Bird Branch Quotes & Sayings

We're angry about this, upset about that, but who has the time to do anything anymore? There are those reports to report on, memos to remember, e-mails to deflect or delete. They bury us like snow. — Mark Slouka

He can think now only of objects. Something alive, just one small grey bird on a branch, will break his heart. — Michael Ondaatje

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

You cannot teach a bird to fly, only how to let go his branch and begin to fall. — Tim Ward

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character. — Hosea Ballou

The most ridiculous of all animals is a proud priest; he cannot use his own tools without cutting his own fingers. — Charles Caleb Colton

For ever so long, on a branch of this willow
Sits a bird, the colour of a riddle.
Attuned to him no sound, no colour.
Totally alone, like me, in this land.
[...]

The bird's tale comes straight from the heart:
What fails to arrive is idle fancy.
His are ties with cities lost:
The riddle bird is a stranger in this land. — Sohrab Sepehri

I want no thunder or lightning to remind me of my God, nor am I as apt to bethink on most of all His goodness in trouble and tribulations as on a calm, solemn, quiet day in a forest, when His voice is heard in the creaking of a dead branch or in the song of a bird, as much in my ears at least as it is ever heard in uproar and gales. — James Fenimore Cooper

Ouma Nella's quotes p 144 -146
"Man, if you don't know where you going, any road will bring you there."
"It don't matter how far a river run. It never forget where it come from. That is all that is important."
"No matter if it's wet or dry," she grunt. "As long as you keep a green branch in your heart, there will always be a bird that come to sing in it."
"It's no use crying in the rain, my child, because no one will see your tears.
"Don't think you can climb two trees at the same time just because you got two legs."
"Ouma Nella, where am I not?"
"But you're right here with me, Philida. So there's many places where you're not."
"Tell me where those places are. I got to know. So I can go and look for myself. — Andre Brink

The weight of his fingers on mine, like a bird landing on a branch. It was the drop of a match. I did not see that we were surrounded by tinder until I felt it burst into flames. — Hannah Kent

If she had looked out the window, she might have seen a great, hoary old black owl alight on the branch of the oak tree. She might have seen the owl lean perilously forward on his green-black branch and, without taking his gaze from her window, fall hard - thump, bash! - onto the streetside. She would have seen the bird bounce up, and when he righted himself, become a handsome young man in a handsome black coat, his dark hair curly and thick, flecked with silver, his mouth half-smiling, as if anticipating a terribly sweet thing. — Catherynne M Valente

And a bird who was on a crooked branch is suddenly gone without my even hearing him. — Jack Kerouac

I like the change then." He held her hand again. "Change is inevitable and sometimes it is good." He smiled. — Sara Naveed

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

THE FOX AND THE CROW
A Crow was sitting on a branch of a tree with a piece of cheese in her beak when a Fox observed her and set his wits to work to discover some way of getting the cheese. Coming and standing under the tree he looked up and said, "What a noble bird I see above me! Her beauty is without equal, the hue of her plumage exquisite. If only her voice is as sweet as her looks are fair, she ought without doubt to be Queen of the Birds." The Crow was hugely flattered by this, and just to show the Fox that she could sing she gave a loud caw. Down came the cheese, of course, and the Fox, snatching it up, said, "You have a voice, madam, I see: what you want is wits. — Aesop

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

It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God — Andy Stanley

I have always known
that you will visit my grave.
I see myself as a small brown bird,
perhaps a sparrow, watching you
from a low branch as you pray
in front of my name.
I will hear you
sound out my epitaph: Aqui descansa
una mujer que quiso volar.
You will recall telling me
that you once dreamed in Spanish,
and felt the words
lift you into flight.
The sound of wings
will startle you when you say "volar,"
and you will understand. — Judith Ortiz Cofer

We invite compassion into our lives when we act compassionately toward ourselves and others, and we feel connected in our lives when we reach out and connect. — Brene Brown

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

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. Chuang Tzu — Sung Yee Poon

Bouchalka was not a reflective person. He had his own idea of what a great prima donna should be like, and he took it for granted that Mme. Garnet corresponded to his conception. The curious thing was that he managed to impress his idea upon Cressida herself. She began to see herself as he saw her, to try to be like the notion of her that he carried everywhere in that pointed head of his. She was exalted quite beyond herself. Things that had been chilled under the grind came to life in her that winter, with the breath of Bouchalka's adoration. Then, if ever in her life, she heard the bird sing on the branch outside her window; and she wished she were younger, lovelier, freer. She wished there were no Poppas, no Horace, no Garnets. She longed to be only the bewitching creature Bouchalka imagined her. — Willa Cather

I'll tell you something,' he said, as if he had said nothing that day. 'You're walking on gallows ground, and there's a rope around your neck and a raven-bird on each shoulder waiting for your eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretches from heaven to hell, and our world is only the branch from which the rope is swinging. — Neil Gaiman

I hate the way chorus boxes sound. — Pat Metheny

As in the autumn-time the leaves fall off, First one and then another, till the branch Surrenders all its spoils to the earth; In similar fashion did these evil seeds of Adam throw Themselves from the group, one by one, into the boat At Charon's signal, as a bird is called to its lure. — Dante Alighieri

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

The Mercy of Allah is an Ocean, Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean.It only has to open it's beak — Leila Aboulela

Perhaps it was Maggie, perhaps not. In solitary moments magpies will perch on a branch and mutter soft soliloquies of whines and squeals and chatterings, oblivious to what goes on around them. It is one of those things, I suppose, intelligence now and then does, must in fact now and then do, must think, must play, must imagine, must talk to itself ... What, finally, intelligence could be for: finding your way back. — Stanley Crawford

I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing. — Richard Peck

Cinderella frowned as she wrestled thin willow branches into place, trying her hand at making a wicker basket. One of the maids had left her with a sample basket and pattern, as well as several started bases, but Cinderella's basket was lopsided, and the branch ends poked out like twigs in a bird's nest. "Are you trying to make it look like that, or is it supposed to resemble this one?" Colonel Friedrich asked, holding up the sample basket. Cinderella glared at him. "Don't you have work to do?" She savagely stabbed the willow in the weaving pattern. "I've — K.M. Shea

Each day the mythical return Enzian dreamed of seems less possible. Once it was necessary to know uniforms, insignia, airplane markings, to observe boundaries. But by now too many choices have been made. The single root lost, way back there in the May desolation. Each bird has his branch now, and each one is the Zone. — Thomas Pynchon

Picture a bird perched on a thin branch, she [Miss Saeki] says. 'The branch sways in the wind, and each time this happens the bird's field of vision shifts. You know what I mean?'
I nod.
'When that happens, how do you think the bird adjusts?'
I shake my head. 'I don't know.'
'It bobs its head up and down, making up for the sway of the branch. Take a good look at birds the next time it's windy. I spend a lot of time looking out that window. Don't you think that kind of life would be tiresome? Always shifting your head every time the branch you're on sways?'
'I do.'
'Birds are used to it. It comes naturally to them. They don't have to think about it, they just do it. So it's not as tiring as we imagine. But I'm a human being, not a bird, so sometimes it does get tiring. — Haruki Murakami

Song I try to make the step-down call of the chickadee, but do it too insistently, over and over so it loses sense, the air going equally out and back, not slower in the opening, then quickening as the tight hinge retracts, but absolutely evenly, too even, the way one breathes and regulates breath for a doctor, to present the body's equanimity. There's a bird in a tree with a hinge in its throat, a door opening to let the sweet air pass from a high, thin place down a notch. There's phlox out there, opening between one black and another black, hanging branch of an apple tree - the very tree that holds the bird that bends the air so parenthetically around itself, and its song around anything listening. — Lia Purpura

I'd been trained as a classical musician, but also as a pop musician. My teacher made sure that everything was available. — Jeanine Tesori

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords. — Federico Garcia Lorca