Winter Swans Quotes & Sayings

Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country. — Marquis De Lafayette

Swans in the winter air
A white perfection have — W. H. Auden

I will fly away to them, to the royal birds, and they will beat me, because I, that am so ugly, dare to come near them. But it is all the same. Better to be killed by them than to be pursued by ducks, and beaten by fowls, and pushed about by the girl who takes care of the poultry yard, and to suffer hunger in winter!" And it flew out into the water, and swam towards the beautiful swans; these looked at it, and came sailing down upon it with outspread wings. "Kill me!" said the poor creature, and bent its head down upon the water, expecting nothing but death. But what was this that it saw in the clear water? It beheld its own image; and, lo! it was no longer a clumsy dark-gray bird, ugly and hateful to look at, but a - swan! — Hamilton Wright Mabie

The earth with yellow pearsAnd overgrown with roses wildUpon the pond is bent,And swans divine,With kisses drunkYou drop your headsIn the sublimely sobering water.But where, with winter come, am ITo find, alas, the floweres, and whereThe sunshineAnd the shadow of the world?Cold the walls standAnd the wordless, in the windThe weathercocks are rattling. — Friedrich Holderlin

Forgetting wasn't the same as being happy. Being drunk wasn't the same as forgetting ... we were at our most miserable when we're doing it to ourselves. — Eleanor Brown

Dream of the Tundra Swan

Dusk fell
and the cold came creeping,
cam prickling into our hearts.
As we tucked beaks
into feathers and settled for sleep,
our wings knew.

That night, we dreamed the journey:
ice-blue sky and the yodel of flight,
the sun's pale wafer,
the crisp drink of clouds.
We dreamed ourselves so far aloft
that the earth curved beneath us
and nothing sang but
a whistling vee of light.

When we woke, we were covered with snow.
We rose in a billow of white. — Joyce Sidman

It was not surprising that after the war Dostoevsky was linked to Kierkegaard as a prophet of social resignation. — Martin Jay

Contrast warm to cool. Make color sing, ring like a bell. Work from big to small. — Sergei Bongart

Loss of resilience can come as a surprise, because the system usually is paying much more attention to its play than to its playing space. — Donella H. Meadows

The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, and still fluttered down the snow. — James Russell Lowell

A hopeless man is a very desperate and dangerous man, almost a dead man. — Robert F. Kennedy

Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work. — Albert Einstein