Quotes & Sayings About Swallows

Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In my third novel there is an actual black hole that swallows everything you love. — Jonathan Lethem

And you, Tacitus,
observe how I make my grove
on an old crannog
piled by the fearful dead:

a desolate peace.
Our mother ground
in sour with the blood
of her faithful,

they lie gargling
in her sacred heart
as the legions stare
from the ramparts.

Come back to this
'island of the ocean'
where nothing will suffice.
Read the inhumed faces

of casualty and victim;
report us fairly,
how we slaughter
for the common good

and shave the heads
of the notorious,
how the goddess swallows
our love and terror.
- Kinship — Seamus Heaney

He swallows, keeping his tormented eyes on mine. "I hate this. I hate what it's doing to me. I hate that I'm tired of doing the right thing."
This time I swallow roughly and tilt my head back, boldly pushing my hips into his, "Then stop being right. — L.A. Bressett

The swallows, fleeing before the hoopoes, shall have all flocked together in one place, and shall refrain them from all amorous commerce, then will be the end of all the ills of life; yea, and Zeus, which doth thunder in the skies, shall set above what was erst below ... — Aristophanes

Birdscapes moves rather like those swallows, dipping and swerving to pick up all sorts of items of interest. Mynott tells plenty of good birding tales, but these serve mainly to set off trains of reflection ... Reading Birdscapes is like going birding with a learned, witty, and somewhat irreverent companion who isn't satisfied just to check things off ... [D]elightful to read on a journey or a housebound day, and [opens] fascinating new horizons for anyone who wants to enlarge his or her interest in birds. — Robert O. Paxton

Malice swallows the greatest part of its own venom. — St. Jerome

He swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing on his thick neck and I briefly imagine what it's like to bite him there, just a small nibble or two. I bet he tastes like sage and testosterone. — Karina Halle

A toilet flushes, and everyone turns to see Jax emerge from the downstairs bathroom holding a Victoria's Secret catalogue and chewing on a Red Vine. "Yo, what up," he says, oblivious. As he looks from one face to the next he stops chewing. He swallows hard. "Everything okay?" "No," I say. — Rachel A. Marks

For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer's unreturning track. — Christina Rossetti

Death swallows death. — Dejan Stojanovic

They've built their nests in the chimneys of my heart: those swallows that you lost. — Tom Robbins

People are ignorant of what any street clock knows. Why? Because the crack that cleaves existence also swallows their existence-reflecting consciousnesses. Thrown back into existence, the poor souls don't suspect that a moment ago they didn't exist - and only isolated things and persons, swallowed by the crack never to return to this world, arouse a certain fear and foreboding. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

I Know a girl with sea green eyes. She melts the sun, swallows the sky then breathes out stars to kiss the night so guys like me will have some light, she doesn't know the things I've dome. but if a girl like that could love me, i might be clean again — Carolee Dean

How would you like to have a thousand brilliantly colored cliff swallows keeping house in the eaves of your barn, and gobbling up insects over your farm at the rate of 100,000 per day? There are many Wisconsin farmsteads where such a swallow-show is a distinct possibility. — Aldo Leopold

Today I keep thinking of all the people who have left and never returned - my brothers, Khan Tegus, our guards, this entire city. What a strange, dark world that swallows people whole. — Shannon Hale

You know what I like best about porn cinemas?"
"I couldn't begin to guess."
"Whenever a sex scene starts, you can hear this "Gulp!' sound when everybody swallows all at once," said Midori. "I love that "Gulp!' It's so sweet! — Haruki Murakami

so alone was almost spiritual - but something in Abby's voice makes her pause. "You might have a better idea," she says. "But you two were 'best friends,'" Abby says mockingly. She taps ash from her cigarette into a chipped teacup on the table. Kathryn looks at her. "I thought so." She swallows hard. "But — Christina Baker Kline

Autumn is full of leave-taking. In September the swallows are chattering of destination and departure like a crowd of tourists. — Mary Webb

If one swallows a cup of chocolate only three hours after a copious lunch, everything will be perfectly digested and there will still be room for dinner. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

I'm a man of extraordinary talents, but I need you." He swallows. "Do you hear what I'm saying? — Krista Ritchie

She who invented words, and yet does not speak; she who brings dreams and visions, yet does not sleep; she who swallows the storm, yet knows nothing of rain or wind. I speak for her; I am her own. — Catherynne M Valente

He is so brilliant. He shines. He's beautiful with his hands that grab things and his tongue that says things and the way he stands and chews his food for so long, mashing it into a paste before he swallows. — Garth Stein

She swallows, then adds in a horrified whisper, "I wanted you to make Jason Kim bleed. A lot."
I blink, surprised. And pleased, though I know I shouldn't be. I'm supposed to be turning Ariel away from her dark side, not indulging her taste for bloodshed. But then, I didn't really believe she had one. She seems so good to me. At least, most of the time. When she isn't trying to commit murder/suicide by driving a car off the road or proclaiming her undying hatred. — Stacey Jay

We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked. — Honore De Balzac

Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up. — Mahatma Gandhi

This garden is no metaphor - more a task that swallows you into itself, earth using, as always, everything it can. — Jane Hirshfield

I am working on a new book about a boa constrictor and a litter of hyenas. The boa constrictor swallows the babies one by one, and the mother hyena dies laughing. — E.B. White

It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything. — E.B. White

Japan is neither willing nor able to conclude the war at present, nor has her strategic offensive yet come to an end, but, as the general trend shows, her offensive is confined within certain limits, which is the inevitable consequence of her three weaknesses; she cannot go on indefinitely till she swallows the whole of China. — Mao Zedong

I hope to define my life, whatever is left, by migrations, south and north with the birds and far from the metallic fever of clocks, the self staring at the clock saying, "I must do this." I can't tell the time on the tongue of the river in the cool morning air, the smell of the ferment of greenery, the dust off the canyon's rock walls, the swallows swooping above the scent of raw water. — Jim Harrison

I am sick of speaking English like this ... I am scared that I have become a person who is always very aware of talking, speaking, and I have become a person without confidence, because I can't be me. I have become so small, so tiny, while the English culture surrounding me becomes enormous. It swallows me ... I am dominated by it ... Why do we have to force ourselves to communicate with people? Why is the process of communication so troubled and so painful? — Xiaolu Guo

Why did you fucking leave her, Phillipe?" Bringing his eyes back to mine, he swallows and simply replies,"I wanted to see if I could. — Ella Frank

Militarism consumes the strongest and most productive elements of each nation. Militarism swallows the largest part of the national revenue. — Emma Goldman

Your hurt swallows ine, like space swallows time, and the two intertwine. We tangle together. — Ellen Hopkins

Life just swallows you up, doesn't it?Just swallows you up with its everyday things — Simon Van Booy

You once told me you wanted the world to stand still, you wanted a safe spot to stand still. I want to be that place for you." His hands are almost swallowing my face, but it's his stare that swallows me most - swallows me whole.
"Even if I'm spinning through life, the spot beside me will be the eye of the hurricane, and nothing there can be touched or harmed. I want you here with me, beside me." - Malcolm — Katy Evans

We've already been killed, all of us. It happened so long ago, we've forgotten it. — Yasmina Khadra

There is no time like Spring
When life's alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track. — Christina Rossetti

To the sight of the swallows dying in mid air, Alessandro was finally able to add his own benediction. "Dear God, I beg of you only one thing. Let me join the ones I love. Carry me to them, unite me with them, let me see them, let me touch them." And then it all ran together, like a song. — Mark Helprin

When the fight ends you can afford to relax. That's the worst part. Winner or loser you have again eyes to see around you. Blood, butchered bodies, bodies pierced by arrows. You stir inside, your heart tightens, the feeling of loss wells up. The sense of smell is the next thing to revive, adding a new dimension of pain. I closed the eyes of the last cadet, blue eyes, unseeing, his body, so small, almost a child, the youngest cadets were all gone, their faces surprised in death. Cold lips never able again to kiss a girl. It's then that the emptiness swallows you and you mourn inside. Damn you, Scharon. No! Damn you, Travellers. — Florian Armas

Joe Spork opens the door. The man departs. Joe turns to Polly to say something about how they're obviously not going to Portsmouth, and finds an oyster knife balanced on his cheek, just under his eye.

"Can we be very clear," Polly Cradle murmurs, "that I am not your booby sidekick or your Bond girl? That I am an independent supervillain in my own right?"

Joe swallows. "Yes, we can," he says carefully.

"There will therefore be no more 'Say hello, Polly'?"

"There will not. — Nick Harkaway

let the stars inside you breathe,
before the darkness swallows them whole.

let them burn through your skin and light this
whole goddamn world on fire. — AVA.

And books -- she swallows like dumplings. — Sholem Aleichem

I've loved you my whole life, Chas, from that first day you took me home after Michelle died. And I'm terrified you'll leave me or you'll stop loving me or even worse, something will happen to you. But I can't be without you anymore." He takes my hands, which are shaking wildly, and swallows.
"Today I watched Mike give away the woman he loves. I can't do that, Chas. I thought I could, I thought it would be better if you were with someone else, but I was wrong. And I swear to you, I will love you the rest of my life and nothing will ever come before you. Please, Chastity. Forgive me and marry me and have a bunch of babies with me, and I'll- — Kristan Higgins

Tarver," she whispers, her eyes on my face. "There'll be cameras all the time. More questions. Everyone will want to hear your story. Your life will be different, no matter how far from Corinth we go." A flashlight flickers through the trees, broken and jagged as it shines past the trunks. The light glances off her face, illuminating her eyes for a brief, brilliant moment. I step closer.
"I don't care."
"My father will try to - " She swallows, then lifts her chin, mouth firming to a straight, determined line. "No. I'll figure out a way to handle him." I can't help but grin down at her, this steely assurance, my Lilac through and through.
"I'd pay to see that showdown. — Amie Kaufman

The ocean is a beast. A beast that doesn't care if it chews you up or swallows you whole. A beast you cannot beat - you can only dance with it until the time comes when it kills you. It will never lose, — Alessandra Torre

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world. — Blaise Pascal

And then I get it. The 318s have somehow decided to make me do the things that are in my notebook. All the things I'm afraid of. The things I've been writing since the seventh grade. And if I don't, they're going to post the book on the internet, and everyone at school, no, everyone with an internet connection, will know all my secrets. For a second, it feels like my throat swallows up my heart and my breath catches in my throat. There's only one thing left to do. I put my head in my hands and start to cry. — Lauren Barnholdt

To-night when the full-bellied moon swallows the stars. Grant that I know. — Amy Lowell

There are no words big enough to describe grief. It's an incredibly lonely, empty place, a large hole that swallows your soul and threatens to destroy it. It's a dark place with no light that blinds you, deafens you, and crushes your spirit. It's a place full of memories you're afraid to lose.
I was in that place. No amount of tears washed away the loneliness. No amount of screams chased it away. There were simply memories, an avalanche of memories that I desperately needed to hold onto.
There was so much that death didn't prepare me for. It didn't prepare me for the storm that would break my will. ~Hawthorn — R.K. Ryals

All other trades are contained in that of war.
Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.
That's your notion.
The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all. — Cormac McCarthy

I have loved colours, and not flowers;Their motion, not the swallows wings;And wasted more than half my hoursWithout the comradeship of things. — Arthur Symons

What do you mean, ruined?"
From the way Emily swallows slowly, you'd think we were talking about smoking crack. "Compromised. By ... by another man."
"Oh!" I say, too loudly. "You mean, if the girl's not a virgin, the guy won't marry her?"
She nods, her eyes wide, as if being a non-virgin is akin to being an ax-murder. — Mandy Hubbard

Come, come," said Mrs. Wiggins. "Stop your fighting, animals. If there are swallows in that chimney, it means that there hasn't been a fire built in the house in a long time. And that means that nobody lives there. Let's get inside." Bang, — Walter R. Brooks

I stare at my freakish eyeball, gaze into the distorted pupil until it expands and fills the mirror, fills my brain and I'm rushing through vacuum. Wide awake and so far at such speed I flatten into a subatomic contrail. That grand cosmic maw, that eater of galaxies, possesses sufficient gravitational force to rend the fabric of space and time, to obliterate reality, and in I go, bursting into trillions of minute particles, quadrillions of whining fleas, consumed. Nanoseconds later, I understand everything there is to understand. Reduced to my "essential saltes" as it were, I'm the prime mover seed that gets sown after the heat death of the universe when the Ouroboros swallows itself and the cycle begins anew with a big bang. — Laird Barron

The danger with playing a part that defines you is that it swallows up everything else. — Tom Hollander

The world gobbles us and chews us and swallows us," Hatcher said, in that uncanny way he had of reading her thoughts. "I think happy endings must be accidents."
"But we hope for them all the same," Alice said. She looked sadly at the remains of those hopeful faces. Above all, we hope not to die in terror. — Christina Henry

We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows
a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we. — Sean Wilsey

It was her favorite cup, emerald-green china with a rim of silver, and sturdy enough to drink from half awake without worrying that she'd crush it, the last unbroken one of a set used for company meals when she was still in Granny School. She despised the cups her mother and grandmother chose to start their days with, delicate white porcelain with the Brightwater Crest on the side, big enough to hold maybe three good swallows, and so frail they felt like eggshells in your hand. She could face those later in the day if need be, but not before breakfast, and at no time did she admire them. — Suzette Haden Elgin

People just ... disappear," he says.
"The Earth just opens up and swallows people," I say, some what sadly, checking my Rolex.
"Eerie." Kimball yawns, stretching. "Really eerie."
"Ominous." I nod my agreement.
"It's just"- he sights, exasperated- "futile. — Bret Easton Ellis

It's as if you kneel to plant the seed of a tree and it grows so fast that it swallows your whole town before you can even rise to your feet. — Jaron Lanier

Funny thing about fear. When you cling to it, the fear grows exponentially, a monster morphing into a suffocating mass. But when you face it head-on, conquering the beast before it swallows you whole, you find there was nothing there to fear at all. The chains break, and the whole world feels lighter than ever before. — Juliette Cross

The sad irony here is that the FDA, which does not regulate fluoride in drinking water, does regulate toothpaste and on the back of a tube of fluoridated toothpaste ... it must state that "if your child swallows more than the recommended amount, contact a poison control center."
The amount that they're talking about, the recommended amount, which is a pea-sized amount, is equivalent to one glass of water.
The FDA is not putting a label on the tap saying don't drink more than one glass of water. If you do, contact a poison center ...
There is no question that fluoride - not an excessive amount - can cause serious harm. — Paul Connett

No. Depression is the unseen, unheard, silent killer. It is the pain that is too much to cope with, too hard to deal with and never understood. It is something that you can't escape, no matter how hard you try it ALWAYS swallows you again. It constantly follows you around, like black smoke choking you from the inside out. Like a lion clawing at your heart and mind, eating pieces of you until there is nothing left. — Astrid Lee Miles

A gun is a terrible thing. It's a dark hole pointed at you, and that hole swallows up everything else in the world, your friends, your nerve, until there's nothing but you and what's waiting in that little round space of dark. — Sarah Zettel

Worst fears: That God was not good. That the earth you stood upon shifted, and chasms yawned; that people, falling, clutched one another for help and none was forthcoming. That the basis of all things was evil. That the beauty of the evening, now settling in a yellow glow on the stone of The Cottage barns, the swallows dipping and soaring, a sudden host of butterflies in the long grasses in the foreground, was a lie; a deceitful sheen on which hopeful visions flitted momentarily, and that long, long ago evil had won against good, death over life... in the glow of the sun against the stone walls, as well as in the dancing of butterflies- that in this she had been mocked. — Fay Weldon

The man who takes up nothing but a newspaper, but reads it to think, to deduct conclusions from its premises, and form a judgment on its opinions, is more fitted for society than he, who having all the current literature and devoting his whole time to its perusal, swallows it all without digestion. — Cecil B. Hartley

What is gone is gone and will not come back. When the earth swallows, it swallows forever and we are left to stumble along feeling the absences. These are our burdens. — Nadia Hashimi

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

The Tigris is so fierce and rapid, and swallows its alluvial banks so greedily, that it is probable that some of the buildings described by the Hebrew traveller Benjamin of Tudela as existing in the twelfth century were long since carried away. — Isabella Bird

We are captives, even if our wheat grows over the fences/ and swallows rise from our broken chains./ We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are. — Mahmoud Darwish

Long shadows of evening creep up the walls, inching closer. Gradually, they reach fully across us, holding us in the stillness that only night can bring. In the hazy gloom of dusk, we are silhouettes of ourselves, reduced to our very essence. The night grows bolder. Unafraid, it opens its mouth and swallows us whole. — Libba Bray

Then the concerts came to an end, the weather turned bad and my girls left Balbec, not all at once, as the swallows leave, but within the same week. — Marcel Proust

Hens embarrass me; owls disturb me; if I am with an eagle I always pretend that I am not with an eagle; and so on down to swallows at twilight who scare the hell out of me. But pigeons have absolutely no effect on me. — James Thurber

There is a pain so utter, it swallows being up;
The covers the abyss with a trance
So memory can step around, across, upon it. — Emily Dickinson

That's when he finally turns his head to look at me. As he rubs himself, he swallows, and I see his Adam's apple bob roughly. "I need to know. — Sarina Bowen

Life attacks us like a blind beast. It swallows up time, the years of our life, it passes like a typhoon and leaves nothing behind. Not even memory, because memory is made of the same swift, ungraspable substance out of which illusions emerge and then disappear. — Alvaro Mutis

There are so many demons. Agnes tips the bottle back and her eyes flutter closed, and she swallows, and swallows again, and the burn of it tells her it will be okay, that everything will be just fine, because the burn is always followed by the dark, and the dark is followed by - Peace. Or something very much like it. She drinks, and eventually her grip loosens on the bottle, and she slips into that dark where Esmerelda, where Eleanor, where nobody else is permitted. — Jason Gurley

Think of what this planet has done to us. Dune took my Duke and my son and shattered all our hopes and dreams as a family. It swallows people. — Brian Herbert

He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, the birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea. — Ernest Hemingway,

None of them understand ... they can't see the enormity of time the way I can, the way it swallows all our striving ... they want to live solely in the moment, not realizing that for our kind the moment never ends. Empires have come and gone, continents have been discovered and populated from shore to shore, men have walked on the moon, wars have consumed the planet ... everything dies, but we remain. We are witnesses to the endless decay of the world. No matter how high we rise, eventually ... ashes to ashes, we all fall down. — Dianne Sylvan

The mob hysteria over pedophiles has reached epidemic proportions and driven parents to panic. Today's Just Williams, today's Huck Finns, today's Swallows and Amazons are deprived of the freedom to roam that was one of the delights of childhood in earlier times (when the actual, as opposed to the perceived, risk of molestation was probably no less). — Richard Dawkins

IF YOUR OPPONENT strikes with fire, counter with water, becoming completely fluid and free-flowing. Water, by its nature, never collides with or breaks against anything. On the contrary, it swallows up any attack harmlessly. — Morihei Ueshiba

Each day death corrodes what we call living, and life ceaselessly swallows our desire for the void. — Jindrich Styrsky

When you fall in love, when Love really does its worst, it gives you no cause. It swallows you whole. It allows no refusals. Like Jonah only after he had been inside the whale awhile, you may say, if asked, Oh, this is why I am here. — Candice Raquel Lee

In a real poem a sound does not swallow a letter, but a letter swallows a sound. — Dejan Stojanovic

the intimacy of the kiss, that feeling of euphoria that comes with that kiss that is right and real, that kiss that swallows you up, starting from the curl in your toes to the fine hairs on the back of your neck, that kiss that leaves you panting for air, that makes each part of your body quiver as you melt against him, that makes you suck his bottom lip into your mouth with the overwhelming urge to bite it. Sometimes hard. That. That kind of kiss. — R.B. O'Brien

Toadstools
The toadstools are starting to come
up,
circular and dry.
Nothing will touch them,
Gophers or chipmunks, wasps or swallows.
They glow in the twilight like rooted will-o'-the-wisps.
Nothing will touch them.
As though little roundabouts from the bunched unburiable,
Powers, dominions,
As though orphans rode herd in the short grass,
as though they had heard the call,
They will always be with us,
transcenders of the world.
Someone will try to stick his beak into their otherworldly styrofoam.
Someone may try to taste a taste of forever.
For some it's a refuge, for some a shady place to fall down.
Grief is a floating barge-boat,
who knows where it's going to moor? — Charles Wright

A brick could be slid on a wood floor, like a rolling bowling ball, in an attempt to fill the seconds between swallows of beer. — Jarod Kintz

A map of Esmeralda should include, marked in different colored inks, all these routes, solid and liquid, evident and hidden. It is more difficult to fix on the map the routes of the swallows, who cut the air over the roofs, dropping long invisible parabolas with their still wings, darting to gulp a mosquito, spiraling upward, grazing a pinnacle, dominating from every point of their airy paths all the points of the city. — Italo Calvino

But what is done is done. Who can make the dead tree green, or gaze again upon last year's light? Who can recall the spoken word, or bring back the spirit of the fallen? That which Time swallows comes not up again. Let it be forgotten! — H. Rider Haggard

What can I do to make you understand I will not run? What can I say?"
He gazes at me, revealing his fear and anguish again. He swallows. "There is one thing you can do."
"What?" I snap.
"Marry me," he whispers. — E.L. James

Gifts are like fish-hooks; for who is not aware that the greedy char is deceived by the fly which he swallows? — Martial

What is it?" asked the knight.
"Life," Merlin replied.
"Life?"
"Yes," said the wise magician. "Did it not first seem bitter, then, as you tasted more of it, was it not pleasant?"
The knight nodded. "Yes, and the last swallows were quite delicious."
"That was when you began to accept what you were drinking."
"Are you saying that life is good when you accept it?"
"Is it not?" replied Merlin, raising an eyebrow in amusement. — Robert Fisher

Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants. — William Butler Yeats

I searched for my own heart
and long after I had lost my way
in the days trailing past with their foliage
in the aloof sky blue with distance
I thought I'd find my heart
where I'd kept your eyes two brown butterflies
and I saw the swallows swoop
and shadows starlings — Ingrid Jonker

Everything just feels so right when I'm with you, Scarlett. I can be me. But it's more than that. You give me something I haven't had in a long time, if ever. You give me peace. It's like the jumbled mess in my head can settle down, and I can be still with you. Like none of the other stuff matters." His voice catches, and he swallows. "I had a bad day and usually I'd get shitfaced drunk, but the only thing I could think of was I had to see you. — Denise Grover Swank

He who runs with the platypus is no more a man than he who swallows chesnuts — Chief Long Spear Who Hunts Beavers

IGNORANCE

I didn't know love would make me this
crazy, with my eyes
like the river Ceyhun
carrying me in its rapids
out to sea,where every bit
of shattered boat
sinks to the bottom.

An alligator lifts its head and swallows
the ocean, then the ocean
floor becomes
a desert covering
the alligator in
sand drifts.

Changes do
happen. I do not know how,
or what remains of what
has disappeared
into the absolute.

I hear so many stories
and explanations, but I keep quiet,
because I don't know anything,
and because something I swallowed
in the ocean
has made me completely content
with ignorance. — Jalaluddin Rumi