Birds And Heaven Quotes & Sayings

What if heaven is just a vast consciousness that the dead return to? And their assignment is to report on the experiences they collected during their time on earth? ... The spring mornings they woke up to a million birds singing their hearts out, and the summer afternoons with the swim towels hung over the porch rail, and the October air that smelled like wood smoke and apple cider, and the warm yellow windows of home when they came in on a snowy night. That's what my experience has been,' they say, and it gets folded in with the others
one more report on what living felt like. What it was like to be alive. — Anne Tyler

The Hill
Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;
Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,
When we are old, are old ... " "And when we die
All's over that is ours; and life burns on
Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
- "Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"
"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.
Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;
"We shall go down with unreluctant tread
Rose-crowned into the darkness!" ... Proud we were,
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away. — Rupert Brooke

Matthew 13:31 31. Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Matthew 13:32 32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. — The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints

Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait,
His day's hot task hath ended in the west:
The owl, night's herald, shrieks-'tis very late;
The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest;
And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven's light,
Do summon us to part, and bid good night. — William Shakespeare

You bad birds,
But God shall not punish you, you
Shall be with us in heaven, though less
Conscious of your happiness, perhaps, than we.
Hell is a not quite satisfactory heaven, probably,
But you are the fruit and jewels
Of my arrangement ... — John Ashbery

The birds are the eyes of heaven, and the flies are the spies of hell. — Suzy Kassem

"Your Breast is Enough"
By Pablo Neruda
Your breast is enough for my heart,
and my wings for your freedom.
What was sleeping above your soul will rise
out of my mouth to heaven.
In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horizon with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.
I have said that you sang in the wind
like the pines and like the masts.
Like them you are tall and taciturn,
and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.
You gather things to you like an old road.
You are peopled with echoes and nostalgic voices.
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated
that had been sleeping in your soul. — Pablo Neruda

Can you see air you breathe? Can you see the force that moves the tides or changes the seasons or sends the birds to a winter haven?" Her eyes welled. "Can Rome with all its knowledge be so foolish? Oh Marcus, you can't carve God in stone. You can't limit him to a temple. You can't imprison him on a mountaintop. Heaven is his throne; earth, his footstool. Everything you see is his. Empires will rise and empires will fall. Only God prevails. — Francine Rivers

The rocks are where they are- and this is their will. The rivers flow- and this is their will. The birds fly- this is their will. Human beings talk- this is their will. The seasons change, heaven sends down rain or snow, the earth occasionally shakes, the waves roll, the stars shine- each of them follows its own will. To be is to will and so is to become. — D.T. Suzuki

On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,
We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world
That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."
Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever. — Bai Juyi

And what of my extended family-birds, beasts, and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities-the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch? (pg. 98) — Yann Martel

Don't bring the ocean if I feel thirsty, nor heaven if I ask for a light; but bring a hint, some dew, a particle, as birds carry only drops away from water, and the wind a grain of salt. — Olav H. Hauge

And also celebrate the Skill of the Scythians in that Art, who sent once to Darius King of Persia an Embassador that made him a present of a Bird, a Frog, a Mouse, and five Arrows, without speaking one word; and being ask'd what those Presents meant, and if he had Commission to say any thing, answer'd that he had not; Which puzzl'd and gravell'd Darius very much; till Gobrias, one of the seven Captains that had kil'd the Magi explain'd it, saying to Darius, By these Gifts and Offerings the Scythians silently tell you, that except the Persians like Birds fly up to Heaven, like Mice hide themselves near the Centre of the Earth, or like Frogs dive to the very bottom of Ponds and Lakes, they shall be destroyed by the Power and Arrows of the Scythians. — Francois Rabelais

The sun had not risen, but the vault of heaven was rich with the winning, softness that "brings and shuts the day," while the whole air was filled with the carols of birds, the hymns of the feathered tribe. — James F. Cooper

The Brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing, and think it were not night. — William Shakespeare

Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as if they line a grand parade route for our passage. Their black feathers are stark as soot against the white road and the snow. They stab at the ground with their strange bare bills and gray unfeathered faces. The birds are like rough-edged black stones on a string around this stripped cold neck of road. The old books tell us rooks bring the virtuous dead to heaven's gate. — Ned Hayes

No matter what heaven you believe in, your time on this earth will end. What I'm saying is that you should listen - really listen - to the slosh of the waves and the distant call of Pacific birds. You should feel a boy's pulse against your cheek; you should fill your lungs with ocean air. While you can, I mean. You should do these things while you still can. — Emery Lord

Birds are the eyes of heaven, and flies are the spies of hell. — Suzy Kassem

By heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!" replied the other. "He IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn't take ten thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment, a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most astonishing birds that ever lived!" The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so tame that he was brought down by Mr. Boythorn's man, on his forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted on his master's head. To hear Mr. Boythorn presently expressing the most implacable and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to have a good illustration of his character, I thought. — Charles Dickens

Many birds and beasts are ... as fit to go to Heaven as many human beings - people who talk of their seats there with as much confidence as if they had booked them at a box office. — Leigh Hunt

Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to be the very oracles of Heaven. As though God had turned away from the wise, and written His decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind! Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear. — Christopher Hitchens

Futurity is impregnable to mortal ken: no prayer pierces through heaven's adamantine walls. Whether the birds fly right or left, whatever be the aspect of the stars, the book of nature is a maze, dreams are a lie, and every sign a falsehood. — Friedrich Schiller

You have heaven adorned, earth beautified, the sea populated with its own creatures, the air filled with birds which scour it in every direction. Studious listener, think of all these creations which God has drawn out of nothing; ... recognize everywhere the wisdom of God; never cease to wonder, and, through every creature, to glorify the Creator. — Saint Basil

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden's beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land. — Rumi

Why were the flowers born so beautiful and yet so hapless? Insects can sting, and even the meekest of beasts will fight when brought to bay. The birds whose plumage is sought to deck some bonnet can fly from its pursuer, the furred animal whose coat you covet for your own may hide at your approach. Alas! The only flower known to have wings is the butterfly; all others stand helpless before the destroyer. If they shriek in their death agony their cry never reaches our hardened ears. We are ever brutal to those who love and serve us in silence, but the time may come when, for our cruelty, we shall be deserted by these best friends of ours. Have you not noticed that the wild flowers are becoming scarcer every year? It may be that their wise men have told them to depart till man becomes more human. Perhaps they have migrated to heaven. Much may be said in favor of him who — Okakura Kakuzo

You don't have a soul, so you can't be baptized. All animals are like that. I think it's unfair and sometimes I don't believe it. After all, what would heaven be without birds or dogs or horses? And what about trees and flowers? They don't have souls either. Does that mean heaven looks like a cement parking lot? I suppose this is what the nuns call a theological problem. — Nancy Farmer

We have never understood how birds manage to fly,
Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams,
Now how heaven and earth can appear in a poem. — Robert Bly

She what was honour knew, And with obsequious majesty approv'd My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower I led her blushing like the morn; all heaven And happy constellations on that hour Shed their selectest influence; the earth Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill; Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs Whisper'd it to the woods, and from their wings Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub. — John Milton

Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth. — Henry David Thoreau

Heavens is here 'neath the mountain walls,
In the song of the wind and the waterfalls,
In the watchful stars that blanket the night
And the music of birds before the dawn light.

Heaven is here in our mountain keep.
In the silence and dim of the forest deep,
From the chestnut tall as the mightiest mast,
To the laurel flowers in the shadow it casts.

Heaven is here on theses mountains high,
In ancient stone castles that challenge the sky,
In the thunder and flash that ring from their fight
And the meadows made gold by the day's final light. — Michael Oechsle

I know how the birds fly, how the fishes swim, how animals run. But there is the Dragon. I cannot tell how it mounts on the winds through the clouds and flies through heaven. Today I have seen the Dragon. — Confucius

And when the rains were over and it was October and the birds were in song again, I could lie in the sun on sweet-smelling grass and gaze up through a pattern of oak leaves into a blind-blue heaven. And I would thank my God for leaves and grass and the smell of things, the smell of mint and myrtle and bruised clover, and the touch of things, the touch of grass and air and sky, the touch of the sky's blueness. — Ruskin Bond

Unbelief does nothing but darken and destroy. It makes the world a moral desert, where no divine footsteps are heard, where no angels ascend and descend, where no living hand adorns the fields, feeds the birds of heaven, or regulates events. — Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher

I tied a bunch of balloons to a beach chair and tried to float up to heaven. *begins to weep* There's no heaven, and birds tried to kill me! *shrivels up* — Thom Yorke

Well, I've had more than one odd moment, I have, But I have never felt those impulses you have. Soon enough you get your fill of woods and things, I don't really envy birds their wings. How different are the pleasures of the intellect, 1130 Sustaining one from page to page, from book to book, And warming winter nights with dear employment And with the consciousness your life's so lucky. And goodness, when you spread out an old parchment, Heaven's fetched straight down into your study. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

THEIR BELIEF. IT is a strange revelation to find that the natives believe in a common Creator, and that their race sprang from one man and woman. There is no mistake that this it; their belief. Their Creator's name is GNURKER. They allow that he has a wife, who gave birth to the first couple sent to populate the earth. When their God saw that this earth was fit for man, and that all animal life and fishes were plentiful, He caused an immense whirlwind, which reached from Heaven to earth, and sent down him son and daughter with full instructions in all manner of ceremonies. They were to name their children by four tribal names--Banaka, Boorung, Paljarri, Kymera--and thus observe the marriage laws. They were to strictly follow out His commands, and when they died, their and their children's spirits would be received into heaven. They were given control over the fishes of the waters, the birds of the air, all animals, insects, and every living thing--that — John G. Withnell

Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

kingdom of heaven is like a a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. — Anonymous

Alas, so all things now do hold their peace:
Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing:
The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease;
The nightes chare the stars about doth bring. — Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey

I got used to birds: small black birds flying up from behind a building like God had tossed up a handful of currants, birds squalling in the parking lot of the grocery store (drowning the hum of industrial refrigerators), chachalacas -brown robed nuns to the spangled disco dancer peacocks - cackling in the dust of our yard. I got used to the chatters, squeaks, squalls, peeps, calls that sounded like bitter laughter, whistles, flutes, calls that sounded like souls ascending to heaven. I got used to dust and flatness, to sunsets like pink water pouring from the sky, flooding the earth with orange soda. I got used to wind: the hot, cruel wind of afternoon, the merciful magnolia breeze of night. I got used to it. But then I had to go. — Kathleen Founds

Pray to God for gladness. Be glad as children, as the birds of heaven. And let not the sin of men confound you in your doings. Fear not that it will wear away your work and hinder its being accomplished. Do not say, 'Sin is mighty, wickedness is mighty, evil environment is mighty, and we are lonely and helpless, and evil environment is wearing us away and hindering our good work from being done.' Fly from that dejection, children! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The land and sea, the animals, fishes, and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests, mountains, and rivers, are not small themes ... but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects ... they expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls. — Walt Whitman

Heaven above was blue, and earth beneath was green; the river glistened like a path of diamonds in the sun; the birds poured forth their songs from the shady trees; the lark soared high above the waving corn; and the deep buzz of insects filled the air. — Charles Dickens

During that night the blessed Antony told us this, too. 'A whole year long I prayed that the place of the righteous and of the sinners be revealed to me, and I saw a huge giant, high as the clouds and black. He had his hand stretched out to heaven, and beneath him there was a lake the size of a sea and I saw souls, flying like birds. 17. " 'Those flying above his hands and his head were being saved; they that were struck by his hands were falling into the lake. A voice came to me saying, "Those souls that you see flying above are the souls of the righteous, the ones that are being brought safely into Paradise; the others are they that are being dragged down to Hades, having followed the desires of the flesh and the remembrance of injuries." ' "* — John Wortley

Any day above ground is a good one. A woman's beauty is her inherent ability to better a man in every way. My father, now in heaven, is the watcher of birds. And his eye is on his sparrow. God, in his great silence, is still there. Of that I haven't a single doubt. Music is the balm that heals the ache of a forlorn star. — Donald E. Williams Jr.

Jesus lived in occupied territory, in poverty and misery, and his stories and preaching are all about food, land, liberation from bondage and servitude and get. He preached about providing for those who lacked the most and were considered expendable, as the birds of the air, and yet in Jesus' eyes were where one found the treasure of heaven, here, now, on earth. — Megan McKenna

From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie. — Hokusai Katsushika

Lines Written In Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man? — William Wordsworth

Vimes died. The sun dropped out of the sky, giant lizards took over the world, and the stars exploded and went out and all hope vanished and gurgled into the sinktrap of oblivion. And gas filled the firmament and combusted and behold! There was a new heaven - or possibly not. And Disc and Io and and possibly verily life crawled out of the sea - or possibly didn't because it had been made by the gods, and lizards turned to less scaly lizards - or possibly did not. And lizards turned into birds and bugs turned into butterflies and a species of apple turned into banana and a kind of monkey fell out of a tree and realised life was better when you didn't have to spend your time hanging onto something. And in only a few billion years evolved trousers and ornamental stripey hats. Lastly the game of Crocket. And there, magically reincarnated, was Vimes, a little dizzy, standing on the village green looking into the smiling countenance of an enthusiast. — Terry Pratchett

You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "By heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!" replied the other. "He IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn't take ten thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment, a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most astonishing birds that ever lived! — Charles Dickens

When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side ... And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds ... Then Man was born: ... though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven. — Ovid