Broken Wing Quotes & Sayings

My life has crept so long on a broken wing Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear, That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Why is it we love so fully what has washed up on the beaches
of our hearts, those lost messages, lost friends, the daylight stars
we never get to see? Bad luck never takes a vacation, my friend
once wrote. It lies there among the broken shells and stones
we collect, a story he would say begins with you, with me,
a story that is forever lost among the backwaters of our lives,
our endless fear of ourselves, and our endless need for hope,
a story, perhaps an answer, a word suddenly on wing, the simple
sound of a torn heart, or the unmistakable scent of the morning's fading moon. — Richard Jackson

Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."
"She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me.
"Moderately," Holly confessed ... Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc
it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear. — Truman Capote

He "binds up the broken-hearted" (Isa. 61:1). As a mother is tenderest toward the most diseased and weakest child, so does Christ most mercifully incline to the weakest. Likewise he puts an instinct into the weakest things to rely upon something stronger than themselves for support. The vine steadies itself upon the elm, and the weakest creatures often have the strongest shelters. The consciousness of the church's weakness makes her willing to lean on her Beloved and to hide herself under his wing. — Richard Sibbes

The death of a man's wife is like cutting down an ancient oak that has long shaded the family mansion. Henceforth the glare of the world, with its cares and vicissitudes falls upon the old widower's heart, and there is nothing to break their force, or shield him from the full weight of misfortune. It is as if his right hand were withered; as if one wing of his angel was broken, and every movement that he made brought him to the ground. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Like a bird with broken wing
that has traveled through wind for years ...
I sleep and my heart stays awake ... — Giorgos Seferis

Broken wings don't mend that way; the way you think broken wings do. Once that wing has taken time to mend; that bird has forgotten how to fly — S.L. Northey

Your love has a broken wing if it cannot fly across the sea. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

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

A trail twists through the stone cliffs toward Arques. At its end lies a broken man, his soul lifting away from his body, fluttering on a butterfly's wing, as fragile as a dream. — Julie Christine Johnson

(First lines) Now a traveler must make his way to Noon City by the best means he can, for there are no trains or buses headed in that direction, though six days a week a truck from the Chuberry Turpentine Company collects mail and supplies at the nextdoor town of Paradise Chapel; occasionally a person bound for Noon City can catch a ride with the driver of the truck, Sam Ratcliffe. It's a rough trip no matter how you come, for these washboard roads will loosen up even brandnew cars pretty fast, and hitchhikers always find the going bad. Also, this is lonesome country, and here in the sunken marshes where tiger lilies bloom the size of a man's head there are luminous green logs that shine under the dark water like drowned corpses. Often the only movement on the landscape is a broken spiral of smoke from a sorry-looking farmhouse on the horizon, or a wing-stiffened bird, silent and arrow-eyed, circling endlessly over the bleak deserted pinewoods. — Truman Capote

A broken wing simply means, you have to find another way to fly. Have a wonderful day people. — Kerry Katona

Muhammad Ali has a lot to answer for. When he lit the flame at the Atlanta Olympics there wasn't a dry eye on the planet. Why were we crying? Because a great sportsman had been reduced to this-a shuffling, mumbling, twitching cripple. A man who once danced like a butterfly now shook like blancmange.
We always remember sportsmen. When the body deserts a scientist like Stephan Hawking we figure that he'll be able to live in his mind, but a crippled athlete is like a bird with a broken wing. When you soar the heights the landing is harder. — Michael Robotham

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

To Eva, Cousin Randy was an untouchable demigod - an angel's wing broken from an ancient statue, sent here to help her hover above all things insipid and heartbreaking. — J. Ryan Stradal

I have developed my eye as a cinematographer through the craft of operating. When I am not operating, I am often anxious, uncertain, restless, sometimes irritable. When I am in the position of working with Steadicam or remote cameras, I fly with a broken wing. — Robert Richardson

My love is like some raven at my window with a broken wing. — Bob Dylan

Remarks on My Character
Waving a flag I retreat a long way beyond
any denial, all the way over the scorched earth,
and come into an arching grove of evasions,
onto those easy paths, one leading to another
and covered ever deeper with shade: I'll never
dare the sun again, that I can promise.
It is time to practice the shrug: "Don't count on
me." Or practice the question that drags its broken
wing over the ground and leads into the swamp
where vines trip anyone in a hurry, and a final
dark pool waits for you to stare at yourself
while shadows move closer over your shoulder.
That's my natural place; I can live where the blurred
faces peer back at me. I like the way
they blend, and no one is ever sure itself
or likely to settle in unless you scare off
the others. Afraid but so deep no one can follow,
I steal away there, holding my arms like a tree. — William Stafford

Aaron's therapist calls him a wounded bird, but, I ask you, who wouldn't care for a wounded bird? What kind of person sees a bird with a broken wing, cat on the horizon, and walks on by? — David James Poissant

No. I told you before, I don't even remember coming through the gate. I woke up in thecemetery, my poor wing snapped, my leg broken, beaten like an orphan kid in regency England. I was a pitiful wee creature."
"Um, okay. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Tshepo reckons that it is inevitable that one's circle of friends will become smaller as one grows older. He reasons that when we begin we are similar, like two glasses of water sitting side by side on a clean tray. There is very little that differentiates us. We are simple beings whose interests do not extend beyond playing touch and kicking balls.
However, like the two glasses of water forgotten on a tray in the reading room, we start to collect bits. Bits of fluff, bits of a broken beetle wing, bits of bread, bits of pollen, bits of shed epithelial cells, bits of hair, bits of toilet paper, bits of airborne fungal organisms, bits of bits. All sorts of bits. No two combinations the same. Just like with the glasses of water, Environment, jealous of our fundamentality, bombards our basic minds with complexity. So we become frighteningly dissimilar, until there is very little that holds us together. — Kopano Matlwa

These memories of happiness are fleeting things, reflections in a stream, glimpsed all broken for a second and then swept away in the current of grief that is our life now. I can't say that I ever feel what it felt like then, when I was happy. But sometimes something will touch the place where that feeling was, a touch as slight and swift as the brush of a moth's wing in the dark. — Geraldine Brooks

I worry hope will crush me, the way love has so many times before.
Are they so different, hope and love? O & E in the same place, half of the other in each word.
Both swimming in unknowns.
I've been through the big changes. These ones should seem easier in comparison, I should be more prepared, but they don't and I'm not.
Sometimes I feel like a broken-wing butterfly, clinging to a window screen.
Afraid to let go. Afraid to stay.
Wondering how much wing is enough to fly. — Erin Morgenstern

196. "Look on the bright side, suicide
Lost eyesight I'm on your side
Angel left wing, right wing, broken wing
Lack of iron and/or sleeping
Protector of the kennel
Ecto-plasma, Ecto-skeletal
Obituary birthday
Your scent is still here in my place of recovery!" ~ — Kurt Cobain

If you imagine, friend, that I do not have those
black serpents in the pit of my body,
that I am not crushed in fragments by the tough
butterfly wing
broken and crumpled like a black silk stocking,
if you imagine that my body is not
blackened
burned wood,
then you imagine a false woman. — Diane Wakoski

A bird with a broken wing cannot survive nor will a man with a broken spirit endure. — Kilroy J. Oldster

A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the steam of its rose like a broken butterfly wing. — Lauren Oliver

A loose feather can't be put back...but a broken wing can sometimes heal. — Bob Graham

Look, sometimes it's OK with girls like this, they wanna have fun, and sometimes it's not because they've got a broken wing and they're hurt and they're an easy target. In this case, this particular case, I think that wing is being fixed, my friend, and you gotta make sure that it's mended and you're getting in the way of that right now, okay, because she's sensitive and she's smart, she's artistic. This is a great girl, you gotta be respectful to that. Come on, let me walk you to your car, you're a better guy than this. — Matthew Quick

I'm just looking for an angel with a broken wing. — Jimmy Page

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

A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled, down, down to the water — Kate Chopin

Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature. — Jeannette Walls

I think humans might be like butterflies; people die every day without many other people knowing about them, seeing their colors, hearing their stories ... and when humans are broken, they're like broken butterfly wings; suddenly there are so many beauties that are seen in different ways, so many thoughts and visions and possibilities that form, which couldn't form when the person wasn't broken! So it is not a very sad thing to be broken, after all! It's during the times of being broken, that you have all the opportunities to become things unforgettable! Just like the broken butterfly wing that I found, which has given me so many thoughts, in so many ways, has shown me so many words, and imaginations! But butterflies need to know, that it doesn't matter at all if the whole world saw their colors or not! But what matters is that they flew, they glided, they hovered, they saw, they felt, and they knew! And they loved the ones whom they flew with! And that is an existence worthwhile! — C. JoyBell C.

He walked outside onto the terrace and sat. Obviously settled and comfortable, he poured coffee. There were ways and ways to gain trust, he thought. With
a bird with a broken wing, it took patience, care, and a gentle touch. With a high-strung horse that had been whipped, it took diligence and the risk of being kicked. With a woman, it took a certain amount of charm. He was willing to combine all three. — Nora Roberts

She limped, unaided around the house, like a bird with its wing broken. Tame, because it couldn't fly away. All her time was taken up with managing herself, working out new ways to do things. Being a different person in the world. — Joan London

What did you discover about the shooter?" Jude asked as he struggled to sit upright.
"Once I spotted him on the rooftop, I ran up the back stairs to follow him. He was long gone, but he left something behind," Sussex said.
"Oh?"
"Yes, I'll take it upon myself to investigate it."
Jude opened his eyes, his stare focused on the duke. "Do you need my help?"
Alynwick snorted. "A soiled dove with a broken wing," he drawled. "What use would you be?"
Jude grumbled, "I'll be fine by the morning. — Charlotte Featherstone

Better to struggle through life with a broken wing than have no wings at all. — Elizabeth Goudge

Classical virtuosity is more than technique, line, proportion, and balance. It is as if the performer and spectator come together to hold in their hands a bird with a broken wing. The creature can be felt to stir, to struggle for freedom. Its life responds to human warmth; its wing might brush your check as it flies away. — Gelsey Kirkland