Whippoorwill Quotes & Sayings

What is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around the pool at night? — Chief Seattle

Above the decorous walking around me, sounds of footsteps leaving the verandas of far-flung buildings and moving toward the walks and over the walks to the asphalt drives lined with whitewashed stones, those cryptic messages for men and women, boys and girls heading quietly toward where the visitors waited, and we moving not in the mood of worship but of judgement; as though even here in the filtering dusk, here beneath the deep indigo sky, here, alive with looping swifts and darting moths, here in the hereness of the night not yet lighted by the moon that looms blood-red behind the chapel like a fallen sun, its radiance shedding not upon the here-dusk of twittering bats, nor on the there-night of cricket and whippoorwill, but focused short-rayed upon our place of convergence; and we drifting forward with rigid motions, limbs stiff and voices now silent, as though on exhibit even in the dark, and the moon a white man's bloodshot eye. — Ralph Ellison

This is how the soul heals. it thaws out bit by bit, the way the ground warms after a hard winter. you notive the sun or hear the whippoorwill calling across the flats. You sweep your porch, go drink coffee in the shade of the trumpet vines. You have days where you want to lay down and die, but what you learn is this: As long as there's somebody left on this earth who loves you, it's reason enough to stay alive. You don't give in to your broke heart
you just let the wide, cracked space fill up again. — Michael Lee West

She's at the Fall carnival because this is the South, and the South fetes the bleaker months because it has a heart more for the terrible beating of black wings than the song of a whippoorwill. — L. Joseph Shosty

If ever you should doubt me or that these are my words, call my name. With nothing save Love and Joy and Grace, call my name, and i will be there, as indeed i always am, and ask me. "Then, like the lovely trill of the whippoorwill, the murmur of the stream, the call of the sweetest breeze, if you listen closely, you will hear my voice, confirming all you have felt and read and seen to be true. — Pietro De La Luna

By night only crazy things
like the full moon and the whippoorwill

and us, are busy. — Charles Olson

Oh, good," said Hugh, but without enthusiasm. "By the way, here is that American novel I told you about. Let me know what you think of it."
"Anything special?"
"I don't feel happy about the chapter where Irving and Wayne listen to the whip-poor-will."
"I'll study it."
I took Lot's Hometown and went back to my room to ring up Hudson. — Anthony Powell

Twilight whippoorwill ... Whistle on, sweet deepener Of dark loneliness — Matsuo Basho