Like A Swan Quotes & Sayings

A rare bird on this earth, like nothing so much as a black swan. — Juvenal

I've named my cookies Snowballs, but not because that's what they look like. It's the way they make you feel. You know how it is when a snowball is flying toward you on an icy-cold night? The stars are glittering, and the snow is twinkling, but you're wrapped up in mittens and boots, so you're toasty warm. It's surprise and comfort, all at the same time; that's how I want them to taste. Do you know what I mean? Here's the recipe: It has chocolate, marshmallows, and pecans in a very buttery batter. — Ruth Reichl

To be a part of something like 'Tron,' good God! It doesn't matter how big or small your role is, you're like, 'Yeah, I was in 'Tron.' — Serinda Swan

Yes You Are!

Like the Blossoming rose,
Like the Rays of hope.

Like a deer in the forest,
Like an athlete full of zest.

Like a lamp in temple,
Like the life feeling ample.


Like the feel of the dawn,
Like the grace of the swan.

Like the melody of sitar,
Like the rage of guitar.

Like a group of angels in the sky,
Like the pot that makes you high.

Like the peacock's dance,
Like she is the romance.


Like the silent talk,
Like the wine from Medoc.

Like the colors of life,
Like the music from the fife.

Like the calmness of the cold wind
Like the beauty of the hind. — Ameya Agrawal

Then came night
that was like falling water.
At times, for hours,
a bird spirit,
half buzzard, half swan,
just above the rushes
from which a snow-storm howls. — Peter Huchel

She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox's tongue. She tastes like hope. — Laini Taylor

Once you become a professional, to get through a ballet like 'Swan Lake' - four acts as the lead, changing character - the perseverance is incredible. It takes a lot to make it through and keep the same energy throughout the entire performance. — Misty Copeland

Are you sure you do not want to be inside meeting all the countesses and duchesses?" "We can go back inside in a little while. It is pleasant here." Alone with you. She could stay here with him all night, allowing herself to imagine what it would be like if he kissed her, if they were free to fall in love. If only she were truly a swan princess and he were truly a prince. — Melanie Dickerson

Slowly she spread her arms and stood there swan-like, radiating a pride in her young perfection that lit a warm glow in Carlyle's heart. "We're going through the black air with our arms wide," she called, "and our feet straight out behind like a dolphin's tail, and we're going to think we'll never hit the silver down there till suddenly it'll be all warm round us and full of little kissing, caressing waves." Then she was in the air, and Carlyle involuntarily held his breath. He had not realized that the dive was nearly forty feet. It seemed an eternity before he heard the swift compact sound as she reached the sea. And it was with his glad sigh of relief when her light watery laughter curled up the side of the cliff and into his anxious ears that he knew he loved her. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I like relativity and quantum theories because I don't understand them and they make me feel as if space shifted about like a swan that can't settle, refusing to sit still and be measured; and as if the atom were an impulsive thing always changing its mind. — D.H. Lawrence

I want to hear a million robins making a frightful racket. I sort of like birds." "All women are birds," he ventured. "What kind am I?" - quick and eager. "A swallow, I think, and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are sparrows, of course - see that row of nurse-maids over there? They're sparrows - or are they magpies? And of course you've met canary girls - and robin girls." "And swan girls and parrot girls. All grown women are hawks, I think, or owls." "What am I - a buzzard?" She laughed and shook her head. "Oh, no, you're not a bird at all, do you think? You're a Russian wolfhound." Anthony remembered that they were white and always looked unnaturally hungry. But then they were usually photographed with dukes and princesses, so he was properly flattered. "Dick's — F Scott Fitzgerald

Serving men cleared away the swan, hardly touched. Cersei beckoned for the sweets. "I hope you like blackberry tarts."
"I love all sorts of tarts."
"Oh, I've know that for a long while. Do you know why Varys is so dangerous?"
"Are we playing riddles now? No."
"He doesn't have a cock."
"Neither do you." And don't you just hate that, Cersei?
""Perhaps, I'm dangerous too. You, on the other hand, are as big a fool as every other man. That worm between your legs does half your thinking. — George R R Martin

Sometimes I feel my arm is like a swan's neck - so weak. — Maria Sharapova

I am mad with joy.
At least I think it's joy. Strangers have come, and it's a whole new game. I kiss the ice on the frozen creeks, I press my ear to it, honoring the water that rattles below, for by water they came: the icebergs parted as if gently pushed back by enormous hands, and the ship sailed through, sea-eager, foamy-necked, white sails, riding the swan-road, flying like a bird! O happy Grendel! Fifteen glorious heroes, proud in their battle dress, fat as cows! — John Gardner

Perthites were like the Swan River's jellyfish - small pink blobs adrift in a warm environment. — Dave Franklin

If I was a nightingale I would sing like a nightingale; if a swan, like a swan. But since I am a rational creature my role is to praise God. — Epictetus

derelict. my voice cracked and yolk poured out. wind chimes rigid, no breeze, no song. my wings found hidden in your suitcase. pleas for help mistaken for a swan song. i'm stuffing pages from my journal down my throat as kindling. hoping the smoke will get the taste of you out of my mouth. he looks at me from across the room and all i want is to push him against the wall. ravage. ravage. carnage has never been more vogue. is it still art if it doesn't bring you to your knees? lover, let me prey at your altar. let me bare my fangs in praise. don't i look so pretty in a funeral shroud? i keep time with the click of my creaking bones. dance with me under the milky translucence of a world suffocating. how did you find me? i buried myself beneath the cicadas. is a girl trapped in glass still a prize?
let me get under your skin. i want to know what your fears taste like. i want to consume. — Taylor Rhodes

Alice! You know I love you like a sister!"
"Words." she growled. — Stephenie Meyer

Due to Jade's fortresslike manner, which, like any well-built castle, made access challenging, girls found her existence not only threatening but flat-out wrong. Although Bartelby Athletic Center featured the latest advertising campaign of Ms. Sturd's three member Benevolent Body-Image Club (laminated Vogue and Maxim covers above captions, "You Can't Have Thighs Like This and Still Walk" and "All Airbrushing"), Jade would only have to swan by, munching on a Snickers to reveal a disturbing truth: You could have thighs like that and still walk. She emphasized what few wanted to accept, that some people did win Trivial Pursuit: The Deity Looks Edition, and there wasn't a thing you could do about it, except come to terms with the fact that you'd only played Trivial Pursuit: John Doe Genes and come away with three pie pieces. — Marisha Pessl

His leap was exact, mathematical. The initial arc - head tucked between taut arms that spread out gradually like wings - was as graceful as a swan dive. — Juan Filloy

I think outdoors has been my second home. My parents wouldn't be like, "Go and do a puzzle," they'd be like, "Hey, there's a forest across the street. You need to go play in it." — Serinda Swan

There are moments in one's life which are like frontier posts marking the completion of a period but at the same time clearly indicating a new direction. At such a moment of transition we feel compelled to view the past and the present with the eagle eye of thought in order to become conscious of our real position. [ ... ] At such moments, however, a person becomes lyrical, for every metamorphosis is partly a swan song, partly the overture to a great new poem, which endeavors to achieve a stable form in brilliant colors that still merge into one another. Nevertheless, we should like to erect a memorial to what we have once lived through in order that this experience may regain in our emotions the place it has lost in our actions. — Karl Marx

A rational human being of the civilized world would be like the swan that can draw the milk from a mixture of milk and water, leaving aside the water. — Abhijit Naskar

RIDE A WHITE SWAN"
"Ride it on out like a bird in the skyway,
Ride it on out like you were a bird,
Fly it all out like an eagle in a sunbeam,
Ride it all out like you were a bird.
Wear a tall hat like the druid in the old days
Wear a tall hat and a Tattooed gown
Ride a white swan like the people of the Beltane,
Wear your hair long,babe,you can't go wrong.
Catch a bright star and place it on your forehead,
Say a few spells and baby,there you go,
Take a black cat and sit it on your shoulder,
And in the morning you'll know all you know.
Wear a tall hat like the druid in the old days
Wear a tall hat and a Tattooed gown
Ride a white swan like the people of the Beltane,
Wear your hair long, babe ,you can't go wrong.
Da di di da, da di di da — Marc Bolan

verb swon to swear, derivative of swannee I swan, raising kids is like being pecked to death by a chicken — Amy Metz

You never count your chickens before they hatch. I used to keep parakeets and I never counted every egg thinking I would get all eight birds. You just hoped they came out of the nest box looking all right. I'm like a swan at the moment. I look fine on top of the water but under the water my little legs are going mad. — Ian Holloway

Like the curved pipe of a fountain, your arching boughs
drive the sap
downward and up again: and almost without awakening
it bursts out of sleep, into its sweetest achievement.
Like the god stepping into the swan. — Rainer Maria Rilke

El Condor Pasa"

I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail
Yes I would
If I could, I surely would
I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.
Yes I would
If I only could, I surely would.

Away, I'd rather sail away
Like a swan that's here and gone
A man gets tied up to the ground
He gives the world
Its saddest sound, its saddest sound

I'd rather be a forest than a street.
Yes I would
If I could, I surely would.
I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet
Yes I would
If I only could, I surely would — Simon & Garfunkel

Now we see it, lying in the middle of the road. A swan, a mute swan. It looks like an offcut of organza, crumpled around the edges, twitching. As we pass we see its long neck has buckled into its body like a folding chair. We see its wings are tucked back as if the tar is liquid and the swan is swimming.
There are two men and a woman in the road. One man is standing on the tar, the other is directing the traffic. The woman is kneeling down beside the swan. I think she is crying, she seems to be crying, and this makes me suddenly angry. I think of all the other creatures we've seen since we set out. I think of the rat, the fox, the kitten, the badger. I think of the jackdaw, did you see the jackdaw? We passed it in the queue to pass the swan. Its beak was cracked open, its brains squeeged out. Why didn't anybody stop for the jackdaw? Because the swan looks like a wedding dress, that's why. Whereas the jackdaw looks like a bin bag. Because this is how people measure life. — Sara Baume

Joseph Stiglitz, with two colleagues, the Orszag brothers (Peter and Jonathan), looked at the very same Fannie Mae. They assessed, in a report, that "on the basis of historical experience, the risk to the government from a potential default on GSE debt is effectively zero."* Supposedly, they ran simulations - but didn't see the obvious. They also said that the probability of a default was found to be "so small that it is difficult to detect." It is statements like these and, to me, only statements like these (intellectual hubris and the illusion of understanding of rare events) that caused the buildup of these exposures to rare events in the economy. This is the Black Swan problem that I was fighting. This is Fukushima. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I get a lot of dramas, but I'd like to do a romantic comedy type of movie; that'd be a nice step for me. No more screaming or running or shooting ... for one movie where I can just be in love with a boy. — Serinda Swan

So let's say my bad luck did crash the plane. What exactly are were you going to do about it?' 'Why is the plane crashing?' He was trying to hide a smile now. 'The piolets are passed out and drunk.' 'Easy. I'd fly the plane.' Of course. I pursed my lips and tried again. 'Both engines have exploded and we're falling in a death spiral towards the earth.' 'I'd wait till we were close enough to the ground, get a good grip on you, kick out the wall, and jump. Then, I'd run you back to the scene of the accident, and we'd stumble around like the two luckiest surviours in history.' I stared at him wordlessly. 'What?' He wispered. - Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, Eclipse — Stephenie Meyer

One Night Stand"

Listen, you silk-hearted bastard,
I said in the bar last night,
You wear those dream clothes
Like a swan out of water.
Listen, you wool-feathered bastard,
My name, just for the record, is Leda.
I can remember pretending
That your red silk tie is a real heart
That your raw wool suit is real flesh
That you could float beside me with a swan's touch
Of casual satisfaction.
But not the swan's blood.
Waking tomorrow, I remember only
Somebody's feathers and his wrinkled heart
Draped loosely in my bed. — Jack Spicer

She had been waiting for someone to notice her, like, really notice her. She felt that that was the key, that she would go from the duck to the swan the minute someone recognized her potential. And they would look into her like they were trying to pierce her eyes with theirs, like they were trying to make her heart stop, and the whole world would become background noise and she would take her first breath after all of these years of nothing but existing. It would be like a coronation, or a star exploding, and then she would be born. She would be alive, and she would be loved. — Rose Fall

I have had a lot of your countrymen as co-stars, that's true. I quite like them both. It depends on the person. I don't think English makes the man nor does American, but I like this guy right here [Clive]. He's nice and tall, which means I never have a double chin - there's lots of shots of me looking up, and I'm a swan. Well, we all laugh but it's so true. — Julia Roberts

Friend John, to you with so much experience already, and you too, dear Madam Mina, that are young, here is a lesson. Do not fear ever to think. A half thought has been buzzing often in my brain, but I fear to let him loose his wings. Here now, with more knowledge, I go back to where that half thought come from and I find that he be no half thought at all. That be a whole thought, though so young that he is not yet strong to use his little wings. Nay, like the 'Ugly Duck' of my friend Hans Andersen, he be no duck thought at all, but a big swan thought that sail nobly on big wings, when the time come for him to try them. — Bram Stoker

One evening he was in his room, his brow pressing hard against the pane, looking, without seeing them, at the chestnut trees in the park, which had lost much of their russet-coloured foliage. A heavy mist obscured the distance, and the night was falling grey rather than black, stepping cautiously with its velvet feet upon the tops of the trees. A great swan plunged and replunged amorously its neck and shoulders into the smoking water of the river, and its whiteness made it show in the darkness like a great star of snow. It was the single living being that somewhat enlivened the lonely landscape. — Theophile Gautier

I cry. Evil dissolves, and love, like foam;
that love. Prattle of children powers me home,
my heart claps like the swan's
under a frenzy of who love me and who shine. — John Berryman

Dream young. Don't settle for old - for to be old is to be superstitious and without curiosity and always questioning your faith. And be ferocious in your dreaming - run like a sun's explosion, and skip across bluing waves, and dance upon tips of swan feathers. — Carew Papritz

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.
Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.
Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,
So that our dream might reply
to the sky's questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow. — Pablo Neruda

I would love to branch out a little bit and ... do a Judd Apatow type of movie. It just looks like it's so much fun. — Serinda Swan

In Australia, we've always been a country that runs the ball right up the middle on the fifth tackle. We've never seen a challenge we didn't like, and we've certainly never run from one. — Wayne Swan

And as she'd watched him stagger away Swan had realized that forgiveness crippled evil, drew the poison from it like lancing a boil. — Robert McCammon

I wish you could have seen the kitchen when I was done: It looked like a hurricane had blown right in the door! But I cleaned it all up, and when Mother came home the whole house smelled warm and spicy, Bing Crosby was singing "White Christmas" on the radio, I was wearing a clean apron, and she called me her "little homemaker."
What would you think about tomato mincemeat cookies? I bet no one else will think of that! — Ruth Reichl

A rare bird upon the earth and very much like a black swan. — Juvenal

When he went outside, dazed by the echoes of his dream, the tiger was pacing the roof of the trailer. In the light of dawn he noticed the remarkable fact that the animal had wings harmoniously joined to its body. Wings of a swan or an angel. Two fans of white, silky, well-groomed feathers. It had come from a place where it had been raining because drops of water glistened like pellets of mercury on the edges of its feathers. It was something to see. — Eliseo Alberto

If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it could be a really ugly swan. — Timmothy Radman

Before you drown, the spinning just feels like a dance. — Swan Huntley

Nobody really metamorphoses. Cinderella is always Cinderella, just in a nicer dress. The Ugly Duckling was always a swan, just a smaller version. And I bet the tadpole and the caterpillar still feel the same, even when they're jumping and flying, swimming and floating.
Just like I am now. — Holly Smale

This is making me sick, Jacob. Can you imagine what this feels like to me? I don't even like Bella Swan. And you've got me grieving over this leech-lover like I'm in love with her, too. Can you see where that might be a little confusing? I dreamed about kissing her last night! What the hell am I supposed to do with that? — Stephenie Meyer

It would just be like a movie makeover montage, pop music scoring the ugly girl's transformation from bespectacled duckling to cheerleader swan. — Leila Sales

Like a swan, she made no sound. — Sabrina Jeffries

A man's voice was saying, "Odette seems a little off tonight."
"You think?" answered a woman.
"Less confident than last night's," said the man. "I wonder if she's injured." A loud put-upon sigh. "Not to mention that the swans sound more like a herd of elephants."
Oh, come on, Grigori wanted to say: You spoiled, spoiled people. The dancer was wonderful, just like the swan-girls, doing their best to deliver them magnificence. If she was "slightly off", it was nothing Grigori had been able to notice. These people - himself included - were all so thoroughly indulged, could they not simply accept the wonder of it, sitting in this lush, gilded theater while a live orchestra accompanied so much physical exquisiteness? And this man thought he had the right to be disappointed! That these people expected so much, that they could expect that much, and not be ashamed of their petty disappointments. — Daphne Kalotay

Even if you enter the dirty water, stay neat like a white swan! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Cloud-based, blockchain-based autonomous business entities running via smart contract could then electronically contract with compliance entities like governments to self-register in any jurisdictions in which they wanted to operate. Every business could be a general universal business first, and a jurisdictional business later when better decisions can be made about jurisdictions. The same could be true for individuals as general humans first, and citizens on demand later. — Melanie Swan

Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff. Don't be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth - remember that you are a Black Swan. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"You see, I do a little in this way myself," he explained; "here is my most prized piece." He took from his pocket a snuffbox, which looked to be of eighteenth-century workmanship. Inside the lid was an enamel picture of Leda and the Swan, and when a knob was pushed to and fro the swan thrust itself between Leda's legs, which jerked in mechanical ecstasy. A nasty toy, I thought, but Urky doted on it. "We single gentlemen like to have these things," he said. "What do you do, Darcourt? Of course we know that Hollier has his beautiful Maria."
To my astonishment Hollier blushed, but said nothing. His beautiful Maria? My Miss Theotoky, of New Testament Greek? I didn't like it at all. — Robertson Davies

(a specially oily old gentleman in a blanket, with a swan's-down tippet for a beard, and a web of cracks all over him like rich pie-crust), — Charles Dickens

Try not to trip," she added. "We don't have time for a concussion today."
I groaned. That would be just like me - ruin everything, destroy the world, in a moment of klutziness. — Stephenie Meyer

I don't think there are enough words in the world that exist to express exactly just how much I love my son! He's right there in the front of my soul, he can turn me into an eagle, a lioness, a tigress, a swan! A goof or a queen! There's no underestimating just how much I love him; I surround him like the ocean surrounds the ships! I never wanted to change the world, until he came along and showed me that he deserves a better world to live in! — C. JoyBell C.

Who may be called a paramahamsa? He who, like a swan, can take the milk from a mixture of milk and water, leaving aside the water. He who, like an ant, can take the sugar from a mixture of sugar and sand, leaving aside the sand. — Ramakrishna

Edward,' she mumbled softly.
She was dreaming of me.
Could a dead, frozen heart beat again? It felt like mine was about to.
'Stay,' she sighed. 'Don't go. Please ... don't go — Stephenie Meyer

like a disaffected swan - — Eleanor Catton

The expression 'to lose one's faith', as one might a purse or a ring of keys, has always seemed to me rather foolish. It must be one of those sayings of bourgeois piety, a legacy of those wretched priests of the eighteenth century who talked so much.

Faith is not a thing which one 'loses', we merely cease to shape our lives by it. That is why old-fashioned confessors are not far wrong in showing a certain amount of scepticism when dealing with 'intellectual crises', doubtless far more rare than people imagine. An educated man may come by degrees to tuck away his faith in some back corner of his brain, where he can find it again on reflection, by an effort of memory: yet even if he feels a tender regret for what no longer exists and might have been, the term 'faith' would nevertheless be inapplicable to such an abstraction, no more like real faith, to use a very well-worn simile, than the constellation of Cygne is like a swan. — Georges Bernanos

He was on the edge of a cliff. And he wasn't jumping, he was diving, a huge swan dive, like those famous cliff-top divers in some exotic place he'd seen on television once. Only they landed safely, bodies cutting into seawater like knife blades.

And his dive was a killing one. — B.D. Roca