Bird In A Cage Quotes & Sayings

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

The feelings trembled and flapped in his chest like a bird newly put in a cage. — Rumi

You're like some wild bird, aren't you? Batting its wings and flying against the cage door. Even if it hurts you. Even if it kills you. You won't stop. Even if on one is out to hurt you, you wont stop." He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and I flinch at the brush of his fingers on my skin.
I shrug, slap at his hand "So what? You just described everyone in here. All of us."
"No, the rest of us will keep to this cage. It's protection from the dangers outside. In here, we have shelter. Freedom. Each other. We wait for the door to open, and when its safe, only then do we go out. You? You don't care as long as you're gone. Away from the rest of us. — Sophie Jordan

He said what nobody understood was, she always felt like a bird in a cage--she wanted to be without roots. — Kate Alcott

A bird named Vlad the Impaler, who spent the bulk of his life hissing and looking at himself in a little mirror hanging[ ... ] in the iron cage, a mirror so dull and cloudy with Vlad the Impaler's bird-spit that Vlad the Impaler could not possibly have seen anything more than a vague yellowish blob behind a pane of mist[ ... ] A bird that not infrequently literally bit the hand that fed it, before returning to dance in front of its own shapeless reflection, straining and contorting always for a better view of itself. — David Foster Wallace

I'm a cage, in search of a bird. — Franz Kafka

I am a bird of God's garden
and I do not belong to this dusty world
For a day or two they have put me here
in this cage of my own body
I did not come here of my own
I will not return of my own
to my own country. — Rumi

A bird who hurt her wing,
now forgotten how to fly.
A song she used to sing,
but can't remember why.
A breath she caught and kept -
that left her in a sigh.
It hurts her so to love you,
but she won't say goodbye. — Lang Leav

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

A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Ibn Rushd caressing her body had often praised its beauty to the point at which she grew irritated and said, You do not think my thoughts worth praising, then. He replied that the mind and body were one, the mind was the form of the human body, and as such was responsible for all the actions of the body, one of which was thought. To praise the body was to praise the mind that ruled it. Aristotle had said this and he agreed, and because of this it was hard for him, he whispered blasphemously in her ear, to believe that consciousness survived the body, for the mind was of the body and had no meaning without it. She did not want to argue with Aristotle and said nothing. Plato was different, he conceded. Plato thought the mind was trapped in the body like a bird and only when it could shed that cage would it soar and be free. — Salman Rushdie

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

True love does not put a person in a cage like a bird. It gives true freedom to soar. — Debasish Mridha

What the men like best are what there's the least sense in, dresses you can't sit down in, that won't stand a lot of action, that hobble you and truss you up and slow you down and fix it so you can't hardly breathe, till finally you're off in one corner, like a bird in a cage, not cluttering up the busy paths in life that men has got to use. That's the styles they really like! — Ardyth Kennelly

We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out. — Michel De Montaigne

In all his trials he was sustained and at times even exalted by a secret strength in himself. The soul aids the body and at moments uplifts it. It is the only bird that can endure a cage. — Victor Hugo

A baby is born like a bird ready to soar from the mother's lap. The nets of societal rules and regulations puts him in a cage from which he can never escape to create his own new world. — Debasish Mridha

I am strong and on the road to recovery away from the place that caused so much pain. I am free. I am a bird whose broken wing is now mended and I am able to escape the steel cage I was once trapped in. — Mary E. Palmerin

He saw that there was something alive in it, and went near enough to read a sign that said, TWO DEADLY ENEMIES. HAVE A LOOK FREE. There was a black bear about four feet long and very thin, resting on the floor of the cage; his back was spotted with bird lime that had been shot down on him by a small chicken hawk sitting on a perch in the upper part of the same apartment. Mose of the hawk's tail was gone; the bear only had one eye. — Flannery O'Connor

Abby's eyes seemed almost as vacant as those of the girl in the photograph. Then a shiver came over her and she blinked. Gently, almost affectionately, she put the picture back on the wall. She touched it one last time and said, Poor little bird. I wonder if she ever escaped her cage. — Madeleine Roux

No bird in a cage has ever come to know what the mountain winds feel like, by staring at the free flying birds, wishing that they would fall from the sky! — C. JoyBell C.

Academics have developed complicated theories and obscure jargon in an effort to describe what is now referred to as st7-uctunal racism, yet the concept is fairly straightforward. One theorist, Iris Marion Young, relying on a famous "birdcage" metaphor, explains it this way: If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape.11 — Michelle Alexander

If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense. Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre? Don't trouble yourself to answer - I see you laugh rarely; but you can laugh very merrily: believe me, you are not naturally austere, any more than I am naturally vicious. The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat; controlling your features, muffling your voice, and restricting your limbs; and you fear in the presence of a man and a brother - or father, or master, or what you will - to smile too gaily, speak too freely, or move too quickly: but, in time, I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you; and then your looks and movements will have more vivacity and variety than they dare offer now. I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high. You are still bent on going? — Charlotte Bronte

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

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

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

Abel wanted a traditional marriage with a traditional wife. For a long time I wondered why he ever married a woman like my mom in the first place, as she was the opposite of that in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there were plenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He's attracted to independent women. "He's like an exotic bird collector," she said. "He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage. — Trevor Noah

I am a cage, in search of a bird. — Franz Kafka

HOG, n. A bird remarkable for the catholicity of its appetite and serving to illustrate that of ours. Among the Mahometans and Jews, the hog is not in favor as an article of diet, but is respected for the delicacy and the melody of its voice. It is chiefly as a songster that the fowl is esteemed; the cage of him in full chorus has been known to draw tears from two persons at once. The scientific name of this dicky-bird is _Porcus Rockefelleri_. Mr. Rockefeller did not discover the hog, but it is considered his by right of resemblance. — Ambrose Bierce

I caught a red bird once,
I fell in love with her,
Took the red bird home with me,
I saw her eyes, at saw my peace,
I love the red bird much,
I cut her wings, I wanted the bird to stay,
I made a cage for her,
No wings, and trapped, the red bird cried,
I saw her eyes in pain; it broke my heart to see,
I was the one to blame, for the red bird's pain,
It grew back its wings, no longer in the cage,
She looked at me once more, spread its wings and left,
I loved that red bird still; I wish she was with me
But now I know for sure , her pain was caused by me. — Quetzal

A secret in his mouth, is like a wild bird put into a cage; whose door no sooner opens, but 'tis out. — Samuel Johnson

Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers. — Anthony Burgess

A bird in a cage is safe but God didn't create birds for that. — Paulo Coelho

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

Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. — Anthony Burgess

A bird in a cage is not half a bird. — Henry Ward Beecher

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

He was withdrawing. I think it was getting harder for him to accept his fate.
Like a bird in a cage, he grew silent. — Alice Hoffman

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

The poor child felt like a little bird that is placed in a glittering cage. — Johanna Spyri

Through millions of years of evolution, nature has caged you within certain boundaries - this is the human predicament. But this imprisonment is only on the level of biology. On the level of human consciousness, you are like a bird in a cage without a door. What a tragic irony! It is only out of long aeons of habit that you are refusing to fly free. Life — Sadhguru

I walked into a bakery seven years later and there he was. He had dogs at his feet and a bird in a cage beside him. The seven years were not seven years. They were not seven hundred years. Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we had traveled, just as the dead can never be counted. I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go right up to him. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The rock has split, the egg has hatched, the prismatically plumed bird of life has escaped from its cage. It spreads its wings and is perched now on the peak of the huge African mountain Kilimanjaro.
Strange recompense, in the depths of our despair at the unfathomable mist into which all mankind is plunging, a curious force awakens. It is Hope long asleep, aroused once more. Wilson has taken an army of advisers and sailed for England. The ship has sunk. But the men are all good swimmers. They take the women on their shoulders and buoyed on by the inspiration of the moment they churn the free seas with their sinewy arms, like Ulysses, landing all along the European seaboard.
Yes, hope has awakened once more in men's hearts. It is NEW! Let us go forward!
The imagination, freed from the handcuffs of "Art", takes the lead! Her Feet are bare and not too delicate. In fact those who come behind her have much to think of. Hm. Let it pass. — William Carlos Williams

If Livingston won her, he'd keep Elizabeth in a cage like a gilded bird and never let her blossom into the vibrant person she really was. Nick shook his head in disbelief. How could that man want to clip her wings? Elizabeth had glowed with pride at her achievement. Her blue eyes had sparkled with pleasure. Beneath the dusting of flour, her cheeks had been pink. For the first time she'd been totally relaxed with him. Despite her disheveled appearance, Nick had never seen her look happier, nor more beautiful. — Debra Holland

You humans are always locking each other away. Cells. Dungeons. Some of your earliest jails were sewers, where men sloshed in their own waste. No other creature has this arrogance - to confine its own. Could you imagine a bird imprisoning another bird? A horse jailing a horse? As a free form of expression, I will never understand it. I can only say that some of my saddest sounds have been heard in such places. A song inside a cage is never a song. It is a plea. — Mitch Albom

In all his trials he felt encouraged and sometimes even upbourne by a secret force within. The soul helps the body, and at certain moments uplifts it. It is the only bird which sustains its cage. — Victor Hugo

I'm trying to keep you safe."
Safe as a porcelain bowl wrapped in cotton linen and boxed up. It would be a lie to say she didn't want to feel safe, or that Nolan's worry didn't leave her feeling warm and even a bit precious. But it also left her feeling trapped, like an ornamental bird kept in a cage, its wings clipped. — Page Morgan

Fifty years ago people believed, accurately, that they were entitled to seek the blue bird, whereas today they believe, mistakenly, that they're entitled to find it and take it home, in a complimentary cage with a month's supply of birdseed ... Those who think they've a right to catch whatever they are free to chase, are doomed to disappointment. That's our generation in a nutshell. — George Jonas

I think a bird is the worst present you can give somebody because it's guilt-ridden. This animal has the gift of flight, and you put it in a cage and watch it not do that until it dies. — Kyle Dunnigan

DEPARTURE
The horizon slopes away
The days are longer
Trip
A heart hops in a cage
A bird sings
It is going to die
Another door is going to open
At the end of the corridor
Where a star
Begins to shine
A dark-haired woman
The lantern of the departing train
("Departure") — Pierre Reverdy

A bird is safe when it's closed in a cage, but it isn't living. It isn't flying. You have beautiful wings desperate to stretch out and catch the wind. Don't. Let. Anyone. Stop you."
"And what happens," I whisper, "when I fall?"
"Then you have someone waiting to catch you. That's the right kind of safe. — Rachel Morgan

How can a bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? — William Blake

Do you have a pet bird?' I asked, looking around the room.
'Oh, heavens, no. I'd never cage a bird. I can't imagine a worse fate, can you? I bought this cage at a market in Peru several years ago. I hung it here and wired the door open to remind myself how delicious freedom is
financial and otherwise. — Beth Hoffman

If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape. — Iris Marion Young

The prince set her down and dismissed his valet. The latter left with a bow and closed the door. Leaning against the wall, the prince pulled off his stockings. As he walked toward the amethyst tub, he yanked his shirt over his head.
He was lean and tightly sinewed. Her little bird heart thudded.
He glanced at her, his lips curved in not quite a smile. The next thing she knew, his shirt had flown through the air and landed on the cage, blocking her view toward the bathtub.
"Sorry, sweetheart. I am shy."
She chirped indignantly. It was not as if she would have continued to watch him disrobe beyond a certain point. — Sherry Thomas

And at last, the wicked Queen's spell was broken, and the young woman, whom circumstance and cruelty had trapped in the body of a bird, was released from her cage. The cage door opened and the cuckoo bird fell, fell, fell, until finally her stunted wings opened, and she found that she could fly. With the cool sea breeze of her homeland buffeting the underside of her wings, she soared over the cliff edge and across the ocean. Towards a new land of hope, and freedom, and life. Towards her other half. Home. — Kate Morton

Even as I begin to realize the magnitude of what I'm doing, a thought occurs to me. Somewhere in the city of rebirth, Paul is lifting himself out of bed, staring out his window, and waiting. There are pigeons cooing on rooftops, cathedral bells tolling from towers in the distance. We are sitting here, continents apart, the same way we always did: at the edges of our mattresses, together. On the ceilings where I am going there will be saints and gods and flights of angels. Everywhere I walk there will be reminders of all that time can't touch. My heart is a bird in a cage, ruffling its wings with the ache of expectation.
In Italy, the sun is rising. — Dustin Thomason

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

There must be something beyond man in this world. Even on attaining to his highest possibilities, he is like a bird beating against his cage. There is something beyond, O deathless like a sea-shell, moaning for the bosom of the ocean to which you belong! — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Fear," said Lobsang. "An instinct that prevents many people from taking actions that they know, deep down inside, would liberate them. Like a bird in a cage whose door has been opened, we are free to go out in search of fulfillment, but fear makes us look for all kinds of reasons not to. — David Michie

Her beauty was sold for an old man's gold. She's a bird in a gilded cage. — Arthur J. Lamb

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly. — Kahlil Gibran

He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage. — Khalil Gibran

I feel as though I should say something profound, or enact some rite, or trade something to make it official. I want to transfer some trinket which would allow me to say that she's my girl, some kind of currency that proves to people that she likes me back. Something that would permit me to think about her all the time without feeling guilty or helpless or hopelessly far away. I guess I'm just so excited, I want to cage this thing like a tiny red bird so if can't fly away, so it stays the same, so it's still there the next time. For keeps, like a coin in your pocket. Like a peach pit from Mad Jack Lionel's tree. Like scribbled words in a locked suitcase. A bright balloon to tie to your bedpost. And you want to hug it close, hold it, but not so tight it bursts. — Craig Silvey

My heart is flailing, thumping in my chest like a bird caught in a cage, wanting to be wild again. — Sona Charaipotra

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only! — Emily Dickinson

Got a kick for a dog
Beggin' for Love
I gotta have my suffering
So that I can have my cross
I know a cat named Easter
He says will you ever learn
You're just an empty cage girl
If you kill the bird
I've been looking for a savior in these dirty streets
looking for a savior beneath these dirty sheets
I've been raising up my hands
Drive another nail in
Got enough guilt to start
my own religion — Tori Amos

What are you? Who are you? I have never met a Chosen like you in my entire existence. You are everything that is free. You are freedom. And I... I'm the bird trapped in the cage, watching you fly away. But then, you look back at me, you always look back, and you reach through the bars and offer your hand to me. Though I am nothing, though I am just a heartless creature, you still offer me your hand. But I won't take it. I won't because... what will happen to us if I do?

It doesn't matter. None of it matters. Because you were kind to me, you made me laugh - that isn't something I will forget easily, and I will repay you. — Giselle Simlett

The war could kill the faith in him, too, if he was not strong or careful enough. He could feel it fluttering within him sometimes, a bird in a cage of knives. Its own blood on its face and wings. — Brian Francis Slattery

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

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

No bird in a cage ever speaks. What is there to say? The sky is everywhere, churning above its head, blue and endless, calling out to it. But the caged bird can't answer anything except 'I cannot'. — Sonya Hartnett

She dreamed of escape - of growing wings like a bird and flying away from the palace, never to return. But, alas, she was a bird still locked tightly in her cage. — Morgan Rhodes

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

Teach them the shame that tells the lie, "I am unforgivable," when the truth is, "I feel unforgivable, but it was out of my control." Never let them switch those round right or The Adversary will liberate them in a heartbeat, like a bird flying from a cage. — Geoffrey Wood

Souls shriveled by public sins, each holding office like a bird in its cage — Giorgos Seferis

Having dreams without enthusiasm is like a bird living in a cage. — Debasish Mridha