Ostrich Quotes & Sayings

"Father Peregrine, won't you ever be serious?"

"Not until the good Lord is. Oh, don't look so terribly shocked, please. The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humor, doesn't it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn't that true? And certainly we are ridiculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to His humor."

"I never thought of God as humorous," said Father Stone.

"The Creator of the platypus, the camel, the ostrich, and man?" Oh, come now!" Father Peregrine laughed.

Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man — Ray Bradury

OSTRICH, n. A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe ... The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly. — Ambrose Bierce

I had a dream about you. You were an escalator, and I was a flight of stairs. You thought I was a Luddite, and I thought I was as ostrich, because I hadn't figured out how to put the fly in flight. One day you broke down, and then you saw that you and I weren't so different after all. — Dora J. Arod

Now that would be a good way to face Armageddon, fighting it every step of the way, or should you choose to be an Ostrich, well you can go out with your head buried in the sand. — Steve Merrick

I shook Obama's hand and I said, 'I want to be your friend.' My hand is still outstretched. I am not Obama's enemy, but it's difficult not see imperialism in Washington. Those who don't see it don't want to see it, like the ostrich. — Hugo Chavez

When life hands you an ostrich...make a boa! ~Bertha — Jane Carroll

I will endanger your species like an ostrich,
Hold you hostage, and crazy feed you swine sausage! — Busta Rhymes

The walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph of Beauty. A large press, inlaid with agate and lapis-lazuli, filled one corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinet with lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placed some delicate goblets of Venetian glass, and a cup of dark-veined onyx. Pale poppies were broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as though they had fallen from the tired hands of sleep, and tall reeds of fluted ivory bare up the velvet canopy, from which great tufts of ostrich plumes sprang, like white foam, to the pallid silver of the fretted ceiling. A laughing Narcissus in green bronze held a polished mirror above its head. On the table stood a flat bowl of amethyst. — Oscar Wilde

The ostrich is a bird that lost its ability to fly. So 'unalienable rights' should be translated into 'mutable characteristics'. — Yuval Noah Harari

Now comes the difficult part: you must provoke the animal that is afflicting you. Tiger, rhinoceros, ostrich, wild boar, brown bear- no matter the beast, you must get its goat. — Yann Martel

Outrageous ... that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort. — Radclyffe Hall

I break all the rules and wear everything. Ruffles, ostrich feathers, fox coats. You look fat in fox anyway, so if you start fat, you only look a little fatter. — Totie Fields

'Tragedy admires man. Comedy feels a bit sorry for him.' We think we are kings or queens, masters of the universe or at least our own destiny. We forget that a foot may crush us, or that the wind may knock us down. We are not in control. We are subject to gas and sloughing skin and dirty pores. Most of our joints will eventually fail us. We have big brains which we can imagine great things, but we can't really get off the ground. It's like we have wings but we can't fly. — Debbie Blue

I just don't wanna be an ostrich. That's all. — William T. Vollmann

He was looking at Mr. Nancy, an old black man with a pencil moustache, in his check sports jacket and his lemon yellow gloves, riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered, high in the air; and, at the same time, in the same place, he saw a jeweled spider as high as a horse, its eyes an emerald nebula, strutting, staring down at him; and simultaneously he was looking at an extraordinarily tall man with teak colored skin and three sets of arms, wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress, his face painted with red stripes, riding an irritated golden lion, two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beast's mane; and he was also seeing a young black boy, dressed in rags, his left foot all swollen and crawling with black flies; and last of all, and behind all these things, Shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider, hiding under a withered ochre leaf. Shadow saw all these things, and he knew they were the same thing. — Neil Gaiman

Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that is hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man. — Ayn Rand

Any fool can turn a blind eye but who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand. — Samuel Beckett

Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon'd round, And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown'd? No; the dead know it not, nor profit gain; It only serves to prove the living vain. — John Gay

Damn her he said to himself. What good does it do my risking my life? She doesn't care whether we own an ostrich or not. Nothing penetrates. — Philip K. Dick

I have a very ostrich mentality. I feel like I have my head in the sand so no one can see me. — Lupita Nyong'o

If you stick your head in the sand like an ostrich, pretending you don't exist - why get upset when the world agrees with you/ — Christina Engela

Why be an ostrich? — Margaret Mitchell

Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American Eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich. — H.G.Wells

A ranch hand, equivalent of the old gaucho, rides after an ostrich, swinging three-thonged and weighted baleadoras. Note how only the toe of the boot is in the stirrup iron. In old times, the gaucho often rode with only the great toe of the bare foot in a metal ring. — Luis Marden

Son of a Midas
You, sir, are a stupid-head
Here, have an ostrich — Rick Riordan

Take the matter as you find it ask no questions, utter no remonstrances; it is your best wisdom. You expected bread and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don't shriek because the nerves are martyrised; do not doubt that your mental stomach - if you have such a thing - is strong as an ostrich's; the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation; close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. — Charlotte Bronte

Like the ostrich, head under wingWhen the roaring storm breaks,So many people take refugeUnder the soft pillowOf specious arguments. — Georges Rouault

A chicken grows up in a little less time than an ostrich. An ostrich takes a whole year. A chicken takes a few months. — Jack Horner

We [USA and China] have a common responsibility with different numerical targets, and that's the situation ultimately we are going to have with China. We emit six times more per person than they do. It's hard to tell them to cut theirs in half right now until we start moving. Being the ostrich with your head in the sand and tail feathers in the air like some would have us to do while China continues to pollute is simply not an option. — Jay Inslee

Madness is the WHO staring into the abyss and denying it is there. Madness is an ostrich who sticks her head in the sand while a pack of hyenas closes around her. - Lanky Man with green eyes — Dan Brown

We know - intellectually - that confronting an issue is the only way to resolve it. But any resolution will disrupt the status quo. Given the choice between conflict and change on the one hand, and inertia on the other, the ostrich position can seem very attractive. — Margaret Heffernan

There's a heart-wrenching scene in Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the old stop-motion Christmas TV special, that has always resonated with me. After his run-in with the Abominable Snowman, Rudolph and his buddies seek asylum on the Island of Misfit Toys, a haven for crappy, deformed, and unwanted toys presumably built by an elf with substance abuse issues. There's the choo-choo train with square wheels, the water pistol that shoots jelly, the cowboy riding an ostrich, the white elephant with pink polka dots, the infelicitously named Charlie-in-the-Box. "Hey we're all misfits, too!" Rudolph squeals to his newfound friends, and everyone breaks into song. I cry every time I see it. — Anonymous

....One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
"Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody's here--

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare. — Robert Lowell

Ostrich is a very lean meat. Bison is a very lean meat. Chicken is a very lean meat. Notice something about my favorite meats? — Arlo Guthrie

When the San Francisco Democrats treat foreign affairs as an afterthought, as they did, they behaved less like a dove or a hawk than like an ostrich - convinced it could shut out the world by hiding its head in the sand. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

A weapon, I told Horus. I need a weapon. I reached into the Duat and pulled out an ostrich feather. "Really?" I yelled. Horus didn't answer — Rick Riordan

To ABSTERSE (ABSTE'RSE) [See ABSTERGE.]To cleanse, to purify; a word very little in use, and less analogical than absterge. Nor will we affirm, that iron receiveth, in the stomach of the ostrich, no alteration; but we suspect this effect rather from corrosion than digestion; not any tendence to chilification by the natural heat, but rather some attrition from an acid and vitriolous humidity in the stomach, which may absterse and shave the scorious parts thereof.Brown'sVulgar Errours,b. iii. — Samuel Johnson

You know, a meme is now circulating that's called the Ostrich Brigade. And it's used to describe all those people who are burying their heads in the sand. I call it the three D strategy. It's denial, deflection, and a demonization of those of us who want to speak honestly about these issues of extremism. — Dalia Mogahed

Al and Lou had arrived at the Wisconsin State Fair by nine in the morning for fresh egg omelettes in the Agriculture Building and some apple cider donuts. They'd nibbled their donuts and wandered the stalls celebrating various products grown and raised in Wisconsin. You could sample and buy anything, from honey-filled plastic sticks to ostrich steaks to cranberry scones. They followed up their breakfast with a stop at the milk barn, where Lou had forced him to try root beer-flavored milk. While he'd been skeptical, it tasted delicious and precisely like a root beer float. — Amy E. Reichert

Out of all the things in the world to emulate an ostrich isn't one of them. — Guy S. Stanton III

I must seem like an ostrich who forever burries its head in the relativistic sands in order not to face the evil quanta. — Albert Einstein

Rural Reflections
This is the grass your feet are planted on.
You paint it orange or you sing it green,
But you have never found
A way to make the grass mean what you mean.
A cloud can be whatever you intend:
Ostrich or leaning tower or staring eye.
But you have never found
A cloud sufficient to express the sky.
Get out there with your splendid expertise;
Raymond who cuts the meadow does not less.
Inhuman nature says:
Inhuman patience is the true success.
Human impatience trips you as you run;
Stand still and you must lie.
It is the grass that cuts the mower down;
It is the cloud that swallows up the sky. — Adrienne Rich

I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment. — Bette Davis

Concentrate on the wonders and joys of this life, and accept the very best which is your true heritage. It is not being an ostrich, afraid of life and not facing it. It is seeing the reality of this glorious life which is yours, and in doing so, helping to bring it about. The more clearly you can see it, the more quickly will it come about. — Eileen Caddy

Rock star, flier than an ostrich. — Juelz Santana

the runway style. With her short hair freshly died platinum blonde she had to slay the scene in a black Crooks and Castle snapback, diamond stud earrings, gold collar necklace, red Crooks and Castle sweatshirt, Cartier gold men's watch, black leather leggings, Saint Laurent suede peep-toe lace-up booties and a extra sickening red $7750 VBH Brera ostrich satchel bag. — Keisha Ervin

It's like, take my body, fine, I wasn't really using it anyway. I've got this enormous butt on ostrich legs, the hair of a "before" picture, and weird milky brown eyes like a Frappuccino. But not my brain. My true connection to the world. — Lara Avery

Honest rejection of Christ, however mistaken, will be forgiven and healed ... but to evade the Son of Man, to look the other way, to pretend you haven't noticed, to become suddenly absorbed in something on the other side of the street, to leave the receiver off the telephone because it might be He who was ringing up, to leave unopened certain letters in a strange handwriting because they might be from Him
this is a different matter. You may not be certain yet whether you ought to be a Christian; but you do know you ought to be a Man, not an ostrich, hiding its head in the sand. — C.S. Lewis

Don't be more serious than God. God invented dog farts. God designed your body's plumbing system. God designed an ostrich. If He didn't do it, He permitted a drunken angel to do it. Empirical facts can add significantly to the meaning of "being godlike". — Peter Kreeft

I don't want a team that escapes from reality and escapes from the truth. I don't want people who are always escaping, who always have a story and are always conniving. An ostrich tries to escape from the truth. Isn't an ostrich the thing that puts its head in the sand? But guess what's sticking out when he does it? It's ass, that's what. I don't want a team like that ... Because when you have a team like that and trouble comes, that team will not face the trouble. — John Chaney

In fact, I've essentially given up on the idea of flight altogether and accepted that I'm going to be an angel-blood who stays earthbound, a flightless bird, like an ostrich. Maybe, or in this weather, a penguin. — Cynthia Hand

Mankind has tried the other two roads to peace - the road of political jealousy and the road of religious bigotry - and found them both equally misleading. Perhaps it will now try the third, the road of scientific truth, the only road on which the passenger is not deceived. Science does not, ostrich-like, bury its head amidst perils and difficulties. It tries to see everything exactly as everything is. — Garrett P. Serviss

By understanding the world I mean being equal to the world. It is the hard reality of living that is the essential, not the concept of life, that the ostrich philosophy of idealism propounds. — Oswald Spengler

The ostrich is the only animal officially endowed with political direction. — Pierre Daninos

If I was a painter, and was to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it? ... I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam. for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like an Ostrich, for putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees it -' ... 'And like a Phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky! — Charles Dickens

America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand. — Woodrow Wilson

What could she do, bound as she was by the tyranny of silence? She dared not explain the girl to herself ... that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort. The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that seeing nothing it might avoid Truth ... if silence is golden it is also in this case, very expedient. — Radclyffe Hall

Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich. — Lenny Bruce

What modern day burlesquer hasn't been influenced by Sally Rand? My own pink ostrich fans -designed by Catherine, naturally- were the largest fans on any stage in the world (even I must up the ante). They are absolutely stunning! Made with four graduated shades of pink and hundreds of rose-colored crystals, they measure seven feet across and weigh 2.3 pounds each. — Dita Von Teese

An ostrich egg is bigger than its brain. — Jill Shalvis

I never thought of God as humorous," said Father Stone. "The Creator of the platypus, the camel, the ostrich, and man? Oh, come now! — Ray Bradbury

The ostrich-approach of burying your head in the sand, when confronting your areas of weakness, becomes a self-set trigger for failure. — Archibald Marwizi

I am she who lifts the mountains
When she goes to hunt,
Who wears mamba for a headband
And a lion for a belt.
Beware!
I swallow elephants whole
And pick my teeth with rhinoceros horns,
I drink up rivers to get at the hippos.
Let them hear my words!
Nhamo is coming
And her hunger is great.
I am she who tosses trees
Instead of spears.
The ostrich is my pillow
And the elephant is my footstool!
I am Nhamo
Who makes the river my highway
And sends crocodiles scurrying into the reeds! — Nancy Farmer

You know what it's like, finding eight middle-aged guys having tantric sex with ostriches? — Warren Ellis

Confronted by something she couldn't explain, she pretended it wasn't there. Dude, ostrich much? — Karen Marie Moning

My best guess is that my garbled allusion to Ezra Pound in the following must have come from my parents' reading aloud. The Askari fell off the ostrich In the rain Huge sing Goddamn And what became of the ostrich? Huge sing Goddamn — Richard Dawkins

This was now officially the most inane conversation in which Griff had ever been a participant - and that included a drunken debate with Del over ostrich racing.

"The color isn't too awful?" She twisted a fold of the skirt. "The draper called it 'dewy petal,' but your mother said the shade was more of a 'frosted berry.' What do you say?"

"I'm a man, Simms. Unless we're discussing nipples, I don't see the value in these distinctions. — Tessa Dare

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him. — Thomas Malthus

We women continue to swallow this line that it's unladylike or even proof of being a lesbian if you wear flat shoes like Doc Martens. I'm prepared to put up with that accusation, because at least my feet aren't killing me and I don't look like a bandy ostrich. — Jo Brand

Linguists holding bullhorns hollered, "A bas les Boches! A bas les Marcon! Down with the Boches! Down with the Macaronis! Vive la France!" A mortar crew with the 18th Infantry fired a special shell the size of an ostrich egg. It soared 200 feet into the night, detonated with dazzling pyrotechnic sparkle, and unfurled an American flag, which floated to earth; given a clear target at last, French gunners replied with eager fire. — Rick Atkinson

The ostrich burying its head in the sand does at any rate wish to convey the impression that its head is the most important part of it. — Katherine Mansfield

Madness is an ostrich who sticks her head in the sand while a pack of hyenas closes in around her. — Dan Brown

Return me safely to my home," the princess said, "and I shall reward you with your weight in eggs."
Olorun snorted derisively. "You're joking, right?"
The woman's eyes flitted in embarrassment.
"Now wait a minute," said Helianthus. "We're talkin' eggs here. What sort of eggs? Ostrich eggs?"
Neferre made an impatient noise. "Hel! She doesn't have any eggs! Unless they're hidden in a very . . . delicate place." Neferre grinned at the princess. "Tell me your eggs are hidden where I think they're hidden. — Ash Gray

If about a dozen genera of birds had become extinct or were unknown, who would have ventured to have surmised that birds might have existed which used their wings solely as flappers, like the logger-headed duck (Micropterus of Eyton); as fins in the water and front legs on the land, like the penguin; as sails, like the ostrich; and functionally for no purpose, like the Apteryx. Yet the structure of each of these birds is good for it, under the conditions of life to which it is exposed, for each has to live by a struggle; but it is not necessarily the best possible under all possible conditions. It must not be inferred from these remarks that any of the grades of wing-structure here alluded to, which perhaps may all have resulted from disuse, indicate the natural steps by which birds have acquired their perfect power of flight; but they serve, at least, to show what diversified means of transition are possible. — Charles Darwin

He behaved like an ostrich and put his head in the sand, thereby exposing his thinking parts. — George Carman

The Indians were Araucanians from the south of Chile; several hundreds in number, and highly disciplined. They first appeared in two bodies on a neighbouring hill; having there dismounted, and taken off their fur mantles, they advanced naked to the charge. The only weapon of an Indian is a very long bamboo or chuzo, ornamented with ostrich feathers, and pointed by a sharp spear-head. My informer seemed to remember with the greatest horror the quivering of these chuzos as they approached near. When close, the cacique Pincheira hailed the besieged to give up their arms, or he would cut all their throats. As this would probably have been the result of their entrance under any circumstances, the answer was given by a volley of musketry. — Charles Darwin

A swooshing sound broke the predawn silence. A tiny marmoset monkey and an ostrich pushed a cardboard box labeled "Donations" through the snow. — Mikael Barstow

I have lived among enough painters and around studios to have had all the theories - and how contradictory they are - rammed down my throat. A man has to have a gizzard like an ostrich to digest all the brass-tacks and wire nails of modern art theories. — D.H. Lawrence

You might be a redneck if a full-grown ostrich has fewer feathers than your cowboy hat. — Jeff Foxworthy

The whole Esther Williams of it all. The ostrich ballet. Like pirouetting feather dusters; their paddle feet in fourth position. — Durga Chew-Bose

With the Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, this is the Eisenhower-era revisited. It's ostrich time, where people are looking for comfort rather than challenge in their art. It's a lot easier to listen to Barry Manilow murder what are actually good songs from the '50s than to consider what [left-leaning songwriter] Steve Earle has to say. — David Fricke

I have a hippopotamus skull next to my bed, called Gregory. When I was six, my three sisters and I clubbed together and paid £4 for it in a junk shop. We collected owl pellets, ostrich eggs and sheep skulls for our natural history museum at home. — Deborah Moggach

Gentlemen, as sure as I'm sitting here now, the result of continuation of a non-system, the ostrich-like head-in-the-sand attitude, the constant rejection of any efforts to solve this problem, will produce an Armageddon in the American population in those states where there is a big problem. — Dianne Feinstein

Pliny suggested that the ostrich, then newly discovered, was the result of a cross between a giraffe and a gnat. (It would, I suppose, have to be a female giraffe and a male gnat.) In practice there must be many such crosses which have not been
attempted because of a certain understandable lack of motivation. — Carl Sagan