Quotes & Sayings About Canaries

I had suddenly become aware of my hands, which meant only one thing: It was time to say my farewells and make a graceful
or at least dignified
exit.
Dogger had once told me, 'Your hands know when it's time to go.'
And he had been right. The hands are the canaries in one's own personal coal mine: They need to be watched carefully and obeyed. A fidget demands attention, and a full-blown not-knowing-what-to-do-with-them means 'Vamoose! — Alan Bradley

Because of her, he had learned to look for the birds - the darting flight of wild canaries (yellow sun on yellow wings), the chesty preening of redbirds and bluebirds, the blackbird with the red-tipped wings like startling epaulets. — Terry Kay

Places to hunt
places to hide are
getting harder to find, and pet
canaries and goldfish too, did you notice
that? — Charles Bukowski

The song of canaries
Never varies,
And when they're moulting
They're pretty revolting. — Ogden Nash

Perhaps poetry will be the canary in the mine-shaft warning us of what's to come. — Galway Kinnell

He smiled like a cat who'd just eaten a pet shop full of canaries, — C.D. Reiss

Don't save the canary. Fix the coal mine. — Seth Godin

Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf. — Anton Chekhov

He is an innocent in the way that lonesome canaries are innocent, flitting from one branch to another, the tender flutter of their wings and a few millilitres of blood keeping them airborne against the gravity of this world that wants to pull everyone down to its rotting surface. — Mohammed Hanif

Mrs. Grant glanced at her
husband. "She's always so fidgety.
Like a canary." She narrowed her
eyes at me. "I hate canaries."
I squeaked again. But not like a
canary. I hoped. — A&E Kirk

Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the lovebirds and the yellow canaries
escaped from their cages and hoping to get a taste of the sky
usually end up back on the ground, plucked raw by their more conformist cousins — Joanne Harris

You can't soar like an eagle and crap like a canary. — Ed Sabol

Within the army, field officers despised Staff officers as "having the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam," but both groups were as one in their distaste for interference by civilian ministers who were known as "the frocks." The civil arm in its turn referred to the military as "the boneheads. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Birds are, especially canaries, are super sensitive to hydrogen sulfide and sour gas. — David Suzuki

Bed is the only place for protracted telephoning. It is also execellently suited to reading, sleeping and listening to canaries. It is not a good place for sex: sex should take place in armchairs, or in bathrooms, or on lawns which have been brushed but not too recently mown, or on sandy beaches if you happen to have been circumcised. If you are too tired to have intercourse except in bed you are probably too tired anyway and should be husbanding your strength. — Kyril Bonfiglioli

Always look for sparrows before you look for canaries. — Michael Ruhlman

A tom cat hijacked a plane, stuck a pistol into the pilot's ribs and demanded: 'Take me to the canaries'. — Bob Monkhouse

Some canaries love their cages, they even call them home. — Marty Rubin

It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal. — Walker Percy

The way we view fiction is a reflection of how we define ourselves as a nation. Works of the imagination are canaries in the coal mine, the measure by which we can evaluate the health of the rest of society. — Azar Nafisi

[to Navy SEALs] Quite frankly, I didn't even want to use you guys, with your dip and velcro and all your gear bullshit. I wanted to drop a bomb. But people didn't believe in this lead enough to drop a bomb. So they're using you guys as canaries. And, in theory, if bin Laden isn't there, you can sneak away and no one will be the wiser. But bin Laden is there. And you're going to kill him for me. — Mark Owen

Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions. — Jaron Lanier

Likewise, civilizations have throughout history marched blindly toward disaster, because humans are wired to believe that tomorrow will be much like today - it is unnatural for us to think that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things is not stable and permanent. Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium. Yet the reality of global climate change is going to keep intruding on our fantasies of perpetual growth, permanent innovation and endless energy, just as the reality of mortality shocks our casual faith in permanence. — Roy Scranton

When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. — Kenneth Grahame

Then he smiled, like a cat who had just been entrusted with the keys to a home for wayward but plump canaries. — Neil Gaiman

You know it's time to start using mouthwash when your dentist leaves the room and sends in a canary. — Joan Rivers

Quote is taken from Chapter 1:
A decade ago when Isabel's husband Max had died, they'd moved in together and merged their possessions. Neither sister brought any fussy teapots, canaries, sachets, or doilies, but lots of other stuff had to either stay or go. Looking at the lime green gave Alma the willies. Her suggestion to slipcover it in a more subdued color had garnered Isabel's frosty stare, and Alma had dropped the matter. — Ed Lynskey

The sense of a small courageous community barely existing above the desert of trees, hemmed in by a sun too fierce to work under and a darkness filled with evil spirits - love was an arm round the neck, a cramped embrace in the smoke, wealth a little pile of palm-nuts, old age sores and leprosy, religion a few stones in the centre of the village where the dead chiefs lay, a grove of trees where the rice birds, like yellow and green canaries, built their nests, a man in a mask with raffia skirts dancing at burials. This never varied, only their kindness to strangers, the extent of their poverty and the immediacy of their terrors. Their laughter and their happiness seemed the most courageous things in nature — Graham Greene

Artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive.
They are supersensitive.
They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas,
long before more robust types realize that any danger is there. — Kurt Vonnegut

You could say sorry," suggested Harry bluntly.
"What, and get attacked by another flock of canaries?" muttered Ron.
"What did you have to imitate her for?"
"She laughed at my mustache!"
"So did I, it was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. — J.K. Rowling

We are the canaries in the mine. If we go, the last ecosystems go. So does the wisdom of how to sustain resources, live in balance with nature, and create communities based on cooperation, not competition. I think the rest of the world is searching for these values. I know we're here to share them. But we can only share them if we're here. — Rebecca Adamson

Why employ intelligent and highly paid ambassadors and then go and do their work for them? You don't buy a canary and sing yourself. — John Keats

He was just thinking aloud, ruling out possibilities by releasing them into the air, like canaries in the coal mine of his mind. — John Connolly

Women and gay people are the litmus test of whether a society is democratic and respecting human rights. We are the canaries in the mine. — Peter Tatchell