart is flailing, thumping in my chest like a bird caught in a cage, wanting to be wild again. ~ Sona Charaipotra, #NFDB
667:Oh. My. God.” I lower my voice, having forgotten to whisper. “You are nothing but a bird with an attitude. ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
668:Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
669:Will Abbott,” Mrs. Hendricks said as her face turned bright red, “you could charm a bird out of a tree. ~ Marie Force, #NFDB
670:You don't have to love somebody to miss them. You get used to having them around, like a cat or a bird. ~ Ann Rinaldi, #NFDB
671:A secret in his mouth, is like a wild bird put into a cage; whose door no sooner opens, but 'tis out. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
672:Birds were also hard-hit; perhaps three-quarters of all bird families, perhaps more, went extinct. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert, #NFDB
673:Consider well the proportion of things: it is better to be a young June bug than an old bird of paradise. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
674:Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
675:I barged through the palace, dripping a trail of blood behind me as I held the dead bird by the neck. ~ Alwyn Hamilton, #NFDB
676:I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. ~ Madeline Miller, #NFDB
677:Larry Flynt, running for governor of California. His goal - change our state bird to the spread eagle. ~ Craig Kilborn, #NFDB
678:Love is rebellious bird that nobody can tame, and it's all in vain to call it if it chooses to refuse. ~ Georges Bizet, #NFDB
679:People probably assume I sleep in my uniform. Then I get up and go to the mall or the market in my uniform. ~ Sue Bird, #NFDB
680:The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
681:Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
682:What is joy? It is a bird That we all want to catch. It is the same bird That we all love to see flying. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
683:When nations resort to arms, the human spirit is like a bird that cannot stand to hear its own song. ~ Phoenix Desmond, #NFDB
684:When the wind stops, kite falls but bird flies; because bird did not borrow the wind when rising! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
685:Ah, to be a bird. To fly the skies, sing my song, and best of all occasionally peck someone's eyes out. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
686:A man can refrain from wanting what he has not and cheerfully make the best of a bird in the hand. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
687:Every time I see a cardinal, I know my grandmother is with me. This regal, red bird was Grandma's favorite. ~ Kris Carr, #NFDB
688:Her imagination was such that she could hear the song of the bird when it was still but a yolk in an egg. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
689:I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
690:In relationship, be blissful, in aloneness be aware and they will help each other, like two wings of a bird. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
691:It has always been difficult to get Big Bird to be very pretty. Big Bird in England is much more gorgeous. ~ Jim Henson, #NFDB
692:What you see with your eyes when you're making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
693:When I rise up, let me rise up joyful like a bird. When I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
694:Amanda took the torn page from Maniac. To her, it was the broken wing of a bird, a pet out in the rain. ~ Jerry Spinelli, #NFDB
695:Everyone thinks I'm a wimp and even my own band hates me. Oh, well. I guess I'll just flip 'em the bird! ~ Black Francis, #NFDB
696:Gliders, sail planes, they're wonderful flying machines. It's the closest you can come to being a bird. ~ Neil Armstrong, #NFDB
697:Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky. ~ Chogyam Trungpa, #NFDB
698:He said what nobody understood was, she always felt like a bird in a cage--she wanted to be without roots. ~ Kate Alcott, #NFDB
699:I have just dropped into the very place I have been seeking, but in everything it exceeds all my dreams. ~ Isabella Bird, #NFDB
700:I think it's really good for a family or children to have a dog, cat, bird or whatever to grow up with. ~ Hayao Miyazaki, #NFDB
701:Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water. ~ D T Suzuki, #NFDB
702:Only birds can manipulate time. Therefore, all time manipulators must be able to take the form of a bird. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
703:The first lady is, and always has been, an unpaid public servant elected by one person, her husband. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
704:A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
705:A bird killed in the name of human power is in truth a loss of power from the world, not an addition to it. ~ Linda Hogan, #NFDB
706:Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
707:For before this I was born once a boy, and a maiden, and a plant, and a bird, and a darting fish in the sea. ~ Empedocles, #NFDB
708:I also don't believe that "everything happens for a reason," which is in a similar category of world-views. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
709:In case of attack, this completely inadequate load of bird shot will make a loud noise, if nothing else. ~ Paulette Jiles, #NFDB
710:Maya Angelou once observed, “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
711:Take a good rest, small bird," he said. "Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
712:Take a stock of your virtues. Aspire within your means. No one admires the bird who sings over the orchestra. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
713:That which prevents disagreeable flies from feeding on your repast, was once the proud tail of a splendid bird. ~ Martial, #NFDB
714:The anti-aging advert that I would like to see is a baby covered in cream saying, 'Aah, I've used too much' ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
715:There will be a bird today. It will be white with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It will fly. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
716:The soul aids the body, and at certain moments, raises it. It is the only bird which bears up its own cage. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
717:Avoid the reeking herd,
Shun the polluted flock,
Live like that stoic bird,
The eagle of the rock. ~ Elinor Wylie,#NFDB
718:Flowers in the city are like lipstick on a woman-it just makes you look better to have a little color. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
719:For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
720:Happiness is like a bird. If it chooses
to sit on your roof, you cannot capture it and put it in a cage. ~ Farin Powell,#NFDB
721:I feel akin to the Platypus. An orphan in a family. A swimmer, a recluse. Part bird, part fish, part lizard. ~ Trevor Dunn, #NFDB
722:I liked to refer to myself as bougavian. Slightly bougie, but I was not one to easily forget my bird roots. ~ Nicole Falls, #NFDB
723: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, #NFDB
724:Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works. ~ Alma Gluck, #NFDB
725:You are the song of every bird, you are the poet's every word, every artist's picture, every writer's play. ~ Dolly Parton, #NFDB
726:and his voice the cry of a bird unknown, 3Jane answering in song, three notes, high and pure. A true name. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
727:For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
728:If the light of the sun is invisible to the owl it is only the fault of that bird and not of the sun. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
729:Hush a-bye my little bird
Hush a-bye my child
I have lost a love so great
Oh, woe is me. ~ Kelly Creagh,#NFDB
730:I loved birds, and every bird was my favorite bird. But no bird was a better bird than a bird I saw with Linda. ~ Bob Tarte, #NFDB
731:It is wonderful to be in on the creation of something, see it used, and then walk away and smile at it. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
732:I've always had levity in my songs, so I like to turn things over, twist them around, and make fun of myself. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
733:Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
734:What kind of idiot bird sings in the middle of the night?... I wish it'd shut up and let me sleep! - Pirra ~ Michelle Paver, #NFDB
735:Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird’s heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood, ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
736:The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus. —WALLACE STEGNER, THE SPECTATOR BIRD ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
737:To us, she was like a rare bird that had escaped its cage and was roaming through a courtyard of common chickens. ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
738:If I could come back as anything - I'd be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice. ~ Nikki Giovanni, #NFDB
739:It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes. ~ Anne Baxter, #NFDB
740:My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
741:O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth! ~ John Keats, #NFDB
742:the phoenix feather in Harry’s wand had come from the same bird that had supplied the core of Lord Voldemort’s. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
743:You don't take your cat with you to go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn't polite, but because he's a cat. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
744:You drew a bird that was here, a kind of sweet chanticleer. But with a terrible fear that the cage couldn't tame ~ Aimee Mann, #NFDB
745:"Disappear where?" You know what they say: curiosity killed the mutant bird kid. But I couldn't help myself. ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
746:He has a great smile, a cat's smile. He should cough out yellow Tweety Bird feathers, the way he smiles at me. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
747:I’m on the benevolent side of antisocial. I don’t mind people, but I’d prefer not to have a lot of them around. ~ Jessica Bird, #NFDB
748:It's hard to play with a bagpipe player. It's like an exotic bird. I love the sound, it's like strangling a goose. ~ Tom Waits, #NFDB
749:My bird has been replicated on belt buckles, embroidered into silk lapels, even tattooed in intimate places. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
750:My ex-girlfriend owned a parakeet…oh my god, that f**king thing would never shut up. But the bird was cool. ~ Anthony Jeselnik, #NFDB
751:My heart has become a bird that searches the whole sky. Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere? ~ ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, #NFDB
752:No ladder needs the bird but skies To situate its wings, Nor any leaders grim baton Arraigns it as it sings. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
753:Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
754:When I was a kid I had this funny blonde hair and everyone called me 'Chick' because I looked like Tweety Bird. ~ Nicky Hilton, #NFDB
755:A gourmet can tell from the flavor whether a woodcock's leg is the one on which the bird is accustomed to roost. ~ Lucius Beebe, #NFDB
756:A tissue of small sounds filled the room, a bird, a clock, a voice from another garden. What we call silence. ~ Patrick McGrath, #NFDB
757:Going to college and living with someone of another race gave me a different view of what people have to go through. ~ Sue Bird, #NFDB
758:He owe his wife a debt he couldn't hope to pay with any coin save one: open the cage and let the bird fly. ~ Colleen McCullough, #NFDB
759:If you see this body don't weep
it was just the cage to
the bird of my soul
which is now free. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,#NFDB
760:It’s not a bird project,” Brooke said. “It’s a people project. The birds are an excuse for doing something good. ~ Jon Mooallem, #NFDB
761:It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained... ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
762:The bird only keeps good things about the future to herself, but you can bet we hear all the brown-trouser bits. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
763:To me, women's lib was mainly a white, upper-middle class affair of little use to a reservation Indian woman. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
764:We are watching very closely to see how the disease associated with bird flu, when it hits humans, is evolving. ~ David Nabarro, #NFDB
765:Every bird needs a tree; every ship needs a harbour! Blessed are those who have a place to rest when tired! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
766:He's like an exotic bird collector... he only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
767:It's not set in stone. I like to keep it rolling and changing, and so I am like, "Great, I get to remake my song." ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
768:Scientists say that human beings are made of atoms, but a little bird told me that we are also made of stories ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
769:She called, "Aurora!" in a penetrating voice that could cause a small bird to fall dead out of the sky. ~ Maureen Johnson, #NFDB
770:The cat has caught the bird, and she will scratch out your eyes as well. You will never see your Rapunzel again. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
771:The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
772:A beautiful girl is much superior to a little yellow bird, and a boy—such as I was—far better than a Green Monkey. ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB
773:A bird needs both long and short feathers to fly,” said Jia. “You need to learn to work with different kinds of people. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
774:Apologies have nothing to do with you. They are balloons in the sky. They may never land. They may even choke a bird. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
775:As important as color is to a painting, or wings to a bird. Music injects vibrancy to film and makes it soar! ~ Gerard de Marigny, #NFDB
776:Being a bird, I imagined, must be wonderful. All birds had to do was fly. no need to worry about contraception. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
777:Does a bird stop flying just because someone tells it not to? It cannot stop, if that's what it was meant to do. ~ Jessica Verday, #NFDB
778:Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching. ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
779:Hey, Blue Bird.” His voice was lower, his words raspier than before. “Sorry it took me so long to make it back. ~ Nicole Williams, #NFDB
780:Hold the foil as a bird, not so loosely that it can fly away, but not so tightly that you squeeze the life out of it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
781:If you lose an opportunity you will be like one who lets the bird fly away; you will never get it back. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
782:I'm not really a bird person or an Audubon guy who studies them, but as I was around them, they interested me. ~ Gordon Lightfoot, #NFDB
783:Saraswati. ‘But today Hansa insisted on coming along with me. I like Hansa. She is no ordinary bird. Give her ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
784:There’s a sob building inside me so immense and powerful it’s going to break all my bird bones. It’s Judemageddon. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
785:There was the girl, screaming like an angry bird,
When it finds its nest left empt and little ones gone." - Sentry ~ Sophocles,#NFDB
786:Twentieth pupil of the centuries knows its stuff and bird-changed this century like Jesus climbs the sky. ~ Guillaume Apollinaire, #NFDB
787:WE APPROXIMATE THE BIRD'S BODY BY A SPHERE OF RADIUS 5CM, said Sib, I had no idea aerodynamics was so entertaining ~ Helen DeWitt, #NFDB
788:When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. ~ Richard Cushing, #NFDB
789:You can't steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it. ~ Dizzy Gillespie, #NFDB
790:A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled, down, down to the water ~ Kate Chopin, #NFDB
791:A hawk reeled overhead with a rodent squirming in its beak, close enough so you could see the bird’s black shiny eyes. ~ Mary Karr, #NFDB
792:Americans specially love superlatives. The phrases 'biggest in the world,' 'finest in the world,' are on all lips. ~ Isabella Bird, #NFDB
793:(a moon swims out of a cloud
a clock strikes midnight
a finger pulls a trigger
a bird flies into a mirror) ~ E E Cummings,#NFDB
794:How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five? ~ William Blake, #NFDB
795:I absolutely think that hand-drawn animation is valid and I actually hope to do one in the future with a large budget. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
796:Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
797:Now you tell me, I thought. I could help, he urged. Give me control. Not today, bird-head. Finally, I steered Sadie ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
798:Since I had my gastric bypass surgery in 1998, I eat like a bird. Unfortunately, that bird is a California condor. ~ Roseanne Barr, #NFDB
799:the forest remembers that the last word can only be
the flaming cry of the bird of ruins in the bowl of the storm ~ Aim C saire,#NFDB
800:The olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
801:A bird feeder hung from the porch roof, but there were no seeds in it. The curtains in all the windows were closed. ~ Jeanne DuPrau, #NFDB
802:A bird sings, a child prattles, but it is the same hymn; hymn indistinct, inarticulate, but full of profound meaning. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
803:(And could love free me from the shadows? Can a caged bird sing only the song it knows or can it learn a new song?) ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
804:An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left. ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB
805:Apologies have nothing to do with you. They are balloons in the sky. They may never land. They may even choke a bird. ~ Amy Poehler, #NFDB
806:A stitch in time saves nine. The early bird catches the worm. Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. ~ Robert C Martin, #NFDB
807:I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
808:Say I'm a bird! Say it! Say it now!" "You're a bird." "Now say you're a bird too." "If you're a bird, I'm a bird. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
809:This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
810:To make something really great and different and interesting means taking risks and following these ideas in your head. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
811:Try and inject into every commercial you make a touch of singularity; a bird that will hook on to the consumers mind ~ David Ogilvy, #NFDB
812:You must be Mrs. Cleveland’s friend that’s come to stay,’ said a woman in a dark felt hat trimmed with a bird’s body. ~ Barbara Pym, #NFDB
813:Be like a Bird in Flight. Be able to see Before You, Around You, and Behind You At All Times. - Kailin Gow on Awareness ~ Kailin Gow, #NFDB
814:Feel body as luxury-- as a bird feels when shooting through the air, and as a child does always -- is health ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
815:Here every bird and fish knew its course. Every tree had its own place upon this earth. Only man had lost his way. ~ Margaret Craven, #NFDB
816:I am the bird of the spiritual Garden,
not of this world of dust; for a few days,
they have a cage of my body made. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
817:I scoop the soil over the bird, smoothing it flat before standing. “I hope someone is this kind to us when it’s over. ~ Adam Silvera, #NFDB
818:I would not put my little bird in the jaws of a trap without being near enough to make sure it wouldn't close on her. ~ Lili St Crow, #NFDB
819:You can build up expectations for a song before you record it, and then it's like nothing's good enough in the studio. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
820:A bird can be a bat. A bat can be a piece of floating plastic bag. Way of the world. To see things as other things. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
821:became el Capitán Juan Caballo and, for many years, we were happy in Coahuila. And then, once more, the betrayals began. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
822:Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch, #NFDB
823:I've really tried to learn the art of clothes, because you don't sell for what you're worth unless you look good. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
824:Like a bird handled by humans whose flock would not accept it back, Rob now wore the unwashable scent of the Ivy League. ~ Jeff Hobbs, #NFDB
825:Shall the squid have praise or blame for being a squid?
Shall the bird have compliments for being born with wings? ~ Carl Sandburg,#NFDB
826:The only thing crueler than a cage so small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so large that a bird thinks it can fly. ~ Caroline Kepnes, #NFDB
827:Attacked by a bird,” Mrs. Reilly wept. “That hadda happen to you, Ignatius. Nobody never gets attacked by a bird. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
828:He who loses an opportunity is like the man who lets a bird fly from his hand, for he will never recover it. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
829:How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five? ~ William Blake,#NFDB
830:I didn’t realize I was squeezing Tiffany’s and Bird’s hands until Bird said, “You know, bones break under pressure. ~ Rachel Hawthorne, #NFDB
831:I guess I have to thank Shupe and all that marching for something, because my butt is as springy as a bag of Gummi Bears. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
832:I just love to skate. When I put a skate on the ice, I'm free from the world, and I have no problems at all. I am a bird! ~ Jim Carrey, #NFDB
833:I named you once, I think," he said, and then strode to his house and entered, bearing the bird still on his wrist. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
834:Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
835:Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilerated speechlessness. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
836:Shreave flicked away the dead mosquito. "Don't these things carry the bird flu too?"
"No Boyd, that would be a bird. ~ Carl Hiaasen,#NFDB
837:The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it is dispatched quickly and without mercy. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
838:This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values.... ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
839:What a beautiful bird, they kept telling one another, which was a weird thing to say about a dead thing without a head. ~ Tom Perrotta, #NFDB
840:here it was again, clamping down upon his spirit, drying up his mouth, fluttering like an imprisoned bird in his bosom. ~ D E Stevenson, #NFDB
841:I'm not an early bird at all. Ideally, on Saturday morning I'd allow myself a lovely lie-in. 10:45 would be just right. ~ Shilpa Shetty, #NFDB
842:It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
843:No man had ever heard a nightingale, When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and define -- what is a bird. ~ Emma Lazarus, #NFDB
844:One day, if you make the most of it, can be more satisfactory than a lifetime squandered," the wise young bird replied. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
845:She was completely alone, only the distant call of a bird telling her a world existed outside of her circle of pain. ~ Roseanna M White, #NFDB
846:The clever cannot catch the genius; such an attempt is just an act of trying to catch the shadow of a flying bird! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
847:The idea of writing songs because you're depressed and you need to communicate it somehow, that isn't really true for me. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
848:The trembling increased, a moan of grief was heard, nothing articulate - as a bird in the night sometimes laments alone. ~ Hans Fallada, #NFDB
849:Whenever I get bird meat, I like to eat it in the open, let the falcons and hawks see who the boss is. Me. I’m the boss. ~ Shannon Hale, #NFDB
850:You can cage the songbird, but you can't make her sing. And you can trap the free bird, but you'll have to clip her wings. ~ Elton John, #NFDB
851:Ahead was an ocean of rabbit brush bursting with yellow blossoms. The prairie under hoof was lavender in the dimming light. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
852:A little bird told me that jumping is easy and the falling is fun, right up until you hit sidewalk shivering and stunned. ~ Ani DiFranco, #NFDB
853:A loan is the scissors of friendship.
A man's own tongue may cut his throat.
The cage has no value without the bird. ~ Idries Shah,#NFDB
854:And when she's fragile like this, she's a little lost bird looking for ts nest. So i give her my wing to hide under. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
855:Fans of the 'Inbetweeners' like the show because it is about four normal people, average guys or lower than average losers. ~ Simon Bird, #NFDB
856:I have become an environmentalist, because it is over the environment that the last of the Indian Wars will be fought. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
857:Put a bird cage near the window so that the bird can see the sky? It's much better to look than not to, even if it hurts. ~ Klaus Kinski, #NFDB
858:Shall we make a new rule of life...always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary? (J.M. Barrie, Little White Bird) ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
859:She was so goddamn beautiful, the way things that could end you were. Guns. Knives. The tawny bird of prey she resembled. ~ Anne Calhoun, #NFDB
860:She was speaking again, her voice like the chirp of a bird who has flown into a black tunnel but does not yet know it. ~ Andre Dubus III, #NFDB
861:The daughter sat down too and watched him with a cautious sly look as if he were a bird that had come up very close. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
862:When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.
When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf. ~ Wendell Berry,#NFDB
863:whoa
I wasn't LOOKING at a bird
wow where is this even coming from
the BIRD
wouldn't stop LOOKING
at ME ~ Mallory Ortberg,#NFDB
864:A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch but on its own wings. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
865:Do not shoot me, for I will give you good counsel; I know what your business is, and that you want to find the golden bird. ~ Jacob Grimm, #NFDB
866:I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
867:The reputation of a girl ... is a delicate thing. Like a mynah bird in your hands. slacken your grip and away it flies. ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
868:The spirit looks upon the Dust
That fastened it so long
With indignation,
As a Bird
Defrauded of it's Song. ~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
869:To be born in a duck's nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan's egg. ~ Hans Christian Andersen, #NFDB
870:All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
871:Her collarbones like wings that spread from the base of her throat to the ends of her shoulders. A bird held down by skin. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
872:I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
873:If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut? ~ Olive Schreiner, #NFDB
874:like I had tumbled from the sky and hit every forest branch on the way down. Like a baby bird with featherless wings. ~ Charlie N Holmberg, #NFDB
875:Simultaneously all three went for the ball, and the coconut-like sound of their heads colliding secretly delighted the bird. ~ Gary Larson, #NFDB
876:So, either you say, 'Sure, I'd love to have you along,' or you have a big bird dropping things on your head the whole trip. ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
877:The bird that has taught its nestling to fly does not try to keep it in the nest, when it is once able to take care of itself. ~ G A Henty, #NFDB
878:Do you want to be kept in a little cage? No! Because it is a horror! But then why do you keep a little bird in a cage? ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
879:He saw clearly the truth other men didn’t. If you gave anyone the power to hurt you, soon enough, they were going to use it. ~ Jessica Bird, #NFDB
880:I can see her mind beating around the closed car like a bird. Locked in with privileges and pleasures, but also with pain. ~ Mary Gaitskill, #NFDB
881:If it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters & gamblers there'd be no Jazz. Wasn't middle~class who said Let's go hear Bird tonight. ~ Betty Carter, #NFDB
882:I love you.” He presses his lips to the top of my head. A shudder ripples through him. “I never stopped loving you, Josie Bird. ~ Nina Lane, #NFDB
883:Kill every dog, every cat, she said slowly. Kill every mouse, every bird. Kill every fish. Anyone objects, kill them too. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
884:No sooner did the thirsty bird With parching throat complain, Than forming clouds in heaven stirred And sent the streaming rain. ~ K lid sa, #NFDB
885:Slowly the silent bird turned its head. It could do so, if it chose, through more than three hundred and sixty degrees. ~ Edward Rutherfurd, #NFDB
886:The only thing crueler than a cage so
small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so
large that a bird thinks it can fly. ~ Caroline Kepnes,#NFDB
887:The two of them together in a place like Retribution Falls would result in alcoholic carnage, sure as bird shit on statues. ~ Chris Wooding, #NFDB
888:Though I wondered what she ever made of my professed love for and intentions to marry Big Bird, the hottie of Sesame Street. ~ Wendy Delsol, #NFDB
889:A lot of black guys always ask me, 'Did Larry Bird really play that good?' I said, 'Larry Bird is so good it's frightening.' ~ Magic Johnson, #NFDB
890:English version by Robert Bly
The migrating bird
leaves no trace behind
and does not need a guide.
~ Dogen, Coming or Going
,#NFDB
891:I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
892:I sometimes think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
893:I think my father felt very strongly that when there was bigotry anywhere, prejudice anywhere, all of us lose out. ~ Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, #NFDB
894:Say I'm a bird! Say it! Say it now!"
"You're a bird."
"Now say you're a bird too."
"If you're a bird, I'm a bird. ~ Nicholas Sparks,#NFDB
895:Shall we make a new rule of life... Always try to be a little kinder than us necessary? ['The little white bird' by JM Barrie] ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
896:You can't change human nature. Men are always going to kick fuck out of each other then go off and shaft some bird. That's life. ~ John King, #NFDB
897:A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. Often attributed to Maya Angelou in error. ~ Joan Walsh Anglund, #NFDB
898:Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird ~ Jerzy Kosinski, #NFDB
899:Honestly, I didn't have the patience for biology or history in an academic sense, but I always liked the kind of big questions. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
900:I like PBS. I love Big Bird ... But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it. ~ Mitt Romney, #NFDB
901:I once asked a bird,
"How do you fly in this gravity of darkness ?"
And she replied "Love lifts me"
~ Hafez Hafiz~ Hafez ~ Hafez,#NFDB
902:It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
903:Sometimes I just think we're not meant to fly halfway around the world in a day. That some kind of mutation is going to happen. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
904:The human heart is like a night bird. Silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight toward it. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
905:Wall is a frontier for the cow but not for the bird! What makes something frontier for you is the abilities you possess! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
906:A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush. Unless it crapped on your fingers and pecked you. Some birds carried salmonella too. ~ Mike Omer, #NFDB
907:Did Rob make it?” Sistine asked Willie May. “He did,” said Willie May. “It looks alive. Is it like your bird that you let go? ~ Kate DiCamillo, #NFDB
908:How foolish was the fox. How blind. To not see, not value the friendship, the affection, the trust the brown bird offered him. ~ Julie Klassen, #NFDB
909:I flunked out that semester, but I got my money's worth learning about people that don't have hearts no bigger than bird shot. ~ Tim Gautreaux, #NFDB
910:I forgot for a second that he was my ancestral enemy, and felt bad for him; then i consoled myself that bird poop brings good luck ~ Rob Reger, #NFDB
911:I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
912:It’s crucial to be able to gather enough inner strength to rise up from the ashes like the Phoenix Bird, when it’s necessary. ~ Sahara Sanders, #NFDB
913:Just as a prayer may be merely a mechanical intonation as of a bird, so may a fast be a mere mechanical torture of the flesh. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
914:Miriam Sacher had survived polio as a child. To Abraham, she was simply the most exquisite little bird who could not fly. ~ Guillermo del Toro, #NFDB
915:Occasionally, some sitcoms still stereotype women - the old dragon or the dolly bird - but on the whole we've moved away from that. ~ Jo Brand, #NFDB
916:On the holy boughs of the Celestial Tree High up in the heavenly fields, Beyond terrestrial desire My soul-bird a warm nest has built. ~ Hafez, #NFDB
917:Our government is a bird with two right wings... They're devoted to the perpetuation & spread of corporate capitalism. ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti, #NFDB
918:Painted canvases I visit Now I’m not chained To any one place Travelling free as a bird I measure my life in two suitcases. ~ Vickie Johnstone, #NFDB
919:Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
920:Sometimes I think I don't have much choice in the matter. It's just what happens, and I'm following my instincts the whole time. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
921:So the world splintersInto a million piecesEach in a high towerThe bird of my soulHas nowhere to returnReply to ~ Jalaluddin Rumi@mysticpoetry, #NFDB
922:The nest may be constructed, so far as the sticks go, by the male bird; but only the hen can line it with moss and down! ~ Frances Power Cobbe, #NFDB
923:You guys are just jealous because i'm a natural athlete and you can't cross the street without falling on your face." -(Bird) Doug ~ R L Stine, #NFDB
924:Be a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
925:Buddha also said that the Dharma, like a bird, needs two wings to fly, and that the wing that balances Wisdom is compassion. ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
926:Call it eternal optimism or romantic rebellion, but one of these days karma would stop flipping her the bird and pay it forward. ~ Marina Adair, #NFDB
927:Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
928:Even if it's poisoned with radiation, it's still my home. There's no place else they need us. Even a bird loves its nest. ~ Svetlana Alexievich, #NFDB
929:How hard is that?” asked Dave. “He’s just a bird.” Cooper snorted. “About as hard as I got looking at your mom’s Pornhub videos. ~ Robert Bevan, #NFDB
930:I AWAKENED THAT MORNING to birdsong. It was only the little yellow bird who lives in the locust tree outside our bedroom window, ~ Thomas Tryon, #NFDB
931:I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better, stronger. I want to be the bird that flies away. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
932:Once written, a classic text is like a bird released from its cage. It develops a life of its own. Its "meaning" is not locked in. ~ Harvey Cox, #NFDB
933:The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement. ~ Germaine Greer, #NFDB
934:There was a horrible, erratic thumping in my chest, as if a large bird was trapped inside my ribcage and beating itself to death. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
935:To be generous, guiltless, and of a free disposition is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
936:When I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird. ~ Audrey Niffenegger, #NFDB
937:All the great feelings like goodness, love or compassion eliminate the gravity and thus the wingless man rises like a bird. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
938:Hardly a couple of ounces of feathers and bones. But that bird can fly to Africa and back. Powered by bugs and worms and desire. ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
939:He's throwing everything he can into the air on the chance that something might take flight. And we're the smallest, weakest bird. ~ Ally Condie, #NFDB
940:I’d rather be a lone lioness, roaring and free, than a caged bird without even a name to call my own.
~ Sherry JonesAi’sha ~ Sherry Jones,#NFDB
941:If it weren’t for her setting me free, I may still be a caged bird today, holding my own daughter captive on a shit-laden perch. ~ Raquel Cepeda, #NFDB
942:I'm a bit of a perfectionist, but you have to know you're going to make mistakes. It's how you respond to those mistakes that counts. ~ Sue Bird, #NFDB
943:Larry, you only told me one lie. You said there will be another Larry Bird. Larry, there will never, ever be another Larry Bird. ~ Magic Johnson, #NFDB
944:Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless. ~ Charles Frazier, #NFDB
945:Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it’s a common mistake nonetheless. ~ Charles Frazier, #NFDB
946:Mrs. Bird, seeing the defenseless condition of the enemy's territory, had no more conscience than to push her advantage. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
947:People don't use their eyes. They never see a bird, they see a sparrow. They never see a tree, they see a birch. They see concepts. ~ Joyce Cary, #NFDB
948:That's like asking you to pick your favorite child... I do however, think Bird on a Wire was one of my finest works. Oscar caliber. ~ Mel Gibson, #NFDB
949:Then I will not repine
Knowing that bird of mine
Though flown shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return. ~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
950:Umpire Harold Bird, having a wonderful time, signalling everything in the world, including stopping traffic coming on from behind. ~ John Arlott, #NFDB
951:We are monsters, stamped from birth with forbidden hungers, and these can no more be Corrected than can the need to breathe. Bird ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
952:What he really needed was a pair of those infrared night goggles, but Central Park drew a lot of bird-watchers, not commandos. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
953:What law, what reason can deny that gift so sweet, so natural that God has given a stream, a fish, a beast, a bird? ~ Pedro Calderon de la Barca, #NFDB
954:Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird’s heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood, but while it lasted, ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
955:He that hath a scrupulous conscience is like a horse that is not well weighed; he starts at every bird that flies out of the hedge. ~ John Selden, #NFDB
956:I cannot help esteem The 'Bird within the Hand' Superior to the one The 'Bush' may yield me Or may not Too late to choose again ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
957:intensely craving a salad of green papaya with bird chilies that tore your mouth apart, that burned your lips, set fire to your heart. ~ Kim Th y, #NFDB
958:Like the birds of the sea, men come from the ocean-the ocean of the soul. How could this bird, born from that sea, make his dwelling here? ~ Rumi, #NFDB
959:Over the mountain growths, disease and sorrow,
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
High in the purer, happier air. ~ Walt Whitman,#NFDB
960:She looked at him without saying anything, and a dread suddenly roosted in his heart like an evil bird coming back to an old nest. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
961:The going was rough, and it was time to get going. There was no time like the present, because the early bird catches the worm. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
962:To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
963:You are walking on a street; a bird is singing, do you hear it? No? Then you are missing the life because life is awareness! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
964:Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
965:Dad thinks I'm ready to fly around the country as the Ambassador of Hope, but Mom thinks I'm a frail little bird with broken wings. ~ Clara Kensie, #NFDB
966:I'll wire the International Federation of American Homing Pigeon Fanciers and give them the number stamped on the bird's leg ring. ~ Carolyn Keene, #NFDB
967:It's not just for me, little bird," Jay says in a pained voice. "I would have left you alone forever, I promise you I would have. ~ Willow Winters, #NFDB
968:Shall we make a new rule of life... always to try to be a little kinder than necessary? [from 'The little white bird', by JM Barrie] ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
969:Shall we make a new rule of life... Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary? [from 'The little white bird', by JM Barrie] ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
970:Sometimes I see a bird fly by and I feel jealous. But then other times I see a bird fly into a closed window and I feel laughing. ~ Demetri Martin, #NFDB
971:TANDAAN: your mind is your weapon. Pagyamanin natin ito at magiging handa tayo sa gulo na dulot ng paghihimagsik ng puso at bird. ~ Ramon Bautista, #NFDB
972:The cage door opened and the cuckoo bird fell, fell, fell, until finally her stunted wings opened, and she found that she could fly. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
973:Walk away from it until you're stronger, All your problems will be there when you get back, but you'll be better able to cope. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
974:We all of us try to make God in our image. It is one of the worst of our temptations. ~ Elizabeth Goudge, The Bird in the Tree (1940), Chapter 6.3, #NFDB
975:Who's to know what makes a bird wake up and decide to change its song? It was written that our world would change and it changed. ~ Eliot Pattison, #NFDB
976:A single bird flew by at eye level, then shot straight up to the treetops. A grasshopper landed suddenly on my wrist. Creepy magic. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
977:Beware the Jabberwock, my son The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch! ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
978:But the moment a bird was dead, no matter how beautiful it had been in life, the pleasure of possession became blunted for me. ~ John James Audubon, #NFDB
979:Each time Stalker called you 'dove', I wanted to hit him. Because you're not a little gray bird... you're all the light in the world. ~ Ann Aguirre, #NFDB
980:How could an argument soothe or settle a controversy when every word is a nest for a bird of doubt? (meaning of words as inferences) ~ Edmond Jabes, #NFDB
981:I don't mind taking orders from them as has the right to give them," she said, "but take orders from that ridiculous bird I will not. ~ Enid Blyton, #NFDB
982:Just to settle it once and for all: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg, laid by a bird that was not a chicken. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
983:My witness is the empty sky.
My reward is the perfect blue sky at dawn in the desert in a bird-resounding riverbottom grove. ~ Jack Kerouac,#NFDB
984:No one can know the infinite importance of a tiny drop of water better than a thirsty bird or a little ant or a man of desert! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
985:Ravenna Caulfield's ruination began with a bird, continued with a pitchfork, and culminated with a corpse wearing a suit of armor. ~ Katharine Ashe, #NFDB
986:Then Ged pitied her. She was like a white deer caged, like a white bird wing-clipped, like a silver ring in an old man's finger. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
987:There are some old photographs from where if you take anything out, even a chicken or a little bird, the magic will disappear. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
988:This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
989:To be successful, you have to expose yourself to different situations-different styles of play, different teammates, different coaching. ~ Sue Bird, #NFDB
990:A male frigate bird blows up a wild red pouch on his neck. He can keep it puffed up for hours. It is his way of impressing the girls. ~ Julie Murphy, #NFDB
991:Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch! ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
992:Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?"
- from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird ~ Jerzy Kosi ski,#NFDB
993:Fear is a bird that refuses to fly, and each time she neglects to use her wings, she consents to the slow death of her destiny. ~ Nadia Janice Brown, #NFDB
994:Foppery, being the chronic condition of women, is not so much noticed as it is when it breaks out on the person of the male bird. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
995:I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful. ~ Pete Hamill, #NFDB
996:I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
997:I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
998:It's surely summer. for there's a swallow: Come one swallow, his mate will follow, The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken. ~ Christina Rossetti, #NFDB
999:The baby's body lay in a bassinet. He was the size of a half loaf of bread, his bones light as a bird's and stretched with thin skin. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1000:There was a bird whistle as Polly neared the hiding place. She identified this one as the sound of the Very Bad Bird Impersonator… ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1001:The thing to keep in mind is that laws are framed by those who happen to be in power and for the purpose of keeping them in power. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
1002:This is me apologizing. I am a fool, a bird-brain, a liar and a horse-thief. I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
1003:What do you want to accuse me of now? Did a bird urinate for the first time in history and you think it must be my fault for being evil? ~ Ker Dukey, #NFDB
1004:Even the robin and the martin come back, year after year, to their old nests; shall a woman be less true hearted than a bird? ~ James Fenimore Cooper, #NFDB
1005:For the planet's sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we're doomed. ~ Susan Blackmore, #NFDB
1006:Love is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame[...] I think the bird is the connection between us... I'd do anything for him. ~ Veronica Rossi, #NFDB
1007:I love the feeling of shredded wheat. I love healthy bird food with a fun-to-eat feel. Then you spray them with sugar, and I'm there. ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
1008:I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself,
A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough,
Without ever having felt sorry for itself. ~ D H Lawrence,#NFDB
1009:I play a bad boy on television, but in real life I have a passion for nature and nature conservancy, specifically bird rehabilitation. ~ Mark Salling, #NFDB
1010:I've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1011:Midwives’ experience of fathers is incidental but proficient, like a farmer’s knowledge of bird migration or the behavior of clouds. ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
1012:My soul is like the dead sea, over which no bird can fly; when it gets halfway, it sinks down spent to its death and destruction. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1013:Over the waves, with the wind behind her and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird until her curved prow had covered the distance... ~ Seamus Heaney, #NFDB
1014:The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1015:The tailor bird builds her nest in deep woods, she uses no more than one branch.The mole drinks off the river, it can only fill one belly. ~ Zhuangzi, #NFDB
1016:You've got to believe in yourself, or no one will believe in you. Imagination is like a bird on the wing, flying free for you to use. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
1017:And I touched her with the strongest, most delicate touch in the world--like the thumb of God running down the spine of a baby bird. ~ Jonathan Evison, #NFDB
1018:I’m terrified of heights, but I think there’s something really beautiful about birds and soaring, having a bird’s-eye view of the world. ~ Lindy Booth, #NFDB
1019:parrot,” he said, “is a tropical zygodactyl bird (order psittaciformes) that has a stout curved hooked bill, is often crested, brightly ~ Deborah Howe, #NFDB
1020:Sometimes a crow lands on the roof of the house. It sits there for hours and watches the girl. The woman doesn’t chase the bird away. ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
1021:THE BIRD AND THE WATER
A bird which has not heard of fresh water
Dips his beak in salt-water year after year.
(Anwar-i-Suhaili) ~ Idries Shah,#NFDB
1022:There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
(NOT Maya Angelou, NOT I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) ~ Zora Neale Hurston,#NFDB
1023:Hey, it’s a bird!” a voice said from the darkness just as Patricia reached the ground. “Come here, bird. I only want to bite you. ~ Charlie Jane Anders, #NFDB
1024:So say it loud and let it ring We are all a part of everything The future, present and the past Fly on proud bird You're free at last ~ Charlie Daniels, #NFDB
1025:There is something comforting about going into a practice room, putting your sheet music on a stand and playing Bach over and over again. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1026:And the man who seeks salvation in change of place like a migrating bird would find nothing anywhere, for all the world is alike to him. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1027:Goddammit, T-bird, he said. I love that faerie as much as any of us, but I couldn’t watch and do nothing while she becomes your Titanic. ~ Thea Harrison, #NFDB
1028:My grandmother simply shook her head and said, "You know what you saw. The bird doesn't need to be counted, and neither do you. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
1029:Saving a species of bird or insect is no different from saving humankind. ‘All lives are equal’ is the basic tenet of Pan-Species Communism. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
1030:Scientists aren’t responsible for the facts that are in nature. . . . If anyone should have a sense of sin, it’s God. He put the facts there. ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
1031:So like a bit of stone I lie
Under a broken tree.
I could recover if I shrieked
My heart's agony
To passing bird, but I am dumb. ~ W B Yeats,#NFDB
1032:Songwriters can sort of get away with murder. You can throw out crazy theories and not have to back it up with data or graphs or research. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1033:Terwhit … terwhit … I couldn’t help but smile momentarily. The bird had a point. You sing when you can, not when someone wants you to. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
1034:watching a man in an immaculate designer suit flailing his arms like a baby bird, trying to catch his balance before his chair flipped over? ~ J S Scott, #NFDB
1035:What little bird of scarlet plumage may this be?...'
'I am Mother's child,' answered the scarlet vision, 'and my name is Pearl! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne,#NFDB
1036:When we kill a word, it’s akin to killing off the dodo bird. Nothing can replace it, and it’s impossible to know the scope of the loss.” The ~ Beth Cato, #NFDB
1037:All’s well here. Hope your life is full of mice, moles, voles, butterflies, and the occasional inattentive bird. In Catitude, Sneaky Pie ~ Rita Mae Brown, #NFDB
1038:Bare your forehead, waiting for the first blessing of light, and sing with the bird of the morning in glad faith. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit Gathering, #NFDB
1039:I tried to put a bird in a cage. O fool that I am! For the bird was Truth. Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage! ~ William Carlos Williams, #NFDB
1040:So I care for this restless fluttering in my heart as if it were a bird with a broken wing, in the hope that it will one day heal and fly. ~ Hazel Gaynor, #NFDB
1041:the southern edge of town. Tim was a liver-colored bird dog, the pet of Maycomb. “What’s he doing?” “I don’t know, Scout. We better go home. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
1042:The true self is not aware that it is a self. A bird, as it sings, sings itself. But not according to a picture. It has no idea of itself. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1043:Time is swift, it races by; Opportunities are born and die... Still you wait and will not try - A bird with wings who dares not rise and fly. ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
1044:When you train your thoughts to dissolve as they arise, they will cross your mind like a bird crosses the sky--without leaving a trace. ~ Julietta Suzuki, #NFDB
1045:I bet you a million dollars, that guy was the jackdaw!”
“Oh, crap, I bet you’re right,” he muttered in response. “He’s the stupid bird. ~ Cherie Priest,#NFDB
1046:I was caged by him like a bird with clipped wings. I could flutter but I couldn’t escape though I’m not certain I’d want to even if I could. ~ Paloma Beck, #NFDB
1047:Nog remembered what an Earth-style omelet was made from, from his time at Starfleet Academy—bird eggs and flavored mold. In a word, revolting. ~ S D Perry, #NFDB
1048:She was ... unhappy. It was part of her, you could not separate her from it. She was sad the way a horse is strong or a bird flies. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
1049:Then there's the joy of getting your desk clean, and knowing that all your letters are answered, and you can see the wood on it again. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1050:There is in each person, in every animal, bird and plant a star which mirrors, matches or is in some sense the same as a star in the heavens. ~ Paracelsus, #NFDB
1051:I am sure of the here and now, this moment, and the next. I am sure of my past.” That was ghost bird’s castle keep, and it was inviolate. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
1052:I don’t expect you to understand, little bird. I expect you only to sing. Sing for me, sing for Kanin, and make it a glorious song.” —Sarren ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
1053:I heard a bird congratulating itself
all day for being a jay.
Nobody cared. But it was glad
all over again, and said so, again. ~ William Stafford,#NFDB
1054:I understand now, Fluttering Bird! I must draw the cats close—together once more—so that we can grow strong and spread like the Blazing Star. ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
1055:The firebird drops a feather, was his summary, and if you're fool enough to pick it up and chase the bird itself, you're in for trouble. ~ Susanna Kearsley, #NFDB
1056:The whole universe is in darkness, but we remain lit. We're a tiny bird tied to a branch in the dark forest, with a spotlight trained on on us. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
1057:And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door. ~ William Blake,#NFDB
1058:I mean, if the choice was playing on a field with girls or watching a field of guys, Bird and I were going to choose the guys every time. ~ Rachel Hawthorne, #NFDB
1059:Other friends have flown before— On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.” Then the bird said, “Nevermore.” Startled ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
1060:The Consul stood up. He gave two short whistles while below him the cat’s ears twirled. “She thinks I’m a tree with a bird in it,” he added. ~ Malcolm Lowry, #NFDB
1061:There's always that struggle between me wanting to keep [song] new and fresh and then be - I can never get with pop songs being so repetitive. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1062:Thoughts in your head are really no different than the sound of a bird outside. It is just that you decide that they are more or less relevant. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
1063:You know what kind of a man Lonny Tooker is? The kind of a man that sets broken bird's wings."
"Hitler loved dogs and babies," Dave said. ~ Joseph Hansen,#NFDB
1064:Your life is just a bird’s flight through a lit room. You pass from infinite darkness into endless night, with only a short time in between. ~ Conn Iggulden, #NFDB
1065:20Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1066:Alice wished on feathers and dandelions to be a bird and fly far away into the golden seam of the horizon where the sea was sewn to the sky. ~ Holly Ringland, #NFDB
1067:A pearl in the shell does not touch the ocean. Be a pearl without a shell. a mindful flooding. a spark turned to flame. bird settling nest. love lived ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1068:Credit, that rare bird of security and peace, rested with none, but stood with upraised wings, ready to fly off at the first rumor of suspicion. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1069:I have loved you every moment of every day, and I will love you until I cease to be. Bird, man, or king, I love you, and I will always love you. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
1070:In this place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things. ~ Theodore Roethke, #NFDB
1071:It was cruel. Like opening a birdcage to let the bird fly out, whilst all the while it's tethered by the leg, and freedom is only an illusion. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1072:She held up the arrow again and threatened the bird. "You do anything, ignite a single spark, and I'm having Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. ~ Chanda Hahn, #NFDB
1073:That's true that Sen. Robert Bird was in the Klan and a lot of people were friends of Robert Byrd in the U.S. Senate, Democrats and Republicans. ~ David Duke, #NFDB
1074:Any chick who carried around a bird of prey with a little helmet was cool in my book. Oh, man, I really hoped she didn’t intend to kill us all. ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
1075:A wise old owl lived in an oak, The more he saw the less he spoke, The less he spoke, the more he heard, Why aren’t we all like that old bird? ~ Daniel Yergin, #NFDB
1076:A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let's emulate that wise old bird. ~ Flann O Brien, #NFDB
1077:Be like the bird who,
Resting in his flight
On a twig too slight,
Feels it bend beneath him
Yet sings,
Knowing he has wings. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
1078:Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1079:Even in hand drawn animation, humans are widely considered to be the most difficult to execute, because everybody has a feeling for how they move. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
1080:I kept seeing Dante standing in the rain holding a bird with a broken wing. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not. What if he’d lost his smile? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1081:In the Midwest... winter is an exercise in waiting — for relief, for a bird to sing, for the first purple crocus to push up through the snow. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
1082:It hardly seemed fair, because, unlike a horse or a Seeing Eye dog, the whole glory of being a bird is that nobody would ever put you to work. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
1083:It is foolish to spread a net where any bird can see it, but they set an ambush to kill themselves; they attack their own lives. Proverbs 1:17–18 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1084:May the bird of paradise fly up your nose, may an elephant caress you with his toes, may your wife be plagued with runners in her hose. ~ Little Jimmy Dickens, #NFDB
1085:she hopped and darted to and fro like a bird in a berry bush, trilling and twittering a series of notes as liquidly bright as a cardinal’s song, ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
1086:Sometimes redemption lands in your life like a bird and looks you straight in the eye, even when you believe you don't deserve forgiveness. ~ Adriana Trigiani, #NFDB
1087:Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
1088:Where did you say you found that bird again?” “In my head.” Ronan’s laugh was a sharp jackal cry. “Dangerous place,” commented Noah. Ronan ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
1089:A bird without wings and a man without art are both condemned to wander in low places; they can never soar up to those unrivalled heights. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1090:and jazz is like a bird who migrates or emigrates or immigrates or transmigrates, roadblock jumper, smuggler, something that runs and mixes in ~ Julio Cort zar, #NFDB
1091:And turkeys are a bird. A very nervous bird. You'd be nervous too if you knew that one day you'd get your head cut off and... filled with stuffing. ~ Bob Saget, #NFDB
1092:As the sociologist Daniel Bell later observed, Oppenheimer’s ordeal signified that the postwar “messianic role of the scientists” was now at an end. ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
1093:Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch! ~ Lewis Carroll,#NFDB
1094:But my darling was as frail as a bird. She died nine days later. After sixty-one years together, she simply clutched my hand and exhaled. Although ~ Sara Gruen, #NFDB
1095:Every time I make a record, it's kind of like scarification or something. You work 15 hours until you're stupid. You're just kind of all jittery. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1096:Hope is a waking dream," Jael quoted softly. "And it's the last thing to go. It torments you like a bird killing itself slowly against the glass. ~ Ann Aguirre, #NFDB
1097:I had no more alphabet than the journeying of the swallows, the pure and tiny water of the small, fiery bird that dances rising from the pollen. ~ Pablo Neruda, #NFDB
1098:It’s as if someone fashioned a small golden bird and then attached a ring around it. The bird is connected to the ring only by its wing tips. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
1099:I've always felt that dark lyrics with dark music is pretty useless. Maybe that's a strong statement - not useless, but for me, it's just boring. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1100:My face felt like my normal face, as if that part of me hadn’t transformed into a bird. [Fine, Sadie. Call me the Carter-headed chicken. Happy?] ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1101:Native plants give us a sense of where we are in this great land of ours. I want Texas to look like Texas and Vermont to look like Vermont. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1102:Pizza Hut isn't real pizza," I tell them. "The way that balloon of Big Bird they fly in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade isn't the real Big Bird. ~ Meg Cabot, #NFDB
1103:The flower is not evil because it blooms where it does. It simply exists. As do the fish in this pool, and the bird on the cliff, and you, and I. ~ Emily Rodda, #NFDB
1104:And what has become of it, where is that onetime love? Now it is the grave of a bird, a drop of black quartz, a chunk of wood eroded by the rain. ~ Pablo Neruda, #NFDB
1105:Bird boy kept us out there in the freezing rain while he yammered about the Red One this and Red One that. Darius got Zoey in here despite his help". ~ P C Cast, #NFDB
1106:Bird leaves the land to enjoy the freedom; man leaves his thoughts to enjoy the silence. Meditation is man’s flying to the land of silence. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1107:He worked for Rockefeller?” Oppenheimer said, puffing on his pipe. And then lowering his voice, he quipped, “I, too, have taken money for doing harm. ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
1108:My legs, arms, torso, underarms, and parts of my eyebrows have been stripped of the stuff, leaving me like a plucked bird, ready for roasting. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
1109:Quinn wanted to make her see that people didn't live like this; but what was the use. No one was going to get her away from Bird Man out there. ~ Thomas McGuane, #NFDB
1110:The Iraqi is really not whacky toady, perhaps, even tacky. When they gave him the word, he gave us the bird and joined with the Arabs, by cracky! ~ Dean Acheson, #NFDB
1111:The most risky day in the world will be the day the bird will decide to swim and the fish will decide to fly. Stay glued to what you can do. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1112:Think of it like you’re holding a bird in your hand,” Peter said. “If you hold it too tightly, you’ll strangle it. Too loosely, and it’ll fly away. ~ Cary Elwes, #NFDB
1113:And when I look again she seems neither bird nor reptile, but a creature shaped by a million years of evolution for a life she's not yet lived. ~ Helen Macdonald, #NFDB
1114:Any committee is only as good as the most knowledgeable, determined and vigorous person on it. There must be somebody who provides the flame. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1115:Before the castle gate all was as the fox had said: so the son went in and found the chamber where the golden bird hung in a wooden cage, and below ~ Jacob Grimm, #NFDB
1116:Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus. —WALLACE STEGNER, THE SPECTATOR BIRD ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1117:Ten-year-old boys move differently than middle-aged women, who move differently than athletic guys, who move differently than government bureaucrats. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
1118:Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas; a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour. ~ Augusten Burroughs, #NFDB
1119:The glory of Advent and Christmas is camouflaged by humility, anonymity and even foolishness, for our God likes to hide himself beneath his opposite. ~ Chad Bird, #NFDB
1120:There is Indian time and white man's time. Indian time means never looking at the clock. ... There is not even a word for time in our language. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
1121:There’s only a double abyss: between painter and imprisoned bird; between the record he left of the bird and our experience of it, centuries later. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
1122:The same substance composes us--the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star--we are all one, all moving to the same end. ~ P L Travers, #NFDB
1123:Truth can be awful and even excruciating, but once it’s released, it’s like a bird that’s been caged too long who finally flies to freedom. I ~ Ilsa Madden Mills, #NFDB
1124:Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1125:Always keep a big bottle of booze at your side. If a bird starts talking nonsense to you in the middle of the night pour yourself a stiff drink. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
1126:“But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.” ~ Vincent Van GoghThe Epigraph to "Red Bird" by Mary Oliver [Born on this day, in 1935], #NFDB
1127:I don't like super-descriptive modern fiction. I like, "Here's what was happening in 1582 all over the planet." Then that gets my imagination going. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1128:I have never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A little bird will fall dead, frozen from a bough, without ever having felt sorry for itself. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1129:I'm alive inside. A bird is my heart. Mama and Daddy is not win. I'm winning. I'm drinking hot chocolate in the Village wif girls-all kind who love me. ~ Sapphire, #NFDB
1130:In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
1131:No one took her seriously because she was small and feathered, a strange little dino-bird, but she had a sickle claw and she was not afraid to use it. ~ Anne Ursu, #NFDB
1132:She died in her cage, the little bird
These words she left for her captor
Please take the spring harvest
And shove it up your gilded arse ~ Arundhati Roy,#NFDB
1133:A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute. ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
1134:A cat’s New Year dream is mostly a bird! Don’t be like a cat; in New Year, dream something that you have never dreamed! Target for new things! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1135: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. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
1136:I had a very exciting time,” Oppenheimer recalled, “reading the Principia with Whitehead, who had forgotten it, so that he was both teacher and student. ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
1137:I have three kids and a wife, and any moments that aren't dedicated to working on this film in some way, or family, are immediately reserved for sleep. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
1138:In this place of light: he dares to live
Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings
Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things. ~ Theodore Roethke,#NFDB
1139:The anima also has affinities with animals, which symbolize her characteristics. Thus she can appear as a snake or a tiger or a bird. ~ Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 358, #NFDB
1140:When caricaturist, Al Hirschfeld, did a drawing of a celebrity, it often looked more like the person than the person did. That's our goal in animation. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
1141:You will forget. Life is like that. Everything goes in time. Memories blur, pain diminishes. I remember my wife as one remembers a bird or a flower ~ gota Krist f, #NFDB
1142:A bird came down the Walk— He did not know I saw— He bit an Angleworm in halves And ate the fellow, raw” —Emily Dickinson, “A Bird Came Down the Walk ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1143:Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1144:Birds scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth, but sadly we don't speak bird. ~ Kurt Cobain, #NFDB
1145:But fate it a cunning hussy, and builds up her plans as imperceptibly as a bird builds her nest; and with the same kind of unconsidered trifles. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
1146:Every bird that sings, sings for you. Every breeze that blows, blows for you. Every sunray shines for you. If you only knew how loved you are. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1147:Every living person and thing responds to beauty. We all thirst for it. We receive strength and renewal by seeing stirring and satisfying sites. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1148:I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began. ~ Madeline Miller, #NFDB
1149:The encapsulated bird your conspirators sent you to fetch. The sterilized male chicken with the Creator DNA sequences. The plot capon. Where is it? ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
1150:We had our arms round each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1151:A bird may twitter a better song.
But should you consider abortion wrong
or that the quacks ask too high a fee,
come to this wall, and see. ~ Joseph Brodsky,#NFDB
1152:A bird needs both long and short feathers to fly,” said Jia. “You need to learn to work with different kinds of people.” Kuni nodded, glad of Jia’s wisdom. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
1153:Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie, A fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly. Ask me a riddle and I reply: “Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.” That ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
1154:It's odd that you can get so anesthetized by your own pain or your own problem that you don't quite fully share the hell of someone close to you. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1155:I've read that madness is present when everything you see and hear takes on an equal significance. A dead bird makes you cry, and so does a doorknob. ~ Helen Oyeyemi, #NFDB
1156:Just Enough Soil for legs Axe for hands Flower for eyes Bird for ears Mushrooms for nose Smile for mouth Songs for lungs Sweat for skin Wind for mind. ~ Nanao Sakaki, #NFDB
1157:Pan, who and what art thou?" he cried huskily. "I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg. ~ James M Barrie, #NFDB
1158:When told by a helpful aide that his flies were undone he replied 'Young man, there is no harm in leaving the cage door open if the bird is dead! ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1159:Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again. ~ Rene Char, #NFDB
1160:A bird, a horse, a dog, a man, a girl, or a cat—you knock them about and diminish yourself because all you do is prove yourself equally vulnerable. ~ John D MacDonald, #NFDB
1161:"Bird, how can you fly in the gravity of this darkness?""Love lifts me." ~ Rumi #spiritchat #quote #quoteoftheday #LoveInTheTimeOfCorona #NaturePhotography #Wellbeing, #NFDB
1162:Everybody seized upon a bit of the beast. The Sultan claimed the liver, which, when dried and powdered, is worth twice its weight in gold as medicine. ~ Isabella Bird, #NFDB
1163:Fletcher Lynd Seagull was still quite young, but already he knew that no bird had ever been so harshly treated by any Flock, or with so much injustice. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
1164:Flow my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled forever let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn. ~ Philip K Dick,#NFDB
1165:Flow my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled forever let me mourn;
Where night’s black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn. ~ Philip K Dick,#NFDB
1166:I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1167:I didn't know what words to use until my hand wrote them, though as I wrote, I saw every color, heard the singing bird, and tasted the dry Spanish dust. ~ Julie Berry, #NFDB
1168:If a bird is used to flying and you put in a a cage, it won't be a happy bird; It wants to fly; that's its nature. Your nature is infinite awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1169:I'm really an alarmist when it comes to epidemics. Swine flu now; when SARS was big, I was all freaked out about that, bird flu. That terrifies me. ~ Chuck Klosterman, #NFDB
1170:Out of love alone shall my despising and my warning bird fly up, not out of swamp. (...) Where one can no longer love, there one should pass by. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1171:Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.” -Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird ~ Danny Gregory, #NFDB
1172:The bird still didn’t move. Mrs. Yun thought it had discerned her deepest, innermost ideas. Actually, she herself didn’t know exactly what those ideas were. ~ Can Xue, #NFDB
1173:There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of woman is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on only one wing. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1174: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. ~ Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, #NFDB
1175:Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. ISAIAH 26:3 CHAPTER 1 Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania ~ Wanda E Brunstetter, #NFDB
1176:You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,You are soft as the nesting dove.Come to my heart and bring it restAs the bird flies home to its welcome nest. ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar, #NFDB
1177:Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.
in the lost lands ~ E E Cummings,#NFDB
1178:Be the prettiest book I ever seen. The cover is pale blue, color a the sky. And a big white bird - a peace dove - spreads its wings from end to end. ~ Kathryn Stockett, #NFDB
1179:I enjoy watching sitcoms where the team behind it have successfully created a whole alternate reality that you can enter into for half an hour every week. ~ Simon Bird, #NFDB
1180:If you take a little time, let's say three weeks off, after recording a song, and you listen to it every other day, you're just going to know eventually. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1181:My fingers are callused from gripping tree limbs, and my nails are short and grubby with bark. They are like the talons of a bird that lives only in trees. ~ Ned Hayes, #NFDB
1182:She was apt at hunting, a naturally trained bird of prey who would beat the game and always bring it back to the hunter. And speaking of the devil … It ~ Pauline R age, #NFDB
1183:The challenge we now face is to build on the record of the past, to continue accepting new responsibilities and seeking new opportunities to serve. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1184:The kind of person that I admire most would be one who becomes extraordinarily good at doing a lot of things but still maintains a tear-stained countenance. ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
1185:You can’t make a falcon love you, but you can convince its little bird brain that sitting on your glove means a full croup.” “Unless it’s a Harris Hawk. ~ S M Stirling, #NFDB
1186:After macrobiotics, Zen, and channeling, the "poor Vanishing Indian" is once more the subject of "deep and meaningful conversation" in the high rises. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
1187:An innocent bird is not innocent from the insect’s point of view! Only man can attain the rank of innocence through becoming a peaceful vegetarian! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1188:Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie. ~ A A Milne,#NFDB
1189:Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird? ~ David Attenborough, #NFDB
1190:He doesn't say goodbye," Inej said. She kept her eyes on the lights of the canal. Somewhere in the garden, a night bird began to sing. "He just lets go. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
1191: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, #NFDB
1192:I’ll go anywhere you see fit to take me, Jesse Bird. But I won’t set foot out of this cabin again till I’m a married woman. This time I’m going to insist. ~ Lori Benton, #NFDB
1193:Only is a bird doesn't swim in the ocean but flies in the air can it enter the ocean from above; only because God is not temporal can he enter into time. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
1194:O, that the gods
Would set me free from this unhallow'd place,
Though they did change me to the meanest bird
That flies i' the purer air! ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
1195:The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
1196:Trust me, there are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no more fit to lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped. ~ Frances Wright, #NFDB
1197:Well caught, Cloudpaw,” he meowed. “I didn’t see you coming until it was too late.” “Nor did this stupid bird,” crowed Cloudpaw, flicking his tail smugly. ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
1198:Who told you I was called Carl David?" "A little bird, Monsieur." "Does it fly from me to you? Then one can tie a message under its wing when needful. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1199:A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
1200:After so many years of foolishness, you have once again had an idea, have done something, have heard the bird in your chest singing and have followed it. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1201:A moment later, red smoke swirled around her, and Mel formed beside her. The beautiful, large bird whipped her wings out, shattering the glass of their cell. ~ Lia Davis, #NFDB
1202:Considering how long it's been since I said it, I would've assumed I'd be more rusty. Well, that and the fact that the last time I was talking to a horse. ~ Jessica Bird, #NFDB
1203:I guessed it was a migratory bird, too innocent to be wary of the spiders in the jungle grass. It worried be to think that we were a little like that bird ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
1204:I guess everyone has a bird urge when they look down heights, a desire to jump, without wing or buoyant sail. Fear of heights is fear of a desire to jump. ~ Amruta Patil, #NFDB
1205:In Nature there is no dirt, everything is in the right condition; the swamp and the worm, as well as the grass and the bird,-all is there for itself. ~ Berthold Auerbach, #NFDB
1206:Leaving what is safe so you can be more, Derek said. The cage is what the bird knows; the sky is all the things he still wants to do even if it's a risk. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
1207:Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird And catch the worm for your breakfast plate. If you’re a bird, be an early bird But if you’re a worm, sleep late. ~ Cornelia Funke, #NFDB
1208:The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes. “Say ‘Nevermore,’” said Shadow. “Fuck you,” said the raven. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1209:The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1210:THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS” You may talk about your Dearest May, And sing of Rosa Lee, But the Yellow Rose of Texas Beats the belles of Tennessee. TRADITIONAL ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
1211:When Sabine parted her lips to argue, Lanthe said, “This baby bird’s gotta fly, sis.” “Great,” Sabine drawled. “She’s already speaking in avian metaphors. ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
1212:130. "Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1213:A bird is like an instrument working according to mathematical law, and it is in the capacity of man to reproduce such an instrument," Leonardo da Vinci ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1214:change. Eddie saw the leper, the mummy, the bird; he saw the werewolf, and a vampire whose teeth were Gillette Blue-Blades set at crazy angles like mirrors ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1215:Disneyland's a mess. And it's not just the measles. Donald Duck has bird flu. Pocahontas has small pox. The Little Mermaid has crabs. And the Monorail? Mono. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
1216:I don't expect you to understand, little bird. I expect you only to sing. Sing for me, sing for Kanin, and make it a glorious song. ~ Julie KagawaSarren ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
1217:If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
1218:I think there is a total equality for me between painting a literary figure or Kate Moss or my Mum or a dog or a bird. To me, they are all absolutely equal. ~ Stella Vine, #NFDB
1219:She knew if you weren’t always stepping lightly as a bird the whole world came apart to crush you. Like a house of cards. Like a bottle against stones. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
1220:She was like a flightless bird, her wings clipped by every cruel word and heartless action bestowed upon her. I realized I would do anything to heal her. ~ Kellie McAllen, #NFDB
1221:The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes. “Say ‘Nevermore,’ “ said Shadow. “Fuck you,” said the raven. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1222:The real drag is trying to fly from country to country, day of show, with all your gear. You get hassled all the time. It's hard trying to keep it together. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1223:tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1224:We Anhedonians have adapted to long periods between good news. Our national animal is the hope camel. We have no national bird. All the birds are dead. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
1225:How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring? ~ William Blake, #NFDB
1226:I don’t speak bird … or bitch,” I snarled at her. Not a total lie, I really didn’t speak bird, but I was damned fluent in bitch. Some would say expert levels. ~ Jaymin Eve, #NFDB
1227:Mother, I have made a bird of prey my lover, When I give him bits of bread he doesn’t eat, So I feed him with the flesh of my heart. —Shiv Kumar Batalvi ~ Georgia Le Carre, #NFDB
1228:No more my heart shall sob or grieve. My days and nights dissolve in God's own Light. Above the toil of life, my soul is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1229:Once you get the kids raised and the mortgage paid off and accomplish what you wanted to do in life, there's a great feeling of: 'Hey, I'm free as a bird.' ~ Dick Van Dyke, #NFDB
1230:So you have you price," I said with a mouthful of crumbs. "Your soul for a cookie." Fang made sure Dr. Martinez wasn't looking and then shot me the bird. ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
1231:The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The name of the god is Abraxas. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1232:Without the gift of flowers and the infinite diversity of their fruits, man and bird, if they had continued to exist at all, would be today unrecognizable. ~ Loren Eiseley, #NFDB
1233: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. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
1234:Harry was just thinking that all he needed was for Dumbledore's pet bird to die while he was all alone in the office with it, when the bird burst into flames. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1235:How exactly are you supposed to force your way into someone's life? Like I said, I have nothing she wants anymore. Not even, or especially not, my love. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
1236:I am not an early bird. I go to bed normally between midnight and 1 oclock, so it is understandable that I cannot be an early bird. I wake up around 9 oclock. ~ Dieter Rams, #NFDB
1237:I feel caged. Always. I feel like I am this bird, trapped and stifled and caged, and I keep looking for a way to escape, but I am barred at every turn. ~ Julianne Donaldson, #NFDB
1238:It is impossible to think about the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is impossible for a bird to fly on only one wing. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1239:It's all right," she said. "It's all right." That was really a very nice sound. There should be a bird that does that: that sings when you are impotent. ~ Richard Brautigan, #NFDB
1240:I wasn’t reaching for glory at Naoetsu. I just wouldn’t give the Bird the satisfaction of destroying my dignity. Don’t let anyone take yours away, either. ~ Louis Zamperini, #NFDB
1241:The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes. “Say ‘Nevermore,’” said Shadow. “Fuck you,” said the raven. It ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1242:Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?” Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1243:Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’ Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1244:To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1245:A girl doesn't always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels like being nasty--like, if the guy's gonna wait, let him really wait. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1246:As she swallow a few more drops, I whisper to my child's namesake, "The first of untold numbers of sweet things you will taste in this life." It is my blessing. ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
1247:It is impossible to think about the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is impossible for a bird to fly on only one wing. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1248:Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean, higher than any bird ever flew, longer than there've been stars up in the heavens, I've been in love with you. ~ Dan Fogelberg, #NFDB
1249:Praise is the beauty of a Christian. What wings are to a bird, what fruit is to the tree, what the rose is to the thorn, that is praise to a child of God. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1250:Teddy shuddered. The idea of the sublime little bird being plucked from the sky, of its exquisite song being interrupted in full flight, was horrible to him. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
1251:The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1252:The peregrine falcon is the swiftest, most adept animal I have ever seen. It is worth noting that, like many bird, the falcon's bones are hollow. Travel light. ~ Ethan Hawke, #NFDB
1253:Where logic seems apparent: in bullfrogs or Black-Eyed Susans bird migrations patterns on the skin of newt or carp we go too far imagining a god of purposes. ~ John Burnside, #NFDB
1254:A bird in the open never looks Like its picture in the birdie books - Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage, And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage. ~ Ogden Nash, #NFDB
1255:A life where love does. It doesn't come in an envelope. It's ushered in by a sunrise, the sound of a bird, or the smell of coffee drifting lazily from the kitchen. ~ Bob Goff, #NFDB
1256: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. ~ John James Audubon, #NFDB
1257:As long as anything in this world means anything to you, your freedom is only a word. You are like a bird that is held by a leash; you can only fly so far. ~ Francois Fenelon, #NFDB
1258:I just gazed at the smoke haze above Lundene, the darkness darkening a summer sky, and wished I were a bird, high in that nothingness, vanishing. Haesten ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
1259:Let us be like a bird for a moment perched
On a frail branch when he sings;
Though he feels it bend, yet he sings his song,
Knowing that he has wings. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
1260:Like the baby bird that flies the nest too soon, because it can’t comprehend anything better to do. Freedom is still freedom, even when it ends in a suicide song. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1261:Maybe that bird that floats
hill belly on the wind up there,
and that cat
that pats
in this grass,
is the same
Infinite
Worldwide
Angel ~ Jack Kerouac,#NFDB
1262:Open skies painted above painted doorways and painted birds skimming across bricks trying to fly away. Little bird, what are you thinking? You come from a can. ~ Cath Crowley, #NFDB
1263:[...] she pressing her lips together as though she were keeping my kiss inside her, and me, holding this moment that was as fragile as a bird in my hands. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
1264:Somewhere outside, a goldfinch was singing. Or maybe it was a song sparrow. My dad tried to teach me different kinds of bird songs, but I couldn't quite remember. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
1265:The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1266:The human soul is like a bird that is born in a cage. Nothing can deprive it of its natural longings, or obliterate the mysterious remembrance of its heritage. ~ Epes Sargent, #NFDB
1267:A person is a freedom. A person is beautiful because of freedom. The bird is beautiful on the wing in the sky—you encage it and it is no longer the same bird, remember. ~ Osho, #NFDB
1268:At last, hopelessly surveying myself all over, I was obliged to face the mortifying fact that I had been transformed not into a bird, but into a plain jackass. ~ Robert Graves, #NFDB
1269:Bird and beast and stone and star—we are all one, all one——” murmured the Hamadryad, softly folding his hood about him as he himself swayed between the children. ~ P L Travers, #NFDB
1270:Everybody's a bird, locked up in a pretty cage. Sometimes you fly to a slightly bigger one, but you never quite have the courage to abandon captivity completely. ~ Dave McKean, #NFDB
1271:God made us walking animals - pedestrians. As a fish needs to swim, a bird to fly, a deer to run, we need to walk, not in order to survive, but to be happy. ~ Enrique Penalosa, #NFDB
1272:I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it -- and, more important, I like to give it. ~ Julia Child, #NFDB
1273:I was an ambitious child and I tended to be scatterbrained. If I was at school and saw a bird outside the window I wanted to follow it. I was adventurous. ~ Sylvester Stallone, #NFDB
1274:The intent of sincere humanitarians is to do good to society, just as the intent of the child who kills a bird by to much fondling is to do good to the bird. ~ Vilfredo Pareto, #NFDB
1275:the ladder, the metal freezing, biting my fingers. When I get up to the roof I press myself perfectly flat, belly-down on a coating of bird shit and rust. Even ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
1276:We employed a stocky Yorkshire woman to walk me home from school past the barbershop with the unhappy mynah bird. "Kill me!" it suggested as we passed by. ~ Elizabeth Mckenzie, #NFDB
1277:Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time—then you might not be as ambitious as you are. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
1278:When I’m a woman, I eat Pop-Tarts and vindaloo. When I’m a big black bird, I eat eyeballs and spleens. It’s all part of the glorious contradiction that is me. ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
1279:Why is it that you still beguile me –
As wind, stone, bird – and all the likes?
Why is that you smile on me –
With sudden summer lightning strikes? ~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
1280:mythical phoenix bird who remains awake through the fires of change, rises from the ashes of death, and is reborn into his most vibrant and enlightened self. ~ Elizabeth Lesser, #NFDB
1281:Remembering a dream is almost as hard as catching a bird in your hand, but sometimes it's as if the bird comes and sits on your shoulder of its own free will. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1282:The bird rocked free from its blocks and carried them down the tarmac, away from their homes and families and dogs and cats and to a land that didn’t want them. ~ Ross Ritchell, #NFDB
1283:Then the Kolokolo Bird said with a mournful cry, "Go to the banks of the great, grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
1284:When we pull back and get, for a moment, the 'bird's eye' view of life, it reveals meanings that are ungraspable by the narrow focus of our usual worm's eye view ~ Colin Wilson, #NFDB
1285:An old horse, an old bird, an old man, an old tree, they all represent a great survival in the jungle of cosmos; they deserve to be applauded and respected! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1286:Birds are extremely valued as indicators of overall environmental health. If there's a problem in a wild bird population, it's indicative that something went wrong. ~ Jim Elliot, #NFDB
1287:Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent. ~ Sharon Tate, #NFDB
1288:Good-bye,” said Michael to the Bird Woman. “Feed the Birds,” she replied, smiling. “Good-bye,” said Jane. “Tuppence a Bag!” said the Bird Woman and waved her hand. ~ P L Travers, #NFDB
1289:If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
1290:If you were a bird, and lived on high, You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by, You'd say to the wind when it took you away: 'That's where I wanted to go today! ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
1291:I once asked a bird,"How do you fly in this gravity of darkness ?"And she replied "Love lifts me" ~ Hafiz ~ Man must use what he has, not hope for what is not.- George Gurdjieff, #NFDB
1292:Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’ ” He turned his head to his shoulder as if the bird were there now. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
1293:It is through the struggle that one develops its strength and independence. And to “help” a bird break out of its shell would be ultimately to cause its death. This ~ Rory Vaden, #NFDB
1294:The bird alighteth not on the spread net when it beholds another bird in the snare. Take warning by the misfortunes of others, that others may not take example from you. ~ Saadi, #NFDB
1295:Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly-and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing. ~ Omar Khayyam, #NFDB
1296:Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing. ~ Omar Khayy m, #NFDB
1297:He looked at me very gravely, and put his arms around my neck. I felt his heart beating like the heart of a dying bird, shot with someone's rifle . . . ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
1298:How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended. ~ Rene Char, #NFDB
1299:Make a change! It's all about you! You may not be able to prevent the bird from flying over your head; but you can prevent it from making a nest on your head! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1300:Nothing is beautiful by itself; things are beautiful with other things. Water is beautiful with autumn leafs, with a bird or with a reflection of the clouds! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1301:Rise early. It is the early bird that catches the worm. Don't be fooled by this absurd law; I once knew a man who tried it. He got up at sunrise and a horse bit him. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1302:Sometimes Frank sighed, thinking he had caught a tropic bird, all flame and jewel color, when a wren would have served him just as well. In fact, much better. ~ Margaret Mitchell, #NFDB
1303: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, #NFDB
1304:The first time you get a ride on a surf board and you are being propelled along by a wave, it’s probably as close as humans can get to being able to fly like a bird ~ Gerry Lopez, #NFDB
1305:When I walk across my living room from my chimney to my window, it takes me 10 seconds, but for a bird it takes one second, and for oxygen zero seconds! ~ Jean Claude Van Damme, #NFDB
1306:You are walking in a desert.You hear a bird singing.As absurd as it may seem for a bird to be pending in the desert,you are obligated to make it a tree.That's poem ~ Kiki Dimoula, #NFDB
1307:Your bird drinks whiskey and eats tobacco?"
The old man frowned."Just be lad he doesn't like eatin' scrawny boys that don't know their way 'round the Otherworld. ~ Kami Garcia,#NFDB
1308:A bird can fly as high as it wants but it eventually has to come down to earth and get some water... and when it comes down to get that water that's when you strike. ~ Kimbo Slice, #NFDB
1309:Bird's mind and fingers work with incredible speed. He can imply four chord changes in a melodic pattern where another musician would have trouble inserting two. ~ Leonard Feather, #NFDB
1310:Happiness, like life itself, was as fragile as a bird’s heartbeat, as fleeting as the bluebells in the wood, but while it lasted, Fox Corner was an Arcadian dream. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
1311:He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
1312:If you want to retire young and retire rich, it is very important that your money be like a bird dog, going out every day and bringing home more and more assets. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
1313:I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree; For sure then I should grow To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust Her household to me, and I should be just. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
1314:I realized that happiness was not some bird that landed on your shoulder by accident, but was a skill that was taught, or not taught, in certain houses and families. After ~ Jewel, #NFDB
1315:I think over his insinuation that doing paperwork might make my pretty little head explode. Then I smile slowly. If he wants a bird-brained model. I’ll give him one. ~ Lily Morton, #NFDB
1316:Lying in one’s own way is almost better than telling the truth in someone else’s way; in the first case you’re a man, and in the second—no better than a bird! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1317:MAN I would be done grieving? BIRD No, not at all. You were done being hopeless. Grieving is something you’re still doing, and something you don’t need a crow for. ~ Max Porter, #NFDB
1318:Most human beings live like a bird in a cage whose door was blown away. Out of habit, too busy gold-plating the cage, they do not soar to the ultimate possibility. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
1319:Rise early. It is the early bird that catches the worm. Don't be fooled by this absurd saw; I once knew a man who tried it. He got up at sunrise and a horse bit him. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1320:Thus he would possess her as a god possesses his creatures, whom he lays hold of in the guise of a monster or a bird, of an invisible spirit or a state of ecstasy. ~ Pauline R age, #NFDB
1321:We’ll manipulate forgiveness, because ultimately it is ours to give to whomever we desire, under whatever conditions we choose, to achieve whatever ends serve us best. ~ Chad Bird, #NFDB
1322:What the internet has done is destroy film criticism. I would never have guessed that the profession of film criticism would be going the way of the dodo bird. ~ Quentin Tarantino, #NFDB
1323:Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue? ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
1324:But I am going to keep going. I am going to soar, and soar, and break away—up, up, up into the thundering noise and the wind, like a bird being sucked into the sky. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
1325:But I don't just see the movie when I see the movie, I see all the great people who worked on it and all their hard work, because they could not have worked any harder. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
1326:For me, books have been a life-long resource-to learning, laughter, solace, excitement, inspiration. At your library, the world awaits you, free for the asking. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1327:He tried to get up and move, but a searing pain from his leg shot through him. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was the song of a bird, greeting the dawn. ~ Rhys Bowen, #NFDB
1328:If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1329:The music that I write is often not necessarily full of doom and gloom. You'll notice in most of the darkest songs, the music is actually pretty peaceful and lulling. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1330:Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
1331:Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
1332:What are you going to have?” he asked.
“A nervous breakdown,” she muttered and opened her menu.
So we’ll tell the waitress to make that a double, he thought. ~ Jessica Bird,#NFDB
1333:[W]hen you find yourself face to face with one [Bondsmage], you bow and scrape and mind your 'sirs' and 'madams.'"
...
'Nice bird, asshole,' said Locke. ~ Scott Lynch,#NFDB
1334:While the spirit of neighborliness was important on the frontier because neighbors were so few, it is even more important now because our neighbors are so many. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1335:If a bird’s hair cells are damaged by disease or loud noises—say, by the blasting decibels of a rock concert in a domed stadium—they can regenerate. Ours can’t.) ~ Jennifer Ackerman, #NFDB
1336:If you turn the imagination loose like a hunting dog, it will often return with the bird in its mouth.'
(from "The Front and the Back Parts of the House", 1991) ~ William Maxwell,#NFDB
1337:negative emotions can contribute to prolonged or chronic infections or to delayed wound healing, which in turn indirectly increases the production of these cytokines. ~ Chloe E Bird, #NFDB
1338:The human race is like a bird and it needs both wings to be able to fly. And, at the moment, one of is wings is clipped an we're never going to be able to fly as high. ~ Emma Watson, #NFDB
1339:The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into lustre. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1340:There was a damn silly bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1341:The tight place, the dark pit in which I am now lying, of what bird is it the talon? When the design of my life is completed, shall I, shall other people see a stork? ~ Isak Dinesen, #NFDB
1342:What he remembered from that day at the beach when he was seven was that the bird’s heart had stopped in the palm of his hand, a fluttering that faltered and went still. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1343:Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet. ~ Miles Davis, #NFDB
1344:Bird, don't sound so crushed. The fact that I had never had sex before can only have been significant for me, if it had any meaning at all-it had nothing to do with you. ~ Kenzabur e, #NFDB
1345:he thought no more of performing the lesser arts of magic than a bird thinks of flying. Yet a greater, unlearned skill he possessed, which was the art of kindness. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1346:I think if you have a really big, heavy person, there's a feeling of an invisible puppeteer jerking them around in space. They don't feel like they are moving themselves. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
1347:[...] it was so hot that noon that the bird in their confusion were running into walls like clay pigeons and breaking through screens to die in the bedrooms. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
1348:Like a bird, when his cage is opened, stays on his perch, dazzled by freedom, the postponed traveler does not see that his cage, with its bars of anxiety, it is open. ~ Andre Maurois, #NFDB
1349:Oh, nature's noblest gift, my grey goose quill, Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from the parent bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
1350:olivia reminds me of a bird sometimes, how her feathers get all ruffled when she's mad. and when she's fragile like this, she's a little lost bird looking for its nest. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
1351:Once you develop the practice of smiling, you may not need a reminder. You will smile as soon as you hear a bird singing or see the sunlight streaming through the window. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1352:The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
1353:Well what's funny is, again, people say they believed what was going on, but again, Bob's hands are about three times bigger than his feet. So these are very caricatured. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
1354:A beard on a man is only a way of hiding something, his face of course, but also the inner matters, like a hedge around a secret garden, or a cover over a bird cage. ~ Sebastian Barry, #NFDB
1355:How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring? ~ William Blake,#NFDB
1356:it is possible for us to mount into a state in which a doubt or a fear shall be but as a bird of passage flitting across the soul, but never lingering there. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1357:moss; A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; A cripple in the right way, will beat a racer in the wrong; Make hay while the sun shines; 'T is hard to carry ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1358:Noa Now, just like Noa Then, watched his careful fingers turn the crepes. His hands, both Then and Now, moved just the same; everything else, only, had changed. ~ Lauren Bird Horowitz, #NFDB
1359:Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.' ~ Charles Mingus, #NFDB
1360:There is a thing, like a bird, weak and fluttering within my chest, i cradle it and care for it as anyone should an injured thing, yet, i silently pray for it's death. ~ Gabriel Macht, #NFDB
1361:There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS and the OBSCENE bird of night chatters endlessly. ~ William James, #NFDB
1362:they were, they soon began to think they were not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, they decided to kill it in order to secure the ~ Aesop, #NFDB
1363:A bird cried jubilation. In that moment they lived long. All minor motions were stilled and only the great ones were perceived. Beneath them the earth turned, singing. ~ Sheri S Tepper, #NFDB
1364: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. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1365:Clever man is a chicken; it can fly, but a little. Genius, on the other hand, is a migratory bird; it can fly at high altitudes until He disappears on the horizon! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1366:Come, fill the Cup, in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing ~ Omar Khayy m,#NFDB
1367:I don't expect you to understand, little bird. I expect you only to sing. Sing for me, sing for Kanin, and make it a glorious song. ~ Julie KagawaSarren~ Julie Kagawa ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
1368:I read that part over and over again, until I felt I had the pronunciation right. There was quite a good pencil drawing of a phoenix, that mythical bird that was supposed ~ John Irving, #NFDB
1369:It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau]. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1370:Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new-create another heir As great in admiration as herself. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1371:Oh, what is that bird?'
'It is a wheatear. We have seen between two and three hundred since we set out, and I have told you their name twice, nay, three times. ~ Patrick O Brian,#NFDB
1372:Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. — ANNE LAMOTT, Bird by Bird ~ Michele Cushatt, #NFDB
1373:The bird hovering over a tiny seed eventually fell upon the seed. How will his life end, whether in a cage or under the butcher’s knife – who knows what will happen? ~ Munshi Premchand, #NFDB
1374:The man who drifted above the earth and the bird who rode him paused above the dead. They looked down at him, and they looked up with unnatural perfect timing into the sky. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1375:A bright gray sky woke me, sunlight diffused through high thin clouds. That, and the extraordinarily cheerful sound of some bird I did not know and wanted to strangle. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
1376:Another form we see for Narasimha (aka, the Lion of Judah) is a two-headed bird called Gandaberunda; the very same heritage of the brethren of the Jew, the Freemasons. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1377:Are we not witnessing a strange tableau of survival whenever a bird alights on the head of a crocodile, bringing together the evolutionary offspring of Triassic and Jurassic? ~ Anna Lee, #NFDB
1378:I do not know why I shot the bird. At the moment I squeezed the trigger it seemed that the only two things in the world were the crow and myself. And now there is just me. ~ Scott Frost, #NFDB
1379:I found Bridgman a wonderful teacher,” Oppenheimer remembered, “because he never really was quite reconciled to things being the way they were and he always thought them out. ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
1380:I have learned something about the job of being the President's wife. She is not chosen by anyone except her husband and she really has no obligations except to him. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1381:I have nine children... and one of them is an invalid. Her mother is obliged to take her away in the winter, and when one bird is off the nest, the other has to go on. ~ Melville Fuller, #NFDB
1382:More like some small, fierce bird of prey, something with a sharp bite. An owl perhaps, that speaks only when the rest of the world sleeps. Jenny will do well enough. ~ Juliet Marillier, #NFDB
1383:What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1384:Alberta thought for a moment, and took a live mouse out of her pocket by its tail before dropping it into Wagner’s mouth. The bird wolfed the unfortunate creature whole. ~ David Walliams, #NFDB
1385:Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1386:Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone’s soul being blown to the far side of the world. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1387:His heart was leaping against his ribs like a frantic bird. Perhaps it knew it had little time left, perhaps it was determined to fulfill a lifetime’s beats before the end. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1388:If there is one thing I disapprove of it's the unnatural capture and taming of wild animals, whether an elephant or a bird. To me, the only good cage is an empty cage. ~ Lawrence Anthony, #NFDB
1389:If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,
You'd say to the wind when it took you away:
"That's where I wanted to go today! ~ A A Milne,#NFDB
1390:I got through two reports, knocked off at five. Back home, I ate Bojangles’ chicken with Bird and watched a rerun of Bones. For some reason, the cat is nuts about Hodgins. ~ Kathy Reichs, #NFDB
1391:In Parliament a fellow MP whispered to him that his trousers were unfastened. “It makes no difference,” Winston replied wryly. “The dead bird doesn’t leave the nest. ~ William Manchester, #NFDB
1392:She was pleased with Cherie’s contribution, which was a tree with the head of a man and the feet of a bird, possibly a chicken, and spiked eyelashes made of razor blades. ~ Nova Ren Suma, #NFDB
1393:Straight is my path. Straight is my mind. Straight is my heart. Straight is my speech. Kind will I be to my brothers and sisters. Kind will I be to beast and bird. ~ William Kent Krueger, #NFDB
1394:We must force the government to stop the bird migration. We must shoot all birds, field all our men and troops... and force migratory birds to stay where they are. ~ Vladimir Zhirinovsky, #NFDB
1395:While I am compassed round With mirth, my soul lies hid in shades of grief, Whence, like the bird of night, with half-shut eyes, She peeps, and sickens at the sight of day. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
1396:As I began researching butterflies, however, the monarch stood out among all of them. It's the only butterfly - the only insect - that migrates like a bird or a whale! ~ Mary Alice Monroe, #NFDB
1397:Bird wondered how newspapers could get things so utterly wrong, then pondered how many of his own prejudices and ideas had been shaped by similarly mistaken journalism. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
1398:Do not curse the king, even in your thought; Do not curse the rich, even in your bedroom; For a bird of the air may carry your voice, And a bird in flight may tell the matter. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1399:Even though she didn’t know if the world was ready for a bird girl, she stood on her tiptoes and flapped her arms. Then she and the blackbird flew away, never to return. ~ Phaedra Patrick, #NFDB
1400:His informality contrasted sharply with the manner of General Groves, who “demanded attention, demanded respect.” Oppie, on the other hand, got attention and respect naturally. ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
1401:How good it is, when you have roast meat or suchlike foods before you, to impress on your mind that this is the dead body of a fish, this the dead body of a bird or pig. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1402:I really like the sound of analog things where clearly there's something being touched. You can sense that something is handmade. So much with digital, there's a disconnect. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1403:I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary. ~ Graham Swift, #NFDB
1404:Mr. Bird flung his food away and leaped to his feet, glaring around at no one in particular. 'I am not a dog!' he shouted agrily, his gold earrings flashing in the firelight. ~ Tim Powers, #NFDB
1405:Speaking personally, I want my films to make money, but money is just fuel for the rocket. What I really want to do is to go somewhere. I don't want to just collect more fuel. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
1406:The human bird shall take his first flight,filling the words with amazement,all writings with his fame,and bringing eternal glory to those whose nest whence he sprang. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
1407:The incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon, are always blowing evil’s whole structure away. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1408:Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?”
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
1409:Warner. A white bird with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. A fair - skinned boy with gold hair, the leader of Sector 45. It was always him. All along . The link. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
1410:When it's like this, I don't notice the cold. I don't hear the wind howling through the empty spaces. I don't feel like a small, broken-winged bird trapped in a rusty cage. ~ Sarah Ockler, #NFDB
1411:Yeah,” I said. “What is that? A bird? "It’s the swan,” he said. “Wow. A school with a swan. Wow.”
“That swan is the spawn of Satan. Never get closer to it than we are now. ~ John Green,#NFDB
1412:Youth, like a magic bird, has flown away
He sang a little morning-hour in May
Sang to the rose, his love, that too is gone--
Whither is more than you or I can say. ~ Omar Khayy m,#NFDB
1413:A lizard in the spring - hear his darling sing. A bird with wings to fly - go back to his darling weep and moan till he dies. A mole in the ground - root a mountain down. ~ Charles Frazier, #NFDB
1414:...he picked me up in his arms, as if I was as light as a feather, which I am not, unless it was a very heavy feather, maybe from a giant prehistoric dinosaur-type bird... ~ Helen Fielding, #NFDB
1415:I definitely have to give myself permission, like on "Master Swarm," to rip a lead on that. Just play a violin solo that's - it's a bit showoff-y, but it's fun, so who cares? ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1416:Iren broke the moment of quiet reflection. "He was a bad captian"
"But a worse bird" said Voleta.
Man, what a thing to say after a dude falls to his death. ~ Josiah Bancroft,#NFDB
1417:I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1418:It's so important that you don't put the stuffing in the bird, where in order for the stuffing to get cooked you have to overcook the turkey. It's better to do it on the side. ~ Ina Garten, #NFDB
1419:I've never approached classical music in a formal way, ever. I couldn't read very well. I'd have to play every piece and internalize it, almost as if I had written it myself. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1420:negative emotions such as depression or anxiety can directly affect the cells of the immune system and either up- or down-regulate the secretion of proinflammatory cytokines ~ Chloe E Bird, #NFDB
1421:Self-Pity
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
~ David Herbert Lawrence,#NFDB
1422:We cherish all the past, we glide a-down the present, awake yet dreaming; but the future of ours together—there the bird sings loudest, and the sun shines always there... ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
1423:We have used up all our inherited freedom, like the young bird the albumen in the egg. It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1424:I flipped the good doctor the bird. Snorting, Gideon caught my hand and pulled me back down the hall. "What is it with you and giving people the finger?" "What? It's a classic. ~ Sylvia Day, #NFDB
1425:Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect. ~ Jose Marti, #NFDB
1426:More like some small, fierce bird of prey, something with a sharp bite. An owl perhaps, that speaks only when the rest of the world sleeps.
Jenny will do well enough. ~ Juliet Marillier,#NFDB
1427:No bird casts the seed on land to grow food for itself, nor do beasts plough and enclose fields claiming - this is mine, this is for my children and children's children -. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1428:Straight is my path. Straight is my mind. Straight is my heart. Straight is my speech. Kind will I be to my brothers and sisters. Kind will I be to beast and bird. He ~ William Kent Krueger, #NFDB
1429:The land is sacred. These words are at the core of your being. The land is our mother, the rivers our blood. Take our land away and we die. That is, the Indian in us dies. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
1430:The woman has a beak,’ he thought, standing red and tongue-tied before her. ‘She’s a bird of prey. She has got her talons into my Catherine. Linked together! Good God. ~ Elizabeth von Arnim, #NFDB
1431:Tie Dye Tom, my closes friend next to Cherry, say next to her crying like a little baby. 'I feel like a mama bird,' he said through choking sobs that made me laugh out loud. ~ Fisher Amelie, #NFDB
1432:When nature made the blue-bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast. ~ John Burroughs, #NFDB
1433:You could have knocked me down with a feather,' said Lady Abbott, quite untruly. The feather had not been grown by bird that could have disturbed her balance for an instant. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
1434:Adam said, "You were smart to figure it out."
"Oh, I don't know," Gansey replied, but it was clear he was proud. Adam felt like he had helped a bird hatch from an egg. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,#NFDB
1435:Even the evil-looking bird perched on a rod in the bar had stopped screeching out the names and addresses of local contract killers, which was a service it provided for free. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1436:Frailty. Sweet, treacherous acquiescence. Bird docility. You became a woman with me. I was almost terrified by it. You are not just thirty years old—you are a thousand years old. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1437:From up here Kyra had a bird’s-eye view of all the goings-on in her father’s fort, the comings and goings of the village folk and warriors, another reason she liked it up here. ~ Morgan Rice, #NFDB
1438:History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1439:Leaving your dreams and living someone's dreams is like dipping a pole into a pool to catch a weaver bird alive! It doesn't work that way... Pursue what God sent you for! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1440:The bird dares to break the shell, then the shell breaks open and the bird can fly openly. This is the simplest principle of success. You dream, you dare and and you fly. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1441:The bird is fighting its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wishes to be born must destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The god is named Abraxas.” After ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1442:To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves. ~ Gretel Ehrlich, #NFDB
1443:Are we not witnessing a strange tableau of survival whenever a bird alights on the head of a crocodile, bringing together the evolutionary offspring of Triassic and Jurassic? ~ Annalee Newitz, #NFDB
1444:As a bird of the waters, such as the pelican, can dive into the waves and his plumage is not wetted, the liberated soul lives in the world, but is not affected by the world. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1445:Debt is to man what the serpent is to the bird; its eye fascinates, its breath poisons, its coil crushes sinew and bone, its jaw is the pitiless grave. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
1446:Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be? Is today the day I die? ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
1447:I like to dress up and look nice. I'm not quite at the stage yet financially to do that too often, but it's nice to push the boat out a little bit for award ceremonies and stuff. ~ Simon Bird, #NFDB
1448:In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part. To sleep for a season and hear no word Of true love's truth or of light love's art, Only the song of a secret bird. ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne, #NFDB
1449:I was keenly aware that I had a unique opportunity, a front row seat, on an unfolding story and nobody else was going to see it from quite the vantage point that I saw it. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1450:My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth. I wanted future generations to be able to savor what I had all my life. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1451:Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise. ~ Ivan Pavlov, #NFDB
1452:Surely one advantage of traveling is that, while it removes much prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold one's appreciation of the good at home. ~ Isabella Bird, #NFDB
1453:The greatest achievement was at first and for a time only a dream. Just as the oak sleeps in the acorn, and the bird waits in the egg, so dreams are the seedlings of realities. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
1454:There's times when the crockery seems alive, an' flies out o' your hand like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands. What is to be broke will be broke. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1455:Truth can be awful and even excruciating, but once it's released, it's like a bird that's been caged too long who finally flies to freedom. I felt a little like that. Free ~ Ilsa Madden Mills, #NFDB
1456:What did you name yours?”
“Awesomer Than Sang’s Town.”
Stone, C. L. (2014-05-31). Push and Shove: The Ghost Bird Series: #6 (p. 153). Arcato Publishing. Kindle Edition. ~ C L Stone,#NFDB
1457:At last, a door thumped open. A man rushed out and snapped to a halt, screaming “Keirei!” It was the Bird. Louie’s legs folded, the snow reared up at him, and down he went. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
1458:Betsie saw where I was looking and laid a bird-thin hand over the whip mark. “Don’t look at it, Corrie. Look at Jesus only.” She drew away her hand: it was sticky with blood. ~ Corrie ten Boom, #NFDB
1459:Birds. They’ve been all over the news. Birds crashing into skyscrapers; dozens of birds dying randomly in some suburb in Virginia. Birds. So when you said a bird crashed your car— ~ Malinda Lo, #NFDB
1460:Can I look at my feet now?” “No. A bird never looks at its wings while it’s flying. If it did, it would realize it’s doing something utterly impossible, and fall to the ground. ~ Suzanne Enoch, #NFDB
1461:Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat. ~ Henrik Ibsen, #NFDB
1462:He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1463:Hild fetched a lump of grey salt for Mildburh and mortar and pestle to crush it in. She loved the gritty crunch and thump under her hand. It sounded like a cat eating a bird. ~ Nicola Griffith, #NFDB
1464:It is somethingit can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below. ~ Wallace Stegner, #NFDB
1465:Look, it's terrible, I know, but weakness really, really bugs me, to the point that if there is a wounded bird on the sidewalk, I look at it and I go: I think I'll just kick it. ~ Jodie Foster, #NFDB
1466:the instant she made a point of telling me I was just as good as them, I saw that the whole question was open to debate and she was cheering me on because I was on the losing team ~ Sarah Bird, #NFDB
1467:Wild. If there is one thing I disapprove of it’s the unnatural capture and taming of wild animals, whether an elephant or a bird. To me, the only good cage is an empty cage. ~ Lawrence Anthony, #NFDB
1468:You’ve read some of my stuff?” he asked eagerly, adding with bitterness, “ ‘The Raven,’ I suppose. Such fame as I have appears to rest entirely on the plumage of that gloomy bird. ~ Anya Seton, #NFDB
1469:Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be? ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
1470:Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks. "Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be? ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
1471:Eneke the bird was asked why he was always on the wing and he replied: 'Men have learnt to shoot without missing their mark and I have learnt to fly without perching on a twig.' ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
1472:God, says Handy, or the Eternal Spark, is in every human heart, in every piece of this earth. In this rock, in this ice, in this plant, this bird. All deserve our gentleness. The ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
1473:If some people think, "Why am I eating a dead bird soaked in poop?" I think if some people get disgusted by that, it's all to the good. Their coronary arteries will be healthier. ~ Neal Barnard, #NFDB
1474:If you had asked me when I was 28 and in my wedding dress if I ever thought I would end up in my forties flipping my husband the bird over potato chips, I'd say you were crazy. ~ Jenna McCarthy, #NFDB
1475:I have snakes, three sharks, moray eels, piranhas, five scorpions and a bird spider. All of them are predators. They are dangerous but it's cool to have strong and powerful pets. ~ Tracy Morgan, #NFDB
1476:Norman is a very up-close, personal, character drama and I'd like to do something more zoomed out, a little more pastoral, some sweeping epic. I'd like to try something different. ~ Andrew Bird, #NFDB
1477:Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new-create another heir
As great in admiration as herself. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
1478:Speed is what distinguishes intelligence. No bird discovers how to fly: evolution used a trillion bird-years to 'discover' that – where merely hundreds of person-years sufficed. ~ Marvin Minsky, #NFDB
1479:Anon, to sudden silence won, In fancy they pursue The dream-child moving through the land Of wonders wild and new, In friendly chat with bird or beast - And half believe it true. ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
1480:Bird, hesitating, recalled a line from the English textbook he was reading with his students; a young American was speaking angrily: Are you kidding me? Are you looking for a fight? ~ Kenzabur e, #NFDB
1481:Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber, for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
1482:A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he's just another bird drinking from your misery. ~ Amy Tan, #NFDB
1483: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, #NFDB
1484:In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be; Where all the noises, that on peace intrude, Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee, Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude. ~ John Clare, #NFDB
1485:In this little night-covered world with you, I hope to find what I long for; a clue, a map, a bird flying south, and when the light comes we will get dressed together and go. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1486:It has been estimated that more than 50 million individuals have lost their lives to wars and religious massacres. Is there even one among them worth the blood of a single bird? ~ Marquis de Sade, #NFDB
1487:Looking round upon those eager, friendly faces, I compared them with the cold face of the [christian] missionary, who suddenly appeared to me as a great bird of prey ~ Marmaduke William Pickthall, #NFDB
1488:nature’s noblest gift – my grey goose-quill! Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men! – Lord Byron ~ Julie Klassen, #NFDB
1489:You are nothing but a bird with an attitude. Okay, so you have a few muscles, I’ll grant you that. But you know, a bird is nothing but a barely evolved lizard. That’s what you are.’ He ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
1490:And then she would put her hand over the bird’s face like she was hiding it from seeing something, and then she would grab and twist. Break the neck. Slice the head off on the stump. ~ Jesmyn Ward, #NFDB
1491:Especially in quail hunting, where the hunter is so focused on the bird that it makes everything else blurry. The bottom line in terms of bird hunting is what we call shooting zones. ~ Steven Hall, #NFDB
1492:It's all right,' she said. Her throat hurt. Her chest hurt. Love hurt. So why was she happy? 'The world is good. Go see it.'
And the bird leaped into the sky and flew away. ~ Kelly Barnhill,#NFDB
1493:I want to seize my is. And like a bird I sing hallelujah into the air. And my song belongs to no one. But no passion suffered in pain and love is not followed by an hallelujah. ~ Clarice Lispector, #NFDB
1494:I want us to know our world. If I lived in North Georgia on up through the Appalachians, I would be just as crazy about the mountain laurel as I am about [Texas] bluebonnets. ~ Lady Bird Johnson, #NFDB
1495:since the security hearing, he nevertheless no longer seemed to have the capacity or motivation to fight against the “cruelty” of indifference. In that sense, Rabi had been right: “They ~ Kai Bird, #NFDB
1496:Someday I'll be a weather-beaten skull resting on a grass pillow,
Serenaded by a stray bird or two.
Kings and commoners end up the same,
No more enduring than last night's dream. ~ Ry kan,#NFDB
1497:After the death of my marriage, I was hell-bent on keeping the bird-of-paradise alive. I would take it slowly. Plants first. And if everything went well, then I'd move on to people. ~ Margot Berwin, #NFDB
1498:An oak is a tree. A rose is a flower. A deer is an animal. A sparrow is a bird. Russia is our fatherland. Death is inevitable.
P. Smirnovsky, A Textbook of Russian Grammar ~ Vladimir Nabokov,#NFDB
1499:A strange passion is moving in my head My heart has become a bird which searches in the sky. Every part of me goes in different directions. Is it really so that the one I love is Everywhere? ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1500:But,” Patricia said, more startled that the bird was refusing her protection than that he was speaking to her. “I can keep you safe. I can bring you bugs or seeds or whatever. ~ Charlie Jane Anders, #NFDB
496 Poetry
160 Integral Yoga
94 Philosophy
90 Mysticism
62 Fiction
60 Occultism
42 Yoga
41 Christianity
30 Psychology
24 Philsophy
15 Mythology
15 Islam
6 Hinduism
6 Baha i Faith
4 Sufism
4 Integral Theory
3 Zen
2 Education
2 Buddhism
1 Theosophy
1 Thelema
1 Science
1 Cybernetics
1 Alchemy
117 Sri Aurobindo
72 William Wordsworth
55 William Butler Yeats
46 The Mother
43 Percy Bysshe Shelley
39 Sri Ramakrishna
38 Nolini Kanta Gupta
37 Satprem
35 Rabindranath Tagore
30 Robert Browning
29 James George Frazer
28 Carl Jung
25 H P Lovecraft
24 Walt Whitman
24 Ralph Waldo Emerson
23 John Keats
21 Friedrich Nietzsche
18 Farid ud-Din Attar
17 Saint Augustine of Hippo
16 Li Bai
15 Muhammad
14 Lucretius
12 Ovid
12 Jalaluddin Rumi
11 Jorge Luis Borges
11 Anonymous
11 Aleister Crowley
10 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
9 Rainer Maria Rilke
8 Plotinus
8 Plato
8 Hafiz
7 Friedrich Schiller
7 Baha u llah
7 Aldous Huxley
6 Vyasa
6 Thomas Merton
5 Lewis Carroll
5 Henry David Thoreau
4 Saint John of Climacus
4 Edgar Allan Poe
4 Al-Ghazali
3 Tao Chien
3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
3 Saint Teresa of Avila
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
3 Mechthild of Magdeburg
3 Joseph Campbell
3 Jordan Peterson
3 A B Purani
2 Vidyapati
2 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Genpo Roshi
72 Wordsworth - Poems
55 Yeats - Poems
43 Shelley - Poems
43 Record of Yoga
38 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
35 Tagore - Poems
30 Browning - Poems
29 The Golden Bough
25 Lovecraft - Poems
24 Whitman - Poems
24 Emerson - Poems
23 Keats - Poems
21 Savitri
20 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
16 Li Bai - Poems
15 Quran
14 Of The Nature Of Things
13 Collected Poems
12 The Bible
12 Metamorphoses
11 Mysterium Coniunctionis
10 City of God
9 Rumi - Poems
9 Rilke - Poems
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
8 On the Way to Supermanhood
8 Labyrinths
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
7 Words Of Long Ago
7 The Perennial Philosophy
7 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
7 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
7 Schiller - Poems
7 Hafiz - Poems
6 Vishnu Purana
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Practice of Psycho therapy
6 The Life Divine
5 Walden
5 Talks
5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
5 Prayers And Meditations
5 Magick Without Tears
5 Letters On Poetry And Art
5 Goethe - Poems
5 Faust
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
5 Anonymous - Poems
5 Agenda Vol 03
4 The Synthesis Of Yoga
4 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
4 The Divine Comedy
4 The Alchemy of Happiness
4 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
4 Poe - Poems
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
4 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
4 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
4 Alice in Wonderland
4 Aion
4 Agenda Vol 04
3 Vedic and Philological Studies
3 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
3 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
3 The Book of Certitude
3 The Blue Cliff Records
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Maps of Meaning
3 Liber ABA
3 Kena and Other Upanishads
3 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
3 Borges - Poems
3 Agenda Vol 10
3 Agenda Vol 07
3 5.1.01 - Ilion
2 Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit
2 The Phenomenon of Man
2 Symposium
2 Some Answers From The Mother
2 Selected Fictions
2 Questions And Answers 1956
2 On Education
2 Isha Upanishad
2 Essays On The Gita
2 Crowley - Poems
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
2 Agenda Vol 13
2 Agenda Vol 08
2 Agenda Vol 02
2 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
TheChhandyogya12 gives a whole typal scheme of this universal reality and explains how to realise it and what are the results of the experience. The Universal Brahman means the cosmic movement, the cyclic march of things and events taken in its global aspect. The typical movement that symbolises and epitomises the phenomenon, embodies the truth, is that of the sun. The movement consists of five stages which are called the fivefold sma Sma means the equal Brahman that is ever present in all, the Upanishad itself says deriving the word from sama It is Sma also because it is a rhythmic movement, a cadencea music of the spheres. And a rhythmic movement, in virtue of its being a wave, consists of these five stages: (i) the start, (ii) the rise, (iii) the peak, (iv) the decline and (v) the fall. Now the sun follows this curve and marks out the familiar divisions of the day: dawn, forenoon, noon, afternoon and sunset. Sometimes two other stages are added, one at each end, one of preparation and another of final lapse the twilights with regard to the sun and then ,we have seven instead of five smas Like the Sun, the Fire that is to say, the sacrificial Firecan also be seen in its fivefold cyclic movement: (i) the lighting, (ii) the smoke, (iii) the flame, (iv) smouldering and finally (v) extinction the fuel as it is rubbed to produce the fire and the ashes may be added as the two supernumerary stages. Or again, we may take the cycle of five seasons or of the five worlds or of the deities that control these worlds. The living wealth of this earth is also symbolised in a quintetgoat and sheep and cattle and horse and finally man. Coming to the microcosm, we have in man the cycle of his five senses, basis of all knowledge and activity. For the macrocosm, to I bring out its vast extra-human complexity, the Upanishad refers to a quintet, each term of which is again a trinity: (i) the threefold Veda, the Divine Word that is the origin of creation, (ii) the three worlds or fieldsearth, air-belt or atmosphere and space, (iii) the three principles or deities ruling respectively these worldsFire, Air and Sun, (iv) their expressions, emanations or embodimentsstars and birds and light-rays, and finally, (v) the original inhabitants of these worldsto earth belong the reptiles, to the mid-region the Gandharvas and to heaven the ancient Fathers.
Now, this is the All, the Universal. One has to realise it and possess in one's consciousness. And that can be done only in one way: one has to identify oneself with it, be one with it, become it. Thus by losing one's individuality one lives the life universal; the small lean separate life is enlarged and moulded in the rhythm of the Rich and the Vast. It is thus that man shares in the consciousness and energy that inspire and move and sustain the cosmos. The Upanishad most emphatically enjoins that one must not decry this cosmic godhead or deny any of its elements, not even such as are a taboo to the puritan mind. It is in and through an unimpaired global consciousness that one attains the All-Life and lives uninterruptedly and perennially: Sarvamanveti jyok jvati.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Hardly had he crossed the threshold of the Kali temple when he found himself again in the whirlwind. His madness reappeared tenfold. The same meditation and prayer, the same ecstatic moods, the same burning sensation, the same weeping, the same sleeplessness, the same indifference to the body and the outside world, the same divine delirium. He subjected himself to fresh disciplines in order to eradicate greed and lust, the two great impediments to spiritual progress. With a rupee in one hand and some earth in the other, he would reflect on the comparative value of these two for the realization of God, and finding them equally worthless he would toss them, with equal indifference, into the Ganges. Women he regarded as the manifestations of the Divine Mother. Never even in a dream did he feel the impulses of lust. And to root out of his mind the idea of caste superiority, he cleaned a pariahs house with his long and neglected hair. When he would sit in meditation, birds would perch on his head and peck in his hair for grains of food. Snakes would crawl over his body, and neither would be aware of the other. Sleep left him altogether. Day and night, visions flitted before him. He saw the sannyasi who had previously killed the "sinner" in him again coming out of his body, threatening him with the trident, and ordering him to concentrate on God. Or the same sannyasi would visit distant places, following a luminous path, and bring him reports of what was happening there. Sri Ramakrishna used to say later that in the case of an advanced devotee the mind itself becomes the guru, living and moving like an embodied being.
Rani Rasmani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861. After her death her son-in-law Mathur became the sole executor of the estate. He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and began to look after his physical comfort. Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of him as one of his five "suppliers of stores" appointed by the Divine Mother. Whenever a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.
--
But the most remarkable experience during this period was the awakening of the Kundalini Sakti, the "Serpent Power". He actually saw the Power, at first lying asleep at the bottom of the spinal column, then waking up and ascending along the mystic Sushumna canal and through its six centres, or lotuses, to the Sahasrara, the thousand-petalled lotus in the top of the head. He further saw that as the Kundalini went upward the different lotuses bloomed. And this phenomenon was accompanied by visions and trances. Later on he described to his disciples and devotees the various movements of the Kundalini: the fishlike, birdlike, monkeylike, and so on. The awaken- ing of the Kundalini is the beginning of spiritual consciousness, and its union with Siva in the Sahasrara, ending in samadhi, is the consummation of the Tantrik disciplines.
About this time it was revealed to him that in a short while many devotees would seek his guidance.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The bird of individuality is ecstasy; so also is its
death.
--
Frater P. with a bird, which is master of the four
elements, and therefore of the name Tetragrammaton.
--
idea of "Pelican", the bird, which is fabled to feeds its
young from the blood of its own breast. Yet the two
--
The early bird catches the worm and the twelve-
year-old prostitute attracts the ambassador.
--
woman, playing by a stream, surrounded by birds and
butterflies. The pole-axe is recommended instead of
--
the ornithorhynchus is both bird and beast; it is also
an Australian animal, like Laylah herself, and was
--
of the birds; for he is past beyond all these. Yea,
verily, oft-times he is weary; it is well that the
--
in birds' nests...oh!
Also there is a souffle most exquisite of Chow-Chow.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
He was one of the earliest of the disciples to visit Kamarpukur, the birthplace of the Master, in the latter's lifetime itself; for he wished to practise contemplation on the Master's early life in its true original setting. His experience there is described as follows by Swami Nityatmananda: "By the grace of the Master, he saw the entire Kamarpukur as a holy place bathed in an effulgent Light. Trees and creepers, beasts and birds and men all were made of effulgence. So he prostrated to all on the road. He saw a torn cat, which appeared to him luminous with the Light of Consciousness. Immediately he fell to the ground and saluted it" (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda vol. I. P. 40.) He had similar experience in Dakshineswar also. At the instance of the Master he also visited Puri, and in the words of Swami Nityatmananda, "with indomitable courage, M. embraced the image of Jagannath out of season."
The life of Sdhan and holy association that he started on at the feet of the Master, he continued all through his life. He has for this reason been most appropriately described as a Grihastha-Sannysi (householder-Sannysin). Though he was forbidden by the Master to become a Sannysin, his reverence for the Sannysa ideal was whole-hearted and was without any reservation. So after Sri Ramakrishna's passing away, while several of the Master's householder devotees considered the young Sannysin disciples of the Master as inexperienced and inconsequential, M. stood by them with the firm faith that the Master's life and message were going to be perpetuated only through them. Swami Vivekananda wrote from America in a letter to the inmates of the Math: "When Sri Thkur (Master) left the body, every one gave us up as a few unripe urchins. But M. and a few others did not leave us in the lurch. We cannot repay our debt to them." (Swami Raghavananda's article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXX P. 442.)
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
literally filled with admiration. It is magnificent - the birds are
so beautiful and so very alive; I found their little heads with the
--
I have seen this blouse, I find that the bird-of-paradise
sari is nothing compared to the one X is preparing.
--
The bird-of-paradise is a very beautiful sari.
Her blouse is truly the most beautiful one.
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The great bird "Garuda" standing immobile behind you
with outspread wings is the vehicle of Vishnu, the destroyer of
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
0 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Thus the bird flew back once more...)
For the West, with all its outward development, a few centuries may be needed before the junction between the two worlds can be made. And yet these two worlds the physical world and the world of Truthare not distant from one another. They are as if superimposed. The world of Truth is there, close by, like a lining of the other.
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was another reason. My father was wonderfully healthy and strongwell-balanced. He wasnt very tall, but stocky. He did all his studies in Austria (at that time French was widely spoken in Austria, but he knew German, he knew English, Italian, Turkish), and there he had learned to ride horses in an extraordinary manner: he was so strong that he could bring a horse to the ground simply by pressing his knees. He could break anything at all with a blow of his fist, even one of those big silver five-franc pieces they had in those daysone blow and it was broken in two. Curiously enough, he looked Russian. I dont know why. They used to call him Barine. What an equilibriuman extraordinary physical poise! And not only did this man know all those languages, but I never saw such a brain for arithmetic. Never. He made a game of calculationsnot the slightest effortcalculations with hundreds of digits! And on top of it, he loved birds. He had a room to himself in our apartment (because my mother could never much tolerate him), he had his separate room, and in it he kept a big cage full of canaries! During the day he would close the windows and let all the canaries loose.
And could he tell stories! I think he read every novel available, all the stories he could findextraordinary adventure stories, for he loved adventures. When we were kids he used to let us come into his room very early in the morning and, while still sitting in bed, tell us stories from the books he had read but he told them as if they were his own, as if hed had extraordinary adventures with outlaws, with wild animals. Every story he picked up he told as his own. We enjoyed it tremendously!
0 1961-08-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, yesits a bird!
Its the bird of Grace descending from heaven. The dot at the end is very important. The dot is the seeing consciousness: the eye. Theres a tail, a wing, another wing, and the eye-the seeing consciousness.
Mind you, I didnt think of it in advance! The awareness came later I looked and said, Ah!
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Tapas: literally, heat. It is the concentrated energy constituting everythingnot generated by some mechanism, but by the very concentration of the power of Consciousness (chit). In Indian tradition, the world was created by Tapas in the form of an egg the primordial eggwhich broke open from the incubating heat of consciousness-force and gave birth to the world. To "become the tapas of things" is to uncover in one's own material, bodily substance that same formidable, supramental seat of energy (what physicists, following Einstein, call atomic energy: E = mc2), the energy that animates the stone and the bird and the universe for then like can act upon like. Mother was reaching that point.
***
0 1962-06-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you like, Ill read what she noted down: I am in Pavitras office, standing on the carpet next to his table. I raise my eyes and look down the corridor. It is empty. Then suddenly, all the way at the other end, next to her bathroom, I see Mother appear. She is so tiny, my dear little Mother! She starts towards the office where I am. She leaves the boudoir behind on her right, keeps coming forward, passes by the big window with the birds and the pink vases on her left. And she is growing. With each step she grows taller. One after the other, she goes by her chair, the door to the stairway, my lab, and Mother continues to grow. Then the door to Pavitras room, the door to the terrace, and Mother comes to the office. She crosses the threshold: her head almost touches the top of the door. Mother comes in. She is so tall! Her head now touches the ceiling.2 Standing, I barely come to her knees! Something in me is staggered before that sublime height. I prostrate myself.
(After a silence) I see her quite frequently at night.
0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there is a place where something is awakening, a small something like what little children and animals have, going like this (Mother imitates a baby bird poking its beak out of the nest and peering around), peep-peep-peep, oh, alert and eager to know: America. They have a carapace as hard as an automobilesit has to be hammered open, but underneath theres something that wants to know and knows nothing, nothing, is totally ignorant but oh, it wants to know! And this can be touched. They may be the first to awaken.
A few in India, but a more widespread movement in America.
--
They are silly, silly! They are absolutely ignorant and yet theres a flame of aspiration suddenly awakening. And then they want to know, want to investigate, want to find, want to learn, want to. Its going like this (Mother blinks her eyes like a baby bird waking up), vibrating and searching.
Theyve managed to stay very childlike.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother is referring to a letter of Sri Aurobindo's which Satprem had quoted in his manuscript: "... in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace. Even if a thousand images or the most violent events pass across it, the calm stillness remains as if the very texture of the mind were a substance of eternal and indestructible peace. A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to act, even intensely and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillnessoriginating nothing from itself but receiving from Above and giving it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly, dispassionately, though with the joy of the Truth and the happy power and light of its passage."
Cent. Ed., XXIII. 637.
0 1962-11-10, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some people found it interesting, mon petit! First of all, Sri Aurobindo was there it was like a large hall: a very large room with scarcely any walls, just enough so it didnt seem wide open to everything. And then there was a kind of musical instrument, like a grand piano, but much bigger and higher, playing its own music: nobody was playing it. And its own music was the music of what you have written. It was taking the form of something like luminous, colored sheets of paper, tinged with gold, with pink, which were scattering in the air and then very slowly falling onto a floor that was scarcely a floor, with an almost birdlike movement. They were falling, fallingalmost square sheets of paper falling one upon another like feathersnothing heavy about it. And then from the left a being like a god from the overmind entered the room; he was both like a Hindu deity with a tiara, and a kind of angel in a long robe (a combination of the two), and he moved so lightly, without touching the groundhe was all lightness. And with a very lovely and harmonious movement (everything was so harmonious!), he gathered up all the sheets: he took them in his arms and they stayed therethey were weightless, you see. He gathered them up, smiling all the while, with a young and very, very luminous and happy face something very lovely. Then, when he had gathered them all up, he turned towards me (I was here; you were over there, the music was there and Sri Aurobindo was there), and said as he was leaving, I am taking all this to give to them, as if he were returning to the overmental world where they were greatly interested in it! (Mother laughs.)
But it was all so lovely, so very lovely! There was a rhythm; it was all unfolding rhythmically, a rhythm of the falling sheets of paper; and a rhythm moving along very slowly, not in a straight line, and undulating.
--
Thats what I was beginning to see towards the end. It took form gradually, gradually, and it was all there by the time you finished reading. At the beginning my attention was divided between what you were reading and what was going on; afterwards it was entirely focused on what was happening: your sheets of paper falling and landing weightlessly, like birds, and spreading over a floor that wasnt solid (it was there just to give the impression of a room, but you could see through it). And while you were reading, he was gathering them all up, with a long robe trailing behind him. This being was made of practically the same substance as the sheets coming out of the piano (it was a kind of piano, it was playing music, but it was the principle of what you have written). So he gathered up everything, and when he had a stack this big, he said, I am going to take it and show it to them.
It was really lovely.
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Also when I was eleven or twelve, my mother rented a cottage at the edge of a forest: we didnt have to go through the town. I used to go and sit in the forest all alone. I would sit lost in reverie. One day (it happened often), one day some squirrels had come, several birds, and also (Mother opens her eyes wide), deer, looking on. How lovely it was! When I opened my eyes and saw them, I found it charming they scampered away.
The memory of all these things returned AFTERWARDS, when I met Thonlong afterwards, when I was more than twenty, that is, more than ten years later. I met Thon and got the explanation of these things, I understood. Then I remembered all that had happened to me, and I thought, Well! Because Madame Thon said to me (I told her all my childhood stories), she said to me, Oh, but I know, you are THAT, the stamp of THAT is on you. I thought over what she had said, and I saw it was indeed true. All those experiences I had were very clear indications that there were certainly people in the invisible looking after me! (Mother laughs)
0 1963-05-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, the bird, the white dove they speak of, could be the Universal. Maybe it would manifest openly as a result of that descent?
Basically we always try to cut things into small pieces. It evidently means the manifestation, a new manifestation of the Divine, which takes place some time after the Divine in man is resuscitated. The Divine in man is resuscitated, thats very clear: it has become conscious. And after a time (4 is the manifestation, 10 is the perfection of the manifestation), the perfection of the manifestation of God resuscitated in man allows that universal or cosmic thing to manifest. If you take it like that, it makes sense.
0 1963-09-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, they dont feel unhappy, theyre very happy (!) but its too strong for them. So they fall asleep or are immobilized like those canaries. At the end, the doctor began to worry about his birds and asked me, But whats happening? At home, they whistle all day long! I answered (laughing), Yes, here its something else!
He took his cage, and just as he was going, the canaries shook themselves, whistled a few little notes and off they went!
0 1963-12-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I was always accompanied by a form, not a very precise one, but which was the materialization in that realm of the Lords Presence. I remember having for the work entered a huge room, completely bare, without anything, in a half-light, when suddenly I felt something grabbing hold of me here (gesture at the nape of the neck), something I even felt physically (I was lying in my bed, but I felt it physically). So I pointed it out to that Form which was accompanying me everywhereso attentive, so closeto explain and show things to me; I complained, saying, Look, something has grabbed hold of me, it even hurts physically. So I saw a kind of arm come and take that thing on my neck, pull it away and present it to me: it was like one of those big bats that are called flying fox (there are some here, they eat little birds, chicks), it was clinging to my neck! He said, Oh, its nothing! Its only that. (Mother laughs) And it was a big thing like this (about three feet) which had grabbed hold of me here and had its two claws still out (he had wrenched it off my neck). It had become flat and almost inert, but it was still as vicious as anything.
It was quite simply an incidentto mention just one.
0 1965-06-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember, for instance, there was a time when I used to see people in the form of animals! It was the indication of the type of nature they belonged to. And I remember, when I was still in France, having one day seen (I was sitting in a large room) hosts of small animals coming, especially rabbits, cats, dogs, all kinds of animals, birds; they kept coming and coming, all of them onto my knees! And there were hosts and hosts of them. And there suddenly entered the room a big tiger, which rushed at them all and vrff! sent them scurrying off in all directions! (Mother laughs) But the animals were people and the tiger, too, was someone.
Its amusing.
0 1966-09-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was like that. And then, from the skythere was a vast sky going all the way up from below (it was like a painting), a very clear, very luminous, very pure skyfrom the sky there came innumerable hundreds of things that looked like birds flying towards him, and he drew them to him with a gesture. They generally were pale blue or white; now and then, something like the tip of a wing or the top of a crest was somewhat dark, but that was accidental. They came and came in their hundreds, and he gathered them with a gesture, then sent them towards the earth: he was standing on a steep slope, and he sent them into the valley below. And there, they turned into (Mother laughs) opinions! They became opinions! Some were dark, others light-colored, brown, blue.
They were like kinds of birds flying towards the earth, like that. But it was a pictureit wasnt a picture: it moved. It was very amusing!
They came from up above, luminous, in their hundreds. Then he said, This is how opinions are formed.
--
And those birds (they were birds that werent birds, but they looked like birds), they came all luminous, luminous, with sometimes tiny darker traces here or there, but generally all luminous; their shape was very fluid. And the colors werent as we know them: it wasnt white, it wasnt pale blue, but as if the essence of white and blue, the essence of colors. I dont know how to explain it. And they came like that, then he sent them down, and when they went through his hands and flew down towards the earth (laughing) they became brown, blue, gray all possible colors! But those were opinions. Its amusing.
***
0 1966-09-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Soon afterwards, Satprem suggests the publication in the Ashrams Bulletin of Mothers recent comments on the Aphorisms, including the vision of the birds turning into human opinions, omitting only a few personal passages.)
People will say I am lapsing into second childhood!
0 1966-10-12, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thons teaching wasnt at all metaphysical and intellectual: everything was expressed in a sort of pictorial objectification; and as I said the other day about that vision [of the birds], its a richer expression, less limited than the purely intellectual and metaphysical expression. Its more alive.
And thats pleasant I like meditating with you. Its not meditating, its a silent and very pleasant contemplation-concentration. Thats why, when you are here, I sit without uttering a word!
0 1967-02-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a subject I found very interesting, in the beginning I even wanted to give a class1 on it, when the School had only thirty children or so: a class on religions showing the whole course, from the gods with the heads of birds or jackals to cathedrals. Oh, when I was just five, I was revolted by that God who really was a wicked character and caused bloodshed.
So we could have a city of religions. But we would have to re-create the atmosphere.
0 1967-09-13, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I told her, I cant do anything for you if you dont seek something else, she wrote another letter to me in which she said, But I do seek something else, etc. I didnt want to reply. Then I did a little drawing, a sort of image that came to me: a big sun in the corner, mountain ranges like in the Himalayas, then at the bottom, a small mosque, a small church, and a small pagoda, and a bird flying away towards the sun. And I sent her my drawing!
(Mother laughs) And then?
0 1968-04-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He told me another story. He had another dream here, in Pondicherry, which very much upset him (because he loves you, he feels something for you). One night he saw himself, P.L., turned into a bird, a sort of owl which wanted to go and kill you! That bird had a dagger and was about to go and kill you. Then he woke up with a start, horrified by what he was going to do. It was P.L. turned into an owl, rushing towards you with a dagger to kill you. He was horrified, poor man.
That means he is very much under their influence.
0 1969-04-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All that goes on in people, their reactions, their movements And its in contact with birds, in contact with flowers they respond, birds respond very well. Its really interesting, one could write very interesting things, but there are too many of them!
(silence)
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The book is The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon, whose central theme is "Violence alone pays" (quoted in The Indian Express of May 30). An extract: "The practice of violence binds men together as a whole, since each individual forms a violent link in the great chain, a part of the great organism of violence which has surged upward." The book is prefaced by Jean-Paul Sartre, who says even more explicitly, "Irrepressible violence... is man recreating himself." It is "mad fury" through which "the wretched of the earth" can "become men." "To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone... there remains a dead man and a free man."
On Thursday 29th May. On the 30th too, mother received no one. This is probably the course of experience that began a little before Pavitra's departure (see conversation of May 17).
0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did I tell you the story of that child who came here? That child came, holding this (Mother points to a small yellow bird on her table); he thought it was a swan: its a goose, of course, but he thought it was a swan, and he gave it to me very nicely, saying, Its You. I saw in his thought that he was convinced it was a swan, that is to say, the soul. But then, I saw with my own eyes that it was a goose (Mother laughs), and I said, Yes, its true! (Laughter) and that was precisely Oh, Im keeping it, its precisely thata goose (Mother laughs).
So there.
0 1972-05-17, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then, I really looked, and on the branch of a tree (a coconut tree, I think, or a palm tree), I saw a bird it was mostly white, a bird much like a pigeon but with a very long tail and a kind of golden circle on its breast, I think.
Oh!
0 1973-01-24, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We are on the threshold of something truly marvelous, but we dont know how to keep itit comes like this (gesture imitating a passing bird). We just dont know.
Never, never before have I had such a sense of ignorance, of impotence, of of being a jumble of frightful contradictions, and I know, I KNOWdeep down, beyond speech that its because I dont know how to find the place where they they harmonize and unite.
02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed the darkness and the blindness seem to have been the Divine's grace upon him, for his eyes turned inward to other domains and saw strange truths and stranger facts. We remember in this connection another blind old poet who even though fallen on such evil days composed the world famous epic poem (I am referring obviously to Milton and his Paradise Lost). We remember also here the deaf incomparable master of music Beethoven. Many of the sayings of Dirghatama have become so current that they are now familiar even to the common man. They are mottoes and proverbs we all quote at all times. "Truth is one, the wise call it in different ways"the mantra is from Dirghatama. "Heaven is my father, Earth my mother"this is also from Dirghatama. The famous figure of two birds with beautiful wing dwelling on the same tree comes also from Dirghatama. There are a good many sayings of this kind that have become intimate companions to our lips of which the source we do not know. When we read the mantras of Dirghatama we are likely to exclaim even as the villager did when he first saw Hamlet played in London, "It is full of quotations."
You must have already noticed that the utterance of Dirghatama carries a peculiar turn, even perhaps a twist. In fact his mantras are an enigma, a riddle to which it is sometimes difficult to find the fitting key. For example when he says, "What is above is moving downward and what is down is moving upward; yes, they who are below are indeed up above, and they who are up are here below," or again, "He who knows the father below by what is above, and he who knows the father who is above by what is below is called the poet (the seer creator)", we are, to say the least, not a little puzzled.
02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Take dream-hued rest like birds on timeless trees
Before they dive to float on earth-time's sea.
02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The cry of the birds of Wonder called from the skies
To the deathless people of the shores of Light.
02.03 - The Shakespearean Word, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.
02.04 - The Kingdoms of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In beast and in winged bird and thinking man
It made of the heart's rhythm its music's beat;
--
It fashioned the life-mind of bird and beast,
The answer of the reptile and the fish,
02.04 - Two Sonnets of Shakespeare, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Shakespeare has treated love in a novel way; he has given a new figure to that common familiar sentiment. And incidentally he has given a new sense and bearing to Death. From a human carnal base there is a struggle, an effort here to rise into something extracorporeal; that is, something outside and independent of the body and impersonal. The sense of the first sonnet is this: the body decays and dies, even as bleak winter seizes upon the beauties of Nature or black Night swallows up the light of the day. But love lingers stillas the song of sweet birdsand the dying cadence of love curiously invokes and evokes a resurgent love in the beloved. The second sonnet hymns the soul's conquest over Death. The soul is that which is sinless in the sinful, it is the pure, the unsullied the immortal lovein this filth and dirt of a mortal body with its crude passions. Death eats away the body, but in this way the soul grows and eats away Death. This is the final epiphany, the death of Death and the resurgence of the soul divine in its love divine.
Sonnet 73
--
Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
02.06 - Boris Pasternak, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The first article of his faith thenit is not merely a faith but a deep and concrete perceptionis that the world is one. Creation forms a global unity and there is one pulsation, one throb running through all life. In this regard he is a unanimist of the school of Jules Romains. Life's single pulsation, however, he feels most in the plant world; the global unity there moves in a wonderfully perfect rhythm and harmony. Mankind in its natural, unsophisticated state shares in that rhythm and harmony and forms part of it. That is perhaps the stage of happy innocence of which many of the first great Romantics dreamed, e.g., Rousseau and Wordsworth. Viewed as such, placed as a natural phenomenon in the midst of Nature, in its totality, mankind still appears as a harmonious entity fitting into a harmonious whole. But that is a global bird's-eye view. There is a near view that isolates the human phenomenon, and then a different picture emerges. That is the second article of Pasternak's faith. Life is a rhythmic whole, but it is not static, it is a dynamic movement, it is a movement forwardtoward growth and progress. It is not merely the movement of recurrence; life does not consist in pulsation only a perpetual repetition. As I say, it means growing, advancing, progressing, as well. That is, in other words, the inevitable urge of evolution. Ay, and there's the rub. For it is that which brings in conflict and strife: together with creation comes destruction.
Nature in her sovereign scheme of harmony accepts destruction, it is true, and has woven that element too in her rhythmic pattern and it seems quite well and good. She is creating, destroying and re-creating eternally. She denudes herself in winter, puts on a garb of bare, dismal aridity and is again all lush, verdant beauty in spring. Pain and suffering, cruelty and battle are all there. And all indeed is one harmonious whole, a symphony of celestial music.
--
Yes, the captive tree rooted to the soil for eternity is as much of a miracle as the freed wide-winging bird in the infinitude, even as Death too is a miracle, the passage to Immortality, only its mask perhaps.
Hamlet, Act I, Sc. 5.
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A painted bird of paradise in a cage.
This greater life is enamoured of the Unseen;
02.07 - George Seftris, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I looked at the flying birds: they had turned to stone.
I looked at the shining sky: there was amazement in the air
02.08 - Jules Supervielle, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Then open your hands. How many birds released
How many lost birds that turn into the street,
The shadow, the wall, the apple, the statue, and the night?
02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
(IV) She is now that to us wherein we shall rest even as birds do on a tree.
(V) In her repose all habitations, all the footed and winged creatures, even the fast racing eagle.
03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The religious or Christian humanism of the West is in its essential nature the pagan and profane humanism itself, at least an extension of the same. The sympathy that a St. Francis feels for his leprous brother is, after all, a human feeling, a feeling that man has for man; and even his love for the bird or an inanimate object is also a very human feeling, transferred to another receptacle and flowing in another direction. Itis a play of the human heart, only refined and widened; there is no change in kind.
It goes without saying that in the East too there is no lack of such sympathy or fellow-feeling either in the saint or in the man of the world. Still there is a difference. And the critics have felt it, if not understood it rightly. The Indian bhutadaya and Christian charity do not spring from the same source I do not speak of the actual popular thing but of the idealeven when their manner of expression is similar or the same, the spirit and the significance are different. In the East the liberated man or the man aiming at liberation may work for the good and welfare of the world or he may not; and when he does work, the spirit is not that of benevolence or philanthropy.
03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Ever they replied like bird to calling bird;
The will obeyed the thought, the act the will.
03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The human frame is a miracle of creation. It would not be far wrong to say that the whole trend of physical evolution has been to bring out this morphological marvel. It has not been a very easy task for Nature to raise a living creature from its original crawling crouching slouching horizontal position to the standing vertical position which is so normal and natural to the human body. Man has proportionately a larger cranium with a greater and heavier content of the grey substance in comparison with the (vertebral) column upon which it is set, his legs too have to carry a heavier burden. And yet how easy and graceful his erect posture! It is a balancing feat worthy of the cleverest rope-dancer. Look at a bear or even at a chimpanzee standing and moving on its hind legs; what an uncouth, ungainly gait, forced and ill at ease! He is more natural and at home in the prone horizontal position. The bird was perhaps an attempt at change of position from the horizontal to the vertical: the frame here attained an angular incline (cf. tiryak, as the bird is called in Sanskrit), but to maintain even that position it was not possible to increase or enlarge the head. It is not idly that Hamlet exclaims:
What a piece of work is a man!... how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable!... the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!1
--
Sri Aurobindo, The bird of Fire,Collected Poems & Ploys
***
04.01 - The Birth and Childhood of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Like a strange bird with large rich-coloured breast
That sojourns on a secret fruited bough,
04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Of animal and bird and flower and tree.
They answered to her with the simple heart.
04.04 - The Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Alone with the cry of birds and hue of flowers,
And wildernesses of wonder lit by her moons
--
Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers
And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves,
--
Some winged like birds out of the cosmic sea
And vanished into a bright and featureless Vast:
05.01 - The Destined Meeting-Place, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Held undisturbed the strife of bird and beast.
Man the deep-browed artificer had not come
05.02 - Satyavan, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The branches haunted by the wild bird's call.
Awake to Nature, vague as yet to life,
--
Moved in her breast and cried out like a bird
Who hears his mate upon a neighbouring bough.
05.03 - Satyavan and Savitri, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And every bird remember in its cry."
Allured to her lashes by his passionate words
--
Like lovely plumage of a settling bird.
Her gleaming feet upon the green-gold sward
05.05 - Man the Prototype, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man too as a species has a generic personality, his prototype. Only, in opposition to the scientific view, that is an earlier phenomenon belonging to the very origin of things. Man in his essential form and reality is found at the source and beginning of creation. When the unmanifest Transcendent steps forward to manifest, when there is the first expression of typal variations in the infinite as the basis of physical creation, then and there appears Man in his essential and eternal divine form. He is there almost as a sentinel, guarding the passage from the formless to form. Indeed, he is the first original form of the formless. A certain poet says that man is the archetype of all living forms. A bird is a flying man, a fish a swimming man, a worm a crawling man, even a plant is but a rooted man. His form belongs to a region beyond even the first principles of creation. The first principles that bring out and shape and uphold the manifested universe are the trinity: Life, Light and Delightin other terms, Sachchidananda. The whole complex of the manifest universe is resolvable into that unity of triple status. But behind even this supernal, further on towards the final disappearance into the absolute Unmanifestsumming up, as it were, in him the whole manifestationstands this original primordial form, this first person, this archetypal Man.
The essential appearance of Man is, as we have said, the prototype of the actual man. That is to say, the actual man is a projection, even though a somewhat disfigured projection, of the original form; yet there is an essential similarity of pattern, a commensurability between the two. The winged angels, the cherubs and seraphs are reputed to be ideal figures of beauty, but they are nothing akin to the Prototype, they belong to a different line of emanation, other than that of the human being. We may have some idea of what it is like by taking recourse to the distinction that Greek philosophers used to make between the formal and the material cause of things. The prototype is the formal reality hidden and imbedded in the material reality of an object. The essential form is made of the original configuration of primary vibrations that later on consolidate and become a compact mass, arriving finally at its end physico-chemical composition. A subtle yet perfect harmony of vibrations forming a living whole is what the prototype essentially is. An artist perhaps is in a better position to understand what we have been labouring to describe. The artist's eye is not confined to the gross physical form of an object, even the most realistic artist does not hold up the mirror to Nature in that sense: he goes behind and sees the inner contour, the subtle figuration that underlies the external volume and mass. It is that that is beautiful and harmonious and significant, and it is that which the artist endeavours to bring out and fix in a system or body of lines and colours. That inner form is not the outer visible form and still it is that form fundamentally, essentially. It is that and it is not that. We may add another analogy to illustrate the point. Pythagoras, for example, spoke of numbers being realities, the real realities of all sensible objects. He was evidently referring to the basic truth in each individual and this truth appeared to him as a number, the substance and relation that remain of an object when everything concrete and superficial is extractedor abstractedout of it. A number to him is a quality, a vibration, a quantum of wave-particles, in the modern scientific terminology, a norm. The human prototype can be conceived as something of the category of the Pythagorean number.
05.10 - Children and Child Mentality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Children are often found to be very cruel to animals. Why is it so? Their treatment of birds especially is notorious. To seek out nests and pull them down, to capture nestlings and put them to all kinds of torture, to pick up eggs and dash them to pieces are for children most interesting games. They seem to take particular delight in varying and enhancing as much as possible the torture they can inflict. One reason that can be adduced for the callousness of a child's sensibility is his self-centredness: he is wholly himself, isolated from others, has not yet learnt the social needs and virtues. All he does and feels is for himself, for his own pleasure and free self-assertion. His growing individuality, in order to grow, cuts itself aloof from others and loses the sense of others having the same value as itself. Being self-regarding, to that extent he ceases to be other-regarding. Fellow-feeling is a sentiment that grows later on, as the result of shocks in mutual interchange. Real sympathy is a movement of mature consciousness.
The inquisitiveness that so strongly possesses a child is also the drive of an awakening and growing consciousness. He indulges in breaking, tearing, ripping because of this curiosity, this keen edge of a developing and experimenting consciousness. It seems to be hard and unfeeling, even an aberration, precisely because of the egocentric nature of the child consciousness yet unfamiliar with values normal to age and experience.
05.11 - The Soul of a Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Like the individual a nation too dies. Ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt and Babylon and Chaldea are no more. What I has happened to their souls, it may be asked. Well, what happens to the soul of the individual when the body falls away? The soul returns to the soul-world. Like the individual Psyche the collective Psyche too goes and retires into the womb of peace and light with all its treasures, its beauty and glory gathered in, like a bird that goes to sleep within its folded : wings. What the Greek culture and civilisation was still continues to exist in its quintessential reality in a world to which one has access if one has the requisite kinship of consciousness and psychic opening. That soul lives in its own domain, with all the glory of its achievement and realisation at their purest; and from there it sheds its lustre, exerts its influence, acts as living leaven in the world's cultural heritage and spiritual growth.
When however the soul withdraws, when a nation in a particular cycle of its soul manifestation has fulfilled its role and mission, the body of the nation falls gradually into decadence. The elements that composed the organic reality, the living consistency of national life disintegrate, lose their energy and cohesive capacity; they die out and are dispersed or persist for a time as a confused mixture of disconnected and mechanically moving cells. But it may happen too that in an apparently dying or dead nation, the soul that retired comes back' again, not in its old form and mode of life for that cannot beEgypt, if it lives again today cannot repeat the ages of the Pharaohs and the Pyramids-but in a new personality, with a fresh life purpose, In such a case what happens is truly a national resurrectiona Lazarus coming back to life at the touch of the Divine.
06.01 - The Word of Fate, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Like a bright bird tired of her lonely branch,
To find her own lord, since to her on earth
--
As are the actions of the bird and beast;
He is not moved by stark Necessity
06.31 - Identification of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness being one and the same everywhere fundamentally, through your own consciousness you can identify yourself with the consciousness that inhabits any other particular formation, any object or being or world. You can, for example, identify your consciousness with that of a tree. Stroll out one evening, find a quiet place in the countryside; choose a big treea mango tree, for instance and go and take your seat at its root, with your back resting or leaning against the trunk. Still yourself, be quiet and wait, see or feel what happens in you. You will feel as if something is rising up within you, from below upward, coursing like a fluid, something that makes you feel at once happy and contented and strong. It is the sap mounting in the tree with which you have come in contact, the vital force, the secret consciousness in the tree that is comforting, restful and health-giving. Well, tired travellers sit under a banyan tree, birds rest upon its spreading branches, other animalsand even beings too (you must have heard of ghosts haunting a tree)take shelter there. It is not merely for the cool or cosy shade, not merely for the physical convenience it gives, but the vital refuge or protection that it extends. Trees are so living, so sentient that they can be almost as friendly as an animal or even a human being. One feels at home, soothed, protected, streng thened under their overspreading foliage.
I will give you one instance. There was an old mango tree in one of our gardensvery old, leafless and dried up, decrepit and apparently dying. Everybody was for cutting it down and making the place clean and clear for flowers or vegetables. I looked at the tree. Suddenly I saw within the dry bark, at the core, a column of thin and and dim light, a light greenish in colour, mounting up, something very living. I was one with the consciousness of the tree and it told me that I should not allow it to be cut down. The tree is still living and in fairly good health. As a young girl barely in my teens I used to go into the woods not far from Paris, Bois de Fontainebleau: there were huge oak trees centuries old perhaps. And although I knew nothing of meditation then, I used to sit quietly by myself and feel the life around, the living presence of something in each tree that brought to me invariably the sense of health and happiness.
07.01 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Here only was the voice of bird and beast, -
The ascetic's exile in the dim-souled huge
07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I have shared the fear-filled life of bird and beast,
Its long hunt for the day's precarious food,
--
There was a carol of birds and murmur of bees,
And all that is common and natural and sweet,
--
And the bird of Paradise sit upon life's boughs
And the winds of Paradise visit mortal air.
07.06 - Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The birds' carolling became a canticle,
The beasts forgot their strife and lived at ease.
--
In kinship with the days of bird and beast
And levelled to the bareness of earth's brown breast,
08.03 - Death in the Forest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And hear at ease the birds and the scurrying life
That starts and ceases, rich far rustle of boughs
--
And strange rich-plumaged birds, to every cry
That haunted sweetly distant boughs replied
--
There was no cry of birds, no voice of beasts.
A terror and an anguish filled the world,
08.24 - On Food, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Maeterlinck,you must have heard of him, the author of The Blue birdwas a very corpulent person. As he had some sense of beauty he disliked corpulency, and in order to reduce it or keep it within bounds, he took to fasting for one day a week regularly. As he was an intelligent man, he did not on that day give any thought to food, but he kept himself wholly engaged in writing and studying. Fasting was of use to him.
The moral then is this: you must not think about food: you should regulate your life in such an automatic manner that you do not have to think about it. Eat at fixed hours, reasonablycalmly, quietly, composedly. Do not eat too much; for then you will have to concern yourself with digestion: that would be a disagreeable thing; it will make you lose time. Eat just what is necessary. You must give up all desire and attraction, all vital movement. When you eat only because the body needs food, then the body will tell you in a very precise and exact manner when it has taken just the amount necessary. It is only when you have notions in your mind or desires in your vital, when for example, you are in love with a particular dish that you eat in multiples of the quantity needed and oppress your body and make it lose its natural perception.
09.01 - Towards the Black Void, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The wild bird's voice and its winged rustle came
577
1.002 - The Heifer, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
260. And when Abraham said, “My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead.” He said, “Have you not believed?” He said, “Yes, but to put my heart at ease.” He said, “Take four birds, and incline them to yourself, then place a part on each hill, then call to them; and they will come rushing to you. And know that God is Powerful and Wise.”
261. The parable of those who spend their wealth in God’s way is that of a grain that produces seven spikes; in each spike is a hundred grains. God multiplies for whom He wills. God is Bounteous and Knowing.
1.003 - Family of Imran, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
49. A messenger to the Children of Israel: “I have come to you with a sign from your Lord. I make for you out of clay the figure of a bird; then I breathe into it, and it becomes a bird by God’s leave. And I heal the blind and the leprous, and I revive the dead, by God’s leave. And I inform you concerning what you eat, and what you store in your homes. In that is a sign for you, if you are believers.”
50. “And verifying what lies before me of the Torah, and to make lawful for you some of what was forbidden to you. I have come to you with a sign from your Lord; so fear God, and obey me.”
10.04 - Lord of Time, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The birds are calling in a melodious tone,
Thousands of crazy branches, green clothes
10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is the storm bird of an anarch Power
That would upheave the world and tear from it
1.005 - The Table, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
110. When God will say, “O Jesus son of Mary, recall My favor upon you and upon your mother, how I supported you with the Holy Spirit. You spoke to the people from the crib, and in maturity. How I taught you the Scripture and wisdom, and the Torah and the Gospel. And recall that you molded from clay the shape of a bird, by My leave, and then you breathed into it, and it became a bird, by My leave. And you healed the blind and the leprous, by My leave; and you revived the dead, by My leave. And recall that I restrained the Children of Israel from you when you brought them the clear miracles. But those who disbelieved among them said, `This is nothing but obvious sorcery.'“
111. “And when I inspired the disciples: `Believe in Me and in My Messenger.' They said, `We have believed, so bear witness that We have submitted.'“
1.006 - Livestock, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
38. There is no animal on land, nor a bird flying with its wings, but are communities like you. We neglected nothing in the Scripture. Then to their Lord they will be gathered.
39. Those who reject Our revelations are deaf and dumb, in total darkness. Whomever God wills, He leaves astray; and whomever He wills, He sets on a straight path.
1.00d - Introduction, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Because Truth is simple. It is the simplest thing in the world that is why we do not see it. There is but one Thing in the world, not two, as the modern physicists and mathematicians have begun to realize, and as a child well knows as he smiles at the waves on a sun-swept beach where the same foam seems to have rolled in since the beginning of time, recalling a great rhythm that wells up out of ancient memory and weaves days and sorrows into a single story, so old it feels like an unchanging presence, so encompassing in its immensity it even embraces the glides of a sea gull. And everything is contained in one second, the sum of all ages and all souls, all within one simple little point glistening for an instant on the wild foam. But we have lost that point, and that smile, and the singing second. So we have tried to restore that Oneness by addition: 1+1+1... like our computers, as if adding up all possible knowledge from every conceivable direction would finally yield the right note, the one note that brings forth song and moves the worlds and the heart of a forgotten child. We have tried to manufacture that Simplicity for every pocketbook, but the more we multiplied our clever push buttons, to simplify life, the farther away the bird flew, and the smile even the sparkling foam is polluted by our equations. We are not even entirely sure our body is still ours the beautiful Machine has devoured everything.
Yet that one Thing is also the one and only Power because what shines in one point shines also in all other points. Once that is understood, all the rest is understood; there is but one Power in the world, not two. Even a child knows that: he is king, he is invulnerable. But the child grows up; he forgets. And men have grown up, and nations and civilizations, each in its own way seeking the Great Secret, the simple secret through war and conquest, through meditation or magic, through beauty, religion or science. Though, in truth, we do not know who is most advanced: the Acropolis builder, the Theban magician, the Cape Kennedy astronaut, or the Cistercian monk, for one has rejected life in order to understand it, one has embraced it without understanding it, another has left a trace of beauty, and still another, a white trail in a changeless sky we are merely the last on the list, that's all. And we still have not found our magic. The point, the potent little point, is still there on the open beach of the world; it shines for whoever will seize it, just as it shone before we were humans under the stars.
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
e. Smelling is the faculty of keen perception that eventually brings a man back to the source from whence he came, the archetypal plane, the plane where his true home is to be found. A perception of difference has been cultivated that has caused a divine discontent within the [202] heart of the Pilgrim in the far country; the prodigal son draws comparisons; he has developed the other four senses, and he utilises them. Now comes in the faculty of vibratory recognition of the home vibration, if it might be so expressed. It is the spiritual counterpart of that sense which in the animal, the pigeon and other birds, leads them back unerringly to the familiar spot from whence they originally came. It is the apprehension of the vibration of the Self, and a swift return by means of that instinct to the originating source.
The consideration of this subject awakens the realisation of the vastness of the region of thought concerned the region of the whole evolutionary development of the human being. Yet all that is possible here, as elsewhere, is to indicate lines of thought for careful pondering, and to emphasise certain ideas which may serve as the foundation thoughts for the future mental activity of the immediate generation. The following facts must also be borne in mind when considering the matter:
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
If ye should hunt with beasts or birds of prey, invoke ye the Name of God when ye send them to pursue their quarry; for then whatever they catch shall be lawful unto you, even should ye find it to have died. He, verily, is the Omniscient, the All-Informed. Take heed, however, that ye hunt not to excess. Tread ye the path of justice and equity in all things. Thus biddeth you He Who is the Dawning-place of Revelation, would that ye might comprehend.
God hath bidden you to show forth kindliness towards My kindred, but He hath granted them no right to the property of others. He, verily, is self-sufficient, above any need of His creatures.
1.00 - PRELUDE AT THE THEATRE, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Beasts, birds, trees, rocks, and all such lumber,
Fire, water, darkness, Day and Night!
1.00 - The way of what is to come, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
30 In the text, Jung identifies the white bird as his soul. For Jung's discussion of the dove in alchemy, see Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955/56) (CW 14, 81)
31. The Corrected Draft has: First Nights (p. 13)
10.12 - Awake Mother, #Writings In Bengali and Sanskrit, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The birds wrap their eyes with their wings
And rest self-absorbed in their nests;
1.012 - Joseph, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
36. Two youth entered the prison with him. One of them said, “I see myself pressing wine.” The other said, “I see myself carrying bread on my head, from which the birds are eating. Tell us their interpretation—we see that you are one of the righteous.”
37. He said, “No food is served to you, but I have informed you about it before you have received it. That is some of what my Lord has taught me. I have forsaken the tradition of people who do not believe in God; and regarding the Hereafter, they are deniers.”
--
41. “O my fellow inmates! One of you will serve his master wine; while the other will be crucified, and the birds will eat from his head. Thus the matter you are inquiring about is settled.”
42. And he said to the one he thought would be released, “Mention me to your master.” But Satan caused him to forget mentioning him to his master, so he remained in prison for several years.
1.016 - The Bee, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
79. Have they not seen the birds, flying in the midst of the sky? None sustains them except God. In this are signs for people who believe.
80. And God has given you in your homes habitats for you, and has provided for you out of the hides of livestock portable homes for you, so you can use them when you travel, and when you camp; and from their wool, and fur, and hair, furnishings and comfort for a while.
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
however, catches birds in her net, symbolizing the animus. The idea of the anima
often turns up in the literature of the 16th and 17th cent., for instance in Rich-
1.01 - BOOK THE FIRST, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
New colonies of birds, to people air:
And to their oozy beds, the finny fish repair.
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my
--
Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live,that is, keep comfortably warm, and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course _ la mode_.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.
--
We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with which when young he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. From the hearth to the field is a great distance. It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses. He adds, that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one.
In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savages. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a
_poor_ civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man, and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborers life, even if he is not encumbered with a family;estimating the pecuniary value of every mans labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less;so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before _his_ wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?
--
Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark colored and saturated with water. There were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of mans discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.
I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog.
--
It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a mans building his own house that there is in a birds building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cow birds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer.
Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another _may_ also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Parable of the homa bird
Pointing to Narendra, the Master said: "You all see this boy. He behaves that way here.
--
"The Vedas speak of the homa bird. It lives high up in the sky and there it lays its egg.
As soon as the egg is laid it begins to fall; but it is so high up that it continues to fall for many days. As it falls it hatches, and the chick falls. As the chick falls its eyes open; it grows wings. As soon as its eyes open, it realizes that it is falling and will be dashed to pieces on touching the earth. Then it at once shoots up toward the mother bird high in the sky."
At this point Narendra left the room. Kedar, Prankrishna, M., and many others remained.
1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Know, thou seeker of divine mysteries! that there is no end to the wonderful operations of the heart. For, to pursue the same subject, the dignity of the heart is of two kinds; one kind is by means of knowledge, and the other through the exertion of divine power. Its dignity by means of knowledge is also of two kinds. The first is external knowledge, which every one understands: the second kind is veiled and cannot be understood by all, and is extremely precious. That which we have designated as external, refers to that faculty of the heart by which the sciences of geometry, medicine, astronomy, numbers, the science of law and all the arts are understood; and although the heart is a thing which cannot be divided, still the knowledge of all the world exists in it. All the world indeed, in comparison with it, is as a grain compared with the sun, or as a drop in the ocean. In a second, by the power of thought, the soul passes from the abyss to the highest heaven, and from the east to the west. Though on the earth, it knows the latitude of the stars and their distances. It knows the course, the size and the peculiarities of the sun. It knows the nature and cause of the clouds and the rain, the lightning and the thunder. It ensnares the fish from the depths of the sea, and the bird from the end of heaven. By knowledge it subdues the elephant, the camel and the tiger. All these kinds of knowledge, it acquires with its internal and external senses.
The most wonderful thing of all is, that there is a window in the heart from whence it surveys the world. This is called the invisible world, the world of intelligence, [23] or the spiritual world. People in general look only at the visible world, which is called also the present world, the sensible world and the material world; their knowledge of it also is trivial and limited. And there is also a window in the heart from whence it surveys the intelligible world. There are two arguments to prove that there are such windows in the heart. One of the arguments is derived from dreams. When an individual goes to sleep, these windows remain open and the individual is able to perceive events which will befall him from the invisible world or from the hidden table of decrees,1 and the result corresponds exactly with the vision. Or he sees a similitude, and those who are skilled in the science of interpretation of dreams understand the meaning. But the explanation of this science of interpretation would be too long for this treatise. The heart resembles a pure mirror, you must know, in this particular, that when a man falls asleep, when his senses are closed, and when the heart, free and pure from blameable affections, is confronted with the preserved tablet, then the tablet reflects upon the heart the real states and hidden forms inscribed upon it. In that state the heart sees most wonderful forms and combinations. But when the heart is not free from impurity, or when, on waking, it busies itself with things of sense, the side towards the tablet will be obscured, and it can view nothing. For, although in sleep the senses are blunted, the imaginative faculty is not, but preserves the forms reflected upon the mirror of the heart. But as the perception does not take place by means of the external senses, but only in the imagination, the heart does not see them with absolute clearness, but sees only a phantom. But in death, as the senses are completely separated and the veil of the body is removed, the heart can contemplate the invisible [24] world and its hidden mysteries, without a veil, just as lightning or the celestial rays impress the external eye.
1.01 - Prayer, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
It is not given to all of us to be harmonious in the building up of our characters in this life: yet we know that that character is of the noblest type in which all these three knowledge and love and Yoga are harmoniously fused. Three things are necessary for a bird to fly the two wings and the tail as a rudder for steering. Jnana (Knowledge) is the one wing, Bhakti (Love) is the other, and Yoga is the tail that keeps up the balance. For those who cannot pursue all these three forms of worship together in harmony and take up, therefore, Bhakti alone as their way, it is necessary always to remember that forms and ceremonials, though absolutely necessary for the progressive soul, have no other value than taking us on to that state in which we feel the most intense love to God.
There is a little difference in opinion between the teachers of knowledge and those of love, though both admit the power of Bhakti. The Jnanis hold Bhakti to be an instrument of liberation, the Bhaktas look upon it both as the instrument and the thing to be attained. To my mind this is a distinction without much difference. In fact, Bhakti, when used as an instrument, really means a lower form of worship, and the higher form becomes inseparable from the lower form of realisation at a later stage. Each seems to lay a great stress upon his own peculiar method of worship, forgetting that with perfect love true knowledge is bound to come even unsought, and that from perfect knowledge true love is inseparable.
1.01 - Principles of Practical Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
high mountain. But she is also like a bird, perhaps a marabou or pelican.
She is a mancatcher. Generally she is fair-haired, a hairdressers daughter,
1.01 - Proem, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,
Kindling the lure of love in every breast,
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The lack of a suitable vocabulary and an adequate frame of reference, and the absence of any strong and sustained desire to invent these necessary instruments of though there are two sufficient reasons why so many of the almost endless potentialities of the human mind remained for so long unactualized. Another and, on its own level, equally cogent reason is this: much of the worlds most original and fruitful thinking is done by people of poor physique and of a thoroughly unpractical turn of mind. Because this is so, and because the value of pure thought, whether analytical or integral, has everywhere been more or less clearly recognized, provision was and still is made by every civilized society for giving thinkers a measure of protection from the ordinary strains and stresses of social life. The hermitage, the monastery, the college, the academy and the research laboratory; the begging bowl, the endowment, patronage and the grant of taxpayers moneysuch are the principal devices that have been used by actives to conserve that rare bird, the religious, philosophical, artistic or scientific contemplative. In many primitive societies conditions are hard and there is no surplus wealth. The born contemplative has to face the struggle for existence and social predominance without protection. The result, in most cases, is that he either dies young or is too desperately busy merely keeping alive to be able to devote his attention to anything else. When this happens the prevailing philosophy will be that of the hardy, extraverted man of action.
All this sheds some lightdim, it is true, and merely inferentialon the problem of the perennialness of the Perennial Philosophy. In India the scriptures were regarded, not as revelations made at some given moment of history, but as eternal gospels, existent from everlasting to everlasting, inasmuch as coeval with man, or for that matter with any other kind of corporeal or incorporeal being possessed of reason. A similar point of view is expressed by Aristotle, who regards the fundamental truths of religion as everlasting and indestructible. There have been ascents and falls, periods (literally roads around or cycles) of progress and regress; but the great fact of God as the First Mover of a universe which partakes of His divinity has always been recognized. In the light of what we know about prehistoric man (and what we know amounts to nothing more than a few chipped stones, some paintings, drawings and sculptures) and of what we may legitimately infer from other, better documented fields of knowledge, what are we to think of these traditional doctrines? My own view is that they may be true. We know that born contemplatives in the realm both of analytic and of integral thought have turned up in fair numbers and at frequent intervals during recorded history. There is therefore every reason to suppose that they turned up before history was recorded. That many of these people died young or were unable to exercise their talents is certain. But a few of them must have survived. In this context it is highly significant that, among many contemporary primitives, two thought-patterns are foundan exoteric pattern for the unphilosophic many and an esoteric pattern (often monotheistic, with a belief in a God not merely of power, but of goodness and wisdom) for the initiated few. There is no reason to suppose that circumstances were any harder for prehistoric men than they are for many contemporary savages. But if an esoteric monotheism of the kind that seems to come natural to the born thinker is possible in modern savage societies, the majority of whose members accept the sort of polytheistic philosophy that seems to come natural to men of action, a similar esoteric doctrine might have been current in prehistoric societies. True, the modern esoteric doctrines may have been derived from higher cultures. But the significant fact remains that, if so derived, they yet had a meaning for certain members of the primitive society and were considered valuable enough to be carefully preserved. We have seen that many thoughts are unthinkable apart from an appropriate vocabulary and frame of reference. But the fundamental ideas of the Perennial Philosophy can be formulated in a very simple vocabulary, and the experiences to which the ideas refer can and indeed must be had immediately and apart from any vocabulary whatsoever. Strange openings and theophanies are granted to quite small children, who are often profoundly and permanently affected by these experiences. We have no reason to suppose that what happens now to persons with small vocabularies did not happen in remote antiquity. In the modern world (as Vaughan and Traherne and Wordsworth, among others, have told us) the child tends to grow out of his direct awareness of the one Ground of things; for the habit of analytical thought is fatal to the intuitions of integral thinking, whether on the psychic or the spiritual level. Psychic preoccupations may be and often are a major obstacle in the way of genuine spirituality. In primitive societies now (and, presumably, in the remote past) there is much preoccupation with, and a widespread talent for, psychic thinking. But a few people may have worked their way through psychic into genuinely spiritual experiencejust as, even in modern industrialized societies, a few people work their way out of the prevailing preoccupation with matter and through the prevailing habits of analytical thought into the direct experience of the spiritual Ground of things.
1.01 - THE OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[3] Another favourite theriomorphic image is that of the two birds or two dragons, one of them winged, the other wingless. This allegory comes from an ancient text, De Chemia Senioris antiquissimi philosophi libellus.11 The wingless bird or dragon prevents the other from flying. They stand for Sol and Luna, brother and sister, who are united by means of the art.12 In Lambspringks Symbols13 they appear as the astrological Fishes which, swimming in opposite directions, symbolize the spirit / soul polarity. The water they swim in is mare nostrum (our sea) and is interpreted as the body.14 The fishes are without bones and cortex.15 From them is produced a mare immensum, which is the aqua permanens (permanent water). Another symbol is the stag and unicorn meeting in the forest.16 The stag signifies the soul, the unicorn spirit, and the forest the body. The next two pictures in Lambspringks Symbols show the lion and lioness,17 or the wolf and dog, the latter two fighting; they too symbolize soul and spirit. In Figure VII the opposites are symbolized by two birds in a wood, one fledged, the other unfledged. Whereas in the earlier pictures the conflict seems to be between spirit and soul, the two birds signify the conflict between spirit and body, and in Figure VIII the two birds fighting do in fact represent that conflict, as the caption shows. The opposition between spirit and soul is due to the latter having a very fine substance. It is more akin to the hylical body and is densior et crassior (denser and grosser) than the spirit.
[4] The elevation of the human figure to a king or a divinity, and on the other hand its representation in subhuman, theriomorphic form, are indications of the transconscious character of the pairs of opposites. They do not belong to the ego-personality but are supraordinate to it. The ego-personality occupies an intermediate position, like the anima inter bona et mala sita (soul placed between good and evil). The pairs of opposites constitute the phenomenology of the paradoxical self, mans totality. That is why their symbolism makes use of cosmic expressions like coelum / terra.18 The intensity of the conflict is expressed in symbols like fire and water,19 height and depth,20 life and death.21
1.01 - The Path of Later On, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Everywhere the young man can see criss-crossing footprints. The sun shines ever bright in the sky; the birds are singing in the trees; the day promises to be very beautiful.
Without thinking, the traveller takes the path that is nearest to him, which seems, after all, quite practicable; it occurs to him for a moment that he could have chosen another way; but there will always be time to retrace his steps if the path he has taken leads nowhere. A voice seems to tell him, "Turn back, turn back, you are not on the right road." But everything around him is charming and delightful. What should he do? He does not know. He goes on without taking any decision; he enjoys the pleasures of the moment. "In a little while," he replies to the voice, "in a little while I shall think; I have plenty of time."
1.021 - The Prophets, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
79. And so We made Solomon understand it, and to each We gave wisdom and knowledge. And We subjected the mountains along with David to sing Our praises, and the birds as well—surely We did.
80. And We taught him the making of shields for you, to protect you from your violence. Are you, then, appreciative?
1.022 - The Pilgrimage, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
31. Being true to God, without associating anything with Him. Whoever associates anything with God—it is as though he has fallen from the sky, and is snatched by the birds, or is swept away by the wind to a distant abyss.
32. So it is. Whoever venerates the sacraments of God—it is from the piety of the hearts.
1.024 - The Light, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
41. Do you not realize that God is glorified by whatever is in the heavens and the earth, and even by the birds in formation? Each knows its prayer and its manner of praise. God knows well what they do.
42. To God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and to God is the ultimate return.
1.027 - The Ant, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
16. And Solomon succeeded David. He said, “O people, we were taught the language of birds, and we were given from everything. This is indeed a real blessing.”
17. To the service of Solomon were mobilized his troops of sprites, and men, and birds—all held in strict order.
18. Until, when they came upon the Valley of Ants, an ant said, “O ants! Go into your nests, lest Solomon and his troops crush you without noticing.”
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20. Then he inspected the birds, and said, “Why do I not see the hoopoe? Or is he among the absentees?
21. I will punish him most severely, or slay him, unless he gives me a valid excuse.”
1.02 - BEFORE THE CITY-GATE, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Nor would I beg the bird his wing to spare us:
How otherwise the mental raptures bear us
1.02 - BOOK THE SECOND, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
But his own bird the raven chanc'd to find
The false one with a secret rival joyn'd.
--
"Stay, silly bird, th' ill-natur'd task refuse,
Nor be the bearer of unwelcome news.
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And for her fav'rite chose the bird of night.
Be then no tell-tale; for I think my wrong
Enough to teach a bird to hold her tongue.
But you, perhaps, may think I was remov'd,
--
To be the chaste Minerva's virgin bird:
Preferr'd in vain! I am now in disgrace:
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For which she now does penance in a bird,
That conscious of her shame, avoids the light,
--
The birds, where-e'er she flutters, scare away
The hooting wretch, and drive her from the day."
--
He hates the bird that made her falshood known,
And hates himself for what himself had done;
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
degree of membership, which is to say that an ostrich, for example, is a bird, but perhaps not so much of a
bird as a robin because the robin has more properties that are central to the category bird. A thing can be
a better or worse exemplar of its category; if it is worse, it can still be placed firmly within that category.
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Other versions tell of the primordial egg, which contained the bird of Light..., or of the original
lotus that bore the Child Sun, or, finally, of the primitive serpent, first and last image of the god Atum.
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of matter; as a bird (a winged animal), it is a creature of the air, of the sky, of spirit. The uroboros
symbolizes the union of known (associated with spirit) and unknown (associated with matter), explored and
--
Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?
Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?
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Great Mother, as we shall see, and she often adopts reptilian (material) or bird-like (spiritual) features.
This relationship is schematically represented in Figure 32: Novelty, the Great Mother, 299 as Daughter of
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winged mother bird and matter she is spirit and earth at once; the wings might just as easily be
replaced by the icon of a snake, which would tie her figure more closely to the earth (and to the idea of
1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
hind us. The dog, the cat or the bird train their young in countless
ways to hunt, to fly or to build a nest. The monkey does much
1.02 - Substance Is Eternal, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
And leafy woodlands echo with new birds;
Hence cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk
1.02 - Taras Tantra, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
Moun t Meru t,lpon which thousands of birds and
insects will feed."
1.02 - The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
the humanities. Therefore, although the bird motif is an arche-
type par excellence, its existence in Leonardo's fantasy would
1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The symbolic companionship of Arjuna and Krishna, the human and the divine soul, is expressed elsewhere in Indian thought, in the heavenward journey of Indra and Kutsa seated in one chariot, in the figure of the two birds upon one tree in the
Upanishad, in the twin figures of Nara and Narayana, the seers who do tapasya together for the knowledge. But in all three it is the idea of the divine knowledge in which, as the Gita says, all action culminates that is in view; here it is instead the action which leads to that knowledge and in which the divine Knower figures himself. Arjuna and Krishna, this human and this divine, stand together not as seers in the peaceful hermitage of meditation, but as fighter and holder of the reins in the clamorous field, in the midst of the hurtling shafts, in the chariot of battle. The
1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We create for ourselves by the sacrifice and by the word shining seers, heroes to fight for us, children of our works. The Rishis and the Gods find for us our luminous herds; the Ribhus fashion by the mind the chariots of the gods and their horses and their shining weapons. Our life is a horse that neighing and galloping bears us onward and upward; its forces are swift-hoofed steeds, the liberated powers of the mind are wide-winging birds; this mental being or this soul is the upsoaring Swan or the Falcon that breaks out from a hundred iron walls and wrests from the jealous guardians of felicity the wine of the Soma. Every shining godward Thought that arises from the secret abysses of the heart is a priest and a creator and chants a divine hymn of luminous realisation and puissant fulfilment. We seek for the shining gold of the Truth; we lust after a heavenly treasure.
The soul of man is a world full of beings, a kingdom in which armies clash to help or hinder a supreme conquest, a house where the gods are our guests and which the demons strive to possess; the fullness of its energies and wideness of its being make a seat of sacrifice spread, arranged and purified for a celestial session.
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Let us now consider these relationships a little more closely. In some fields the physiological intelligence works on its own initiative, as when it directs the never-ceasing processes of breathing, say, or assimilation. In others it acts at the behest of the conscious mind, as when we will to accomplish some action, but do not and cannot will the muscular, glandular, nervous and vascular means to the desired end. The apparently simple act of mimicry well illustrates the extraordinary nature of the feats performed by the physiological intelligence. When a parrot (making use, let us remember, of the beak, tongue and throat of a bird) imitates the sounds produced by the lips, teeth, palate and vocal cords of a man articulating words, what precisely happens? Responding in some as yet entirely uncomprehended way to the conscious minds desire to imitate some remembered or immediately perceived event, the physiological intelligence sets in motion large numbers of muscles, co-ordinating their efforts with such exquisite skill that the result is a more or less perfect copy of the original. Working on its own level, the conscious mind not merely of a parrot, but of the most highly gifted of human beings, would find itself completely baffled by a problem of comparable complexity.
As an example of the third way in which our minds affect matter, we may cite the all-too-familiar phenomenon of nervous indigestion. In certain persons symptoms of dyspepsia make their appearance when the conscious mind is troubled by such negative emotions as fear, envy, anger or hatred. These emotions are directed towards events or persons in the outer environment; but in some way or other they adversely affect the physiological intelligence and this derangement results, among other things, in nervous indigestion. From tuberculosis and gastric ulcer to heart disease and even dental caries, numerous physical ailments have been found to be closely correlated with certain undesirable states of the conscious mind. Conversely, every physician knows that a calm and cheerful patient is much more likely to recover than one who is agitated and depressed.
1.02 - THE POOL OF TEARS, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it; there were a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way and the whole party swam to the shore.
1.02 - THE QUATERNIO AND THE MEDIATING ROLE OF MERCURIUS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Ostanes said, Save me, O my God, for I stand between two exalted brilliancies known for their wickedness, and between two dim lights; each of them has reached me and I know not how to save myself from them. And it was said to me, Go up to Agathodaimon the Great and ask aid of him, and know that there is in thee somewhat of his nature, which will never be corrupted. . . . And when I ascended into the air he said to me, Take the child of the bird which is mixed with redness and spread for the gold its bed which comes forth from the glass, and place it in its vessel whence it has no power to come out except when thou desirest, and leave it until its moistness has departed.25
[6] The quaternio in this case evidently consists of the two malefici, Mars and Saturn (Mars is the ruler of Aries, Saturn of Capricorn); the two dim lights would then be feminine ones, the moon (ruler of Cancer) and Venus (ruler of Libra). The opposites between which Ostanes stands are thus masculine / feminine on the one hand and good / evil on the other. The way he speaks of the four luminarieshe does not know how to save himself from themsuggests that he is subject to Heimarmene, the compulsion of the stars; that is, to a transconscious factor beyond the reach of the human will. Apart from this compulsion, the injurious effect of the four planets is due to the fact that each of them exerts its specific influence on man and makes him a diversity of persons, whereas he should be one.26 It is presumably Hermes who points out to Ostanes that something incorruptible is in his nature which he shares with the Agathodaimon,27 something divine, obviously the germ of unity. This germ is the gold, the aurum philosophorum,28 the bird of Hermes or the son of the bird, who is the same as the filius philosophorum.29 He must be enclosed in the vas Hermeticum and heated until the moistness that still clings to him has departed, i.e., the humidum radicale (radical moisture), the prima materia, which is the original chaos and the sea (the unconscious). Some kind of coming to consciousness seems indicated. We know that the synthesis of the four was one of the main preoccupations of alchemy, as was, though to a lesser degree, the synthesis of the seven (metals, for instance). Thus in the same text Hermes says to the Sun:
. . . I cause to come out to thee the spirits of thy brethren [the planets], O Sun, and I make them for thee a crown the like of which was never seen; and I cause thee and them to be within me, and I will make thy kingdom vigorous.30
--
[10] From this remarkable excursus we learn, first of all, that the centre unites the four and the seven into one.48 The unifying agent is the spirit Mercurius, and this singular spirit then causes the author to confess himself a member of the Ecclesia spiritualis, for the spirit is God. This religious background is already apparent in the choice of the term Pelican for the circular process, since this bird is a well-known allegory of Christ.49 The idea of Mercurius as a peacemaker, the mediator between the warring elements and producer of unity, probably goes back to Ephesians 2 : 13ff.:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. [RSV]50
1.02 - The Recovery, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The days were getting hotter and he used to perspire profusely. There was no ceiling fan. We started fanning him as he walked, but what were two small hand-fans the wing-wafts of tiny birds in the sultry heat of the closed room? Sri Aurobindo did not seem to be concerned at all, though we were. Purani hit upon a brilliant idea. He came up with a huge palm leaf fan festooned with a red cloth border, as used for the temple Deities. The Mother smiled approvingly. Stationed near the door, he began fanning with all the vigour of his bare muscular arms and a miniature storm would sweep by. We enjoyed the grand sight. It was so becoming to his giant's nature! He handled it very well. Once for some days he could not come up, and the fan lay idle, like the mythical bow in the cave. With much trepidation I took it up, a pigmy to the giant, but seeing no question on the Mother's face, I set to work. The performance was not bad. I felt rather proud, but alas, pride had its quick fall! By same faux pas, or should I say fausse main, one day I struck Sri Aurobindo's back with the fan, as he was just turning my corner! He immediately looked around with an indulgent smile, and the Mother smiled graciously to lift me up from the crushing shame. But fortunately for the Guru and the disciple, it was not repeated. Afterwards both Champaklal and Mulshankar used the fan with a greater skill.
When at the end of the walk he would stand in the middle of the room with the stick in his right hand, his upright figure with the flowing beard on his broad bare chest, his two plaits of silken hair in front, and a far away look in his calm wide-open eyes, he would kindle a soft glow of love and adoration in our hearts. The Mother would then take the stick from him; after an exchange of sweet smiles between them, she would go away. Champaklal would then step in and wipe away the dripping perspiration.
1.02 - The Ultimate Path is Without Difficulty, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
through, the water is muddied; when a bird flies by, feathers fall.
5. His thieving intent already shows; where is the old fellow going?
1.02 - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, An abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning. Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager,the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others.
I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord Battle
1.034 - Sheba, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
10. We bestowed upon David favor from Us: “O mountains, and birds: echo with him.” And We softened iron for him.
11. “Make coats of armor, and measure the links well; and work righteousness. I am Observant of everything you do.”
1.038 - Saad, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
19. And the birds, gathered together. All obedient to him.
20. And We strengthened his kingdom, and gave him wisdom and decisive speech.
1.03 - A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank--the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross and uncomfortable.
The first question, of course, was how to get dry again. They had a consultation about this and after a few minutes, it seemed quite natural to Alice to find herself talking familiarly with them, as if she had known them all her life.
--
The next thing was to eat the comfits; this caused some noise and confusion, as the large birds complained that they could not taste theirs, and the small ones choked and had to be patted on the back.
However, it was over at last and they sat down again in a ring and begged the Mouse to tell them something more.
--
"I wish I had Dinah, our cat, here!" said Alice. This caused a remarkable sensation among the party. Some of the birds hurried off at once, and a Canary called out in a trembling voice, to its children,
"Come away, my dears! It's high time you were all in bed!" On various pretexts they all moved off and Alice was soon left alone.
1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
All kinds of harmful birds of prey,
And beasts who were producing, rearing,
--
And various malicious birds and beasts
Were peering out of the windows
--
The hawks, eagles, other birds,
And kumbha demons, panicked and terried,
--
With either birds or beasts as their objects.
These are the results of their
1.03 - A Sapphire Tale, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Suddenly a bird's song rings out clear and joyful; all uneasiness vanishes. Liane knows that the forest is friendly - if there are beings in the trees, they cannot wish her harm. She is seized by an emotion of great sweetness, all appears beautiful and good to her, and tears come to her eyes. Never has her hope been so ardent at the thought of the beloved stranger; it seems to her that the trees quivering in the breeze, the moss rustling beneath her feet, the bird renewing its melody - all speak to her of the One whom she awaits. At the idea that perhaps she is going to meet him she stops short, trembling, pressing her hands against her beating heart, her eyes closed to savour to the full the exquisite emotion; and now the sensation grows more and more intense until it is so precise that Liane opens her eyes, sure of a presence. Oh, wonder of wonders! He is there, he, he in truth as she has seen him in her dream ... more handsome than men usually are. - It was Meotha.
With a look they have recognised each other; with a look they have told each other of the long waiting and the supreme joy of rediscovery; for they have known each other in a distant past, now they are sure of it.
1.03 - On Knowledge of the World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The people of this world are also like the passengers in a ship, who while sailing upon the sea, arrive at an island. The sailors draw the ship to the shore, and then call out and say, "whoever wishes for water or other provisions, let him leave the ship and go and procure them : let him not delay, for the ship will not remain long. It is besides a dangerous place, and whoever remains here will perish." After receiving this warning, the passengers leave the ship, and are all scattered about, one in this direction and another in that. The wise passengers, remembering the admonition of the sailors, attended quickly to their affairs, and immediately returned to the ship. They selected the places in the ship [73] that pleased them best, and sat down calm and tranquil. Some of the passengers, however, gazed at the trees, the flowers and the fruits of the island, listened to and admired the notes of the birds, and became absorbed in looking at the wonderful curiosities found there. They delayed so long, that when they came to the ship, they found every place in the ship occupied, and no room for them to sit down. They finally entered, and found a corner with great difficulty, where they could just press themselves in. Others, not satisfied with gazing around, loaded themselves with stones that had the appearance of being precious, and after a time returned to the ship. They found it completely full, and absolutely no place to sit down. After they had entered, they were compelled from necessity to stow themselves in a dark place at the bottom. As for the stones which they had thought were jewels, they lost their color, putrefied, and sent forth such a disagreeable odor, as to affect the passengers to nausea. It was impossible to expel the odor and they remained to the last with its disagreeableness in the midst of them. Others still took so much pleasure in looking about the island, that they said to themselves, "where shall we be able to find a more delightful retreat than this ? It is not clear that the place where we are going is better than this," And so they chose to remain there; and after the departure of the ship some of them perished with hunger and thirst, and some were devoured by wild beasts. Not one of them was saved. In the future world they will certainly suffer pain and retribution.
The Alchemy of Happiness, by Mohammed Al-Ghazzali, the Mohammedan Philosopher, trans. Henry A. Homes (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1873). Transactions of the Albany Institute, vol. VIII.
1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen
ANSWER: He saith, exalted be He: "If ye should hunt with beasts or birds of prey" and so forth.
Other means, such as bows and arrows, guns, and similar equipment employed in hunting, are also included. If, however, traps or snares are used, and the game dieth before it can be reached, it is unlawful for consumption.
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
some form of words. Lastly, the bird is killed and laid, together
with some betel, on the domestic place of sacrifice. When the
--
yellow birds, to wit, a parrot, a thrush, and a yellow wagtail, by
means of a yellow string to the foot of the bed; then pouring water
--
doubt the jaundice, from him to the birds. After that, by way of
giving a final bloom to his complexion, he took some hairs of a red
--
sharply at a stone-curlew, and the bird looked steadily at him, he
was cured of the disease. "Such is the nature," says Plutarch, "and
--
well recognised among birdfanciers was this valuable property of the
stone-curlew that when they had one of these birds for sale they
kept it carefully covered, lest a jaundiced person should look at it
and be cured for nothing. The virtue of the bird lay not in its
colour but in its large golden eye, which naturally drew out the
yellow jaundice. Pliny tells of another, or perhaps the same, bird,
to which the Greeks gave their name for jaundice, because if a
jaundiced man saw it, the disease left him and slew the bird. He
mentions also a stone which was supposed to cure jaundice because
--
holding an effigy of the bird and mimicking its harsh cry. Among the
Arunta the men of the witchetty grub totem perform ceremonies for
--
neck and small head of the emu, mimic the appearance of the bird as
it stands aimlessly peering about in all directions.
--
for a tree, of which the fruit has been much pecked at by birds.
From such a tree he cuts a stout branch and makes of it the
--
tree lured many birds to its fruit, so the branch cut from that tree
will lure many fish to the trap.
--
the trap, the rosebuds in his own stomach would make the bird itch,
with the result that instead of swallowing the bait the eagle would
1.03 - The Gate of Hell. The Inefficient or Indifferent. Pope Celestine V. The Shores of Acheron. Charon. The, #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
At signals, as a bird unto its lure.
So they depart across the dusky wave,
1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to M.): "The mind of the yogi is always fixed on God, always absorbed in the Self. You can recognize such a man by merely looking at him. His eyes are wide open, with an aimless look, like the eyes of the mother bird hatching her eggs. Her entire mind is fixed on the eggs, and there is a vacant look in her eyes. Can you show me such a picture?"
M: "I shall try to get one."
--
"I went to Syamakunda and Radhakunda in a palanquin and got out to visit the holy Mount Govardhan. At the very sight of the mount I was overpowered with divine emotion and ran to the top. I lost all consciousness of the world around me. The residents of the place helped me to come down. On my way to the sacred pools of Syamakunda and Radhakunda, when I saw the meadows, the trees, the shrubs, the birds, and the deer, I was overcome with ecstasy. My clothes became wet with tears. I said: 'O Krishna! Everything here is as it was in the olden days. You alone are absent.'
Seated inside the palanquin I lost all power of speech. Hriday followed the palanquin.
1.04 - BOOK THE FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Transform'd, the name of Theban birds they keep,
And skim the surface of that fatal deep.
--
As when Jove's bird, a speckl'd serpent spies,
Which in the shine of Phoebus basking lies,
1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
It is well known that spirits are divided into two classes, in one of which all blessed spirits are embraced and in the other all miserable spirits. With respect to the blessed spirits God says, "Think not that those who have been slain on [81] the divine road are dead : they are alive near their Lord and are sustained by him."1 In regard to the miserable spirits, the apostle of God came to the infidels who had been slain in the battle of Bader,2and called upon each by name, and said, "O ! such a one, son of such a one, I have found the victory and triumph which my Lord promised. And you, have you found that latter end and torment of which the Lord assured you, or have you not found it ?" His honored companions having remarked to him, "they are dead and how can they hear and how can they speak ?", the glory of the world replied, "By the truth of God who has commissioned me to be a true prophet, they are better able to hear than yourselves : there is only this difference, that they are not able to answer." And the prophet of God declared that the spirits of martyrs are in lanterns under the empyrean : and according to another account that they are suspended to the fruits of the trees of Paradise in the craws of green birds. In brief, whoever will study carefully the verses of the Koran, the Traditions and recollections that have reached us respecting death, and will consider the well substantiated accounts of the movements of the dead in grave yards, he will know, in a manner that should remove all doubt, that the dead clearly do not become non-existent....
Hence it happens, that when a person becomes breathless and is entranced, as sometimes happens in the first exercises among the Soofees, he has a delightful vision of the state after death, notwithstanding the animal spirit continues in the enjoyment of health. Yet if, while in that state, fear and terror should happen to predominate and deprive him of feeling and motion, and if he become so far like the dead that he perceives no external object, the same [82] things may be revealed to him which are revealed to others after death. It is sometimes permitted, after he returns from that state to the sensible world, that all he has seen should remain in his memory, or that if he does not remember it, traces of it should remain in his mind. If he saw hell, he will retain traces of despondency, sadness, heaviness of spirit, suspicion and melancholy. If in the treasury of his imagination he has preserved these traces, it is lawful for him to communicate them to others....
1.04 - Sounds, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some travellers wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.
I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any hea then deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and overhead for the passing day.
This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end. If we were always indeed getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.
Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninterupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsys pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and bedsteads,because they once stood in their midst.
My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub-oaks and sand-cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May, the sand-cherry (_Cerasus pumila_,) adorned the sides of the path with its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with good sized and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable. The sumach (_Rhus glabra_,) grew luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off by its own weight. In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs.
--
When other birds are still the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is truly Ben
Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the wood-side; reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. _Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!_ sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks.
Then_that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!_ echoes another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, and_bor-r-r-r-n!_ comes faintly from far in the Lincoln woods.
--
I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crowing from my clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any birds, and if they could be naturalized without being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses when their lords clarions rested! No wonder that man added this bird to his tame stock,to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes of other birds,think of it! It would put nations on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise? This foreign birds note is celebrated by the poets of all countries along with the notes of their native songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the Atlantic and
Pacific is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for they were starved out, or rather were never baited in,only squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whippoorwill on the ridge pole, a blue-jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech-owl or a cat-owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the yard. No yard! but unfenced Nature reaching up to your very sills. A young forest growing up under your meadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale,a pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind your house for fuel. Instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow,no gate,no front-yard, and no path to the civilized world!
1.04 - Te Shan Carrying His Bundle, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
bird's can catch a bird, one whose wisdom surpasses an ani
mal's can catch an animal, and one whose wisdom surpasses a
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.
Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took,
1.04 - The Crossing of the First Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
ing sun bird, they passed between.
As the rising smoke of an offering through the sun door, so
1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The animal appropriate to Aleph is the Eagle, the king of the birds, since we learn from classical mythology that the Eagle was sacred to Jupiter ; whose sacrifices, I may add, generally consisted of bulls and cows. Its element is
Air A, rushing aimlessly hither and thither, always pressing or tending in a downward direction.
--
Mastic, Mace, and Storax are the perfumes of this twelfth Path ; the Agate is its jewel ; Vervain its sacred plant. The Ibis is its sacred bird, which ages ago was observed to have the curious habit of standing on one leg for long periods of time, and to the fertile imagination of the ancients this suggested the absorption in profound meditation. In Yoga practice there is a posture called the
Ibis wherein the practitioner balances himself on one leg.
--
Rose ; the birds being the Sparrow and Dove. The magical appurtenance is the Girdle, in view of the legend that whosoever wore Aphrodite's girdle became an object of universal love and desire.
The title of this fourteenth Path is " The Luminous
--
Intelligence ". All hybrids are attri buted here ; its bird is the Magpie, and Alexandrite and Tourmaline its precious stones. Its colour is Mauve, and its plants are all forms and species of Orchids.
The Tarot card is VI. - The Lovers. Ancient packs describe this as representing a man between two women, who arc Vice and Virtue, Lilith, the wife of the evil Samael, and Eve. Modern cards, however, show a nude male and female figure, with an angel or a Cupid with outspread wings hovering above them.
1.04 - THE RABBIT SENDS IN A LITTLE BILL, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
So she swallowed one of the cakes and was delighted to find that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house and found quite a crowd of little animals and birds waiting outside. They all made a rush at Alice the moment she appeared, but she ran off as hard as she could and soon found herself safe in a thick wood.
[Illustration: "The Duchess tucked her arm affectionately into
1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
constantly tries to devour us alive. This discovery is as old as the Rig Veda: "Two birds beautiful of wing, friends and comrades, cling to a common tree, and one eats the sweet fruit, the other regards him and eats not." (I.164.20) At this point, it will become easier for him to substitute, voluntarily at first, a habit of referring silently to this vibrating depth for the old superficial habit of mental reflection,
memory, planning, and calculation. In practice, this is a long period of transition, with setbacks and breakthroughs (the feeling is not so much one of setbacks and breakthroughs as of something being veiled and unveiled in turn) as well as a confrontation of the two processes, the old mental mechanism tending constantly to interfere and to recapture its rights, namely, to convince us that we can't do without it; it may also find some support in a sort of laziness whereby we find it easier "to do as usual." On the other hand, this work of disentanglement is powerfully aided, first by the experience of the descending Force,
--
He is forever tuned in elsewhere. Finally, he will see his actions becoming more clear-sighted, effective and powerful, without in the least encroaching upon his peace: The substance of the mental being . . . is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they . . . cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace.
Even if a thousand images or the most violent events pass across it,
1.056 - The Inevitable, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
21. And meat of birds that they may desire.
22. And lovely companions.
1.05 - BOOK THE FIFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
But we, transform'd to birds, avoid his snare,
On pinions rising in the yielding air.
--
But prov'd a bird's; for in a shady tree
Nine magpies perch'd lament their alter'd state,
--
The chearful birds their airy carols sing,
And the whole year is one eternal spring.
--
Or greedy birds the new-sown seed devour,
Or darnel, thistles, and a crop impure
--
And chang'd the vile informer to a bird.
In Phlegeton's black stream her hand she dips,
--
The same their eloquence, as maids, or birds,
Now only noise, and nothing then but words.
1.05 - Character Of The Atoms, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
That ever the variegated birds reveal
The spots or stripes peculiar to their kind,
1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5. He sets like an archer his shaft for the shooting, he sharpens his power of light like an edge of steel. He is the traveller of the night with rich rapid movements; he has thighs of swift motion and is like a bird that settles on a tree.
6. This friendly Light is like a singer of the word and clothes himself with the Rays, he rhapsodises with his flame. This is the shining One who journeys by night and by day to the Gods, the shining Immortal who journeys through the day to the Gods.
1.05 - ON ENJOYING AND SUFFERING THE PASSIONS, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
men. But this bird built its nest with me: therefore I
love and caress it; now it dwells with me, siting on its
--
cellar, but in the end they turned into birds and
lovely singers. Out of your poisons you brewed your
1.05 - On the Love of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
In truth, if the love of God really take possession of the heart all other love is excluded. One of the children of Israel was in the habit of praying at night, but, observing that a bird sang in a certain tree very sweetly, he
{p. 135}
began to pray under that tree, in order to have the pleasure of listening to the bird. God told David to go and say to him, "Thou hast mingled the love of a melodious bird with the love of Me; thy rank among the saints is lowered." On the other hand, some have loved God with such intensity that, while they were engaged in devotion, their houses have caught fire and they have not noticed it.
A sixth test is that worship becomes easy. A certain saint said, "During one space of thirty years I performed my night-devotions with great difficulty, but during a second space of thirty years they became a delight." When love to God is complete no joy is equal to the joy of worship.
--
as a child to its mother, take refuge in the remembrance of Me as a bird seeks the shelter of its nest, and are as angry at the sight of sin as an angry lion who fears nothing."
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Jesus said, If those who lead you say to you, See, the kingdom is in the sky, then the birds of the sky
will precede you. If they say to you, It is in the sea, then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom
1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
tenderness for the death of the bird; "it wails for it by raining,
wailing a funeral wail." In Zulul and women sometimes bury their
--
stone should first be dipped in the blood of a bird or beast and
then presented to the sun, while the sorcerer makes three turns
1.05 - The New Consciousness, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
It has swift flowings, precipitous cascades, slack stretches that go deep into themselves like a sea into a deeper sea, like a great bird into the infinite blue. It has sudden urgings, minute diamond points that probe and pierce, expansive white silences like a steppe in the eternity of ages, like a fathomless gaze spanning lives upon lives, oceans of sorrow and toil, continents of struggle, road upon road of prayer and fervor. It has abrupt bursts, miraculous instantaneous outcomes, a long, untiring patience that follows each step, each quiver of being like a murmur of eternity upholding the minute. And behind that instant or swordlike flash, that vast slowness unfolding its trail of infinity, that burning point bursting out, that commanding word or compelling pressure, there always lies a kind of tranquil clarity, a crystalline distance, a little snow-white note that seems to have traveled and traveled across expanses of calm light, filtered down from an infinity of clear-sighted softness, trickled from a vast sun-washed prairie where no one suffers, acts or becomes a sweeping expanse upholding the little note, the gesture, the word, and the abruptness of an act springing from a fathomless peace where the noise of time and the press of men and the swirl of sorrows are cloaked in their mantle of eternity, already healed, already past, already wept over. For Truth enfolds the world as in a great robe of softness, in an infinite sky where our black birds and birds of paradise, sorrows from here and there, gray wings and pink ones melt away. All becomes one, adjusts to that note, and is in tune; all is simple and stainless, without trace, imprint or doubt, because all flows from that music, and this minute immediate gesture harmonizes with a great swell that will still roll in long after we have left.
But if I interferes, even for a second, a little eddy, a little me, a sticky and hard little nodule, a little self-will, everything goes awry and starts grating, wants or does not want, hesitates and fumbles there is instantaneous muddle: the consequence of the act, the consequence of everything, the haunting memory, the sticky trace, the toil in everything. For it is not enough to be clear in our head; we have to be clear everywhere.
1.05 - Vishnu as Brahma creates the world, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Next from Brahmā, in a form composed of the quality of foulness, was produced hunger, of whom anger was born: and the god put forth in darkness beings emaciate with hunger, of hideous aspects, and with long beards. Those beings hastened to the deity. Such of them as exclaimed, Oh preserve us! were thence called Rākṣasas[16]: others, who cried out, Let us eat, were denominated from that expression Yakṣas[17]. Beholding them so disgusting, the hairs of Brahmā were shrivelled up, and first falling from his head, were again renewed upon it: from their falling they became serpents, called Sarpa from their creeping, and Ahi because they had deserted the head[18]. The creator of the world, being incensed, then created fierce beings, who were denominated goblins, Bhūtas, malignant fiends and eaters of flesh. The Gandharvas were next born, imbibing melody: drinking of the goddess of speech, they were born, and thence their appellation[19]. The divine Brahmā, influenced by their material energies, having created these beings, made others of his own will. birds he formed from his vital vigour; sheep from his breast; goats from his mouth; kine from his belly and sides; and horses, elephants, Sarabhas, Gayals, deer, camels, mules, antelopes, and other animals, from his feet: whilst from the hairs of his body sprang herbs, roots, and fruits.
Brahmā having created, in the commencement of the Kalpa, various plants, employed them in sacrifices, in the beginning of the Tretā age. Animals were distinguished into two classes, domestic (village) and wild (forest): the first class contained the cow, the goat, the hog, the sheep, the horse, the ass, the mule: the latter, all beasts of prey, and many animals with cloven hoofs, the elephant, and the monkey. The fifth order were the birds; the sixth, aquatic animals; and the seventh, reptiles and insects[20].
From his eastern mouth Brahmā then created the Gayatrī metre, the Rig veda, the collection of hymns termed Trivrit, the Rathantara portion of the Sāma veda, and the Agniṣṭoma sacrifice: from his southern mouth he created the Yajur veda, the Tṛṣṭubh metre, the collection of hymns called Pañcadaśa, the Vrihat Sāma, and the portion of the Sāma veda termed Uktha: from his western mouth he created the Sāma veda, the Jayati metre, the collection of hymns termed Saptadaśa, the portion of the Sāma called Vairūpa, and the Atirātra sacrifice: and from his northern mouth he created the Ekavinsa collection of hymns, the Aṭharva veda, the Āptoryāmā rite, the Anuṣṭubh metre, and the Vairāja portion of the Sāma veda[21].
In this manner all creatures, great or small, proceeded from his limbs. The great progenitor of the world having formed the gods, demons, and Pitris, created, in the commencement of the Kalpa, the Yakṣas, Pisācas (goblins), Gandharvas and the troops of Apsarasas the nymphs of heaven, Naras (centaurs, or beings with the limbs of horses and human bodies) and Kinnaras (beings with the heads of horses), Rākṣasas, birds, beasts, deer, serpents, and all things permanent or transitory, movable or immovable. This did the divine Brahmā, the first creator and lord of all: and these things being created, discharged the same functions as they had fulfilled in a previous creation, whether malignant or benign, gentle or cruel, good or evil, true or false; and accordingly as they are actuated by such propensities will be their conduct.
And the creator displayed infinite variety in the objects of sense, in the properties of living things, and in the forms of bodies: he determined in the beginning, by the authority of the Vedas, the names and forms and functions of all creatures, and of the gods; and the names and appropriate offices of the Ṛṣis, as they also are read in the Vedas. In like manner as the products of the seasons designate in periodical revolution the return of the same season, so do the same circumstances indicate the recurrence of the same Yuga, or age; and thus, in the beginning of each Kalpa, does Brahmā repeatedly create the world, possessing the power that is derived from the will to create, and assisted by the natural and essential faculty of the object to be created.
--
[1]: The terms here employed are for qualities, Gunas; which, as we have already noticed, are those of goodness, foulness, and darkness. The characteristics, or Swabhāvas, are the inherent properties of the qualities, by which they act, as, soothing, terrific, or stupifying: and the forms, Svarūpas, are the distinctions of biped, quadruped, brute, bird, fish, and the like.
[2]: Or Tamas, Moha, Mahāmoha, Tamisra, Andhatamisra; they are the five kinds of obstruction, viparyyaya, of soul's liberation, according to the Sā
1.067 - Sovereignty, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
19. Have they not seen the birds above them, spreading their wings, and folding them? None holds them except the Compassionate. He is Perceiver of everything.
20. Or who is this who is a force for you to protect you against the Compassionate? The disbelievers are in nothing but delusion.
1.06 - BOOK THE SIXTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
As when the bold rapacious bird of Jove,
With crooked talons stooping from above,
--
Shares the like fate, and to a bird is chang'd:
Fix'd on his head, the crested plumes appear,
--
Like those in birds, that veil the callow young.
Then as their age advanc'd, and they began
1.06 - Gestalt and Universals, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
words the call of a bird or the stridulations of an insect? How do
we identify the roundness of a coin by touch?184
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly. So the soul, held by the bonds of human affections, however slight they may be, cannot, while they last, make its way to God.
St. John of the Cross
1.06 - Psychic Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"To sum up, never forget the purpose and goal of your life. The will for the great discovery should be always there above you, above what you do and what you are, like a huge bird of light dominating all the movements of your being."1.
As far as the aid that parents and teachers can give, it may first be noted that a good many children are under the influence of the psychic presence which shows itself very distinctively at times in their spontaneous reactions and even in their words. All spontaneous turning to love, truth, beauty, knowledge, nobility, heroism, is a sure sign of the psychic influence. To recognize these reactions and to encourage them wisely and with a psychic feeling would be the first indispensable step.
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A way of pure Knowledge is comparatively straightforward and easy to the tread of the seeker in spite of our mental limitations and the pitfalls of the Ignorance; a way of pure Love, although it has its stumbling-blocks and its sufferings and trials, can in comparison be as easy as the winging of a bird through the free azure. For Knowledge and Love are pure in their essence and become mixed and embarrassed, corrupted and degraded only when they enter into the ambiguous movement of the life-forces and are seized by them for the outward life's crude movements and obstinately inferior motives. Alone of the three powers Life
The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"But the manifestations of Divine Power are different in different beings. Ordinary souls are afraid to teach others. A piece of worthless timber may itself somehow float across the water, but it sinks even under the weight of a bird. Sages like Narada are like a heavy log of wood, which not only floats on the water but also can carry men, cows, and even elephants.
(To Shivanath and the other Brahmo devotees) "Can you tell me why you dwell so much on the powers and glories of God? I asked the same thing of Keshab Sen. One day Keshab and his party came to the temple garden at Dakshineswar. I told them I wanted to hear how they lectured. A meeting was arranged in the paved courtyard above the bathing-ghat on the Ganges, where Keshab gave a talk. He spoke very well. I went into a trance. After the lecture I said to Keshab, 'Why do you so often say such things as: "O
--
Mr. Viswas had been sitting in the room a long time; he now left. He had once been wealthy but had squandered everything in an immoral life. Finally he had become indifferent to his wife and children. Referring to Mr. Viswas, the Master said: "He is an unfortunate wretch. A householder has his duties to discharge, his debts to pay: his debt to the gods, his debt to his ancestors, his debt to the rishis, and his debt to wife and children. If a wife is chaste, then her husb and should support her; he should also bring up their children until they are of age. Only a monk must not save; the bird and the monk do not provide for the morrow. But even a bird provides when it has young.
It brings food in its bill for its chicks."
--
Sing, O bird that nestles deep within my heart!
Sing, O bird that sits on the Kalpa-Tree of Brahman!
Sing God's everlasting praise.
Taste, O bird, of the four fruits of the Kalpa-Tree, Dharma, artha, kama, moksha.
Sing, O bird, "He alone is the Comfort of my soul!"
Sing, O bird, "He alone is my life's enduring Joy!"
O thou wondrous bird of my life,
Sing aloud in my heart! Unceasingly sing, O bird!
Sing for evermore, even as the thirsty chatak
1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
mention the lion, snake (coluber, 'viper'), bird (devil = noc-
turna avis), raven (Christ = nycticorax, 'night-heron'), eagle,
1.06 - Yun Men's Every Day is a Good Day, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
His relaxed gaze descries the tracks of flying birds.
**In the eye, there is no such happening. A wild
--
gaze descries the tracks of flying birds." Even if it's the tracks
of flying birds, allow the eye one look, and it is like tracing
them out. When you get here, you will not consider it difficult
--
flying birds" isn't it either; nor is "The grasses grow thick," nor
"The mists overhang." But even something entirely different
1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Even Garuda, who is the fastest of birds, cannot move if he is shackled with iron chains. What is the use of saying that he is a very fast bird? He cannot move, because he has been tied to a peg with strong ropes or chains. Likewise, whatever be our ardour, whatever be our longing or fervour, that would be set at naught by the calls of the earth the demands of the senses, the feelings of the mind, and the loves of the emotions. These are terrific things, and the teacher of yoga has been cautious in laying the basic foundations in the very beginning itself so that these impediments may be obviated to a large extent. No one can be completely free from them, not even the best of sages. One day or the other they will come in some form, but at least they will be in a milder form not in a violent, wind-like form.
The advice intended by these sutras propounding the yamas and the niyamas is that no one, not even the best of students of yoga, can be free from the possibility of a reversion. There is no such thing as the best of students everyone is in some stage which is other than the best. And so, there is always a chance of it being possible for one to listen to the calls of the realms which one has attempted to transcend, inasmuch as the senses, or the means of perception belonging to the earlier stages, are still present.
It may look many a time that soaring high into the realms or empyreans of yoga in the higher stages would be like a bird flying into the sky, higher and higher, not knowing that its feet are tied with a thread to a peg at the bottom, on the surface of the earth, though the thread may be miles long. Imagine a kite which has been tied with a thread to a peg in the ground a thread which is some five miles long, or ten miles long. The kite can go up and never know that it has been tied like that because it seems free. But, a stage will come when it will feel its limitations and know that it is not possible for it to go further because it is already restrained by certain conditions, which is the thread in this example.
Likewise, there are certain conditions to which we are subject, and if we are completely ignorant of the presence of these conditions and move idealistically, in an unrealistic manner, into the higher stages of yoga, there may be a satisfaction of having risen, or even of having had some visions a conviction that something is coming but, with all that, there would be a susceptibility to withdrawal into the earlier stages on account of not being cautious enough to probe into the possibilities of fall and the chances of self-limitation by the very make-up of ones own personality. We are humans; and, as long as there is a feeling that we are human beings, we cannot escape the limitations of human beings. Though we may sometimes think we are gods, we are only human beings because we cannot forget that we are human beings. Our consciousness itself is our bondage.
1.07 - BOOK THE SEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Men, beasts, and birds in soft repose lay charm'd,
No boistrous wind the mountain-woods alarm'd;
--
Transform'd to birds, a monarch, and his queen.
Far off she saw how old Cephisus mourn'd
--
And rag'd on birds, and beasts, excusing Man.
The lab'ring oxen fall before the plow,
--
The rav'nous birds and beasts avoid the prey:
Th' offensive bodies rot upon the ground,
1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
1:I have been constantly emphasizing that each stage of evolution, in whatever domain, involves a new emergence and therefore a new depth, or a new interiority, whether that applies to molecules or to birds or to dolphins; and that each new within is also a going beyond, a transcendence, a higher and wider identity with a greater total embrace. The formula is: going within = going beyond = greater embrace. And I want to make very clear exactly what that means.
2:This is extremely important, I think, because the higher stages of development, the transrational and transpersonal and mystical stages, all involve a new going within, a new interiorness. And the charge has been circulating, for quite some time now, that endeavors such as meditation are somehow narcissistic and withdrawn. Environmentalists, in particular, often claim that meditation is somehow "escapist" or "egocentric," and that this "going within" simply ignores the "real" problems in the "real" world "out there."
1.08 - Adhyatma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
32. Behold the Lord in the effulgence of the sun, in the fragrance of flowers, in the brilliance of fire, in the sapidity of water, in the birds, beasts, in the air, ether, in the mind, intellect, in the heart, in the sound, in music.
33. The Lord is seated equally in all beings. He is imperishable. He is the Supervisor, Supporter, Enjoyer. He who thus seeth, he really seeth.
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
the experience be spontaneous and ennobling, one can never be reasonably certain that there will occur the desired and longed for event, which comes as the gracious calm such as one sees in a tropical country after a heavy and violent rain. In the second case, the same landscape or the manifold sensations of dark secret woods with the impression of the convocations of the hosts of the mighty, the singing streams and rivulets, and the carefree chirping of birds aloft in the empyrean - all these are like the mnemonic basis of Ritual, creating of necessity what we may term a Magical effect. That is, they overwhelm the recipient mind in boundless ecstasy of delight and joy, and the individual Ruach transcends temporarily its inhibiting barriers of custom, taboo, and restriction, and wings its way towards its Tsureh above the barren desert Abyss ; or else it falls into a sublime union with the Soul of Universal
Nature. Further comparisons cannot be undertaken now, but an example of the type of Nature-experience referred to may advantageously be given in a rather lengthy quotation from Miss Clare Cameron's splendid work, Green Fields of
1.08 - BOOK THE EIGHTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
As parent birds, when first their callow care
Leave the high nest to tempt the liquid air.
--
The only bird of all its kind, and late
Transform'd in pity to a feather'd state:
--
And in the air a new made bird he sails.
The quickness of his genius, once so fleet,
1.08 - Psycho therapy Today, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
in the bird that sits in a gilded cage.
1.08 - The Change of Vision, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
From then on, each thing is, simply and absolutely. We are at that meeting point of being, and we look at the great world, brand new. There is no hope for anything else, no expectation, no regret or desire if it is not there at that moment, it will never be there! Everything is there, the total totality of all possible futures. Water may flow, and the faces and thunder of the world, the costume of the moment, the cry of the passerby, the flying seed. The great kaleidoscope turns and strews beings, events, countries and their kings, and this fleeting second, colors them blue, red or gold, but there is still the same look at the meeting point, the same second and the same thing in different colors, the same beings with their sorrows, with white skin or dark, in this century or another. There is nothing new under the sun, nothing to expect! There is that one little second to delve into, delve into and deepen, to live totally, as if forever and ever; there is that unique thing that passes, that unique being, that speck of pollen or dust, that unique happening in the world. Then everything begins to be filled with such total meaning, to extend and branch out to the four corners of the world, to vibrate with total significance, as if this face, that chance encounter, that passing blue or black hue, this unexpected stumbling or bird feather floating in the wind brought us a message each thing is a message, a sign of our position and the position of the whole. Nothing exists in relation to this little shadow anymore, to its needs, its desires, its expectation of things or people everything is without plus or minus, good or evil, rejection or choice or preference or will of any kind. What could we possibly want? We already have everything, forever. What else is there! Each passing circumstance divulges its keynote, its pure music, its innermost meaning, without addition or subtraction, without false visual color through things and beings we watch one and the same tranquil eternity unfolding. We are in our point of eternity, in a look of truth. We are at that crossroads of being, which, for a moment, seems to open innumerably upon everything. One full little second. Where is the lack, the vain, the missing? Where is the big, the infinite, the useful or useless? We have arrived; we are right in the Thing. There is no more quest for rosewood in the forest of the great world; everything is rosewood and each thing is the one essence. A kind of warm gold begins to glow everywhere.
And the seeker has put his finger on the fourth golden rule of the passage: Each second totally and clearly.
1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "All the sins of the body flyaway if one chants the name of God and sings His glories. The birds of sin dwell in the tree of the body. Singing the name of God is like clapping your hands. As, at a clap of the hands, the birds in the tree flyaway, so do our sins disappear at the chanting of God's name and glories.
"Again, you find that the water of a reservoir dug in a meadow is evaporated by the heat of the sun. Likewise, the water of the reservoir of sin is dried up by the singing of the name and glories of God.
--
After bathing, the Master put on a new wearing-cloth, all the while chanting the name of God. Accompanied by one or two disciples he walked across the courtyard to the temple of Kli, still chanting Her hallowed name. His eyes had an indrawn look, like that of a bird hatching her eggs.
On entering the temple, he prostrated himself before the image and worshipped the Divine Mother. But he did not observe any ritual of worship. Now he would offer flowers and sandal-paste at the feet of the image, and now he would put them on his own head.
--
Parable of the Homa bird
"Youngsters like him belong to the class of the everperfect. They are born with God-Consciousness. No sooner do they grow a little older than they realize the danger of coming in contact with the world. There is the parable of the Homa bird in the Vedas.
The bird lives high up in the sky and never descends to earth. It lays its egg in the sky, and the egg begins to fall. But the bird lives in such a high region that the egg hatches while falling. The fledgling comes out and continues to fall. But it is still so high that while falling it grows wings and its eyes open. Then the young bird perceives that it is dashing down toward the earth and will be instantly killed. The moment it sees the ground, it turns and shoots up toward its mother in the sky. Then its one goal is to reach its mother.
"Youngsters like Rakhal are like that bird. From their very childhood they are afraid of the world, and their one thought is how to reach the Mother, how to realize God.
"You may ask, 'How is it possible for these boys, born of worldly parents and living among the worldly-minded, to develop such knowledge and devotion?' It can be explained. If a pea falls into a heap of dung, it germinates into a pea-plant none the less. The peas that grow on that plant serve many useful purposes. Because it was sown in dung, will it produce another kind of plant?
--
"The everperfect form a class by themselves. Not all birds have crooked beaks. The everperfect are never attached to the world. There is the instance of Prahlada.
"Ordinary people practise spiritual discipline and cultivate devotion to God; but they also become attached to the world and are caught in the glamour of 'woman and gold'. They are like flies, which sit on a flower or a sweetmeat and light on filth as well.
1.09 - ADVICE TO THE BRAHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sing, O bird that nestles deep within my heart!
Sing, O bird that sits on the Kalpa-Tree of Brahman!
Sing God's everlasting praise. . . .
--
"By being lowly one can rise high. The chatak bird makes its nest on low ground, but it soars very high in the sky. Cultivation is not possible on high land; in low land water accumulates and makes cultivation possible.
"One must take the trouble to seek the company of holy persons. In his own home a man hears only worldly talk; the disease of worldliness has become chronic with him.
1.09 - BOOK THE NINTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
And birds for mates the males of their own species chuse.
Her females Nature guards from female flame,
1.09 - The Greater Self, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
This all, this great all has been seen by sages in their visions and by a few rare poets and thinkers: All this is Brahman immortal, naught else; Brahman is in front of us, Brahman behind us, to the south of us and to the North of us and below us and above us; it stretches everywhere. All this is Brahman alone, all this magnificent universe.19 Thou art woman and thou art man also; Thou art the boy and girl, and Thou art yonder worn and aged man that walkest bending upon a staff.... Thou art the blue bird and the green and the scarlet eyed.20 Thou art That, O Swetaketu.21 This great all that is us has shined at the summit of human accomplishment, left a few hieroglyphic traces on the walls of Thebes, and nourished initiates here and there at times we have entered a white radiance above the worlds where, in a flash, we have dissolved the little self and emerged into a cosmic consciousness.... But none of that has changed the world. We still did not have the clue that would connect that vision to this earth and make a new world with a new look. Our truths remained fragile; the earth remained refractory and rightly so. Why should it obey the illuminations from above if that light does not affect its matter, if it itself does not see and it itself is not illuminated? In truth, wisdom is very wise and the earth's darkness is not a negation of the Spirit, any more than night is a negation of day; it is an expectation and a calling for light, and so long as we do not call the light here, why should it trouble itself to move from its summits? So long as we do not turn our nocturnal half toward its sun, why should it be filled with light? If we seek solar wholeness on the summits of the mind, we shall have wholeness there, in a lovely thought; if we seek it in the heart, we shall have it there, in a tender emotion if we seek it in matter at every instant, we shall have that same wholeness in matter and at every instant of matter. We have to know where we are looking. We cannot reasonably find the light where we are not looking. Then, perhaps, we shall realize that this earth was not so dark after all. It was our look that was dark, our want of being that brought about the want of things. The earth's resistance is our own resistance and the promise of a solid truth: an innumerable bursting of rainbows into incarnate myriads instead of an empty radiance on the heights of the Spirit.
But the seeker of the new world has not pursued his quest in a straight line; he has not closed his doors, rejected matter, muffled his soul. He has taken his quest along wherever he went, on the boulevards and on the stairways, in the crowd and in the empty obscurity of millions of senseless gestures. He has pervaded all the wastelands with being, kindled his fire in all the vanities, and fed his need on the very inanity that stifled him. He was not a little one-pointed concentration that rose straight up to the heights and then fell asleep in the white peace of the spirit; he was this chaos and turmoil, this wandering back and forth, in nothing. He pulled all into his net the ups and downs, the blacks and less blacks and so-called whites, the falls and setbacks he held everything within his little circumference, with a fire at the center, a need for truth amid this chaos, a cry for help in this nothingness. He was a tangled course, an endless meandering of which he knew nothing, except that he carried his fire there his fire for nothing, for everything. He no longer even expected anything from anything; he was only like a mellowness of burning, as if that fire were the goal in itself, the being amid all this emptiness, the only presence in this enormous absence. It even ended up becoming a sort of quiet love, for nothing, for everything, here and there. And little by little, this nothingness was lit up; this emptiness was set afire by his look; this futility stirred with the same little warmth. And everything began to answer. The world came to life everywhere, but infinitesimal, microscopic: a powdering of little truths dancing here and there, in facts and gestures, in things and meetings it even seems as if they came to meet him. It was a strange multiplication, a kind of golden contagion.
1.09 - WHO STOLE THE TARTS?, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them--all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it. "I wish they'd get the trial done," Alice thought, "and hand 'round the refreshments!"
The judge, by the way, was the King and he wore his crown over his great wig. "That's the jury-box," thought Alice; "and those twelve creatures
(some were animals and some were birds) I suppose they are the jurors."
Just then the White Rabbit cried out "Silence in the court!"
11.01 - The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Songs thrilled of birds upon unfading boughs
The colours of whose plumage had been caught
--
Like an upsoaring bird who mounts unseen
Voicing to the ascent his throbbing heart
--
And beautiful like fluttering wings of birds,
Visions of joy that she can never win
--
Held like a bird in a child's satisfied hands,
In an enamoured grasp her spirit strove
1.105 - The Elephant, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
3. He sent against them swarms of birds.
4. Throwing at them rocks of baked clay.
1.10 - BOOK THE TENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Of listning birds, and savages around.
Again the trembling strings he dext'rous tries,
--
A bird's was proper, yet he scorns to wear
Any but that which might his thunder bear.
1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Here we may remark in passing that mechanization is incompatible with inspiration. The artisan could do and often did do a thoroughly bad job. But if, like Ching, the chief carpenter, he cared for his art and were ready to do what was necessary to make himself docile to inspiration, he could and sometimes did do a job so good that it seemed as though of supernatural execution. Among the many and enormous advantages of efficient automatic machinery is this: it is completely fool-proof. But every gain has to be paid for. The automatic machine is fool-proof; but just because it is fool-proof it is also grace-proof. The man who tends such a machine is impervious to every form of aesthetic inspiration, whether of human or of genuinely spiritual origin. Industry without art is brutality. But actually Ruskin maligns the brutes. The industrious bird or insect is inspired, when it works, by the infallible animal grace of instinctby Tao as it manifests itself on the level immediately above the physiological. The industrial worker at his fool-proof and grace-proof machine does his job in a man-made universe of punctual automataa universe that lies entirely beyond the pale of Tao on any level, brutal, human or spiritual.
In this context we may mention those sudden theophanies which are sometimes vouchsafed to children and sometimes to adults, who may be poets or Philistines, learned or unsophisticated, but who have this in common, that they have done nothing at all to prepare for what has happened to them. These gratuitous graces, which have inspired much literary and pictorial art, some splendid and some (where inspiration was not seconded by native talent) pathetically inadequate, seem generally to belong to one or other of two main classessudden and profoundly impressive perception of ultimate Reality as Love, Light and Bliss, and a no less impressive perception of it as dark, awe-inspiring and inscrutable Power. In memorable forms, Wordsworth has recorded his own experience of both these aspects of the divine Ground.
1.10 - Harmony, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
There are no miracles. There is a vast Harmony which governs the world with a precision and delicacy as faultless in the meeting of atoms and the cycle of flowering and the return of migrating birds as in the meeting of men and the unfolding of events at a particular juncture. There is a vast, unique movement we thought we were separated from because we had built our little mental turrets on the frontier of our comprehension and black dotted lines on the softness of a great earthly hill, as others had built their hunting grounds, and the sea gulls, their white archipelago on the foam-flecked waters. And because we had put on these blinders or others to protect ourselves from the formidable magnitude of our lands, erected these dwarf fences to farm our little acre, the little wave of energy trapped in our sails, the little golden (or less golden) fireflies caught in the net of our intelligence, the little note captured from too great a Harmony, we have thought that the world behaved according to our laws, or at least our laws to the factual wisdom of our instruments and calculations, and that anything that exceeded this partitioning of the world or slipped through the meshes was unthinkable or nonexistent, miraculous hallucinatory. We were caught in our own trap. And by some gracious kindness which is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries to elucidate the world began to resemble our drawings of erudite children, our illnesses to follow the doctor's prognosis, our bodies to obey the prescribed medicine, our lives to travel in the designated groove between two walls of impossibility, and even our events to bow obligingly before our statistics and our thought of events. The world actually became mentalized from one end to the other and from top to bottom. Thought is the latest magician on the list, after the Mongolian shaman, the Theban occultist or the Bantu witchdoctor. It remains to be seen whether our magic is better than the others but magic it is, and we are not yet aware of all its power. But, in truth, there is only one Power, which uses an amulet, a Tantric yantra23 or an incantation, equally as well as a differential equation or even our simple and futile little thought. What do we want? That is the question.
We manipulate thought haphazardly. Generally, we do not even manipulate it; it manipulates us. We are besieged by a thousand useless thoughts that run back and forth through our inner realm, automatically, futilely, ten, perhaps a hundred times by the time we have walked down the boulevard or climbed the stairs. It is hardly thought; it is a sort of thinking current that got into the habit of following some of our convolutions and circumvolutions and assumes a more or less neutral color, more or less brilliant, depending on our taste or inclination, our heredity, our environment, and is expressed by preferred or customary words, blue or gray philosophies in one language or another but it is one and the same current running everywhere. It is the mental machinery clicking and rumbling and working sempiternally the same range or intensity of the general current. This activity veils everything, envelops everything, and casts a pall over everything with its thick and sticky cloud. But the seeker of the new world is one step removed from this machinery; he has discovered the quiet little clearing behind; he has lit a fire of need in the center of his being; he takes his fire everywhere he goes. And everything is different for him. Unclouded in his little clearing, he begins to see the functioning of the mind; he watches the great play, uncovers step by step the secrets of the mental magic which ought perhaps to be called mental illusion, though if it is an illusion, it is a very effective one. And all sorts of phenomena begin to attract his notice, a little disorderly, in recurring little spurts that end up making a coherent picture. The more he sees, the stronger his control.
This clarity is progressive. But he does not seek to see more clearly, if we may say, because seeking is again to risk setting the old process in motion, enlisting the machine to fight the machine, his right hand to control his left. And besides, we do not even know what is to be sought or found! If we set out with an idea, we will only go in the direction of our idea, a little like the doctor locking himself (and his patient) into a diagnosis: we set up walls beforehand, a trap for something untrappable that will give itself, or it won't, and that's all. The seeker (we should perhaps simply call him the one aspiring to be born) is not concerned with stopping the machinery; he is only concerned with his fire. He makes his fire burn. He is centered in that need in his depths, that poignant call for being amid the great drift, that almost painful thirst in the desert of things and beings passing by and days elapsing as though they did not exist. And his fire burns, grows hotter. And the hotter it grows, the more it consumes the machinery, dissipates the cloud, the vain thoughts, sweeps inside and out. It is the birth of the little clearing. It is the beginning of a clear little flowing that seems to vibrate behind his head, tightening his neck, sometimes even pressing hard then he learns to let it flow freely through him, not to block the passage by resisting, to make himself supple and porous. He lets the flow fill him, the clear little vibration that seems to go on and on and flow without interruption, like a muted little song accompanying him, like a rhythm rising and pulsating endlessly, like two light bird wings beating within his innermost azure and supporting him everywhere, making a sort of tranquil sweetness of view, as though life receded, widened, sank into a clear infinity vibrating with that rhythm alone, that soft, light, transparent cadence alone. And everything starts to become extraordinarily simple.
From within that silence in him a silence that is not empty, not an absence of noise, not a cold and toneless blank, but the smooth breadth of the open sea, an extreme of sweetness that fills him and needs neither words nor thought nor comprehension: it is instant comprehension, the embracing of everything, the absolute here and now. So what could be missing? the seeker, the newborn to be, begins to see the mental play. First, he sees that those thousands of thoughts, gray or blue or paler, do not actually emanate from any brain. Rather, they float in midair, as it were. They are currents, vibrations, which are translated into thoughts in our heads when we capture them, as waves are translated into music or words or images into our television sets; and everything shifts and moves and whirls at different levels, flows universally over our motley little frontiers: captured in English, German, French; colored yellow, black, or blue depending on the height of our antenna; rhythmic, broken, or scattered into a powdering of microscopic thoughts depending on our level of reception; musical, grating, or discordant depending on our clarity or complication. But the seeker, the listener, does not try to pick up one channel or another, to turn the dials of his machine to capture this or that he is tuned in to the infinite, focused on a little flame in the center, so sweet and full, free from interference and preference. He needs only one thing: that that flame in him burn and burn, that that flowing pass again and again through his clearing, without words, without mental meaning, and yet full of meaning and of all meaning, as if it were the very source of meaning. And, at times, without his thinking or wanting it, something comes and strikes him: a little vibration, a little note alighting on his still waters and leaving a whole train of waves. And if he leans a little, to see, stretches toward that little eddy (or that slight note, that point calling out, that rip in the expanse of his being), a thought appears, a feeling, an image or a sensation as though there were really no dividing line between one mode of translation and another; there is just something vibrating, a more or less clear rhythm, a more or less pure light being lit in him, a shadow, a heaviness, an uneasiness, sometimes a glittering little rocket, dancing and light as a powdering of sunshine on the sea, an outpouring of tenderness, a fleeting smile and sometimes a great, solemn rhythm that seems to rise from the depths of time, immense, poignant, eternal, which calls up the unique sacred chant of the world. And It flows effortlessly. There is no need to think or want; the only need is to be again, to burn in unison with a single little flame that is like the very fire of the world. And, when necessary, just for a second, a little note comes knocking at his window, and there comes exactly the right thought, the impulse for the required action, the right or left turn that will open up an unexpected trail and a whole chain of answers and new opportunities. The seeker, the fervent one, then intimately understands the invocation of this five or six-thousand-year-old Vedic poet: O Fire, let there be created in us the correct thought that springs from Thee.24
--
And the bubble grows. It takes in families, peoples, continents; it takes in every color, every wisdom, every truth, and envelops them. There is that breath of light, that note of beauty, the miracle of those few lines caught in architecture or geometry, that instant of truth that heals and delivers, that lovely curve glimpsed in a flash which links that star to this destiny, this asymptote to that hyperbola, this man to that song, this gesture to that effect and more men come, men by the thousands, who come puffing and inflating the little bubble, creating pink and blue and everlasting religions, infallible salvations in the great bubble, summits of light that are the sum of their compounded little hopes, abysses of hell that are the sum of their cherished fears; who come adding this note and that idea, this grain of knowledge and that healing second, this conjunction and that curve, that moment of effectiveness beneath the dust of the myriads of galaxies, chromatic temples, devising unquestionable medicines under the great bubble, irreducible sciences, implacable geometries, charts of illness, charts of recovery, charts of destiny. And everything twists and turns as the doctor willed it under the great fateful Bubble, as the scientist willed it, as that moment of coincidence among the countless myriads of lines in the universe has decided it for the eternity of time. We have seized a minute of the world and made it into the huge amber light that blinds and suffocates us in the great mental bubble. And there is nothing of the kind not one single law, not one single illness, not one single medical or scientific dogma, not one single temple is true,, not one perpetual chart, not one single destiny under the stars there is a tremendous mental hypnotism, and behind, far, far behind, and yet right here, so much here, immediately here, something impregnable, unseizable by any snare, unrestricted by any law, invulnerable to every illness and every hypnotism, unsaved by our salvations, unsullied by our sins, unsullied by our virtues, free from every destiny and every chart, from every golden or black bubble a pure, infallible bird that can recreate the world in the twinkling of an eye. We change our look, and everything changes. Gone is the pretty bubble. It is here if we want.
When the bubble bursts, we begin to enter supermanhood. We begin to enter Harmony. Oh, it does not burst through our efforts; it does not give way through any amount of virtues and meditation, which on the contrary further harden the bubble, give it such a lovely shine, such a captivating light that it indeed takes us captive, and we are all the more prisoners as the more beautiful the bubble is, held more captive by our good than by our evil there is nothing harder in the world then a truth caught in our traps; it does not care at all about our virtues and accumulated merits, our brilliant talents or even our obscure weaknesses. Who is great? Who is small and obscure, or less obscure, beneath the drifting of the galaxies that look like the dust of a great Sun? The Truth, the ineffable Sweetness of things and of each thing, the living Heart of millions of beings who do not know, does not require us to become true to bestow its truth upon us who could become true, who would become other than he is, what are we actually capable of? We are capable of pain and misery aplenty; we are capable of smallness and more smallness, error garbed in a speck of light, knowledge that stumbles into its own quagmires, a good that is the luminous shadow of its secret evil, freedom that imprisons itself in its own salvation we are capable of suffering and suffering, and even our suffering is a secret delight. The Truth, the light Truth, escapes our dark or luminous snares. It runs, breathes with the wind, cascades with the spring, cascades everywhere, for it is the spring of everything. It even murmurs in the depths of our falsehood, winks an eye in our darkness and pokes fun at us. It sets its light traps for us, so light we do not see them; it beckons us in a thousand ways at every instant and everywhere, but it is so fleeting, so unexpected, so contrary to our habitual way of looking at things, so unserious that we walk right past it. We cannot make head or tail out of it; or else we stick a beautiful label on it to trap it in our magic. And it still laughs. It plays along with our magic, plays along with our suffering and geometry; it plays the millipede and the statistician; it plays everything it plays whatever we want. Then, one day, we no longer really want; we no longer want any of all that, neither our gilded miseries, nor our captivating lights nor our good nor our evil, nor any of that whole polychromatic array in which each color changes into the other: hope into despair, effort into backlash, heaven into prison, summit into abyss, love into hate, and each wrested victory into a new defeat, as if each plus attracted its minus, each for its against, and everything forever went forward, backward, right and left, bumping into the wall of the same prison, white or black, green or brown, golden or less golden. We no longer want any of all that; we are only that cry of need in our depths, that call for air, that fire for nothing, that useless little flame that goes along with our every step, walks with our sorrows, walks and walks night and day, in good and evil, in the high and the low and everywhere. And this fire soon becomes like our drop of good in evil, our bit of treasure in misery, our glimmer of light in the chaos, all that remains of a thousand gestures and passing lights, the little nothing that is like everything, the tiny song of a great ongoing misery we no longer have any good or evil, any high or low, any light or darkness, any tomorrow or yesterday. It is all the same, miserable in black and white, but we have that abiding little fire, that tomorrow of today, that murmur of sweetness in the depths of pain, that virtue of our sin, that warm drop of being in the high and the low, day and night, in shame and in joy, in solitude and in the crowd, in approval and disapproval it is all the same. It burns and burns. It is tomorrow, yesterday, now and forever. It is our one song of being, our little note of fire, our paradise in a little flame, our freedom in a little flame, our knowledge in a little flame, our summit of flame in a void of being, our vastness in a tiny singing flame we know not why. It is our companion, our friend, our wife, our bearer, our country it is. And it feels good. Then, one day, we raise our head, and there is no more bubble. There is that Fire burning softly everywhere, recognizing all, loving all, understanding all, and it is like a heaven without trouble; it is so simple that we never thought of it, so tranquil that each drop is like an ocean, so smiling and clear that it goes through everything, enters and slips in everywhere it plays here, plays there, as transparent as air, a nothing that changes everything; and perhaps it is everything.
1.10 - Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
stamped clay floor till the sun rose and the birds began to sing.
All this is now a thing of the past. Only the old folks still
1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"The nature of Brahman cannot be described. About It one remains silent. Who can explain the Infinite in words? However high a bird may soar, there are regions higher still. What do you say?"
PREACHER: "Yes, sir, it is so stated in the Vedanta philosophy."
1.11 - BOOK THE ELEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
The birds, the beasts, and all the savage crew
Which the sweet lyrist to attention drew,
--
They flock, like birds, when in a clustring flight,
By day they chase the boding fowl of night.
--
A bird she seems, but plies her wings in vain,
His hands the fleeting substance still detain:
--
Now dread of birds, and tyrant of the wood.
My make was softer, peace my greatest care;
--
He seem'd a bird already, not a man:
He left us breathless all behind; and now
--
Whose crooked beak and claws the birds controul,
Little of bulk, but of a warlike soul.
--
Another, birds, and beasts, and dragons apes,
And dreadful images, and monster shapes:
--
A bird new-made, about the banks she plies,
Not far from shore, and short excursions tries;
--
That sable bird, he cries, which cuts the flood
With slender legs, was once of royal blood;
1.11 - Higher Laws, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less humane than others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit. As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt,
I have answered, yes,remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education,_make_ them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any vegetable wilderness,hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucers nun, who
1.11 - The Change of Power, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
We have therefore come to a new change of power. A new power such as there has never been since the first anthropoids, a tidal wave of power that has nothing to do with our little philosophical and spiritual meditations of past ages, a worldwide, collective and perhaps universal phenomenon as radically new as the first surge of thought upon the world, when mind took over from the simian order and overthrew all its laws and instinctual mechanisms. But here and this is really the characteristic of the new world being born the power is not a power of abstraction, not a talent for getting a bird's-eye view of things and reducing the scattered data of the world into an equation in order to make a synthesis, which is always wobbly the mind has turned everything into abstraction; it lives in an image of the world, a yellow or blue reflection of the great bubble, like a man inside a glass statue not a discursive and contingent power that only adds and subtracts, not a gathering of knowledge that never makes a whole. It is a direct power of the truth of each instant and each thing harmonized with the total truth of the millions of instants and things, a power to enter the truth of each gesture and each circumstance, which accords with all other gestures and circumstances because Truth is one and the Self is unique, and if this point is touched, everything else is instantly touched, like cell and cell of the same body. It is a tremendous power of concretization of Truth, acting directly upon the same Truth contained in each point of space and each second of time, or rather, compelling each moment, each circumstance, each gesture, each cell of matter to yield its truth, its right note, its own innate power buried under all the layers of our vital and mental accretions a tremendous truing of the world and each being. We could say a tremendous Movement of realization the world is not real! It is a distorted appearance, a mental approximation, which looks more like a nightmare, a black and white translation of something we still have not seized. We do not have our real eyes yet! For, in the end, there is only one reality, and that is the reality of Truth a truth that has grown, that had to protect itself behind walls, to limit and dim itself under one shell or another, one bubble or another, to make itself felt by a caterpillar or a man, then bursts open in its own Sunlight when the wings of the great Self we always were begin to open.
But this change of power, this transition from the indirect and abstract truths of the mind to the direct and concrete Truth of the great Self is obviously not effected on the summits of the Spirit it has nothing to do with mental gymnastics, just as the other power had nothing to do with the ape's skills. It is effected in a most down-to-earth way, in everyday life, in the minuscule, the futility of the moment, which is futile only to us, if we understand that a speck of dust contains as much truth as the totality of all space, and just as much power. It therefore applies itself to utterly material mechanisms. The play takes place in the substance. Therefore it comes up against age-old resistances, against a bubble that is perhaps the first self-defensive bubble of the protoplasm in its water hole. But in the end resistances turn out to have assisted by the resistance much more than they have impeded the intention of the great Creatrix and her Mover,26 and we do not know, finally, if there is a single shadow and pain that does not secretly build up the very power we are trying to manifest. If it emerged too soon, truth would be incomplete, or unbearable for the other animalcules that share our water hole and which would soon disgorge it we are a single human body, we always forget, and our mistakes or slowness are the mistakes and slowness of the world. But if we can win a victory here, in this little point of matter, each of us human beings has a formidable task to carry out, if he understands. Being born in this world is a far more powerful mystery than we had thought.
1.11 - The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
with carved figures of the birds whose shrill clarion heralds the
approach of the sun in the east. On this occasion pigs and dogs are
1.11 - The Three Purushas, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the oceanic stir and change of universal Nature the soul or Purusha is the standing-point, stable, unmoving, unchanging, eternal,nitya sarvagata sthur acaloya santana. In the whole, the Purusha or soul is one,there is One Spirit which supports the stir of the Universe, not many. In the individual the One Purusha has three stages of personality; He is One, but triple, trivt. The Upanishads speak of two birds on one tree, of which one eats the fruit of the tree, the other, seated on a higher branch, does not eat but watches its fellow; one is a or lord of itself, the other is ana, not lord of itself, and it is when the eater looks up and perceives the greatness of the watcher and fills himself with it that grief, death, subjection,in one word my, ignorance and illusion, ceases to touch him. There are two unborn who are male and one unborn who is female; she is the tree with its sweet and bitter fruit, the two are the birds. One of the unborn enjoys her sweetness, the other has put it away from him. These are the two Purushas, the akara, or immutable spirit, and the kara, or apparently mutable, and the tree or woman is Prakriti, universal Energy which the Europeans call Nature. The kara purua is the soul in Nature and enjoying Nature, the akara purua is the soul above Nature and watching her. But there is One who is not seated on the tree but occupies and possesses it, who is not only lord of Himself, but lord of all that is: He is higher than the kara, higher than the akara, He is Purushottama, the Soul one with God, with the All.
These three Purushas are described in the fifteenth chapter of the Gita. There are two Purushas in the world, the akara and the kara,the kara is all creatures, the akara is called kastha, the one on the summit. There is another Purusha, the highest (uttama), called also the Paramatma or Supreme Spirit, who enters into the three worlds, (the worlds of suupti, svapna, jgrat, otherwise the causal, mental and physical planes of existence), and sustains them as their imperishable lord. And in the thirteenth chapter, while drawing the distinction between the lower Purusha and the higher, Sri Krishna defines more minutely the relations of God and the individual soul to Nature. Prakriti is the basic source of cause, effect and agency; the Purusha, of the sense of enjoyment of happiness and grief; for it is the soul in Nature (Purusha in Prakriti) that enjoys the threefold workings of things caused by Nature, (the play of conservation, creation and destruction; reception, reaction and resistance; illumination, misconception and obscuration; calm, work and inertia; all being different manifestations of three fundamental forces called the gunas or essential properties of Prakriti), and it is the attachment of the soul to the gunas that is the cause of births in bodies good and evil. The highest Purusha in this body is the one who watches, who sanctions, who enjoys, who upholds, who is the mighty Lord and the Supreme Soul.
The personality of the Supreme Soul is universal, not individual. Whatever is in all creatures, character, idea, imagination, experience, sensation, motion, is contained by Him as an object of spiritual enjoyment without limiting or determining Him. He is all things at once. Such a universality is necessary to support and supply individual existence, but it cannot be the determining limit of individual existence. Something has to be reserved, something put forward, and this partial manifestation is the individual. It is verily an eternal part of Me that in the world of individual existence becomes the Jiva or individual. The Jiva or individual is kara purua, and between him and the Supreme stands the akara purua, the bird on the summit of the tree, joyous in his own bliss, undisturbed by the play of Nature, impartially watching it, receiving its images on his calm immovable existence without being for a moment bound or affected, eternally self-gathered, eternally free. This akara purua is our real self, our divine unity with God, our inalienable freedom from that which is transient and changing. If it did not exist, there would be no escape from the bondage of life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue; we should be prisoners in a cage without a door, beating our wings against the bars in vain for an exit; life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue would be eternal, ineffugable realities, not temporary rules determining the great game of life, and we should be unwilling actors, not free playmates of God able to suspend and renew the game when we will. It is by realising our oneness with the akara purua that we get freedom from ignorance, freedom from the cords of desire, freedom from the imperative law of works. On the other hand if the akara purua were all, as the Sankhya philosophy contends, there would be no basis for different experience, no varying personality, every individual existence would be precisely like every other individual existence, the development and experience of one soul in Nature an exact replica of the development and experience of another soul. It is the kara purua who is all creatures, and the variety of experience, character and development is effected by a particular part of the universal swabhava or nature of conscious existence in phenomena being attached to a particular individual or Jiva. This is what is meant by saying that it is a part of God which becomes the Jiva. This swabhava, once determined, does not change; but it manifests various parts of itself, at various times, under various circumstances, in various forms of action and various bodies suited to the action or development it has to enjoy. It is for this reason that the Purusha in Nature is called kara, fluid, shifting, although it is not in reality fluid or shifting, but constant, eternal and immutable, santana. It is the variety of its enjoyment in Time, Space and Causality that makes it kara. The enjoyment of the akara purua is self-existent, beyond Time, Space and Causality, aware of but undisturbed by the continual multitudinous flux and reflux of Prakriti. The enjoyment of Purushottama is both in Prakriti and beyond it, it embraces and is the reality of all experience and enjoyment.
Development is determined by the kara purua, but not conducted by him. It is Prakriti, the Universal Energy, that conducts development under the law of cause and effect, and is the true agent. The soul is not the agent, but the lord who enjoys the results of the action of his agent, Prakriti or Nature; only by his attachment to Prakriti he forgets himself and identifies himself with her so as to have the illusion of agency and, by thus forgetting himself, ceases to be lord of himself, becomes subject to Causality, imprisoned in Time and Space, bound by the work which he sanctions. He himself, being a part of God, is made in His image, of one nature with Him. Therefore what God is, he also is, only with limitation, subject to Time, Space and Causality, because he has, of his own will, accepted that bondage. He is the witness, and if he ceased to watch, the drama would stop. He is the source of sanction, and what he declares null and void, drops away from the development. He is the enjoyer, and if he became indifferent, that individual development would be arrested. He is the upholder, and if he ceased to sustain the dhra, the vehicle, it would fall and cease. He is the lord, and it is for his pleasure that Nature acts. He is the spirit, and matter is only his vehicle, his robe, his means of self-expression. But all his sanctions, refusals, behests act not at once, not there and then, not by imperative absolute compulsion, but subject to lapse of time, change of place, working of cause to effect. The lapse may be brief or long, a moment or centuries; the change small or great, here or in another world; the working direct or indirect, with the rapid concentration of processes which men call a miracle or with the careful and laboured evolution in which every step is visibly ordered and deliberate; but so long as the Jiva is bound, his lordship is limited and constitutional, not despotic and absolute. His sanction and signature are necessary, but it is the Lords spiritual and temporal of his mind and body, the Commons in his external environment who do the work of the State, execute, administer, legislate.
1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"One should constantly repeat the name of God. The name of God is highly effective in the Kaliyuga. The practice of yoga is not possible in this age, for the life of a man depends on food. Clap your hands while repeating God's name, and the birds of your sin will fly away.
"One should always seek the company of holy men. The nearer you approach the Ganges, the cooler the breeze will feel. Again, the nearer you go to a fire, the hotter the air will feel.
1.11 - Woolly Pomposities of the Pious Teacher, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Oh, all right, all right! Keep your blouse on! I didn't go for to do it. You're quite right: the Tree of Life is like that, in appearance. But that is the wrong way to look at it. We get our number two, for example, as "that which is common to a bird's legs, a man's ears, twins, the cube root of eight, the greater luminaries, the spikes of a pitchfork," etc. but, having got it, we must not go on to argue that the number two being possessed of this and that property, therefore there must be two of something or other which for one reason or another we cannot count on our fingers.
The trouble is that sometimes we can do so; we are very often obliged to do so, and it comes out correct. But we must not trust any such theorem; it is little more than a hint to help us in our guesses. Example: an angel appears and tells us that his name is MALIEL (MLIAL) which adds to 111, the third of the numbers of the Sun. Do we conclude that his nature is solar? In this case, yes, perhaps, because, (on the theory) he took that name for the very reason that it chimed with his nature. But a man may reside at 81 Silver Street without being a lunatic, or be born at five o'clock on the 5th of May, 1905, and make a very poor soldier.
1.12 - BOOK THE TWELFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Eight were the birds unfledg'd; their mother flew,
And hover'd round her care; but still in view:
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Nine years of labour, the nine birds portend;
The tenth shall in the town's destruction end.
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Had turn'd it to a bird that bears his name.
A truce succeeds the labours of this day,
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Who said he saw a yellow bird arise
From out the piles, and cleave the liquid skies:
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Once first of men below, now first of birds above.
Its author to the story gave belief:
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Chang'd to the bird, that bears the bolt of Jove:
The new-dissembled eagle, now endu'd
1.12 - Brute Neighbors, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
A phbe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge (_Tetrao umbellus_,) which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mothers directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects.
The woods do not yield another such a gem. The traveller does not often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mothers call which gathers them again.
These were my hens and chickens.
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He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under Bristers Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch-pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the wood-cock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off her young, who would already have taken up their march, with faint wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she directed. Or I heard the peep of the young when I could not see the parent bird. There too the turtle-doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the soft white-pines over my head; or the red squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.
I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a _duellum_, but a _bellum_, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each others embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out.
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Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity. A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds.
This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden. The battle which I witnessed took place in the
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In the fall the loon (_Colymbus glacialis_) came, as usual, to moult and ba the in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. When I went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how he would manuvre, he would dive and be completely lost, so that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till the latter part of the day. But I was more than a match for him on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain.
As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than before. He manuvred so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head this way and that, he cooly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it.
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Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the splash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning,perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface.
For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height, from which they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
It is not so much a matter of raising ourselves as of clearing our obstructions. In spring, the rice fields of India stretch before the eye, quiet and green, laden with sweet fragrance, beneath a heavy sky; suddenly, with a single cry, thousands of parrots take flight. Yet we had seen nothing. It is so sudden, lightning-fast like the incredible rapidity with which the consciousness clears up. One mere detail, one sound, one drop of light, and a whole magnificent, overflowing world appears thousands of imperceptible birds in the flash of a wing.
Intuition reproduces, on our scale, the original mystery of a great Gaze: a mighty glance that has seen all, known all, and that delights at seeing bit by bit, slowly, successively, temporally, from a myriad points of view, what It had once wholly embraced in a fraction of Eternity.
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Another practical corollary of the great historical eternity-philosophies, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, is a morality inculcating kindness to animals. Judaism and orthodox Christianity taught that animals might be used as things, for the realization of mans temporal ends. Even St. Francis attitude towards the brute creation was not entirely unequivocal. True, he converted a wolf and preached sermons to birds; but when Brother Juniper hacked the feet off a living pig in order to satisfy a sick mans craving for fried trotters, the saint merely blamed his disciples intemperate zeal in damaging a valuable piece of private property. It was not until the nineteenth century, when orthodox Christianity had lost much of its power over European minds, that the idea that it might be a good thing to behave humanely towards animals began to make headway. This new morality was correlated with the new interest in Nature, which had been stimulated by the romantic poets and the men of science. Because it was not founded upon an eternity-philosophy, a doctrine of divinity dwelling in all living creatures, the modern movement in favour of kindness to animals was and is perfectly compatible with intolerance, persecution and systematic cruelty towards human beings. Young Nazis are taught to be gentle with dogs and cats, ruthless with Jews. That is because Nazism is a typical time-philosophy, which regards the ultimate good as existing, not in eternity, but in the future. Jews are, ex hypothesi, obstacles in the way of the realization of the supreme good; dogs and cats are not. The rest follows logically.
Selfishness and partiality are very inhuman and base qualities even in the things of this world; but in the doctrines of religion they are of a baser nature. Now, this is the greatest evil that the division of the church has brought forth; it raises in every communion a selfish, partial orthodoxy, which consists in courageously defending all that it has, and condemning all that it has not. And thus every champion is trained up in defense of their own truth, their own learning and their own church, and he has the most merit, the most honour, who likes everything, defends everything, among themselves, and leaves nothing uncensored in those that are of a different communion. Now, how can truth and goodness and union and religion be more struck at than by such defenders of it? If you ask why the great Bishop of Meaux wrote so many learned books against all parts of the Reformation, it is because he was born in France and bred up in the bosom of Mother Church. Had he been born in England, had Oxford or Cambridge been his Alma Mater, he might have rivalled our great Bishop Stillingfleet, and would have wrote as many learned folios against the Church of Rome as he has done. And yet I will venture to say that if each Church could produce but one man apiece that had the piety of an apostle and the impartial love of the first Christians in the first Church at Jerusalem, that a Protestant and a Papist of this stamp would not want half a sheet of paper to hold their articles of union, nor be half an hour before they were of one religion. If, therefore, it should be said that churches are divided, estranged and made unfriendly to one another by a learning, a logic, a history, a criticism in the hands of partiality, it would be saying that which each particular church too much proves to be true. Ask why even the best amongst the Catholics are very shy of owning the validity of the orders of our Church; it is because they are afraid of removing any odium from the Reformation. Ask why no Protestants anywhere touch upon the benefit or necessity of celibacy in those who are separated from worldly business to preach the gospel; it is because that would be seeming to lessen the Roman error of not suffering marriage in her clergy. Ask why even the most worthy and pious among the clergy of the Established Church are afraid to assert the sufficiency of the Divine Light, the necessity of seeking only the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit; it is because the Quakers, who have broke off from the church, have made this doctrine their corner-stone. If we loved truth as such, if we sought for it for its own sake, if we loved our neighbour as ourselves, if we desired nothing by our religion but to be acceptable to God, if we equally desired the salvation of all men, if we were afraid of error only because of its harmful nature to us and our fellow-creatures, then nothing of this spirit could have any place in us.
1.13 - And Then?, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But his tranquil silence is not inactivity nothing is inactive in the world, not even the inertia of the clod, even the silence of the immobile Buddha on the verge of Nirvana.33 He is distinguished from others neither by ecstatic meditations atop a festooned gaddhi34 nor by a white beard and immaculate clothing. He attends to the trifling details of life, and no one knows who he is. He cares nothing about being recognized, he who recognizes all. And those trifling details are the minute lever with which he operates on all similar substance throughout the world, for there are no boundaries anywhere, except in our heads and our small imprisoned body life extends infinitely, and this birdcall answers that birdcall, this sorrow, a thousand sorrows. His whole life is a meditation.
Its stillness bears the voice of the world35
1.13 - BOOK THE THIRTEENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Against the birds the shafts due to the fate of Troy.
Yet still he lives, and lives from treason free,
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A real bird, it beats the breezy wind,
Mix'd with a thousand sisters of the kind,
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In fresh array the champion birds appear;
Again, prepar'd with vengeful minds, they come
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Who mark'd the tracts of every bird that flew,
And sure presages from their flying drew)
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All sorts of ven'son; and of birds the best;
A pair of turtles taken from the nest.
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And birds, without their feathers, and their train.
Wool decks the sheep; and Man receives a grace
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
electron (amber) and the sea-hawk, emphasis being laid on the bird's centre.
12 Elenchos, V, 21, 8 (Legge trans., I, p. 168). The ray of light (radius) plays an
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In Mylius the point is called the bird of Hermes. 155 In the
"Novum lumen" it is spirit and fire, the life of the arcane sub-
1.13 - The Kings of Rome and Alba, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
For the eagle was the bird of Jove, the oak was his sacred tree, and
the face of his image standing in his four-horse chariot on the
1.13 - Under the Auspices of the Gods, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
for who could fail to see that their works are admirable precisely because of their lack of contact with life? They all tell us that it is so much more beautiful up there complete with millions of golden birds and divine music than down here. Everything happens above,
but what is happening here? Here, life goes on as usual. Some may 216
1.14 - Descendants of Prithu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Thus glorifying Viṣṇu, and intent in meditation on him, the Pracetasas passed ten thousand years of austerity in the vast ocean; on which Hari, being pleased with them, appeared to them amidst the waters, of the complexion of the full-blown lotus leaf. Beholding him mounted on the king of birds, Garuḍa, the Pracetasas bowed down their heads in devout homage; when Viṣṇu said to them, "Receive the boon you have desired; for I, the giver of good, am content with you, and am present." The Pracetasas replied to him with reverence, and told him that the cause of their devotions was the command of their father to effect the multiplication of mankind. The god, having accordingly granted to them the object of their prayers, disappeared, and they came up from the water.
Footnotes and references:
1.14 - FOREST AND CAVERN, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
"Were I a little bird!" so runs her song,
Day long, and half night long.
1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Once a Vedantic monk came here. He used to dance at the sight of a cloud. He would go into an ecstasy of joy over a rain-storm. He would get very angry if, anyone went near him when he meditated. One day I came to him while he was meditating, and that made him very cross. He discriminated constantly, 'Brahman alone is real and the world is illusory.' Since the appearance of diversity is due to maya, he walked about with a prism from a chandelier in his hand. One sees different colours through the prism; in reality there is no such thing as colour. Likewise, nothing exists, in reality, except Brahman. But there is an appearance of the manifold because of maya, egoism. He would not look at an object more than once, lest he should be deluded by maya and attachment. He would discriminate, while taking his bath, at the sight of birds flying in the. sky. He knew grammar. He stayed here for three days. One day he heard the sound of a flute near the embankment and said that a man who had realized Brahman would go into samdhi at such a sound."
While talking about the monk, the Master showed his devotees the manners and movements of a paramahamsa: the gait of a child, face beaming with laughter, eyes swimming in joy, and body completely naked. Then he again took his seat on the small couch and poured out his soul-enthralling words.
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MANI: "The throat of the chatak bird is pierced with thirst. All around are the waters of the Ganges, the Jamuna, the Saraju, and of innumerable other rivers and lakes; but the bird will not touch any of these. It only looks up expectantly for the rain that falls when the star Svati is in the ascendant."
MASTER: "That means that love for the Lotus Feet of God is alone real, and all else illusory."
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When the cat pounces upon the bird, the bird only squawks and does not say, 'Rma, Rma, Hare-Krishna'.
"It is good to prepare for death. One should constantly think of God and chant His name in solitude during the last years of one's life. If the elephant is put into the stable after its bath it is not soiled again by dirt and dust."
--
"The Avadhuta accepted a bee as another teacher. Bees accumulate their honey by days of hard labour. But they cannot enjoy their honey, for a man soon breaks the comb and takes it away. The Avadhuta learnt this lesson from the bees, that one should not lay things up. Sdhus should depend one hundred per cent on God. They must not gather for the morrow. But this does not apply to the householder. He must bring up his family; therefore it is necessary for him to provide. birds and monks do not hoard. Yet birds also hoard after their chicks are hatched: they collect food in their beaks for their young ones.
"Let me tell you one thing, Vijay. Don't trust a sdhu if he keeps bag, and baggage with him and a bundle of clothes with many knots. I have seen such sdhus under the banyan tree in the Panchavati. Two or three of them were seated there. One was picking over lentils, some were sewing their clothes, and all were gossiping about a feast they had enjoyed in a rich man's house. They said among themselves, 'That rich man spent a hundred thousand rupees on the feast and fed the sdhus sumptuously with cake, sweets, and many such delicious things.' " (All laugh) VIJAY: "It is true, sir. "I have seen such sdhus at Gaya. They are called the lotawalla sdhus of Gaya."
1.14 - ON THE FRIEND, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
still cats and birds. Or at best, cows.
Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell
1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
At the same time, Sri Aurobindo was retrieving the lost Secret, that of the Veda and of all the more or less distorted traditions from Persia to Central America and the Rhine Valley, from Eleusis to the Cathars and from the Round Table to the Alchemists the ancient Secret of all the seekers of perfection. This is the quest for the Treasure in the depths of the cave; the battle against the subconscious forces (ogres, dwarves, or serpents); the legend of Apollo and the Python, Indra and the Serpent Vritta, Thor and the giants, Sigurd and Fafner; the solar myth of the Mayas, the Descent of Orpheus, the Transmutation. It is the serpent biting it own tail. And above all, it is the secret of the Vedic rishis, who were probably the first to discover what they called "the great passage," mahas pathah, (II.24.6) the world of "the unbroken Light," Swar, within the rock of the Inconscient: "Our fathers by their words broke the strong and stubborn places, the Angiras seers252 shattered the mountain rock with their cry; they made in us a path to the Great Heaven, they discovered the Day and the sunworld," (Rig Veda I.71.2) they discovered "the Sun dwelling in the darkness." (III.39.5) They found "the treasure of heaven hidden in the secret cavern like the young of the bird, within the infinite rock." (I.130.3)
Shadow and Light, Good and Evil have all prepared a divine birth in Matter: "Day and Night both suckle the divine Child." 253 Nothing is accursed, nothing is in vain. Night and Day are "two sisters, immortal, with a common Lover (the Sun) . . . common they, though different their forms." (I.113.2.3) At the end of the "pilgrimage" of ascent and descent, the seeker is "a son of the two Mothers (III.55.7): the son of Aditi, the white Mother254 of the superconscious infinite, and the son of Diti, the earthly Mother of "the dark infinite." He possesses "the two births," human and divine, "eternal and in one nest . . . as the Enjoyer of his two wives" (I.62.7): "The contents of the pregnant hill255 (came forth) for the supreme birth . . . a god opened the human doors." (V.45) "Then indeed, they awoke and saw all behind and wide around them, then, indeed, they held the ecstasy that is enjoyed in heaven. In all gated houses256 were all the gods." (Rig Veda IV.1.18)
1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
elephant, horse, bull, bear, white and black birds, fishes, and
snakes. Occasionally one comes across tortoises, snails, spiders,
1.15 - Index, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Hermes, 21, 155, 209, 234, 245; bird
of, 221; ithyphallic, 230; Krioph-
1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The average person will have a conception of these beings corresponding to his power of understanding. In his imagination angels and archangels will have wings, demons and archdemons will have horns. But the person well acquainted with the symbolism will be able to interpret this conception according to true hermetics. A magician knows that an angel has no wings in the literal sense of the word and will see the analogy in these wings: the wings are an analogy to the birds who move about freely in the air above us. The wings are the symbol of what is superior to us, the symbol of agility, liberty, freedom and at the same time the principle of floating above us in the air, the element which is lightest and penetrates everything. The negative beings or demons are usually symbolized by animals with horns and tails, or by creatures that are half human and half animal. Their symbolism, on the contrary, stands for the opposite of what is good: the inferior, incomplete, defective, etc. The question of whether these beings, positive or negative, in their own spheres actually have the shapes attri buted to them by men, and meet each other in these shapes, may be left undecided to the non-initiate. The magician who is capable of visiting these zones by mental and astral travelling and who is able to influence himself with the vibration of these zones so that for the time of his stay he is like an inhabitant of the respective sphere, will have found out that this is not so. Without losing his individuality, he will find quite different .shapes there, which cannot be expressed by words. He will not find personified beings and their leaders there, but powers and vibrations that are analogous to the names and qualities. If he tried to concretise, from his individual point of view, one of these powers, or give it a shape according to his power of understanding, that power would appear in to him in a shape equivalent to his power of symbolic comprehension, no matter whether positive power, alias angel, or negative power, alias demon. A magician working with beings will make the beings perform the causes in that zone in which he exercises his influence. The work of a quabbalist is different. The latter places himself, with his spirit, into the zone in which a certain cause and effect is intended. Though he, too, masters the laws of the zone, he does not need the interposition of the beings for his purposes, but does everything by himself with the help of the quabbalistic word. There will be more about in my next work "The Key to the True Quabbalah".
The principles of the quabbalist's work are quite different. The magician, however, in his present state of development, cannot, for the time being, do otherwise than go on making use of beings up to the point where he has reached a higher degree of development. Each quabbalist must first have become a magician, in order to be able to work differently and more advantageous by later.
1.15 - On incorruptible purity and chastity to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
A fox pretends to be asleep, and the body and demons pretend to be chaste; the former in order to deceive a bird, and the latter in order to destroy a soul.
Throughout your life, do not trust your body,1 and do not rely on it till you stand before Christ.
1.15 - SILENCE, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
When the hen has laid, she must needs cackle. And what does she get by it? Straightway comes the chough and robs her of her eggs, and devours all that of which she should have brought forth her live birds. And just so that wicked chough, the devil, beareth away from the cackling anchoresses, and swalloweth up all the goods they have brought forth, and which ought, as birds, to bear them up towards heaven, if it had not been cackled.
Modernized from the Ancren Riwle
1.15 - The Transformed Being, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
For there is also a Rhythm, which is not a fiction either, any more than that fire or flowing is. They are one and the same thing with a triple face,55 in its individual and universal aspects, in its human condensation or interstellar space, in this rock or that bird. Each thing, each being has its rhythm, as well as each event and the return of the birds from the north. It is the world's great Rite, its indivisible symphony from which we are separated in a little mental body. But that rhythm is there, in the heart of everything and in spite of everything, for without it everything would disintegrate and be scattered. It is the prime bonding agent, the musical network that ties thing together, their innermost vibration, the color of their soul and their note. The ancient Tantric texts said, The Natural Name of anything is the sound which is produced by the action of the moving forces that constitute it.56 It is the real Name of each thing, its power of being, and our real and unique name among the billions of appearances. It is what we are and what is behind all the vocabularies and pseudonyms that science and law inflict upon us and upon the world. And perhaps this whole quest of the world, this tormented evolution, this struggle of things and beings, is a slow quest for its real name, its singular identity, its true music under this enormous parody we are no longer anybody! We are anyone at all in the mental hubbub that passes from one to another; and yet, we are a unique note, a little note which struggles toward its greater music, which rasps and grates and suffers because it cannot be sung. We are an irreplaceable person behind this carnival of false names; we are a Name that is our unique tonality, our little beacon of being, our simple consecration in the great Consecration of the world, and yet which connects us secretly to all other beacons and all other names. To know that Name is to know all names. To name a thing is to be able to recreate it by its music, to seize the similar forces in their harmonic network. The supramental being is first and foremost the knower of the Word the Vedic Rishis spoke of, the priest of the Word,57 the one who does by simply invoking the truth of things, poits he is the Poet of the future age. And his poem is an outpouring of truth whose every fact-creating and matter-creating syllable is attuned to the Great Harmony: a re-creation of matter through the music of truth in matter. He is the Poet of Matter. Through this music, he transmutes; through this music, he communicates; through this music, he knows and loves because, in truth, that Rhythm is the very vibration of the Love that conceived the worlds and carries them forever in its song.
We have forgotten that little note, the simple note that fills hearts and fills everything, as if the world were suddenly bemisted in orange tenderness, vast and profound as a fathomless love, so old, so old it seems to embrace the ages, to well up from the depths of time, from the depths of sorrow, all the sorrows of the earth and all its nights, its wanderings, its millions of painful paths life after life, its millions of departed faces, its extinct and annihilated loves, which suddenly come back to seize us again amid that orange explosion as if we had been all those pains and faces and beings on the millions of paths of the earth, and all their songs of hope and despair, all their lost and departed loves, all their never-extinguished music in that one little golden note which bursts out for a second on the wild foam and fills everything with an indescribable orange communion, a total comprehension, a music of triumphant sweetness behind the pain and chaos, an overflowing instantaneousness, as if we were in the Goal forever.
1.15 - The world overrun with trees; they are destroyed by the Pracetasas, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Soma having concluded, the Pracetasas took Māṛṣā, as he had enjoined them, righteously to wife, relinquishing their indignation against the trees: and upon her they begot the eminent patriarch Dakṣa, who had (in a former life) been born as the son of Brahmā[5]. This great sage, for the furtherance of creation, and the increase of mankind, created progeny. Obeying the command of Brahmā, he made movable and immovable things, bipeds and quadrupeds; and subsequently, by his will, gave birth to females, ten of whom he bestowed on Dharma, thirteen on Kaśyapa, and twenty-seven, who regulate the course of time, on the moon[6]. Of these, the gods, the Titans, the snake-gods, cattle, and birds, the singers and dancers of the courts of heaven, the spirits of evil, and other beings, were born. From that period forwards living creatures were engendered by sexual intercourse: before the time of Dakṣa they were variously propagated, by the will, by sight, by touch, and by the influence of religious austerities practised by devout sages and holy saints.
Maitreya said:-
--
[23]: None of the authorities are more specific on the subject of Aṛṣṭanemis' progeny. In the Mahābhārata this is said to be another name of Kaśyapa. The Bhāgavata substitutes Tārkṣa for this personage, said by the commentator to be likewise another name of Kaśyapa. His wives are, Kadru, Vinatā, Patangi, and Yāminī, mothers of snakes, birds, grasshoppers, and locusts.
[24]: Enumerated in astrological works as brown, red, yellow, and white; portending severally wind, heat, rain, famine.
1.16 - MARTHAS GARDEN, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
There must be such queer birds, however.
MARGARET
1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "The time is ripe for you. The mother bird does not break the shell of the egg until the right time arrives. What I told you is indeed your Ideal."
Sri Ramakrishna again mentioned to M. his spiritual Ideal.
--
Helpless as a bird imprisoned in a cage.
I have done unnumbered wrongs, and aimlessly I roam about, Misled by maya's spell, bereft of wisdom's light, Comfortless as a mother cow whose calf has wandered far away.
1.17 - Geryon. The Violent against Art. Usurers. Descent into the Abyss of Malebolge., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Who, without seeing either lure or bird,
Maketh the falconer say, "Ah me, thou stoopest,"
1.17 - M. AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "That is true. Distress of mind disappears for ever. I shall tell you a few things about yoga. But you see, the mother bird doesn't break the shell until the chick inside the egg is matured. The egg is hatched in the fullness of time. It is necessary to practise some spiritual discipline. The guru no doubt does everything for the disciple; but at the end he makes the disciple work a little himself. When cutting down a big tree, a man cuts almost through the trunk; then he stands aside for a moment, and the tree falls down with a crash.
"The farmer brings water to his field through a canal from the river. He stands aside when only a little digging remains to be done to connect the field with the water. Then the earth becomes soaked and falls of itself, and the water of the river pours into the canal in torrents.
1.17 - On poverty (that hastens heavenwards)., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
8. Let us monks, then, be as trustful as the birds are; for they do not have cares, and they do not collect.
9. Great is he who piously renounces possessions, but holy is he who renounces his will. The one will receive a hundredfold, either in money or in graces, but the other will inherit eternal life.
1.17 - The Burden of Royalty, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
fluttering of the flocks of birds of Linn Saileach after sunset, to
celebrate the feast of the bull of Daire-mic-Daire, to go into Magh
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits.342 Driven to the extreme, Mind can only harden man, not divinize him or even simply give him joy, for the Mind is an instrument of division, and all its hierarchies are inevitably based upon domination, whether religious, moral, political, economic, or emotional, since by its very constitution it is incapable of embracing the totality of human truths and even when it is capable of embracing, it is still incapable of implementation. Ultimately, if collective evolution had nothing better to offer than a pleasant mixture of human and social "greatness," Saint Vincent de Paul and Mahatma Gandhi with a dash of Marxism-Leninism and paid vacations thrown in, then we could not help concluding that such a goal would be even more insipid than the millions of "golden birds" or the string quartets at the summit of individual mental evolution. If so many thousands of years of suffering and striving culminated only in this sort of truncated earthly parade, then Pralaya or any of the other cosmic disintegrations promised by the ancient traditions might not be so bad after all.
If our mental possibilities, even at their zenith, are not adequate,
--
thou art the blue bird and the green and the scarlet-eyed"366 ); and second, that the solar fire in Matter is the material counterpart of the fundamental Agni, which, as Sri Aurobindo stressed in another part of the same conversation, is the builder of forms. To wield Agni is to be able to change forms, to transform Matter: "He tastes not that delight (of the twice-born) who is unripe and whose body has not suffered in the heat of the fire," says the Rig Veda; "they alone are able to bear that and enjoy it who have been prepared by the flame." (IX.83.1) It is the warm gold dust that will transmute its material counterpart, the nuclear dust in our body: The subtle process will be more powerful than the gross, so that a subtle action of Agni will be able to do the 366
Swetaswatara Upanishad IV.3.4
1.18 - The Perils of the Soul, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This
conception has probably left traces in most languages, and it
--
of the bird-soul in a number of odd ways. If the soul is a bird on
the wing, it may be attracted by rice, and so either prevented from
--
the intention clearly is to decoy back the loitering bird-soul and
replace it in the head of its owner.
--
mouth in the form of a white mouse or a little bird, and that to
prevent the return of the bird or animal would be fatal to the
sleeper. Hence in Transylvania they say that you should not let a
--
for the flight of his soul. If in the shape of a bird or an insect
it was caught in the snare, the man would infallibly die. In some
1.19 - Dialogue between Prahlada and his father, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
"It is true that I have been instructed in all these matters by my venerable preceptor, and I have learnt them, but I cannot in all approve them. It is said that conciliation, gifts, punishment, and sowing dissension are the means of securing friends (or overcoming foes)[1]; but I, father-be not angry-know neither friends nor foes; and where no object is to be accomplished, the means of effecting it are superfluous. It were idle to talk of friend or foe in Govinda, who is the supreme soul, lord of the world, consisting of the world, and who is identical with all beings. The divine Viṣṇu is in thee, father, in me, and in all every where else; and hence how can I speak of friend or foe, as distinct from myself? It is therefore waste of time to cultivate such tedious and unprofitable sciences, which are but false knowledge, and all our energies should be dedicated to the acquirement of true wisdom. The notion that ignorance is knowledge arises, father, from ignorance. Does not the child, king of the Asuras, imagine the fire-fly to be a spark of fire. That is active duty, which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge, which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist. Knowing this, I look upon all such acquirement as profitless. That which is really profitable hear me, oh mighty monarch, thus prostrate before thee, proclaim. He who cares not for dominion, he who cares not for wealth, shall assuredly obtain both in a life to come. All men, illustrious prince, are toiling to be great; but the destinies of men, and not their own exertions, are the cause of greatness. Kingdoms are the gifts of fate, and are bestowed upon the stupid, the ignorant, the cowardly, and those to whom the science of government is unknown. Let him therefore who covets the goods of fortune be assiduous in the practice of virtue: let him who hopes for final liberation learn to look upon all things as equal and the same. Gods, men, animals, birds, reptiles, all are but forms of one eternal Viṣṇu, existing as it were detached from himself. By him who knows this, all the existing world, fixed or movable, is to be regarded as identical with himself, as proceeding alike from Viṣṇu, assuming a universal form. When this is known, the glorious god of all, who is without beginning or end, is pleased; and when he is pleased, there is an end of affliction."
On hearing this, Hiraṇyakaśipu started up from his throne in a fury, and spurned his son on the breast with his foot. Burning with rage, he wrung his hands, and exclaimed, "Ho Viprachitti! ho Rāhu! ho Bali[2]! bind him with strong bands[3], and cast him into the ocean, or all the regions, the Daityas and Dānavas, will become converts to the doctrines of this silly wretch. Repeatedly prohibited by us, he still persists in the praise of our enemies. Death is the just retribution of the disobedient." The Daityas accordingly bound the prince with strong bands, as their lord had commanded, and threw him into the sea. As he floated on the waters, the ocean was convulsed throughout its whole extent, and rose in mighty undulations, threatening to submerge the earth. This when Hiraṇyakaśipu observed, he commanded the Daityas to hurl rocks into the sea, and pile them closely on one another, burying beneath their iñcumbent mass him whom fire would not burn, nor weapons pierce, nor serpents bite; whom the pestilential gale could not blast, nor poison nor magic spirits nor incantations destroy; who fell from the loftiest heights unhurt; who foiled the elephants of the spheres: a son of depraved heart, whose life was a perpetual curse. "Here," he cried, "since he cannot die, here let him live for thousands of years at the bottom of the ocean, overwhelmed by mountains. Accordingly the Daityas and Dānavas hurled upon Prahlāda, whilst in the great ocean, ponderous rocks, and piled them over him for many thousand miles: but he, still with mind undisturbed, thus offered daily praise to Viṣṇu, lying at the bottom of the sea, under the mountain heap. "Glory to thee, god of the lotus eye: glory to thee, most excellent of spiritual things: glory to thee, soul of all worlds: glory to thee, wielder of the sharp discus: glory to the best of Brahmans; to the friend of Brahmans and of kine; to Kṛṣṇa, the preserver of the world: to Govinda be glory. To him who, as Brahmā, creates the universe; who in its existence is its preserver; be praise. To thee, who at the end of the Kalpa takest the form of Rudra; to thee, who art triform; be adoration. Thou, Achyuta, art the gods, Yakṣas, demons, saints, serpents, choristers and dancers of heaven, goblins, evil spirits, men, animals, birds, insects, reptiles, plants, and stones, earth, water, fire, sky, wind, sound, touch, taste, colour, flavour, mind, intellect, soul, time, and the qualities of nature: thou art all these, and the chief object of them all. Thou art knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, poison and ambrosia. Thou art the performance and discontinuance of acts[4]: thou art the acts which the Vedas enjoin: thou art the enjoyer of the fruit of all acts, and the means by which they are accomplished. Thou, Viṣṇu, who art the soul of all, art the fruit of all acts of piety. Thy universal diffusion, indicating might and goodness, is in me, in others, in all creatures, in all worlds. Holy ascetics meditate on thee: pious priests sacrifice to thee. Thou alone, identical with the gods and the fathers of mankind, receivest burnt-offerings and oblations[5]. The universe is thy intellectual form[6]; whence proceeded thy subtile form, this world: thence art thou all subtile elements and elementary beings, and the subtile principle, that is called soul, within them. Hence the supreme soul of all objects, distinguished as subtile or gross, which is imperceptible, and which cannot be conceived, is even a form of thee. Glory be to thee, Puruṣottama; and glory to that imperishable form which, soul of all, is another manifestation[7] of thy might, the asylum of all qualities, existing in all creatures. I salute her, the supreme goddess, who is beyond the senses; whom the mind, the tongue, cannot define; who is to be distinguished alone by the wisdom of the truly wise. Om! salutation to Vāsudeva: to him who is the eternal lord; he from whom nothing is distinct; he who is distinct from all. Glory be to the great spirit again and again: to him who is without name or shape; who sole is to be known by adoration; whom, in the forms manifested in his descents upon earth, the dwellers in heaven adore; for they behold not his inscrutable nature. I glorify the supreme deity Viṣṇu, the universal witness, who seated internally, beholds the good and ill of all. Glory to that Viṣṇu from whom this world is not distinct. May he, ever to be meditated upon as the beginning of the universe, have compassion upon me: may he, the supporter of all, in whom every thing is warped and woven[8], undecaying, imperishable, have compassion upon me. Glory, again and again, to that being to whom all returns, from whom all proceeds; who is all, and in whom all things are: to him whom I also am; for he is every where; and through whom all things are from me. I am all things: all things are in me, who am everlasting. I am undecayable, ever enduring, the receptacle of the spirit of the supreme. Brahma is my name; the supreme soul, that is before all things, that is after the end of all. ootnotes and references:
[1]: These are the four Upāyas, 'means of success,' specified in the Amera-koṣa.
1.19 - On Talking, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
1.19 - Tabooed Acts, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
look-out for bones of beasts, birds, or fish, of which the flesh has
been eaten by somebody, in order to construct a deadly charm out of
1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"While Arjuna was aiming his arrow at the eye of the bird, Drona asked him: 'What do you see? Do you see these kings?' 'No, sir', replied Arjuna. 'Do you 'See me'?' 'No.' 'The tree?' 'No.' 'The bird on the tree?' 'No.' 'What do you see then?' 'Only the eye of the bird.'
"He who sees only the eye of the bird can hit the mark. He alone is clever who sees that God is real and all else is illusory. What need have I of other information? Hanuman once remarked: 'I don't know anything about the phase of the moon or the position of the stars. I only contemplate Rma.'
(To M.) "Please buy a few fans for our use here.
1.201 - Socrates, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
state all beasts are in, birds as well as four-footed animals, when they feel the desire to procreate? All sick and in the grip of love, they are concerned first for copulation and then for rearing the offspring, and they are ready to fight it out on their behalf, the weakest against the strongest, even to the death, worn out themselves by hunger in the attempt to feed them, yet ready to do whatever else is necessary. One might suppose that humans do these things because they reason about it. But animals what cause is there for them to be so affected by love?
Can you tell me why?
12.01 - The Return to Earth, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Outwingings of a bird from its bright home,
Her earthly morns were radiant flights of joy.
--
And the birds crying for heart's happiness,
Winged poets of our solitary reign,
--
Who hides himself in bird and beast and man
Sweetly to find himself again by love,
--
And the birds came back winging to their nests,
And day and night leaned to each other's arms.
12.03 - The Sorrows of God, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Son of Man the Avatarsuffers with and suffers for the suffering humanity. The Christ with his cross, Ramakrishna with his cancer, Socrates with the hemlock creeping up and benumbing his limbs and Mohammed being hunted from place to place are familiar and poignant pictures. "Verily, verily, the foxes have their holes, the birds their nests, but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head."
And this is bound to be so, for it is the inexorable law of nature: one who has identified himself with Nature, ignorant nature, of which the ignorant and suffering humanity is part and parcel, one whose body and soul are in unison and union with the body and soul of all beings and creatures, made of the same stuff and substance cannotand wants not to escape the general fate whatever it is. If misery be the badge of the human tribe, the Divine Man, the representative human being must wear that badge.
--
There is a consciousness above and a consciousness below: a consciousness above the ignorant nature and a consciousness within that nature. They are not, however, altogether distinct and incommensurable: it is the same consciousness with a double status as in the well-known figure of the two birds in in the Upanishad.
The Upanishadic standpoint declares that the being above is a silent witness, inactive, immobile, still. The one below is active and tastes of things both bitter and sweet, in other words, it takes part and is involved in the varied life-experiences. Certain lines of spiritual experience find that the being above is the reality, that the other is only an image, a reflection or illusion; and the image looks like a troubled image because it is, as it were, a reflection in the troubled waters of cosmic ignorance: dispel the ignorance, nothing remains but the transcendent Witness-Being, all alone. Such is the position of myvda or illusionism. But there are other lines of experience giving a different view and a different realisation. Both the transcendent and the immanent are form of the same Reality, with different functions, standing on different levels. Thus, as we say, the one below is not a vain image, or a mere reflection, but a descent here in the manifestation, of the reality above. This is also as real as that, the other, only it functions differently. The descent means two things, a double operation, first, the assumption of ignorance: what was light becomes obscurity, what was vast and infinite becomes small and finite, what was straight becomes crooked, what was delight becomes pain, what was one and united becomes many and disparate, what was whole becomes fragmentary. The descending being in one part or facet turns into the exact opposite of what it was originally, it is a denial of itself; secondly, in another aspect or part of itself, in its essence and profundity, it remains unaltered, intact as it were with no change whatsoever in its nature and character. That is the immanent Godhead, the emanation, the extension or projection of the transcendent into the external material appearance. This immanent Godhead has its own function, it is the initiation of the ascent after the descent, in the vast field of an apparent total ignorance it is as it were the catalytic element introducing a reverse movement upward.
1.20 - RULES FOR HOUSEHOLDERS AND MONKS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"To realize God is the one goal of life. While aiming his arrow at the mark, Arjuna said, 'I see only the eye of the bird and nothing else-not the kings, not the trees, not even the bird itself.'
"The realization of God is enough for me. What does it matter if I don't know Sanskrit?
1.20 - Tabooed Persons, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
to hang a live fowl, head uppermost, round his neck; then the bird
is decapitated and its head left hanging round his neck. Soon after
--
beasts, birds, or fish which he has killed or intends to kill. For
the savage commonly conceives animals to be endowed with souls and
1.20 - The Hound of Heaven, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Truth and not through the crooked paths of doubt and error and which delivers the Truth out of the veil of darkness and false appearances; it is through the illuminations discovered by her that the Seer-mind can attain to the complete revelation of the Truth. The rest of the hymn speaks of the rising of the sevenhorsed Sun towards his "field which spreads wide for him at the end of the long journey", the attainment of the swift bird to the
Soma and of the young Seer to that field of the luminous cows, the Sun's ascent to the "luminous Ocean", its crossing over it
1.2.1.03 - Psychic and Esoteric Poetry, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not easy to say whether the poems are esoteric; for these words esoteric and exoteric are rather ill-defined in their significance. One understands the distinction between exoteric and esoteric religion that is to say, on one side, creed, dogma, mental faith, religious worship and ceremony, religious and moral practice and discipline, on the other an inner seeking piercing beyond the creed and dogma and ceremony or finding their hidden meaning, living deeply within in spiritual and mystic experience. But how shall we define an esoteric poetry? Perhaps what deals in an occult way with the occult may be called esoteric e.g., the bird of Fire, Trance, etc. The Two Moons2 is, it is obvious, desperately esoteric. But I dont know whether an intimate spiritual experience simply and limpidly told without veil or recondite image can be called esoteric for the word usually brings the sense of something kept back from the ordinary eye, hidden, occult. Is Nirvana for instance an esoteric poem? There is no veil or symbol there it tries to state the experience as precisely and overtly as possible. The experience of the psychic fire and psychic discrimination is an intimate spiritual experience, but it is direct and simple like all psychic things. The poem which expresses it may easily be something deeply inward, esoteric in that sense, but simple, unveiled and clear, not esoteric in the more usual sense. I rather think, however, the term esoteric poem is a misnomer and some other phraseology would be more accurate.
30 April 1935
1.2.1.06 - Symbolism and Allegory, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Lord, what an incorrigible mentaliser and allegorist you are! If the bird were either consciousness or the psychic or light, it would be an allegory and all the mystic beauty would be gone. A living symbol and a mental allegorical symbol are not the same thing. You cant put a label on the bird of Marvel any more than on the bird of Fire or any other of the fauna or flora or population of the mystic kingdoms. They can be described, but to label them destroys their life and makes them only stuffed specimens in an allegorical museum. Mystic symbols are living things, not abstractions. Why insist on killing them? Jyoti has described the bird and told you all that is necessary about him the rest you have to feel and live inside, not dissect and put the fragments into neatly arranged drawers.
8 August 1936
1.2.1.11 - Mystic Poetry and Spiritual Poetry, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I do not remember the context of the passage you quote from The Future Poetry,1 but I suppose I meant to contrast the veiled utterance of what is usually called mystic poetry with the luminous and assured clarity of the fully expressed spiritual experience. I did not mean to contrast it with the mental clarity which is aimed at usually by poetry in which the intelligence or thinking mind is consulted at each step. The concreteness of intellectual imaged description is one thing and spiritual concreteness is another. Two birds, companions, seated on one tree, but one eats the fruit, the other eats not but watches his fellow that has an illumining spiritual clarity and concreteness to one who has had the experience, but mentally and intellectually it might mean anything or nothing. Poetry uttered with the spiritual clarity may be compared to sunlight poetry uttered with the mystic veil to moonlight. But it was not my intention to deny beauty, power or value to the moonlight. Note that I have distinguished between two kinds of mysticism, one in which the realisation or experience is vague, though inspiringly vague, the other in which the experience is revelatory and intimate, but the utterance it finds is veiled by the image, not thoroughly revealed by it. I do not know to which Tagores recent poetry belongs, I have not read it. The latter kind of poetry (where there is the intimate experience) can be of great power and value witness Blake. Revelation is greater than inspiration it brings the direct knowledge and seeing, inspiration gives the expression, but the two are not always equal. There is even an inspiration without revelation, when one gets the word but the thing remains behind the veil; the transcribing consciousness expresses something with power, like a medium, of which it has not itself the direct sight or the living possession. It is better to get the sight of the thing itself than merely express it by an inspiration which comes from behind the veil, but this kind of poetry too has often a great light and power in it. The highest inspiration brings the intrinsic word, the spiritual mantra; but even where the inspiration is less than that, has a certain vagueness or fluidity of outline, you cannot say of such mystic poetry that it has no inspiration, not the inspired word at all. Where there is no inspiration, there can be no poetry.
10 June 1936
1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"He also tells us a parable. Once a bird sat on the mast of a ship. When the ship sailed through the mouth of the Ganges into the 'black waters' of the ocean, the bird failed to notice the fact. When it finally became aware of the ocean, it left the mast and flew north in search of land. But it found no limit to the water and so returned. After resting awhile it flew south. There too it found no limit to the water. Panting for breath the bird returned to the mast. Again, after resting awhile, it flew east and then west. Finding no limit to the Water in any direction, at last it settled down on the mast of the ship."
MASTER (to the elder Gopal and the other devotees): "As long as a man feels that God is 'there', he is ignorant. But he attains Knowledge when he feels that God is 'here'.
1.21 - Families of the Daityas, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
The family of Krodhavasā were all sharp-toothed monsters[17], whether on the earth, amongst the birds, or in the waters, that were devourers of flesh.
[18]Surabhi was the mother of cows and buffaloes[19]: Irā, of trees and creeping plants and shrubs, and every kind of grass: Khasā, of the Rākṣasas and Yakṣas[20]: Muni, of the Apsarasas[21]: and Aṛṣṭā, of the illustrious Gandharvas. These were the children of Kaśyapa, whether movable or stationary, whose descendants multiplied infinitely through successive generations[22]. This creation, oh Brahman, took place in the second or Svārociṣa Manvantara. In the present or Vaivaswata Manvantara, Brahmā being engaged at the great sacrifice instituted by Varuṇa, the creation of progeny, as it is called, occurred; for he begot, as his sons, the seven Ṛṣis, who were formerly mind-engendered; and was himself the grand-sire of the Gandharvas, serpents, Dānavas, and gods[23].
--
[13]: All the copies read ### which should be, 'Śūkī bore parrots; and Ulūkī, the several sorts of owls? but Ulūkī is nowhere named as one of the daughters of Tāmrā; and the reading may be, 'Owls p. 149 and birds opposed to owls, i. e. crows. The authorities generally coñcur with our text; but the Vāyu has a somewhat different account; or, Śukī, married to Garuḍa, the mother of parrots: Śyenī, married to Aruṇa, mother of Sampāti and Jaṭāyu: Bhāsī, the mother of jays, owls, crows, peacocks, pigeons, and fowls: Kraunchi, the parent of curlews, herons, cranes: and Dhritarāṣtrī, the mother of geese, ducks, teal, and other water-fowl. The three last are also called the wives of Garuḍa.
[14]: Most of the Purāṇas agree in this account; but the Bhāgavata makes Vinatā the wife of Tārkṣa, and in this place substitutes Saramā, the mother of wild animals. The Vāyu adds the metres of the Vedas as the daughters of Vinatā; and the Padma gives her one daughter Saudāminī.
--
[17]: By Danṣṭriṇa some understand, serpents, some Rākṣasas; but by the context carnivorous animals, birds, and fishes seem intended. The Vāyu makes Krodhavaśā the mother of twelve daughters, Mrigī and others, from whom all wild animals, deer, elephants, monkeys, tigers, lions, dogs, also fishes, reptiles, and Bhūtas and Piśācas, or goblins, sprang.
[18]: One copy only inserts a half stanza here; "Krodhā was the mother of the Piśācas;" which is an interpolation apparently from the Matsya or Hari Vaṃśa. The Padma P., second legend, makes Krodhā the mother of the Bhūtas; and Piśācā, of the Piśācās.
1.21 - Tabooed Things, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
notion that if birds find a person's cut hair, and build their nests
with it, the person will suffer from headache; sometimes it is
--
bury it to prevent the birds from lining their nests with it, which
would cause the heads from which the hair came to ache.
1.22 - ADVICE TO AN ACTOR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Actor: "Yes, sir. Many birds are trapped in a net; if they all fly together and drag the net in one direction, then many of them may be saved. But that doesn't happen if they try to fly in different directions.
"One also sees in a theatrical performance a person keeping a pitcher of water on his head and at the same time dancing about."
1.22 - Ciampolo, Friar Gomita, and Michael Zanche. The Malabranche quarrel., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Said: "Stand aside there, thou malicious bird."
"If you desire either to see or hear,"
1.22 - Dominion over different provinces of creation assigned to different beings, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
WHEN Prithu was installed in the government of the earth, the great father of the spheres established sovereignties in other parts of the creation. Soma was appointed monarch of the stars and planets, of Brahmans and of plants, of sacrifices and of penance. Vaisravaṇa was made king over kings; and Varuṇa, over the waters. Viṣṇu was the chief of the Ādityas; Pāvaka, of the Vasus; Dakṣa, of the patriarchs; Vāsava, of the winds. To Prahlāda was assigned dominion over the Daityas and Dānavas; and Yama, the king of justice, was appointed the monarch of the Manes (Pitris). Airāvata was made the king of elephants; Garuḍa, of birds; Indra, of the gods. Uccaiśravas was the chief of horses; Vṛṣabha, of kine. Śeṣa became the snake-king; the lion, the monarch of the beasts; and the sovereign of the trees was the holy fig-tree[1]. Having thus fixed the limits of each authority, the great progenitor Brahmā stationed rulers for the protection of the different quarters of the world: he made Sudhanwan, the son of the patriarch Viraja, the regent of the east; Sa
khapāda, the son of the patriarch Kardama, of the south; the immortal Ketumat, the son of Rajas, regent of the west; and Hiraṇyaroman, the son of the patriarch Parjanya, regent of the north[2]. By these the whole earth, with its seven continents and its cities, is to the present day vigilantly protected, according to their several limits.
All these monarchs, and whatever others may be invested with authority by the mighty Viṣṇu, as instruments for the preservation of the world; all the kings who have been, and all who shall be; are all, most worthy Brahman, but portions of the universal Viṣṇu. The rulers of the gods, the rulers of the Daityas, the rulers of the Dānavas, and the rulers of all malignant spirits; the chief amongst beasts, amongst birds, amongst men, amongst serpents; the best of trees, of mountains, of planets; either those that now are, or that shall hereafter be, the most exalted of their kind; are but portions of the universal Viṣṇu. The power of protecting created things, the preservation of the world, resides with no other than Hari, the lord of all. He is the creator, who creates the world; he, the eternal, preserves it in its existence; and he, the destroyer, destroys it; invested severally with the attributes of foulness, goodness, and gloom. By a fourfold manifestation does Janārddana operate in creation, preservation, and destruction. In one portion, as Brahmā, the invisible assumes a visible form; in another portion he, as Marīci and the rest, is the progenitor of all creatures; his third portion is time; his fourth is all beings: and thus he becomes quadruple in creation, invested with the quality of passion. In the preservation of the world he is, in one portion, Viṣṇu; in another portion he is Manu and the other patriarchs; he is time in a third; and all beings in a fourth portion: and thus, endowed with the property of goodness, Puruṣottama preserves the world. When he assumes the property of darkness, at the end of all things, the unborn deity becomes in one portion Rudra; in another, the destroying fire; in a third, time; and in a fourth, all beings: and thus, in a quadruple form, he is the destroyer of the world. This, Brahman, is the fourfold condition of the deity at all seasons.
Brahmā, Dakṣa, time, and all creatures are the four energies of Hari, which are the causes of creation. Viṣṇu, Manu and the rest, time, and all creatures are the four energies of Viṣṇu, which are the causes of duration. Rudra, the destroying fire, time, and all creatures are the four energies of Janārddana that are exerted for universal dissolution. In the beginning and the duration of the world, until the period of its end, creation is the work of Brahmā, the patriarchs, and living animals. Brahmā creates in the beginning; then the patriarchs beget progeny; and then animals incessantly multiply their kinds: but Brahmā is not the active agent in creation, independent of time; neither are the patriarchs, nor living animals. So, in the periods of creation and of dissolution, the four portions of the god of gods are equally essential. Whatever, oh Brahman, is engendered by any living being, the body of Hari is cooperative in the birth of that being; so whatever destroys any existing thing, movable or stationary, at any time, is the destroying form of Janārddana as Rudra. Thus Janārddana is the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer of the whole world-being threefold-in the several seasons of creation, preservation, and destruction, according to his assumption of the three qualities: but his highest glory[3] is detached from all qualities; for the fourfold essence of the supreme spirit is composed of true wisdom, pervades all things, is only to be appreciated by itself, and admits of no similitude.
--
There are two states of this Brahma; one with, and one without shape; one perishable, and one imperishable; which are inherent in all beings. The imperishable is the supreme being; the perishable is all the world. The blaze of fire burning on one spot diffuses light and heat around; so the world is nothing more than the manifested energy of the supreme Brahma: and inasmuch, Maitreya, as the light and heat are stronger or feebler as we are near to the fire, or far off from it, so the energy of the supreme is more or less intense in the beings that are less or more remote from him. Brahma, Viṣṇu, and Śiva are the most powerful energies of god; next to them are the inferior deities, then the attendant spirits, then men, then animals, birds, insects, vegetables; each becoming more and more feeble as they are farther from their primitive source. In this way, illustrious Brahman, this whole world, although in essence imperishable and eternal, appears and disappears, as if it was subject to birth and death.
The supreme condition of Brahma, which is meditated by the Yogis in the commencement of their abstraction, as invested with form, is Viṣṇu, composed of all the divine energies, and the essence of Brahma, with whom the mystic union that is sought, and which is accompanied by suitable elements, is effected[7] by the devotee whose whole mind is addressed to that object. This Hari, who is the most immediate of all the energies of Brahma, is his embodied shape, composed entirely of his essence; and in him therefore is the whole world interwoven; and from him, and in him, is the universe; and he, the supreme lord of all, comprising all that is perishable and imperishable, bears upon him all material and spiritual existence, identified in nature with his ornaments and weapons.
1.22 - Tabooed Words, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
referred to as birds. Should a child so far forget itself as to
mention one of the distant ones by name, the mother would rebuke it,
saying, "Don't talk of the birds who are in the heavens." Among the
Bangala of the Upper Congo, while a man is fishing and when he
--
might call a crow a _waa;_ everybody had to speak of the bird as a
_narrapart._ When a person who rejoiced in the title of Ringtail
--
quality, such as a bird, a beast, a tree, a plant, a colour, and so
on. Now, whenever one of these common words forms the name or part
1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "My arm was broken in order to destroy my ego to its very root. Now I cannot find my ego within myself any more. When I search for it I see God alone. One can never attain God without completely getting rid of the ego. You must have noticed that the chatak bird has its nest on the ground but soars up very high.
"Captain says I haven't acquired any occult powers because I eat fish. I tremble with fear lest I should acquire those powers. If I should have them, then this place would be turned into a hospital or a dispensary. People would flock here and ask me to cure their illness. Is it good to have occult powers?"
--
"Captain makes a nice remark in this connexion. He says that when a bird gets tired of soaring very high it perches on a tree and rests. First is the formless God, and then comes God with form.
"I shall have to go to your house once. I saw in a vision that the houses of Adhar, Balarm, and Surendra were so many places for our forgathering. But it makes no difference to me whether they come here or not."
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
"Each is great in its own way. What is Kambar's greatness when compared with a bird which builds its nest so fine, the worms which
232
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Each is great in its own way. What is Kambars greatness when compared with a bird which builds its nest so fine, the worms which
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi give lac, the honey bee which builds the comb, the ants which build cities, and the spider its web?
--
Some days later the youth threw away his sacred thread and appeared before Sri Bhagavan with his limbs shaking, which the young man later described as his Bliss (ananda). Sri Bhagavan told him not to make a habit of sitting in front of Him in the hall and ordered him out. Furthermore He continued: Even a fledgling is protected by the parent birds only till such time it grows its wings. It is not protected for ever. Similarly with devotees. I have shown the way. You must now be able to follow it up and find peace wherever you are.
The young man thinks that Sri Bhagavan gave him upadesa in the following words: The self (i.e. ego) must be subdued by oneself.
--
Nakkirar was doing tapas on the bank of a tirtha. A leaf fell down from a tree; half the leaf touched the water and the other half was on the ground. Suddenly the water-half became a fish and the land-half became a bird. Each of them was united to the other by the leaf and struggled to go into its own element. Nakkirar was watching it in wonder and suddenly a spirit came down from above and carried him away to a cave where were already 999 captives all of whom were tapo bhrashta (those who had fallen away from their austerities).
D.: Was Nakkirar a tapo bhrashta?
1.24 - PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
PUNDIT: "You are right, sir. The scripture says the same thing. There is in the Mahabharata the story of the 'pious hunter' and the 'chaste woman'. Once a hermit was disturbed in his meditation by a crow. When he cast an angry glance at the bird, it was reduced to ashes. The hermit said to himself: 'I have destroyed the crow by a mere glance. I must have made great progress in spiritual life.' One day he went to a woman's house to beg his food. She was devoted to her husb and and served him day and night; she provided him with water to wash his feet and even dried them with her hair. When the hermit knocked at her door for alms, she was serving her husb and and could not open the door at once. The hermit, in a fit of anger, began to curse her. The chaste woman answered from the inner apartments: 'I am not your crow. Wait a few minutes, sir. After finishing my service to my husb and I shall give you my attention.' The hermit was very much surprised to find that this simple woman was aware of his having burnt the crow to ashes. He wanted her to give him spiritual instruction. At her bidding he went to the 'pious hunter' at Benares. This hunter sold meat, but he also served his parents day and night as embodiments of God. The hermit said to himself in utter amazement: 'Why, he is a butcher and a worldly man! How can he give me the Knowledge of Brahman?' But the hunter was a knower of Brahman and had acquired divine knowledge through the performance of his worldly duties. The hermit was illumined by the instruction of the 'pious hunter'."
The Master was about to take his leave. He was standing at the door of the next house, where Ishan's father-in-law lived. Ishan and the other devotees stood by the Master.
--
"Live in the world like a waterfowl. The water clings to the bird, but the bird shakes it off. Live in the world like a mudfish. The fish lives in the mud, but its skin is always bright and shiny.
"The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe. Discard the make-believe and take the truth."
1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"The rishis of old had timid natures. They were easily frightened. Do you know their attitude? It was this: 'Let me somehow get my own salvation; who cares for others?' A hollow piece of drift-wood somehow manages to float; but it sinks if even a bird sits on it. But Nrada and sages of his kind are like a huge log that not only can float across to the other shore but can carry many animals and other creatures as well. A steamship itself crosses the ocean and also carries people across.
The vijnni is fearless and joyous
--
PUNDIT: "But one can hurt a crocodile by throwing a spear into its belly." (All laugh.) MASTER (smiling): "What good is there in reading a whole lot of scriptures? What good is there in the study of philosophy? What is the use of talking big? In order to learn archery one should first aim at a banana tree, then at a reed, then at a wick, and last at a flying bird. At the beginning one should concentrate on God with form.
"Then there are devotees who are beyond the three gunas. They are eternally devoted to God, like Nrada. These devotees behold Krishna as Chinmaya, all Spirit, His Abode as Chinmaya, His devotee as Chinmaya. To them God is eternal, His Abode is eternal, His devotee is eternal.
--
MASTER: "Yesterday I came to know Baburam's inner nature. That is why I have been trying so hard to persuade him to live with me. The mother bird hatches the egg in proper time. Boys like Baburam are pure in heart. They have not yet fallen into the clutches of 'woman and gold'. Isn't that so?"
M: "It is true, sir. They are still stainless."
1.25 - DUNGEON, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Then was I a beautiful bird o' the wood;
Fly away! Fly away!
1.25 - On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual feeling., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
51. birds fear the sight of a hawk, and those who practise humility fear the sound of argument.
52. Many have received salvation without prophecies and lights, without signs and wonders; but without humility no one will enter the marriage chamber, because humility is the guardian of these gifts, and without her they will bring frivolous people to ruin.
1.26 - PERSEVERANCE AND REGULARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again.
St. John of the Cross
1.27 - AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"A devotee who has really and truly renounced all for God is like the chatak bird. It will drink only the rain-water that falls when the star Svati is in the ascendant. It will rather die of thirst than touch any other water, though all around there may lie seven oceans and rivers full to the brim with water. An all-renouncing devotee will not touch 'woman and gold'. He will not keep 'woman and gold' near him lest he should feel attached."
ADHAR: "But Chaitanya, too, enjoyed the world."
--
Like the mother bird brooding over her chicks, Sri Ramakrishna was alert to protect his devotees.
Adhar and Niranjan went out on the porch to take refreshments. Presently they returned to the room.
1.27 - On holy solitude of body and soul., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
50. When you come out of solitude, guard what you have gathered. When the cage is opened, the birds fly out. And then we shall find no further profit in solitude.
51. A small hair disturbs the eye, and a small care ruins solitude; because solitude is the banishment of thoughts and ideas, and the rejection of even laudable cares.
1.28 - The Killing of the Tree-Spirit, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
of frogs and birds. The marvellous change which passes over the face
of nature at such times has been compared even by European observers
1.29 - The Myth of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
prominently than beasts and birds. Yet the two sides of life, the
vegetable and the animal, were not dissociated in the minds of those
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Some days later the youth threw away his sacred thread and appeared before Sri Bhagavan with his limbs shaking, which the young man later described as his Bliss (ananda). Sri Bhagavan told him not to make a habit of sitting in front of Him in the hall and ordered him out. Furthermore He continued: Even a fledgling is protected by the parent birds only till such time it grows its wings. It is not protected for ever. Similarly with devotees. I have shown the way. You must now be able to follow it up and find peace wherever you are.
273
--
Nakkirar was doing tapas on the bank of a tirtha. A leaf fell down from a tree; half the leaf touched the water and the other half was on the ground. Suddenly the water-half became a fish and the land-half became a bird. Each of them was united to the other by the leaf and struggled to go into its own element. Nakkirar was watching it in wonder and suddenly a spirit came down from above and carried him away to a cave where were already 999 captives all of whom were tapo bhrashta (those who had fallen away from their austerities).
D.: Was Nakkirar a tapo bhrashta?
1.3.03 - Quiet and Calm, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The difference between a vacant mind and a calm mind is this, that when the mind is vacant, there is no thought, no conception, no mental action of any kind, except an essential perception of things without the formed idea; but in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace. Even if a thousand images or the most violent events pass across it, the calm stillness remains as if the very texture of the mind were a substance of eternal and indestructible peace. A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to act, even incessantly and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillness - originating nothing from itself but receiving from Above and giving it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly, dispassionately, though with the joy of the Truth and the happy power and light of its passage.
Calm
1.34 - Fourth Division of the Ninth Circle, the Judecca Traitors to their Lords and Benefactors. Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. The Chasm of Lethe. The Ascent., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Such as befitting were so great a bird;
Sails of the sea I never saw so large.
1.39 - Prophecy, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Mixed Bag of Early birds.
An Englishman, a Jew, an Indian, a Negro, a Malayan no, it's not one of those saloon-bar jokes assembled on the Embankment, by Cleopatra's Needle, soon after 6 a.m. yesterday.
1.3 - Mundaka Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
men and beasts and birds, the main breath and downward
breath, and rice and barley, and askesis and faith and Truth,
--
1. Two birds, beautiful of wing, close companions, cling to one
common tree: of the two one eats the sweet fruit of the tree,
--
2. The soul is the bird that sits immersed on the one common
tree; but because he is not lord he is bewildered and has
14.08 - A Parable of Sea-Gulls, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
On a sea-coasta fairly large tract of land opening out on the vast sea and the infinite skyamong rocks and cliffs there lived a flock of sea-gulls, rather flocks of sea-gulls,for they were almost innumerable, in hundreds and perhaps in thou sandsa whole colony of them. Have you seen a sea-gull, at least in a picture? This beautiful bird, spotlessly white end to end, and when in flight with outspread wings and its delicate supple body so pleasing, so wonderful to look at! Do you know their routine, their daily preoccupations? Of course, the first thing in the morning for them to do was to fly out and look for food. Their food is naturally fishes. So these birds used to fly a certain distance out to sea and from above look down and spot the swimming fishes below and dart down, catch them and fly up again; then they came back to their places and shared their catch among themselves. Naturally there was a good deal of scrambling and fighting but that was part of the life. And there after, most of the time, they passed in dozing or sleeping or at times flying out once again to sea for a forage. And of course there was the item of mating and begetting children. That was their life and they continued it day after day, year after year. They were, I suppose, quite content with the life they were leading.
Now, it happened that one of these sea-gulls thought otherwise. Yes, a thought entered into him. Why should not a thought enter into the head of a bird? A new thought, a faith did enter into the heart of a human child as reported in the Upanishads, so this bird with his questioning thought found the ordinary bird-life quite uninteresting. He wondered: why lay so much stress upon food and sleep and quarrelling and increasing the population? He found flying itself a beautiful adventure. Why fly just a few miles, only to come back, flop down and roost? Why not fly out, out into the vast sea abroad and the limitless sky overhead? Having wings, he thought they were strong enough to fly him far and high; he would try.
So from that time he separated himself from his tribe and went out on his own for the joy of long journeys and long flights. It was pure delight for him and he increased the distance of his flight from day to day, from a hundred to a thousand miles or more. And he found himself gradually incredibly stronger in body, unbelievably happy within. Food or sleep or rest did not trouble him anymore. When he was thus practising this new adventure, two or three of his comrades noticed it and became interested. So these approached him and asked what the matter was. He explained to them what he was about, he was not happy with the old common life, he wanted a new, broader, more vigorous life. The newcomers were allured by the project and they wanted to join the new adventure. They were gladly accepted.
So these three or four friends joined together and resolved to start a new life. These new-comers were first taught the lessons of long flightperhaps now they could fly some thousands of miles at a stretch without rest. One day the pioneer birdlet us give him a name "Shobhanaka", la manire de Panchatantra e.g. Damanaka, Karataka, Bhasunaka etc. for he was very fine to look at, so Shobhanaka told his comrades: Long flight is not sufficient, not only horizontal flight but a vertical flight should be also our asset. So they attempted to fly up and up, up into the clouds and beyond as far as possible, to the extent that earth's atmosphere and gravitation would allow. They achieved this feat also and in doing so they pondered upon another mystery. Shobhanaka said: long-distance flight whether horizontal or vertical is not sufficient, we must increase our speed, the speed of flight. And the way to increase the speed is to speed down from abovedart headlong towards earth. In this way in place of a bare fifty or sixty miles per hour they calculated they could attain the speed of sound. To break the sound-barrier is indeed an achievement for bodily speed. Now they wanted to go farther on. Added to the flight they now learnt all kinds of acrobatic movements of the bodyexactly as expert pilots do with their aeroplane, that is to say, with their gathering speed they went through all movements of vaulting, somersaulting, twirling, twisting and so on. They made their bodies a wonderful mass of supple energy and even radiant energy.
At this point one day all on a sudden they saw at a distance a bird of their kind but somewhat different, more beautiful, more glorious. They approached him, or perhaps he approached them and said, I was observing you and I found what you were doing is wonderful. Your achievement is really marvellous. But there is something more yet to do. I have come to teach you what you have still to do for your true fulfilment. Till now you were moving on the same plane, all your progress has been made in one dimension. I will explain:"You have learnt 'moving' flight. You have to learn now un-moving or still flight. This is a contradiction in terms? In the new dimension you have to reconcile or unify the contradictions. Listen carefully, I give you the mystery of still flying. It is getting as I said into another dimension of space, or another kind of spaceit is better I give you a practical demonstration." "Come," he said addressing Shobhanaka, "Stand here on your legs straight, firm and unmovingby my side. Normally when you fly, first you have the will to fly, then that will you put forth into your body, into your muscles and nerves spreading it out as it were into your wings, making your wings mobile. Now what you have to do is an opposite movement. Instead of sending your will and energy outward, as if throwing it out, you gather the will and energy within yourself, that is, concentrate within you your will and energy instead of spilling them out. The whole thing depends upon this concentration, this gathering up your energy and will on one point within you and then just look, that is to say, with your thought or consciousness, at the point where you ant to go. It is like a strung-bow with its arrow pointing at the target. And then let yourself go as it were. Indeed if your concentration is perfect you will leap straight into your target without, as it would seem, passing through the intermediary stagestelescoping, as it were, all the intervening steps into one single stepa long jump at a lightning speed. Now try to do what I told you. Feel what I am doing."
Miraculous it was, Shobhanaka saw the Elder-one who had been by his side but now, there afar on another cliff. At the next moment the expert flyer was back at his place as before by the side of his pupil. The pupil exclaimed in admiration: "It is an impossibility, but since you have done it I will try to do it." "Yes", the Elder-one said, "I too did not succeed in one day or in one attempt. It takes some time, even a long time. But persistence, perseverance and faith undiscouraged will bring you the victory."
--
A demonstration was being given by Shobhanaka of the art of flying, of all the difficult and artistic modes of flying. He was showing the speed with which one is capable of flying, literally lightning speed. A large crowd of spectators had gathered around an arena-like opening and was intently observing all the wonderful and almost impossible acrobatics and calis thenics. They suddenly saw the bird from one far corner of the sky speeding across to the other end and, as I said, beating lightning's speed, but suddenly one stray bird happened to be there up directly in the way of the speeding bird. So in order to avoid dashing against the intruder, Shobhanaka swerved around but hurled itself straight upon... Oh! what horror! a cry of pity and pain rose up from the crowdin swerving away from the bird on his path Shobhanaka in his incredible speed dashed and crashed against a cliff that was blocking the sides. Everyone thought, that was the end of the poor flying expert, he must have been reduced to mere pulp now. But no, what a miracle! Hale and hearty he was there flying up slowly and at ease, then gracefully descending upon the earth as if nothing had happened. Well, his body did not seem to be made of flesh and bone but of some ethereal substance, so supple, so elastic, so resilient that nothing offered any resistance to it. It could pass through like a beam of the invisible light.
The upshot was that the old community gradually changed its habits slowly but inevitably, they took to adventure and far-flights, over the unknown waves into the infinite blue. Many became experts and given to this new life they formed gradually a community by themselves and found for themselves another habitat nearby. Those old experts, Shobhanaka's group, the masters, were with them as teachers and guides. And thus new guides and new teachers arose and community after community leading this new life, a life in which the old and unclean habits were eliminated and there was a life of exquisite beauty and harmony among all.
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
God-realised souls. Such a contact is the most effective means for a rapid spiritual evolution of the soul. In fact, the grace of saints is an invaluable aid for sadhana and without it the condition of the aspirant is like a bird beating in vain its wings against the bars of the cage for freedom. Saints are the saviours and liberators.
The Hindu conception of a saint is that he is the very embodiment of
--
mantra. Two birds, exactly alike, arise simultaneously.
When I was staying in the Skandasramam I sometimes used to go out
1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
God-realised souls. Such a contact is the most effective means for a rapid spiritual evolution of the soul. In fact, the grace of saints is an invaluable aid for sadhana and without it the condition of the aspirant is like a bird beating in vain its wings against the bars of the cage for freedom. Saints are the saviours and liberators.
The Hindu conception of a saint is that he is the very embodiment of
1.46 - The Corn-Mother in Many Lands, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
throat of the bird, from the maw of the ape, from the throat of the
elephant. Come from the sources of rivers and their mouths. Come
--
Each sort of bird represented a special kind of crop cultivated by
the Indians: the wild goose stood for the maize, the wild swan for
--
the maize and to those birds which they regarded as symbols of the
fruits of the earth, and they prayed to them in autumn saying,
--
have something for the winter!" In autumn, when the birds were
flying south, the Indians thought that they were going home to the
1.47 - Lityerses, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning
Star had sent to them as its messenger. The bird was stuffed and
preserved as a powerful talisman. They thought that an omission of
1.48 - The Corn-Spirit as an Animal, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the bird had been bound, and scattering the feathers together with
the seed over the field, the identity of the bird with the corn is
again emphasised, and its quickening and fertilising power, as an
--
plainly, in the custom of burying the bird in the ground, and
cutting off its head (like the ears of corn) with the scythe.
--
primitive man the simple appearance of an animal or bird among the
corn is probably enough to suggest a mysterious link between the
1.50 - Eating the God, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
killing each of the birds he poured out a third of the beer. Then
his wife boiled the fowls in a new pot which had never been used
1.51 - Homeopathic Magic of a Flesh Diet, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, etc., principally because
they argue that the heavier meats make them unwieldy, like the
--
eat no beast, bird, or fish that ran, flew, or swam slowly, lest by
partaking of its flesh they should lose their ability and be unable
--
exceedingly wise, and that in speech the bird is most eloquent.
Therefore whenever he is killed, he should be at once torn open and
--
Central Asia will give it the tongues of certain birds to eat. A
North American Indian thought that brandy must be a decoction of
1.52 - Killing the Divine Animal, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
celebrated a great festival called _Panes_ or bird-feast in its
honour. The day selected for the festival was made known to the
--
represent the god Chinigchinich. When the temple was ready, the bird
was carried into it in solemn procession and laid on an altar
--
out in paint and feathers, danced round their adored bird. These
ceremonies being concluded, they seized upon the bird and carried it
to the principal temple, all the assembly uniting in the grand
--
procession. Arrived at the temple, they killed the bird without
losing a drop of its blood. The skin was removed entire and
--
been changed into a bird by the god Chinigchinich. They believed
that though they sacrificed the bird annually, she came to life
again and returned to her home in the mountains. Moreover, they
thought that "as often as the bird was killed, it became multiplied;
because every year all the different Capitanes celebrated the same
feast of _Panes,_ and were firm in the opinion that the birds
sacrificed were but one and the same female."
--
divine bird. The notion of the life of a species as distinct from
that of an individual, easy and obvious as it seems to us, appears
--
and ask them to defend the people from evil. Yet they offer the bird
in sacrifice, and when they are about to do so they pray to him,
saying: "O precious divinity, O thou divine bird, pray listen to my
words. Thou dost not belong to this world, for thy home is with the
--
prayer should be addressed to the bird: "O divine hawk, thou art an
expert hunter, please cause thy cleverness to descend on me." If a
--
Aino "are firmly convinced that the spirits of birds and animals
killed in hunting or offered in sacrifice come and live again upon
1.53 - The Propitation of Wild Animals By Hunters, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
species of black birds, resembling our black birds, because the
people believe that the parent birds would avenge the wrong by
causing a stormy wind to blow, which would destroy the harvest.
--
wing of a strange bird, and that they did nothing but let the arrow
go. They do all this because they believe that the wandering ghost
--
of the camp. Here he sets the birds in a row on the ground, and
propping up their heads on a stick, puts a piece of dried meat in
--
when they have killed one of these birds and are bringing home the
carcase to the village, they take steps to outwit the resentful
--
Indians pluck feathers from the breast of the bird and strew them at
intervals along the track. At every bunch of feathers the ghost
--
securing the crops against all birds, beasts, and insects, is this:
after he has finished sowing, the sower goes once more from end to
--
Sea Dyaks or Ibans of Sarawak are much pestered by birds and
insects, they catch a specimen of each kind of vermin (one sparrow,
1.54 - Types of Animal Sacrament, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the little king, the king of birds, the hedge king, and so forth,
and has been reckoned amongst those birds which it is extremely
unlucky to kill. In England it is supposed that if any one kills a
--
to hunt the wren, and having found one of these birds they killed it
and fastened it to the top of a long pole with its wings extended.
--
singing an Irish catch, importing him to be the king of all birds."
Down to the present time the "hunting of the wren" still takes place
--
"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze;
--
first to strike down one of these birds was proclaimed King. Then
they returned to the town in procession, headed by the King, who
1.55 - The Transference of Evil, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
prayer that the curse may fall upon the bird and fly away with it.
"The entrance into a house of an animal which does not generally
--
of misfortune. If a wild bird flies into a house, it must be
carefully caught and smeared with oil, and must then be released in
--
out one of the young birds and keep it beside you for three days.
Then go back into the wood and set the snipe free. The fever will
--
fowl in the church. If the bird died, the sickness was supposed to
have been transferred to it from the man or woman, who was now rid
--
remembered quite well to have seen the birds staggering about from
the effects of the fits which had been transferred to them.
1.57 - Public Scapegoats, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
men, women, animals, and birds, all made out of the leaves of the
sago palm. The evil spirits now embark on the raft, and when they
--
away upon a white horse, with a white dog, a white bird, salt, and
so forth, which have all been provided for him by the government.
1.58 - Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
as a scapegoat. But to lighten his fall they fastened live birds and
feathers to him, and a flotilla of small boats waited below to catch
1.60 - Between Heaven and Earth, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
foods, such as eggs, birds of all sorts, mutton, dog, bush-buck, and
so forth. He may neither wear nor touch a mask, and no masked man
1.61 - The Myth of Balder, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
sicknesses and poisons, and from all four-footed beasts, birds, and
creeping things, that they would not hurt Balder. When this was done
1.66 - The External Soul in Folk-Tales, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
and with that he wrung the bird's neck, and threw it at the
magician; and, as he did so, Punchkin's head twisted round, and,
--
is a bird; and my soul is in that bird." The end of the ogre is like
that of the magician in the previous tale. As the bird's wings and
legs are torn off, the ogre's arms and legs drop off; and when its
--
three singing birds which are in a wild boar. The hero kills two of
the birds, and then coming to the ogre's house finds him lying on
the ground in great pain. He shows the third bird to the ogre, who
begs that the hero will either let it fly away or give it to him to
eat. But the hero wrings the bird's neck, and the ogre dies on the
spot.
--
was a leveret, in the head of the leveret was a bird, in the bird's
head was a precious stone, and if this stone were put under his
--
round about it flows a broad deep moat. In the church flies a bird
and in the bird is my heart. So long as the bird lives, I live. It
cannot die of itself, and no one can catch it; therefore I cannot
--
away, contrived to reach the church and catch the bird. He brought
it to the damsel, who stowed him and it away under the warlock's
--
the bed gave the bird a gentle squeeze; and as he did so, the old
warlock felt very unwell and sat down. Then the young man gripped
the bird tighter, and the warlock fell senseless from his chair.
"Now squeeze him dead," cried the damsel. Her lover obeyed, and when
the bird was dead, the old warlock also lay dead on the floor.
In the Norse tale of "the giant who had no heart in his body," the
--
ten white birds, and one of the birds was Bulat's soul. Bulat wept
when he saw that his soul was found in the casket. But one after the
other the birds were killed, and then Ak Molot easily slew his foe.
In another Tartar poem, two brothers going to fight two other
--
Seven little birds are the soul of the Swan-woman; if the birds are
killed the Swan-woman will die straightway. So the horses ran to the
--
the seven birds. So the Swan-woman died. In another Tartar poem the
hero, pursuing his sister who has driven away his cattle, is warned
--
his soul in a little brown bird, which perched on a tall tree beside
the gate of the palace. The king's life was so bound up with that of
the bird that whoever should kill the bird would simultaneously kill
the king and succeed to the kingdom. The secret was betrayed by the
queen to her lover, who shot the bird with an arrow and thereby slew
the king and ascended the vacant throne. A tale told by the Ba-Ronga
1.67 - The External Soul in Folk-Custom, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
bird of night. In every case the beast or bird with which the witch
or wizard has contracted this mystic alliance is an individual,
--
had the form of a great bird, resplendent in green plumage. The
Spanish general Pedro de Alvarado killed the bird with his lance,
and at the same moment the Indian chief fell dead to the ground.
--
as the killing of the green bird was immediately followed by the
death of the Indian chief, and the killing of the parrot by the
--
belongs to the women, and, although a bird of evil omen, creating
terror at night by its cry, it is jealously protected by them. If a
1.68 - The Golden Bough, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
gods. Olofaet, the cunning master of flames, gave fire to the bird
_mwi_ and bade him carry it to earth in his bill. So the bird flew
from tree to tree and stored away the slumbering force of the fire
17.02 - Hymn to the Sun, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The birds with wings of beauty united together and as comrades cling to the same tree.
One of them eats of the sweet fruit; the other does not eat and looks about. [20]
There, where the birds with wings of beauty, in perfect knowledge, sing of their share in immortality.
The Lord and Protector of all the worlds, the Supreme Intelligence, enters into one young and ignorant as I am. [21]
Upon the tree dwell the birds of beautiful wings who eat of honey; from there they made the creation upon earth.
And on its top, there is the sweetest fruit, they say; none can reach it who knows not the father. [22]
--
hey say, it is Indra or Mitra or Varuna or Agni: it is the divine bird with wings of beauty.
The One alone exists: the wise speak of it variously, they call it Agni or Yama or Matarishwan. [46]
The luminous birds with wings of beauty have clothed themselves with waters and they surge up along a dark path towards the heaven.
They have returned from the seat of Truth and in their bright energy lift up the earth to the wideness. [47]
--
The Divine bird, vast in its wings of beauty, is the source of the waters, the seer of earthly growths.1
With its showers pouring all around he brings felicity. He flows ceaselessly on and on: him I call for the vast protection. [52]
17.07 - Ode to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
She is now that to us wherein we shall rest even as birds do on a tree. [4]
In her repose all habitations, all the footed and winged creatures, even the fast racing eagle. [5]
17.11 - A Prayer, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
He dwells in the thousand-petalled lotus, luminous cool like the full orb of the moon, his lotus-hands carry grace and protection. He wears a robe of pure sweet-scented flowers, ever-smiling and gracious-looking. He embodies all the gods. He is the Spirit, the soaring bird on the crown of the head. Remember Him and worship Him in any fair form. He is the Guru.
He shines bright 'within the lotus-centre of the head like the soothing moon; like the brilliant sun he flashes; his arms extend to protect and to give. He is radiant like burning camphor. He wears a white robe and white garlands, he is anointed white. His consort gleams like lightning, as she clings to him athwart one-half of his body. He is the Guru, full of Grace. I worship him in adoration.
1.72 - Education, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Words of one syllable! Louis Marlow[148] had already told me what a fool I was to expect that. "All they can digest," said he, "is a mess of stewed clichs with bird's custard Power."
Damn everything it's true, it's true.
1.78 - Sore Spots, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
We tend to see the myriad flashing colours of the humming bird; the bird itself does not; it has no apparatus of colour-sense; to him all appears a neutral tint, varying only in degrees of brightness.
Such were some of the fundamental facts that directed the course of my research, whose results you may read in "The Psychology of Hashish", by Oliver Haddo in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 2. The general basis of this Essay is Sankhara; it shows how very striking are the analogies between, (1) the results obtained by Mystics this includes the Ecstasy of Sexual Feeling, as you may read in pretty nearly all of them, from St. Augustine to St. Teresa and the Nun Gertrude. The stages recounted by the Buddha in his psychological analyses correspond with almost incredible accuracy. (2) The phenomena observed by those who use opium, hashish, and some other "drugs" (3) The phenomena of various forms of insanity.
18.04 - Modern Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And the heavens tremulous with the song of birds.
In Thy name a world of flowers is still in bloom
--
Even now here am I, an illusory proxy bird. . .
I write poems picking up the twinkles of stars
--
I am a flying light, a flame bird.
The pair of wings is loosened by the heat
--
They all turn into birds and flyaway.
The stars glow like fire-flies
18.05 - Ashram Poets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
bird in a cage
the music of the spheres I sing,
1.80 - Life a Gamble, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Even suicide is not a "dead bird." I knew a creature once careless observers often mistook him of a man who tried three times, pistol, rope and poison. Something always went wrong. (Like the Babbacombe murderer, who went to the scaffold three times, and lived to a green old age!) Finally he did poison himself, by accident, when he had no intention whatever of doing anything of the sort.
Where's the The Book of Lies? Ah, here we are. "It is Pure Chance that rules the Universe; therefore, and only therefore, life is good."[158]
19.07 - The Adept, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
They who have no possessions, who live on measured food, who have realised the emptiness of things and the unconditioned freedom, their movement is hard to follow even as that of the bird in the air.
[4]
They whose longings have withered, who are indifferent to their food, who have realised the emptiness of things and the unconditioned freedom, their movement is hard to follow even as that of the bird in the air.
[5]
1914 01 04p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The tide of materialistic thoughts is always on the watch, waiting for the least weakness, and if we relax but one moment from our vigilance, if we are even slightly negligent, it rushes in and invades us from all sides, submerging under its heavy flood the result sometimes of numberless efforts. Then the being enters a sort of torpor, its physical needs of food and sleep increase, its intelligence is clouded, its inner vision veiled, and in spite of the little interest it really finds in such superficial activities, they occupy it almost exclusively. This state is extremely painful and tiring, for nothing is more tiring than materialistic thoughts, and the mind, worn out, suffers like a caged bird which cannot spread its wings and yet longs to be able to soar freely.
But perhaps this state has its own use which I do not see. In any case, I do not struggle; and like a child in its mothers arms, like a fervent disciple at the feet of his master, I trust myself to Thee and surrender to Thy guidance, sure of Thy victory.
1914 01 24p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
O thou who art the sole reality of our being, O sublime Master of love, Redeemer of life, let me have no longer any other consciousness than of Thee at every instant and in each being. When I do not live solely with Thy life, I agonise, I sink slowly towards extinction; for Thou art my only reason for existence, my one goal, my single support. I am like a timid bird not yet sure of its wings and hesitating to take its flight; let me soar to reach definitive identity with Thee.
***
1916 11 28p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Poverty, poverty! Thou hast placed me in an arid and bare desert and yet this desert is sweet to me as everything that comes from Thee, O Lord. In this dull and wan greyness, in this dim ashen light, I taste the savour of the infinite spaces: the pure breeze of the open seas, the powerful breath of the free heights constantly fill my heart and penetrate my life; all barriers have fallen, within and around me, and I feel like a bird opening its wings for an unrestrained flight. But the bird remains perched upon a rock, its wings outspread against the grey, fleecy sky, awaiting, in order to soar upwards, the coming of something it expects without knowing what it is. As it no longer has any chains to check its flight, it no longer dreams of flying away. Conscious of its freedom, it does not enjoy it, and remains like the others, among the others, perched on the ground in the midst of the dark and dense fog.
***
1917 03 27p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Another is above, unafraid of being burnt: it is the immaculate phoenix, the bird come from the sky who knows how to return to it.
The first is the Power of realisation.
1917 03 31p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At these blessed hours all earth sings a hymn of gladness, the grasses shudder with pleasure, the air is vibrant with light, the trees lift towards heaven their most ardent prayer, the chant of the birds becomes a canticle, the waves of the sea billow with love, the smile of children tells of the infinite and the souls of men appear in their eyes.
Tell me, wilt Thou grant me the marvellous power to give birth to this dawn in expectant hearts, to awaken the consciousness of men to Thy sublime presence, and in this bare and sorrowful world awaken a little of Thy true Paradise? What happiness, what riches, what terrestrial powers can equal this wonderful gift!
1951-04-17 - Unity, diversity - Protective envelope - desires - consciousness, true defence - Perfection of physical - cinema - Choice, constant and conscious - law of ones being - the One, the Multiplicity - Civilization- preparing an instrument, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is indeed something very interesting. I have seen that material things are arranged in such a way at present that one could reach a high degree of perfection of the physical instrument in any field whatever, no matter what may be the degree of inner or psychic development. This was what I thought yesterday evening about the talkies. It is evidently a great progress in the cinematographic art and it cant be called in itself bad or good. It was that I had always seen only talkies of idiotic, vulgar, crude stories, indeed all the stupidities generally shown in cinemas, and this perfection of the instrument had made the crudity yet more crude, the stupidity yet more stupid, and this kind of impression of degradation yet more strong. But yesterday, when we saw that documentary with the beautiful birds singing. Those who made this film have taken great pains, one cant imagine how much of effort and work it entails to film birds in their nests without disturbing them, then to record the sound accurately enough to be able to amplify it and make it perceptible to all. It is a very big work they have done there. And it is the same perfecting of the same instrument which permitted the production of the lovely thing we saw yesterday evening and that ignoble thing we saw sometime ago. This makes us reflect deeply on material things.
Physical perfection does not at all prove, not the least in the world, that one has taken one step farther towards spirituality. Physical perfection means that the instrument the force will useany force whateverwill be sufficiently perfected to be remarkably expressive. But the important point, the essential point is the force which will use the instrument, and it is there that the choice is necessary. If you perfect your body and make of it a remarkable instrument, you must not at all think that because of that you are nearer to the spiritual life. You prepare a remarkable instrument so that this spiritual life may manifest in it, if it manifests itself. But it is for you always to choose what will be manifested. There are people who perfect their body, who build a strong, solid, energetic, agile, capable body, and all this simply to be able to better affirm their ego and the strength of their ego. Others may prepare the body to be sure that when the spiritual light manifests, it will find an instrument capable of doing all that is asked of it. Whatever the work required, the instrument will be so perfected as to be able to do it without difficulty, spontaneously, immediately. This is to arouse your attention to the most important fact which is the choice of the force you will allow to manifest in your body. Perfect your body, make it a remarkable instrument, but never forget that there is a choice to be made and that this choice ought to be made constantlyone doesnt make it once for all, it must always be renewed. Because, before one reaches the total union, the total expression, there will always be this invasion of external things which will try to enter you and spoil all the work. So, the necessary, indispensable condition is a constant vigilance. Do not sleep with satisfaction under the pretext that you have once made your choice: Oh! Now it is all right, everything is all right. In principle everything is all right; in the sincerity of your choice lies also the guarantee of its duration. But for the sincerity to be perfect and the choice unshakable, one must never sleep I dont mean you must not sleep physically, I mean the consciousness must not sleep! And this is an introduction to what I shall read to you next time, a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote quite a long time ago; if I remember rightly, it was in 1928, October 1928. You see, things do not change very quickly.
1955-02-23 - On the sense of taste, educating the senses - Fasting produces a state of receptivity, drawing energy - The body and food, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was... Maeterlinck-you know the books of Maeterlinck, I think; you must have read The Blue bird and others. He was a very fat man, and as he had a sense of beauty, becoming fat upset him very much. So he had decided to fast once a week; one day in the week he did not eat, and as he was an intelligent man he did not bother about food; he wrote, he worked hard on that day, and that kept him reasonably well and in an elegant form; and from that point of view it was very useful to him.
This is the surest result: if one doesn't eat one grows thin; so if one is too fat and wants to grow thin, it is a good means. But on condition that one doesn't pass the day thinking of food, because then, as soon as one stops his fast, he dashes for it and eats so much that he gets back all that he has lost. In fact, the best thing is not to think about it but to regulate one's life automatically enough not to need to think of eating. You eat at fixed hours, eat reasonably, you don't even need to think of the food when you are taking it; you must eat calmly, that's all, quietly, with concentration, and when you do not eat you must never think about it. You must not eat too much, because then you will have to think about your digestion, and it will be very unpleasant for you and will make you waste much time. You must eat just... you must put an end to all desire, all attraction, all movements of the vital, because when you eat simply because the body needs to eat, the body will tell you absolutely precisely and exactly when it has had enough; you see, when one is not moved by a vital desire or mental ideas, one grasps this with surety. "Now it is enough," says the body, "I don't want any more." So one stops. As soon as one has ideas or else desires in the vital, and there is, for instance, something that you like particularly, because you like it particularly you eat three times too much of it... In fact, this may cure you to a certain extent, because if you don't have a very strong stomach, you get indigestion, and then after that you have a disgust for the thing which has given you indigestion. Still, these are rather drastic means. One can make progress without having recourse to such means. The best is not to think about it.
1956-01-25 - The divine way of life - Divine, Overmind, Supermind - Material body for discovery of the Divine - Five psychological perfections, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is nothing which gives you a joy equal to that of gratitude. One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely flower, looks at a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly this comes upon you, this kind of emotionindeed so deep, so intense that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine.
So I find that devotion without gratitude is quite incomplete, gratitude must come with devotion.
1956-10-03 - The Mothers different ways of speaking - new manifestation - new element, possibilities - child prodigies - Laws of Nature, supramental - Logic of the unforeseen - Creative writers, hands of musicians - Prodigious children, men, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then something else written to a boy with frecklesyou know what freckles are, dont you? She writes to him: You are beautiful, yes indeed, your freckles are so pretty; one would say that an angel had sown grains of wheat all over your face so as to attract the birds of the sky there. Surely this is very poetic.
And finally, something really fine which opens the door to the explanation I am going to give you: I am only an ear, a mouth; the ear hears a storm of words which I cannot explain to you, which an immense voice hurls within me, and my mouth repeats them and nothing of what I say can pare with the streaming of light which is within me.
1957-04-17 - Transformation of the body, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the moment, our body is simply a doubtful improvement on the animal body, for if we have gained from a certain point of view, we have lost from another. It is certain that from the point of view of purely physical capacities many animals are superior to us. Unless by a special culture and transformation we succeed in really transforming our capacities, it could be said that from the point of view of strength and muscular power a tiger or a lion is far superior to us. From the point of view of agility a monkey is far superior to us; and, for instance, a bird can travel without needing any exterior mechanism or plane, which is not yet possible for us and so on. And we are bound by the animal necessities of the functioning of our organs; so long as we depend, for instance, on material food, on absorbing matter in such a crude form, we shall be quite inferior animals.
Therefore, I dont want to anticipate what we are going to read, but all this purely animal functioning of our body, all this part which is exactly the same as in animal life that we depend for life on the circulation of the blood and to have blood we need to eat, and so on, and all that this implies these are terrible limitations and bondages! As long as material life depends on that, it is obvious that we wont be able to divinise our life.
1957-11-13 - Superiority of man over animal - Consciousness precedes form, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo speaks of the form that is capable of manifesting the Spirit. The very nature of the manifestation of the Spirit is consciousness, understanding and finally mastery. It is obvious that from the point of view of aesthetics and purely physical appearance, one may find certain animal forms beautiful and perhaps even more beautiful than the human form in its present state of degeneration, I believe. There were periods when the human race seems to have been more beautiful and harmonious; but as a means of expression of the Spirit, its superiority is beyond the shadow of a doubt. For the mere fact that man stands upright is symbolic of the capacity to look at things from above. He dominates what he sees instead of always having his nose to the ground. Of course, it may be said that birds fly, but with wings it is difficult to have a means of intellectual self- expression!
This upright position is very symbolic. If you try to walk on all fours, you will see that this position with the eyes and nose necessarily turned to the ground does not give you the feeling that you are looking at things from another plane or even from above. The whole structure of the human body is made to express a mental life. The proportions of the brain, for instance, the structure of the human ad, the structure of the arms and hands, all that, from the point of view of the expression of the Spirit, is unquestionably altogether superior and it seems to have been conceived and built exclusively for the purpose of expressing intelligence.
1957-12-04 - The method of The Life Divine - Problem of emergence of a new species, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have seen pet animals which truly had a sort of inner need to become something other than what they were. I knew dogs which were like that, cats, horses and even birds like that. The outer form was inevitably what it was, but there was something living and perceptible in the animal which was making an obvious effort to achieve another expression, another form. And every man who has gone beyond the stage of the animal man and become the human man truly has what I might call an incorrigible need to be something other than this thoroughly unsatisfactory semi-animalunsatisfactory in its expression, its means of expression and its means of life. So the problem is this: Will this imperious need be effective enough in its aspiration for the form itself, the species, to develop and transform itself, or will it be only this thing, this imperishable consciousness in the being, which will leave this form when it perishes to enter into a higher form which, besides, as far as we can see now, does not yet exist?
And the problem before us is: How will this higher form be created? If we consider the problem, it becomes very interesting. Is it by some process which we have to imagine, that this form will gradually transform itself in order to create a new one, or is it by some other means, a means still unknown to us, that this new form will appear in the world?
1958-09-03 - How to discipline the imagination - Mental formations, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How many times you sit and become aware that the thought is beginning to form images for itself, to tell itself a story; and so, when you have become a little expert at it, not only do you see unfolding before you the history of what you would like to happen in life, in your own life, but you can take something away, add a detail, perfect your work, make a really fine story in which everything conforms with your highest aspiration. And once you have made a complete harmonious construction, as perfect as you can make it, then you open your hands and let the bird fly away.
If it is well made, it always realises itself in the end. And that is what one doesnt know.
--
And instead of being a cork afloat on the waves of the sea and tossed here and there by each wave, defencelessly, one becomes a bird which opens its wings, flies above the waves and goes wherever it wants. Thats all.
***
1966 09 14, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have just seen a curious image! It looked like a very steep mountain slope and someonelike the symbol of Manwas climbing. A being Its strange, I have seen this several times: beings without clothes who are not naked! I mean, they have a kind of robe of light. But it does not look like a radiating light or anything of that kind. It is like an atmosphere, or rather the aura, the aura made visible. And this transparence does not conceal the form and at the same time the form is not naked. And then from the skythere was a vast sky stretching from top to bottom, like a painting, a very clear, very luminous, very pure skythere were countless hundreds of birdlike things flying towards him and he was beckoning them to him. The picture was mainly pale blue, white; from time to time there was something a little darker like a wing-tip or the top of a crest, but that was incidental. And they kept coming in hundreds and he summoned them together with a gesture, then he sent them down to earthhe was standing on a steep slopehe sent them down, into the valley. And there, they became (Mother laughs) they were opinions! They became opinions! There were dark ones, light ones, brown ones, blue ones
They were like birds flying down towards earth, like that. But it was a picture and yet it was not a picture, because it was moving. It was very amusing.
And he said: Look, that is how opinions are formed. They came from the sky, a vast skyvast and luminous and clear, neither blue nor white nor pink nor it was luminous, simply luminous; and from this sky, it was I said they came in hundreds, but they came in thousands, and he was there, he received them, and then he gestured with his hands and sent them down to earth, and they became opinions! I think I began to laugh, it amused me.
1.ac - Power, #Crowley - Poems, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The shriek of startled birds; the sobs that tear
With sudden terror the sharp sea
1.ac - Prologue to Rodin in Rime, #Crowley - Poems, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
These bats need cloisters; these tame birds a cage;
How should they know the Masters of the Age?
1.ami - Bright are Thy tresses, brighten them even more (from Baal-i-Jibreel), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Naeem Siddiqui Original Language Urdu Bright are Thy tresses, brighten them even more, And ravish my eyes, ravish my mind, ravish my heart and soul. That love should be concealed, and beauty should be veiled! Reveal Thyself to me, O Lord, or reveal me to myself. Thou art the eternal ocean; I am a rivulet., Make me a part of Thee, O Lord, or make me fathomless. If I possess a pearl within, give it a starry lustre, But if I am a piece of brick, give it a diamond's sheen. If of spring I cannot sing as a bird of paradise, Make this half-enrapturcd soul a skylark of Thy spring.
1.anon - Less profitable, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Where is your 'Little Shepherd' bird that went up over you!
See here now, I will recite the list of your lovers.
--
You loved the colorful 'Little Shepherd' bird
and then hit him, breaking his wing, so
1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VII, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
so that my arms were feathered like a bird.
Seizing me, he led me down to the House of Darkness,
--
where, like a bird, they wear garments of feathers,
and light cannot be seen, they dwell in the dark,
1.anon - The Poem of Antar, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
as the bird flies from off her young ones sitting close.
When I saw the people, while their mass advanced, excite one another to fight,
1.anon - The Poem of Imru-Ul-Quais, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Early in the morning, while the birds were still nesting, I mounted my steed.
Well-bred was he, long-bodied, outstripping the wild beasts in speed,
--
As though the little birds of the valley of Jiwaa awakened in the morning
And burst forth in song after a morning draught of old, pure, spiced wine.
1.anon - The Song of Songs, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and
the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
1.dz - Coming or Going, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
The migrating bird
leaves no trace behind
1f.lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
year. Molluscs, crustacean armour, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds,
and early mammalsgreat and small, known and unknown. No wonder Gedney
--
teeth, primitive bird-skulls, and skulls, vertebrae, and other bones of
archaic mammals such as palaeotheres, xiphodons, dinocerases, eohippi,
--
denizens except the seals and whales. All the birds had flown away,
save only the great, grotesque penguins.
--
We wondered, too, what had caused these three birds to venture out of
their usual domain. The state and silence of the great dead city made
--
blind birds we had seen appeared to be singularly peaceful.
Had there, then, been a struggle among those others, and were the
--
signs that any birds had normally dwelt here. Perhaps, we reflected,
there had been a hideous running fight, with the weaker party seeking
--
screamed eternally by the gigantic, spectrally snowy birds of that
malign regions core. Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li! That, I may admit, is
--
birds in the mist might muffle our footfalls, screen our true course,
and somehow set up a false lead. Amidst the churning, spiralling fog
1f.lovecraft - Celephais, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
people there, but only birds and bees and butterflies. On another night
Kuranes walked up a damp stone spiral stairway endlessly, and came to a
1f.lovecraft - Medusas Coil, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
old bird!
I rose perplexedly as I saw the two stroll off across the lawn, arm in
1f.lovecraft - Old Bugs, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
This is the last time for you, old bird! he exclaimed furiously.
When a genlman wants tuh take a drink here, by God, he shall,
1f.lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
wholesome beasts and birds of the woods. It was nightmare itself, and
to see it was to die. But it made men dream, and so they knew enough to
1f.lovecraft - The Doom That Came to Sarnath, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
streams and lakelets rode white swans, whilst the music of rare birds
chimed in with the melody of the waters. In ordered terraces rose the
1f.lovecraft - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
and slept in peace till roused by the magah birds in distant resin
groves.
--
and all the magah birds sang blithely as they flashed their seven
colours in the sun. Near sunset he came on a new camp of lava-gatherers
--
and little red singing birds of Celephas, and it was clear that these
could be no others than the half-gods he sought. Where they dwelt,
--
birds and bees; so that men walk through it as through a faery place,
and feel greater joy and wonder than they ever afterward remember.
--
birds and bees as he walked onward under an enchanted sun.
All that afternoon the pilgrim wandered on through perfumed meadows and
--
bird, which it lured to the water by shewing its tempting scales in the
sun, and grasped by the beak with its enormous mouth as the winged
--
jade and spun gold and little red singing birds of Celephas. Of these
men the sailors knew not much, save that they talked but seldom and
--
luminous fish, the tiny temples of iridescent singing birds atop carven
columns, the marvellous scrollwork of the great bronze gates, and the
--
distant impassable peaks on the right. And ever the small birds and the
fountains sang, while the perfume of rare blossoms spread like a veil
--
knew his stumbling was at an end. They were not any birds or bats known
elsewhere on earth or in dreamland, for they were larger than elephants
--
mountains by one of the incredible bird colossi.
There now followed a hideous whirl through frigid space, endlessly up
--
and still the vile bird winged meaningly through the cold and silence.
At times the slant-eyed man talked with his steed in a hateful and
--
The loathsome bird now settled to the ground, and the slant-eyed man
hopped down and helped his captive alight. Of the purpose of his
--
The slant-eyed man was small, but the great hippocephalic bird was
there to see he was obeyed; so Carter followed where he led, and passed
--
for night-gaunts, and of how the vast hippocephalic birds fly screaming
from the black burrows high up on the gaunt grey peaks that divide
--
the thing above the mountains was not that of any hippocephalic bird.
Its outline against the stars, necessarily vague as it was, resembled
--
touch that noisome and hippocephalic bird; meanwhile discoursing to
them of unknown Kadath, which you will so lately have left, and telling
--
forthwith stride after the loathly bird in the fashion of gods, through
the deep gulfs of heaven to Kadaths familiar towers and domes.
--
and hippocephalic scaled bird. The stars danced mockingly, almost
shifting now and then to form pale signs of doom that one might wonder
--
Unswerving and obedient to the foul legates orders, that hellish bird
plunged onward through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in
--
his Boston room. birds sang in hidden gardens and the perfume of
trellised vines came wistful from arbours his grandfather had reared.
1f.lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
vocal on warm nights. It is vowed that the birds are psychopomps lying
in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eerie
--
doctor, though, was chiefly disturbed by the chattering night birds
outside; a seemingly limitless legion of whippoorwills that cried their
--
lids over the glazing grey eyes as the tumult of birds faded
imperceptibly to silence. Lavinia sobbed, but Wilbur only chuckled
1f.lovecraft - The Haunter of the Dark, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
birds, but here they never rested. At least, that is what he thought
and set down in his diary. He pointed the place out to several friends,
--
the black, frowning steeple shunned by the birds. When the delicate
leaves came out on the garden boughs the world was filled with a new
--
in the birdless eaves and black, ivyless walls Blake felt a touch of
the dimly sinister beyond his power to define.
--
done here, and what might still be lurking in the bird-shunned shadows?
It seemed now as if an elusive touch of foetor had arisen somewhere
--
vision ran riot in queer new ways. The birds of spring were returning,
and as he watched their sunset flights he fancied they avoided the
1f.lovecraft - The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
wyvern-headed birds. Over the fiery surface green monstrous salamanders
slithered, eyeing the intruder with malignant speculation. And on the
1f.lovecraft - The Last Test, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
austere cause of human knowledge. Im like the monkeys and birds and
guinea-pigs I usejust a cog in the machine, to be used to the
1f.lovecraft - The Man of Stone, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
is well melted todayand the first bird that drank toppled over as if
he were shot. I picked him up a second later, and he was a perfect
--- Overview of noun bird
The noun bird has 5 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (29) bird ::: (warm-blooded egg-laying vertebrates characterized by feathers and forelimbs modified as wings)
2. (1) bird, fowl ::: (the flesh of a bird or fowl (wild or domestic) used as food)
3. dame, doll, wench, skirt, chick, bird ::: (informal terms for a (young) woman)
4. boo, hoot, Bronx cheer, hiss, raspberry, razzing, razz, snort, bird ::: (a cry or noise made to express displeasure or contempt)
5. shuttlecock, bird, birdie, shuttle ::: (badminton equipment consisting of a ball of cork or rubber with a crown of feathers)
--- Overview of verb bird
The verb bird has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. bird, birdwatch ::: (watch and study birds in their natural habitat)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun bird
5 senses of bird
Sense 1
bird
=> vertebrate, craniate
=> chordate
=> animal, animate being, beast, brute, creature, fauna
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 2
bird, fowl
=> meat
=> food, solid food
=> solid
=> matter
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 3
dame, doll, wench, skirt, chick, bird
=> girl, miss, missy, young lady, young woman, fille
=> woman, adult female
=> female, female person
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> adult, grownup
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 4
boo, hoot, Bronx cheer, hiss, raspberry, razzing, razz, snort, bird
=> cry, outcry, call, yell, shout, vociferation
=> utterance, vocalization
=> auditory communication
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
shuttlecock, bird, birdie, shuttle
=> badminton equipment
=> sports equipment
=> equipment
=> instrumentality, instrumentation
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun bird
2 of 5 senses of bird
Sense 1
bird
=> dickeybird, dickey-bird, dickybird, dicky-bird
=> cock
=> hen
=> nester
=> night bird
=> bird of passage
=> protoavis
=> archaeopteryx, archeopteryx, Archaeopteryx lithographica
=> Sinornis
=> Ibero-mesornis
=> archaeornis
=> ratite, ratite bird, flightless bird
=> carinate, carinate bird, flying bird
=> passerine, passeriform bird
=> nonpasserine bird
=> bird of prey, raptor, raptorial bird
=> gallinaceous bird, gallinacean
=> parrot
=> cuculiform bird
=> coraciiform bird
=> apodiform bird
=> caprimulgiform bird
=> piciform bird
=> trogon
=> aquatic bird
=> twitterer
Sense 2
bird, fowl
=> poultry
=> wildfowl
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun bird
5 senses of bird
Sense 1
bird
=> vertebrate, craniate
Sense 2
bird, fowl
=> meat
Sense 3
dame, doll, wench, skirt, chick, bird
=> girl, miss, missy, young lady, young woman, fille
Sense 4
boo, hoot, Bronx cheer, hiss, raspberry, razzing, razz, snort, bird
=> cry, outcry, call, yell, shout, vociferation
Sense 5
shuttlecock, bird, birdie, shuttle
=> badminton equipment
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun bird
5 senses of bird
Sense 1
bird
-> vertebrate, craniate
=> fetus, foetus
=> Amniota
=> amniote
=> aquatic vertebrate
=> gnathostome
=> bird
=> amphibian
=> reptile, reptilian
=> mammal, mammalian
=> tetrapod
Sense 2
bird, fowl
-> meat
=> stew meat
=> bird, fowl
=> game
=> dark meat
=> raw meat
=> red meat
=> variety meat, organs
=> cut, cut of meat
=> cold cuts
=> beef, boeuf
=> carbonado
=> halal
=> jerky, jerked meat, jerk
=> pemmican, pemican
=> veal, veau
=> horsemeat, horseflesh
=> mouton, mutton
=> lamb
=> pork, porc
=> sausage
=> sausage meat
=> escargot, snail
Sense 3
dame, doll, wench, skirt, chick, bird
-> girl, miss, missy, young lady, young woman, fille
=> baby, babe, sister
=> belle
=> bimbo
=> chachka, tsatske, tshatshke, tchotchke, tchotchkeleh
=> chit
=> colleen
=> dame, doll, wench, skirt, chick, bird
=> flapper
=> gal
=> gamine
=> Gibson girl
=> lass, lassie, young girl, jeune fille
=> maid, maiden
=> May queen, queen of the May
=> mill-girl
=> party girl
=> peri
=> ring girl
=> rosebud
=> sex kitten, sexpot, sex bomb
=> shop girl
=> soubrette
=> sweater girl
=> tomboy, romp, hoyden
=> valley girl
=> working girl
Sense 4
boo, hoot, Bronx cheer, hiss, raspberry, razzing, razz, snort, bird
-> cry, outcry, call, yell, shout, vociferation
=> bellow, bellowing, holla, holler, hollering, hollo, holloa, roar, roaring, yowl
=> blue murder
=> catcall
=> clamor, clamoring, clamour, clamouring, hue and cry
=> halloo
=> hoot
=> hosanna
=> noise
=> scream, screaming, shriek, shrieking, screech, screeching
=> whoop
=> war cry, war whoop, rallying cry, battle cry
=> yelling, shouting
=> yodel
=> boo, hoot, Bronx cheer, hiss, raspberry, razzing, razz, snort, bird
Sense 5
shuttlecock, bird, birdie, shuttle
-> badminton equipment
=> shuttlecock, bird, birdie, shuttle
--- Grep of noun bird
adjutant bird
anseriform bird
ant bird
antbird
apodiform bird
aquatic bird
arkansas kingbird
baby bird
baltimore bird
bellbird
bird
bird's-eye bush
bird's-eye maple
bird's-foot fern
bird's-foot violet
bird's-nest fungus
bird's eye
bird's eye view
bird's foot
bird's foot clover
bird's foot trefoil
bird's nest
bird's nest fern
bird-footed dinosaur
bird-on-the-wing
bird-scarer
bird cherry
bird cherry tree
bird dog
bird family
bird fancier
bird feed
bird feeder
bird food
bird genus
bird louse
bird nest
bird of jove
bird of juno
bird of minerva
bird of night
bird of paradise
bird of passage
bird of prey
bird parker
bird pepper
bird sanctuary
bird shot
bird vetch
bird watcher
birdbath
birdbrain
birdcage
birdcage mask
birdcall
birder
birdfeeder
birdhouse
birdie
birdlime
birdnest
birdnesting
birdseed
birdseed grass
birdsong
blackbird
blue mockingbird
bluebird
boatswain bird
bowerbird
butcherbird
canary bird
caprimulgiform bird
carinate bird
cassin's kingbird
catbird
cedarbird
coastal diving bird
columbiform bird
common bird cherry
coraciiform bird
corvine bird
cowbird
crocodile bird
crow blackbird
cuculiform bird
dickey-bird
dickeybird
dicky-bird
dickybird
early bird
eastern kingbird
elephant bird
european bird cherry
european blackbird
fairy bluebird
fig-bird
firebird
flightless bird
flying bird
frigate bird
gallinaceous bird
gallows bird
game bird
gaolbird
gaviiform seabird
gooney bird
gray catbird
gray kingbird
great bowerbird
grey catbird
grey kingbird
hangbird
hummingbird
indigo bird
jail bird
jailbird
jaybird
kingbird
ladybird
limicoline bird
lovebird
lyrebird
man-of-war bird
mockingbird
moor-bird
moorbird
mound-bird
mound bird
myna bird
mynah bird
myrtle bird
new world blackbird
night bird
nightbird
nonpasserine bird
oceanic bird
oilbird
oscine bird
ovenbird
passeriform bird
pelagic bird
pelecaniform seabird
perching bird
phoebe bird
piciform bird
podicipitiform seabird
policeman bird
procellariiform seabird
puffbird
queer bird
quetzal bird
railbird
raptorial bird
rare bird
ratite bird
red-winged blackbird
redbird
reedbird
ricebird
riflebird
rifleman bird
ring blackbird
rusty blackbird
satin bird
satin bowerbird
scrub-bird
scrub bird
scrubbird
sea bird
seabird
secretary bird
sedge bird
shoebird
shore bird
shorebird
snakebird
snowbird
songbird
sphenisciform seabird
spotted antbird
stiltbird
stinkbird
summer redbird
surfbird
tailorbird
thunderbird
tropic bird
tropicbird
tyrant bird
umbrella bird
vegetable hummingbird
wading bird
water bird
waterbird
weaverbird
western kingbird
whirlybird
widow bird
yard bird
yardbird
yellowbird
young bird
zubird