Free Bird Quotes & Sayings

The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees; I want money. — John Lennon

Where to begin? Do we measure the relaxing of the feet? The moment when the eye glimpses the hawk, when instinct functions? For in this pure action, this pure moving of the bird, there is no time, no space, but only the free doing-being of this very moment -now! — Peter Matthiessen

I felt like a bird, caged all its life, set free by an open window and cowering upon the windowsill. — Catherine M. Wilson

My life is a tree, yoke fellow of the earth, pledged by roots too deep for remembrance. To stand hard against the storm. To fill my place. (But high in the branches of my green tree there is a wild bird singing. Wing-free are the wings of my bird; she hath built no mortal nest) — Karle Wilson Baker

In alien lands I keep the body
Of ancient native rites and things:
I gladly free a little birdie
At celebration of the spring.
I'm now free for consolation,
And thankful to almighty Lord:
At least, to one of his creations
I've given freedom in this world! — Alexander Pushkin

She was green when green wasn't in. From sea to shining sea, Lady Bird Johnson has left her legacy in a more beautiful America. From millions of trees and wildflowers planted, to interstates free from billboards and replaced with green. — David Mixner

Whereas Mark Fidrych has awakened the boy lying dormant in every man's breast, Whereas he has reminded us all that, in an age of free agents and no-cut contracts, baseball is still a game, he has proven baseballs, like people, respond best to kind words and constructive criticism and not to saliva and Vaseline, he made Big Bird as popular with fifty-year-olds as with the playpen set" - Governor Michael Dukakis — Doug Wilson

When I was a little kid, of course, I was brown all summer. That's because I was free as a bird- nothing to do but catch bugs all day. — Roy Blount Jr.

Free as a bird
It's the next best thing to be
Free as a bird.
Home, home and dry
Like a homing bird I'll fly
As a bird on wings.
Whatever happened to
The life that we once knew?
Can we really live without each other?
Where did we lose the touch
That seemed to mean so much?
It always made me feel so free. — John Lennon

How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day. — A.E. Housman

I don't keep diaries; I consider them like birds; I set them free and let them fly to the depths of the past where they belong! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Rena noticed me watching it pass. 'You think they don't got problem?' Rena said. 'Everybody got problem. You got me, they got insurance, house payment, Preparation H.' She smiled, baring the part between her two upper teeth. 'We are the free birds. They want to be us. — Janet Fitch

Truth is complete in itself. Truth has a strong foundation in itself. It is bold, it has no fears. It has no limit of space or time. It is a fearless, free bird in the sky. It does not care for status. It is wealth in itself. Truth stands even when there is no public support. — Sivananda

I just love to skate. When I put a skate on the ice, I'm free from the world, and I have no problems at all. I am a bird! — Jim Carrey

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

Your thoughts are as free as any bird — Michael Jackson

Freedom, sir," I began unceremoniously, without greeting or inquiry, "freedom is the biggest thing for man. Nothing can be compared to it - nothing at all!" Surprised at my outburst, my master looked up at me in silence. "One can understand nothing from books," I went on. "We read in the scriptures that our desires are bonds, fettering us as well as others. But such words, by themselves, are so empty. It is only when we get to the point of letting the bird out of its cage that we can realize how free the bird has set us. Whatever we cage, shackles us with desire whose bonds are stronger than those of iron chains. I tell you, sir, this is just what the world has failed to understand. They all seek to reform something outside themselves. But reform is wanted only in one's own desires, nowhere else, nowhere else! — Rabindranath Tagore

To feel free like a bird, some things on our minds must be left in the past. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Africa.
That bird came from Africa.
But you mustn't cry for that bird, Paulie, because after a while it forgot about how the veldt smelled at noonday, and the sounds of the wildebeests at the waterhole, and the high acidic smell of the ieka-ieka trees in the great clearing north of the Big road. After awhile it forgot the cerise color of the sun dying behind Kilimanjaro. After awhile it only knew the muddy, smogged-out sunsets of Boston, that was all it remembered and all it wanted to remember. After awhile it didn't want to go back anymore, and if someone took it back and set it free it would only crouch in one place, afraid and hurting and homesick in two unknown and terribly ineluctable directions until something came along and killed it.
'Oh Africa, oh, shit,' he said in a trembling voice. — Stephen King

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,- When he beats his bars and would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings- I know why the caged bird sings! — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Truth can be awful and even excruciating, but once it's released, it's like a bird that's been caged too long who finally flies to freedom. I felt a little like that. Free — Ilsa Madden-Mills

So say it loud and let it ring We are all a part of everything The future, present and the past Fly on proud bird You're free at last — Charlie Daniels

She was a free bird one minute: queen of the world and laughing. The next minute she would be in tears like a porcelain angel, about to teeter, fall and break. She never cried because she was afraid that something 'would' happen; she would cry because she feared something that could render the world more beautiful, 'would not' happen. — Roman Payne

We're flying free like birds in the sky, because we're ALIVE. — Jessie J.

Because your master doesn't control you anymore. He hasn't for years. You're a free bird, Lucky. You are responsible for all your actions now. — Jim Tan

When they started to drain a swamp where birds and fish had lived, for a new housing development down the road from his apartment, Steven watched the protests and the preparations with interest. The bird people were furious, the developers unmovable, and Steven was filled with relief that the fight wasn't his. Nothing here was his ... He thought there should have been something sad about how little he was tied up with the place, but instead it felt like freedom. He was free because it wasn't his water here, and they weren't his fish. — Maile Meloy

I could never be homophobic in any kind of way, dude. I'm such a free bird. — CeeLo Green

Staring at her face, she began to fancy her outer layer had begun to melt away while she wasn't paying attention, and something
some new skeleton
was emerging from beneath the softness of her accustomed self. With a deep, visceral ache, she wished her true form might prove to be a sleek and shining one, like a stiletto blade slicing free of an ungainly sheath. Like a bird of prey losing its hatchling fluff to hunt in cold, magnificent skies. That she might become something glittering, something startling, something dangerous. — Laini Taylor

Her Triumph
I did the dragon's will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us. — W.B.Yeats

A fish is free as long as it stays in the water. If it suddenly declares that it wants its freedom to fly in the air like a bird, disaster occurs. A train is free as long as it stays on the track. However, if it demands freedom to take off down a major highway, the result is destruction and devastation. We too can only experience true freedom in its fullest if we remain within the framework of freedom. Often this requires accepting responsibility and practicing discipline. — Gigi Graham

Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze, A visitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky. Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful than to me; escaped From the vast city, where I long had pined A discontented sojourner: now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will. — William Wordsworth

she was curious to track down that bird, if only to see that it was free. Or, perhaps more accurately, to know that she was free from that desperate search for identity that had imprisoned her. She was now complete, just as she was. So — Ted Dekker

I left him and went up on deck to look out at the slithering city, its glitter of street lamps fizzy under the rain. There's something wrong about a ship in dock, something pathetic, like a bird fluttering in a spill of oil. The Nova was tethered to her berth by ropes and chains, caught in a pool of greasy water. I could feel her shifting under my feet, tugging to be free. — Beryl Bainbridge

The bird rocked free from its blocks and carried them down the tarmac, away from their homes and families and dogs and cats and to a land that didn't want them. — Ross Ritchell

Her hair was bright red, her skin, pale, and I can't explain why, but something about her shouted, 'I heart granola.' She belonged in one of those commercials for asthma medicines. The one with two women skipping through the park as the voiceover says, With my uncontrollable gasping under control, I'm free as a bird! — B. Justin Shier

Man has gone to the moon but he does not yet know how to make a flame tree or a bird song. Let us keep our dear countries free from irreversible mistakes which would lead us in the future to long for those same birds and trees. — Felix Houphouet-Boigny

Away from the tumult of motor and mill I want to be care-free; I want to be still! I'm weary of doing things; weary of words I want to be one with the blossoms and birds. — Edgar Guest

When I was 14-15
There was nothing to my life
but dancing and sex
I'd go to night clubs and dance
Then I'd meet someone and have sex
it was Fine and easy
nothing to do
BUT Think with my body
like a bird
I Thought I was Free
TrAcey Emin — Tracey Emin

Love is like a bird, they flies everywhere, its free, but its hard to trust someone where they like to stay. — Erico Quiambao

Looking at a sea bird flapping its wings against the full moon I wish I could grow wings and fly away from everything and be free. I wish I could lose myself in the vast ocean and float away from all this pain in my heart. — Monica James

Why is it," Jonathan puzzled, "that the hardest thing in the world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for himself if he'd just spend a little time practicing? Why should that be so hard? — Richard Bach

For me, books have been a life-long resource-to learning, laughter, solace, excitement, inspiration. At your library, the world awaits you, free for the asking. — Lady Bird Johnson

Free as a bird to settle where I will. — William Wordsworth

I am a caged bird,
rattling the bars of my cage,
with furious flutterings,
break my chains!
Free my spirit!
Let me fly with the wings you have drawn upon my soul
with heaven dipped ink — Steven James

That so many of the well fed young television-watchers in the world's most powerful democracy should be so completely indifferent to the idea of self-government, so blankly uninterested in freedom of thought and the right to dissent, is distressing, but not too surprising. "Free as a bird", we say, and envy the winged creatures for their power of unrestricted movement in all the three dimensions. But alas, we forget the dodo. Any bird that has learned how to grub up a good living without being compelled to use its wings will soon renounce the privilege of flight and remain forever grounded. — Aldous Huxley

(And could love free me from the shadows? Can a caged bird sing only the song it knows or can it learn a new song?) — Angela Carter

The soul is like a caged bird, it waits for the right person to open the door and set it free. — Belinda Taylor

Like a bird on a wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free!! — Leonard Cohen

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. — Charlotte Bronte

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

I am a helicopter pilot. Something that gives me pleasure sometimes is taking my helicopter to go high, 2000 meter, 6000 feet, to go there and feel like a bird. In this moment I feel free. — Roberto Cavalli

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.

We can love religion as we need rituals, but The Holy Spirit is a bird, free to fly and land where it likes. We don't actually need 'religion' in order to have a relationship with The Holy Spirit. Too many wars an violence over religion.We need to see it's all the same spirit and we are part of that spirit so we shouldn't be fighting over what name we call it. It's a free bird. — Sinead O'Connor

Caged birds sing of freedom, free birds fly. — Thorolf Rafto

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

Even the evil-looking bird perched on a rod in the bar had stopped screeching out the names and addresses of local contract killers, which was a service it provided for free. — Douglas Adams

Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil and you are bound hand and foot. Think only and entirely and completely of what you are doing at the moment and you are free as a bird. — Reginald Horace Blyth

To feel myself. Light as a feather free as a bird, though long since fit to be shot down. Unleash the dog with no sense of shame. Become this or that. Awaken the dead. Wear my pal Baldander's rags for a change. Lose my way on a single-minded quest. — Gunter Grass

What is it like to be so free - so trapped, but so free? What kind of bird sings only when caught? What kind of slave outshines and rises above her master? — Courtney M. Privett

If you have been a slave all your life, used to being ordered about and abused from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, it's impossible to adjust to normal life overnight. I had never been free to make my own decisions before and had no idea how to do it. I was like a bird that has been bred in captivity suddenly being released into the wild: I fell apart. — Jane Elliott

I wouldn't steal anything because stealing is wrong. If I had to, I'd steal a caged bird and set it free. — Arthur Darvill

She stood motionless on the shore, waiting for the dream to continue, for a solution to become visible, but nothing happened. Then she awoke and thought maybe that was how Pierre had died. Like a bird that takes off and ascends and is suddenly gone.

Free, she thought, released. Then she thought:alone.

She stared at the ceiling. No beauty whatsoever, no freedom; she remembered that Pierre was dead and felt ordinary despair and grief pour in through the dawn. The dream dispersed. Suddenly she was unsure.

Maybe the dream wasn't about Pierre but about herself. — Per Olov Enquist

There shall come a day when Birds shall be free ... and humans will see ... — K. Hari Kumar

Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you. — Charlotte Bronte

Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country. — Bill Ayers

In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird. — Laura Hillenbrand

Of course you shall set the bird free because you know that the wings need nothing but freedom! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

God, I wish I was free. I wish I was a bird floating in the breeze. — Katie McGarry

To be generous, guiltless, and of a free disposition is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. — William Shakespeare

My father always said, 'Malala will be free as a bird.' — Malala Yousafzai

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will. — Charlotte Bronte

A Rule: Life without Islam is a naked tree,
Birds without trees can never feel free. — Leena Ahmad Almashat

Her mind is a bird that's trapped inside her skull, flapping and thrashing, never breaking free. — Lauren DeStefano

If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, "Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!"
do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn't. Birds are not free. The people you've just evicted would sputter, "With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We're calling the police, you scoundrel. — Yann Martel

You have the Super Soaker filled with holy water?"
"Yeah. I sucked it out of the church. You know that bird-bath thing they got right up front?"
"The baptismal font?"
"That's it. They got it filled with holy water, free for the taking."
"Brilliant," I said to Lula.
She tapped her head with her finger. "No grass growin' here. — Janet Evanovich

What's important about morality in politics is us. We own the chicken farm. We must give our bird-brained, feather-headed politicians morals. Politicians love to think of themselves as "free-range" but they do not have the capacity to hunt or gather morals in the wild. If we fail to supply them with morality, politicians begin to act very scary in the barnyard. These are enormous headless chickens and they have nukes. — P. J. O'Rourke

It is hard to explain to a privileged child the difference between freedom and captivity. For him, the world functions differently, all rains bear fruits and all men are free. He catches a golden bird and puts it inside a gold cage. He watches it grow, captivated, unaware that with its beautiful body comes a pair of wings that can set it free. — Kanza Javed

I adore the sky wearing rainbow shawl of love for the birds so that they could fly free in warmth after the storm — Munia Khan

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

Once you get the kids raised and the mortgage paid off and accomplish what you wanted to do in life, there's a great feeling of: 'Hey, I'm free as a bird.' — Dick Van Dyke

When a child is born in a jail and during their life all they know is the jail they were born into, the idea of freedom becomes so terrifying that they ridicule the very thought of being free, as a clinical illness. It is nothing like the song that a caged bird sings. — Alejandro C. Estrada

It is easy for desire to be caught like a bird in a net, its wings fouled and twisted, no longer free to cross back and forth between silence and word. Desire may also find itself so amputated by tradition and community that it wanders in a void with nothing to orient it, to shape or discipline it. Desire must find ways to navigate its bitter and sweet paradox: it moves toward but also always through and beyond every object. — Wendy Farley

Life is so Changeable as the Caterpillar into a Butterfly and Everyone like to be so Free as a Bird. — Jan Jansen

I work as often as I want and yet I'm free as a bird. — Ethel Merman

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

Dream As a Human and Feel Free or Fly Like a Bird — Jan Jansen

If it weren't for her setting me free, I may still be a caged bird today, holding my own daughter captive on a shit-laden perch. — Raquel Cepeda

The first splurge of creativity is kind of free, and the last 30 percent is painstakingly hard work, but it's good to light a fire and make it public and create that expectation. It's become part of the writing process, really, a way to ask the audience what they think, how they think it's going. I can't write songs in a vacuum. — Andrew Bird

A soul can finally fly free as a bird only after its energy is lighter and has been purified. — Ilchi Lee

When a bird gets free, it does not go back for remnants left on the bottom of the cage. — Rumi

Your home is your jail, Bird. I'm going to set you free. — Teresa Mummert

Our bird of hope was being denied the altitude it sought, just free enough to fly dangerously close to the reality of the treetops. — Dan Groat

When he sat in the rowboat again, the oars ready but not yet dipped into the water to take him away from the island, Jeff looked back. He didn't see the busy land crabs nor the overgrown interior; he saw the beach, knowing it was there just beyond sight, keeping the sight of it clear in his inner eye. He splashed the oars into the water. Behind him, a great blue squawked - Jeff turned his head quickly. The heron rose up from the marsh grass, croaking its displeasure at the disturbance, at Jeff, at all of the world. Its legs dragged briefly in the water before it rose free to swoop over Jeff's head with a whirring of powerful wings. It landed again on the far side of the ruined dock, to stand on stiltlike legs with its long beak pointed toward the water. Just leave me alone, the heron seemed to be saying. Jeff rowed away, down the quiet creek. The bird did not watch him go. — Cynthia Voigt

And as a character, what I found very inspiring about playing Dharma, especially at that time, is that the women on television were more neurotic than they were free. And I thought, this is a rare bird and this is unique on television and I think it's really refreshing. — Jenna Elfman

Every birdcage deserves to be annihilated because every bird deserves to be free! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

We attain freedom as we let go of whatever does not reflect our magnificence. A bird cannot fly high or far with a stone tied to its back. But release the impediment, and we are free to soar to unprecedented heights. — Alan Cohen

What does he plant who plants a tree?
He plants the friend of sun and sky;
He plants the flag of breezes free;
The shaft of beauty, towering high, he plants a home to heaven anigh.
For song and mother-croon of bird, in hushed and happy twilight heard -
The treble of heaven's harmony.
These things he plants who plants a tree. — Henry Cuyler Bunner

Why a bird?"
Another shrug. "They're free you know? They can go anywhere they want, whenever they want. They can just spread their wings and go. — Larissa Ione

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

I love to swim in the nude and roam around the house in the nude. You're just as free as a bird! — Bettie Page