Finch's Landing Quotes

Journey’s end In western lands beneath the Sun The flowers may rise in Spring, The trees may bud, the waters run, The merry finches sing. Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night, And swaying branches bear The Elven-stars as jewels white Amid their branching hair. Though here at journey's end I lie In darkness buried deep, Beyond all towers strong and high, Beyond all mountains steep, Above all shadows rides the Sun And Stars for ever dwell: I will not say the Day is done, Nor bid the Stars farewell.J.

When I looked at the painting I felt the same convergence on a single point: a glancing sun-struck instance that existed now and forever. Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch's ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature--fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place.

But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest JP court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal

I felt like one who wants to trap and cage a little bird, and after years of waiting and luring and baiting finds that she must do no more than hold out her hand, and the finch lands on her finger and does not fly. You scarcely dare to move. It rests on your hand whole and free, foolishly trusting and infinitely courageous. It will never be more beautiful.

Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch’s ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature—fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place.

Listen and learn it, learn to tell it, and tell it to teach it.

I want you to read ‘God Sees the Truth, but Waits,’ ” said Mother. “Tolstoy writes about a man, wrongly accused of a murder, who spends the rest of his life in a prison camp. Twenty-six years later, as a convict in Siberia, he meets the true murderer and has an opportunity to free himself, but chooses not to. His longing for home leaves him and he dies.” I ask Mother why this story matters to her. “Each of us must face our own Siberia,” she says. “We must come to peace within our own isolation. No one can rescue us. My cancer is my Siberia.” Suddenly, two white birds about the size of finches, dart in front of us and land on the snow.

In western lands beneath the Sun the flowers may rise in Spring, the trees may bud, the waters run, the merry finches sing. Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night and swaying beeches bear the Elven-stars as jewels white amid their branching hair. Though here at journey's end I lie in darkness buried deep, beyond all towers strong and high, beyond all mountains steep, above all shadows rides the Sun and Stars for ever dwell: I will not say the Day is done, nor bid the Stars farewell.

Well, did you know he's the best checker-player in this town? Why, down at the Landing when we were coming up, Atticus Finch could beat everybody on both sides of the river." "Miss Maudie, Jem and me beat him all the time." "It's about time you found out it's because he lets you. Did you know he can play a Jew's Harp?

Five months ago the hillside beyond the wire was home to red squirrels black finches pygmy shrews garter snakes downy woodpeckers swallowtail butterflies wolf lichen monkey flowers ten thousand voles five million ants. Now what is it?

this beautiful bird, a little yellow-breasted finch, landed on my windowsill...she just stopped my time flow...i looked at her, for i could see nothing else mattered in that moment, and she looked directly at me, and then turned her head slightly sideways, and then quickly back...she then sang to me a wonderful melody of tweets and chirps in harmony with the sound of sunshine glowing through her feathers...her wild and innocent essence warmed all my senses, to my core...and all of a sudden with an assured certainty, i knew everything was going to be alright

The painting, the magic and aliveness of it, was like that odd airy moment of the snow falling, greenish light and flakes whirling in the cameras, where you no longer cared about the game, who won or lost, but just wanted to drink in that speechless windswept moment. When I looked at the painting I felt the same convergence on a single point: a sunstruck instant that existed now and forever. Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch’s ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature—fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place.

In hidden orchards the stone fruit ripened so fast that what we didn't eat was given to the animals, and so like chimps like finches like gilas we glutted on plums so ripe they split if looked at, cherries and blackberries staining our sheets. We distilled summer meads heady with anise and yogurt, and watered fields with the barrels' dregs. To the tidal boom of an underground aquarium, I cut a sturgeon nose to slit and ransacked its body for that other fruit, pure caviar. I looked to Aida for the salt. Sweaty, unshowered, her pubis its own rough ocean. Saline, the meat of her as she bucked against my tongue, split open, gleaming.

When I looked at the painting I felt the same convergence on a single point: a flickering sun-struck instant that existed now and forever. Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch’s ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature—fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place.

Then Israel Finch got to his feet and pointed the light at Dolly. He told Tommy to hold her arms, and Tommy roared as if they were the funniest words in his reduced language. Realizing his cut wasn’t mortal, Israel slapped Dolly across the mouth, told her she was in for deep regret now, boy, and reaching forth his strong smelly hands rent open the front of her sweater. That, Dolly said, is when she would’ve started to give up inside, had she not looked over Israel’s shoulder and seen Dad coming. Keep in mind he ought not’ve been visible at all; there were no lights on but the flashlight, which was aimed at Dolly. She said Dad’s face coming toward them was luminous of itself, glowing and serene, the way you’d suppose an angel’s would be, that it rose up behind Israel Finch like a sudden moon, and when Tommy Basca saw it he was so startled he dropped her right down on her bottom. She said Dad was as silent, those next moments, as he was incandescent; he made no sound except a strange whistling, which turned out, of course, to be the broom handle, en route to any number of painful destinations. What was odd, she said, was how the boys weren’t even up to the job of running away—Tommy went screeching to his knees before the first blow landed, and Israel prostrated himself and moaned as though the devil had hold of his liver. The two of them just lost their minds, Dolly said, while her own reaction was nearly as insensible; she suddenly could not stop laughing. Here was Dad, his face still lit though now even the flashlight had gone out, smiling (Dolly said) though his eyes looked terribly melancholy, whacking Finch and Basca every second or two while the pair of them shrieked in no English you’d recognize—Dolly said the laughter just flooded through her and came not only from relief, as you might surmise, but from a reckless and holy sort of joy she had never felt before, not even while cheerleading.

Nah-uh! Bad one!” everybody moaned. “No way,” said Frank. The note shot out of his mouth and landed smack-dab in the middle of Rocky’s desk. Slobber City! “Gross!” yelled Rocky. Mr. Todd passed out the quizzes. Mr. Todd cleared his throat. “Question number one: How many times did I wear a purple tie to school this year?” Everybody shouted answers. “Ten!” “Twenty-seven!” “One hundred!” “Four!” “Never!” called Jessica Finch. “Never is correct!” said Mr. Todd. “Number two: How long did it take our class to go around the world?” “Eight days!” said Frank. “Eight and a half days,” said Judy. “Too easy. Let’s skip ahead. Here’s one. This is big. Really big. We’re talking MUCHO GRANDE!” “Tell us!” everybody shouted. “Can anyone — that means YOU, Class 3T — guess what I, your teacher, Mr. Todd, will be doing THIS SUMMER?” “Working at the Pickle Barrel Deli?” asked Hunter. “I saw you there.” “That was last summer,” said Mr. Todd. “But this summer, if you find me, you win a prize.” “We need a clue,” said Judy. “Give us a clue.” “Clue! Clue! Clue! Clue! Clue!” yelled the class. “Okay, okay. Let me think. The clue is . . . COLD.” Mr. Todd hugged himself, pretending to shiver. “Brrr.” Jackson waved his hand. “Refrigerator salesperson!” “Snow-remover guy!” said Jordan. “Polar-bear tamer!” said Anya.

Much of Darwin’s theory of evolution, in fact, comes from observing the techniques of pigeon breeders. Most of the first chapter of On the Origin of Species is about pigeons. His editor actually suggested he chuck the rest and focus on the birds: “Everyone is interested in pigeons,” he told Darwin. It makes a better Hollywood story to say that Darwin’s revelations came as epiphanies in strange lands, but he really made most of his discoveries at home. On the Beagle he made some acute observations of finches, but it wasn’t until Darwin made a close examination of the utterly unexotic pigeons of England that he was able to articulate a detailed mechanism explaining how evolution worked. In a very real way, the folk knowledge of pigeon fanciers is the foundation of our understanding of biology.

Finch leapt out of the vehicle and landed on the uneven desert terrain in an athletic crouch. Jeffrey followed, noting with irritation that his black leather Oxfords were much less suited to the dusty ground than Finch’s tan desert boots. He suspected that the choice of location was no accident. Finch had a habit of playing what he thought of as unnecessary power games

Falken navigated the veil of hedgerow and shrubs beside the trail where they’d stopped and found a copse in the meadow. There, he undid his britches and sighed in relief as he broke his warm, golden seal upon the taupe bark of his chosen tree. A finch landed on a low strung branch next to the boy and regarded him. “Don’t watch me. Shoo!” The bird chirped in defiance and Falken waved his hand at it, distracting him from the fine, universal art of not peeing on himself. “Shoo, birdie!” The bird remained still. Falken looked down at a wet patch on his woad-dyed trousers. “Now look what you made me do!” he cursed, and the bird took off, satisfied.

Chapter XV The Gathering of the Clouds Now we will return to Bilbo and the dwarves. All night one of them had watched, but when morning came they had not heard or seen any sign of danger. But ever more thickly the birds were gathering. Their companies came flying from the South; and the crows that still lived about the Mountain were wheeling and crying unceasingly above. “Something strange is happening,” said Thorin. “The time has gone for the autumn wanderings; and these are birds that dwell always in the land; there are starlings and flocks of finches; and far off there are many carrion birds as if a battle were afoot!” Suddenly Bilbo pointed: “There is that old thrush again!” he cried. “He seems to have escaped, when Smaug smashed the mountain-side, but I don’t suppose the snails have!” Sure enough the old thrush was there, and as Bilbo pointed, he flew towards them and perched on a stone near by. Then he

But there was some surprising tenderness as well. Forbidden from shooting any birds or animals while in Tibet, the climbers were as amazed by the different kinds of avian life—magpies, linnets, and finches, Brahminy ducks, bar-headed geese, and crazily crowned hoopoes—as they were by the birds’ curiosity and lack of fear of humans. “It is an never-ending joy to find the birds of Tibet so tame,” Hugh Ruttledge wrote. “The place is a paradise for the ornithologist.” Even wild goats would approach them without fear. And on many of the high passes, they found “a little forest of prayer flags,” Frank Smythe recalled, “with their stiff, dry rustling.” Here was a land of harsh but surprising beauty,

Darwin found that if you looked closely enough, nature conveyed a very different message. How could, for instance, the Galápagos Islands serve as home to thirteen separate species of finches, each similar to the other, yet each peculiarly adapted with different-shaped beaks for their particular island habitats? Clearly these finches had migrated over time from the mainland and from one island to another, and then, once separated, had begun to diverge and to become distinct from one another. But how? And why? Why did the giant sloths, whose bones Darwin recovered on his voyage, go extinct, while other creatures thrived in the same environment at the same time? And how was it that some animals seemed poorly designed for their environments, in defiance of Paley’s perfect watchmaker—woodpeckers that lived on treeless terrain, land birds with webbed feet—yet they managed to adapt and survive through makeshift means that no divine designer would ever have intended? Why did pythons have vestigial legs, and why did the bones inside the wings of a bat parallel the bones in the human hand and arm? This was evidence not of a master design, Darwin realized, but of a slow and gradual change in existing forms, spread across the ages, inherited from remote—and shared—ancestors. The evidence he painstakingly assembled on his voyage, then presented, bit by bit, in his classic book, pointed to very slow, very gradual changes in living things over millions of years, to creatures suddenly dying out and disappearing when their forms no longer allowed them to survive in a changing climate or environment, and to new forms of life that emerged and thrived in their place.

Is your mom dead?” he asked, immediately regretting it. “Sorry.” “It’s okay. Yes, she died.” Somewhere a bird chirped, and he thought maybe it was a finch from the sound of it, and he said, “My mom died too,” as he looked at his feet, such weird little feet, and he wished they were wings. “That’s who I was talking about. She called me her Kit and I called her my Dakota because we belonged to each other.” But his feet were just feet, sadly, not the flying kind, and so he tossed his thoughts into the air instead, watched them glide around, blossom into breezes, little I-see-yous floating this way and that, landing like a soft quilt on all the world’s small forgotten things.

You’ve no idea what it’s like to have as your first landed ancestor a common man—a blacksmith, no less. We could have owned three-quarters of Wiltshire and none of the families there would have cared about us.