Quotes & Sayings About Cuckoos

If you got a dollar, soak it away, put it in a savings bank, bury it, do anything but spend it. Spending when we didn't have it put us where we are today. Saving when we've got it will get us back to where we was before we went cuckoo. — Will Rogers

Cruelty in all countries is the companion of anger; but there is only one, and never was another on the globe, where she coquets both with anger and mirth. — Walter Savage Landor

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering voice? — William Wordsworth

The course of the seasons is a piece of clockwork, with a cuckoo to call when it is spring. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Billy here has been talkin' about slicin' his wrists again, so is there seven of you guys who'd like to join him and make it therapeutic? — Ken Kesey

The cuckoos remain silent for a long time (for several seasons) until they are able to sing sweetly (in the Spring) so as to give joy to all. — Chanakya

We were surprised how closely the cuckoo imitated the clock-and yet, of course, it could never have heard a clock. — Mark Twain

The Attic warbler pours her throat, Responsive to the cuckoo's note, The untaught harmony of spring. — Thomas Gray

We ought never to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty. — Hugh Blair

The first cuckoo's melancholy cry. — William Wordsworth

They set off through the soft lingering light. One cuckoo in the depths of Layer Wood and one in the dense shrubbery of the Dower House were keeping up their eternal question and answer, and in the comparative coolness which had come with the evening all the scents of summer had magnified. — Norah Lofts

But I tried, didn't I? Goddamnit, at least I did that. — Ken Kesey

Nothing is so pregnant as cruelty; so multifarious, so rapid, so ever teeming a mother is unknown to the animal kingdom; each of her experiments provokes another and refines upon the last; though always progressive, yet always remote from the end. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

I think there are some groups of stocks that are highly vulnerable because they're in cuckoo land in terms of valuations, — Marc Faber

Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than it is the cure of sufferings; compassion, in the first instance, is good for both; I have known it to bring compunction when nothing else would. — Walter Savage Landor

There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? — Henry David Thoreau

Anyone who thinks cryptozoology is the study of the impossible has never really taken a very good look at the so-called "natural world." Once you get past the megamouth sharks, naked mole rats, and spotted hyenas, then the basilisks, dragons, and cuckoos just don't seem that unreasonable. Unpleasant, yes, but unreasonable? Not really. — Seanan McGuire

It seems like cloud cuckoo land. If anyone is suggesting that I would go to Parliament and suggest the abolition of the Pound Sterling - no! We have made it quite clear that we will not have a single currency imposed upon us. — Margaret Thatcher

The cuckoo bird," she said, "You see, cuckoos are parasites. THey lay their eggs in in other birds' nests. Whhen the egg hatches, the baby cuckoopushes the other birds out of the nest. THe poor parent birds work to death trying to find enough food to feed the enormous cuckoo child who has murdered their babies and taken their places.'
Enormous?' said Jace. 'Did you just call me fat?'
It was an analogy.'
I am not fat. — Cassandra Clare

The behavior of the pigeon
is beyond reproach,
but the mountain cuckoo? — Yosa Buson

Now, we all have stories of how we got here, and prob-probably some of you feel angry who whoever it is who's left you here. But you must try and remember that they were like that because that's how they were taught to be. You m-must try to forgive them. Baby cuckoos can't unlearn their bad habits. But we should try to, and because what you learn as a ch-child you will pass on to people around you, from now on this house is going to be a house of happiness. From this evening on every single one of us is going to consider other people's feelings. — Georgia Byng

I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs. — John Milton

When I was seven, I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with my mom. When Jack Nicholson was strapped to the table getting electroshock treatment, my mom burst into tears. She said it reminded her of her life, and I was stunned, because I didn't know my mom had been nominated for an Oscar. — Christopher Titus

The merry cuckow, messenger of Spring, His trumpet shrill hath thrice already sounded. — Edmund Spenser

Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they learn it. — Karen Joy Fowler

If the cuckoo does not sing, kill it. — Oda Nobunaga

Have I got a mother-in-law. She's so neat she puts paper under the cuckoo clock. — Henny Youngman

The belief that you have a great idea is not worth cuckoo spit. Ideas are ten a penny while the ability to execute counts for a great deal more. — Felix Dennis

Hah!" said Granny Weatherwax. "I should just say it is a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you're listenin' to a nice song about ... cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about ... something else entirely," she added darkly. — Terry Pratchett

The beauty of a cuckoo is in its notes, that of a woman in her unalloyed devotion to her husband, that of an ugly person in his scholarship, and that of an ascetic in his forgiveness. — Chanakya

To me, the most amazing the most amazing transformation in my lifetime is not the revolution of the Sixties but the counter revolution of the Seventies, where they managed to put the cuckoo clock back together again — Terence McKenna

I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every one hundred years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years. If I hurry I should finish the clock in time to see the cuckoo come out for the first time. — Danny Hillis

Early Summer, loveliest season,
The world is being colored in.
While daylight lasts on the horizon,
Sudden, throaty blackbirds sing.

The dusty-colored cuckoo cuckoos.
"Welcome, summer" is what he says.
Winter's unimaginable.
The wood's a wickerwork of boughs.

Summer means the river's shallow,
Thirsty horses nose the pools.
Long heather spreads out on bog pillows.
White bog cotton droops in bloom.

Swallows swerve and flicker up.
Music starts behind the mountain.
There's moss and a lush growth underfoot.
Spongy marshland glugs and stutters.

Bog banks shine like ravens' wings.
The cuckoo keeps on calling welcome.
The speckled fish jumps; and the strong
Swift warrior is up and running.

A little, jumpy, chirpy fellow
Hits the highest note there is;
The lark sings out his clear tidings.
Summer, shimmer, perfect days. — Marie Heaney