Sparrow Feeding Quotes

If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to "trickle down" economics).

Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.

When his mother first came back to earth she’d been a sparrow; Waldo had fed her—stale bits of scavenged cereal, through the wire and bars on his window. Now she was an owl.

Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster Sparrows feeding their young. To pass a place where babies are playing. To sleep in a room where some fine incense has been burnt. To notice that one’s elegant Chinese mirror has become a little cloudy. To see a gentleman stop his carriage before one’s gate and instruct his attendants to announce his arrival. To wash one’s hair, make one’s toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure. It is night and one is expecting a visitor. Suddenly one is startled by the sound of raindrops, which the wind blows against the shatters.

Mack and the boys, too, spinning in their orbits. They are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hurried mangled craziness of Monterey and the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everthing lovable about them. Mack and the boys are the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces. In a world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.

The Chorus Line: The Birth of Telemachus, An Idyll Nine months he sailed the wine-red seas of his mother's blood Out of the cave of dreaded Night, of sleep, Of troubling dreams he sailed In his frail dark boat, the boat of himself, Through the dangerous ocean of his vast mother he sailed From the distant cave where the threads of men's lives are spun, Then measured, and then cut short By the Three Fatal Sisters, intent on their gruesome handcrafts, And the lives of women also are twisted into the strand. And we, the twelve who were later to die by his hand At his father's relentless command, Sailed as well, in the dark frail boats of ourselves Through the turbulent seas of our swollen and sore-footed mothers Who were not royal queens, but a motley and piebald collection, Bought, traded, captured, kidnapped from serfs and strangers. After the nine-month voyage we came to shore, Beached at the same time as he was, struck by the hostile air, Infants when he was an infant, wailing just as he wailed, Helpless as he was helpless, but ten times more helpless as well, For his birth was longed-for and feasted, as our births were not. His mother presented a princeling. Our various mothers Spawned merely, lambed, farrowed, littered, Foaled, whelped and kittened, brooded, hatched out their clutch. We were animal young, to be disposed of at will, Sold, drowned in the well, traded, used, discarded when bloomless. He was fathered; we simply appeared, Like the crocus, the rose, the sparrows endangered in mud. Our lives were twisted in his life; we also were children When he was a child, We were his pets and his toythings, mock sisters, his tiny companions. We grew as he grew, laughed also, ran as he ran, Though sandier, hungrier, sun-speckled, most days meatless. He saw us as rightfully his, for whatever purpose He chose, to tend him and feed him, to wash him, amuse him, Rock him to sleep in the dangerous boats of ourselves. We did not know as we played with him there in the sand On the beach of our rocky goat-island, close by the harbour, That he was foredoomed to swell to our cold-eyed teenaged killer. If we had known that, would we have drowned him back then? Young children are ruthless and selfish: everyone wants to live. Twelve against one, he wouldn't have stood a chance. Would we? In only a minute, when nobody else was looking? Pushed his still-innocent child's head under the water With our own still-innocent childish nursemaid hands, And blamed it on waves. Would we have had it in us? Ask the Three Sisters, spinning their blood-red mazes, Tangling the lives of men and women together. Only they know how events might then have had altered. Only they know our hearts. From us you will get no answer.

My great-grandmother, a wonderful old woman, often considered eccentric by those who didn’t know any better, would frequently give away her food to ants and sparrows. Tears of bliss would be streaming down her face as she did this. People around her kept saying, “Why don’t you eat, old woman?” She’d simply reply, “I am full.” But all those advisers died a long time before she did. She lived on and died at the incredible age of a hundred and thirteen! My mother used to do this as well: every day before she ate her breakfast, she would take one handful of it and go looking for ants to feed. Only then would she eat. This has been a tradition among the womenfolk in many families. An ant is the smallest living entity you can see around you, the most inconsequential organism you can think of. So, for that very reason, you feed it first. You make an offering not to the gods, or other celestial creatures, but to the smallest creature you know. This planet belongs as much to them as it belongs to you. You understand that every creature on this planet has the same right to live as you have. This awareness can help create a conducive atmosphere, mentally and physically, for consciousness to grow. Just a simple act like this loosens you from your identification with the physical body.

And an image had appeared in Christopher's head... not the usual ones of the war, but a peaceful one... Beatrix's face, calm and intent, as she had tended a wounded bird the previous day. She had wrapped the broken wing of a small sparrow against its body, and then showed Rye how to feed the bird. As Christopher had watched the proceedings, he had been struck by the mixture of delicacy and strength in Beatrix's hands. Bringing his attention back to the ranting woman before him, Christopher pitied the man who eventually became Prudence's husband. Prudence's mother had come into the parlor then, alarmed by the uproar, Christopher had taken his leave soon after, regretting every minute he had ever wasted in Prudence Mercer's company.

And an image had appeared in Christopher's head... not the usual ones of the war, but a peaceful one... Beatrix's face, calm and intent, as she had tended a wounded bird the previous day. She had wrapped the broken wing of a small sparrow against its body, and then showed Rye how to feed the bird. As Christopher had watched the proceedings, he had been struck by the mixture of delicacy and strength in Beatrix's hands. Bringing his attention back to the ranting woman before him, Christopher pitied the man who eventually became Prudence's husband. Prudence's mother had come into the parlor then, alarmed by the uproar, and she had tried to soothe her. Christopher had taken his leave soon after, regretting every minute he had ever wasted in Prudence Mercer's company.

All that was left of the Navane was a dark orange film, hardened against the plastic walls of the dropper bottle, segmented and flaking like dried earth. I remembered this stuff. It was the worst of the worst. It came with all kinds of warnings about going out into the sun and what to use on your skin to protect yourself from the extra sensitivity, which seemed like jokes to me, like they had to be meant as jokes. I think it was years before I stood outside in the sun at all for longer than the few minutes it took me to get from a transport van into the cool shade of the indoors. I sniffed at the bottle. There wasn’t a whole lot of scent left; just enough for me to grab hold of the memory of what it had been like getting this stuff from the dropper to my tongue. Like forcing a cadaver to drool something sweet into my mouth. Whole sweeping narratives had formed inside me around this medication, I remembered: stories I’d told myself to make taking it less numbing, to give not just meaning but intrigue to my dull condition. Explorers on distant South American mountainsides retrieving flowers from rock cliffs whose petals alone could yield the essence that would make the nauseating syrup in the tinted bottle: but you couldn’t get the essence directly from the petals; it was far too potent for human beings, it’d kill you; first you had to feed it to sparrows, whose livers filtered out the toxins, then cut out the livers and boil all the remaining organs in water. Then you strained the resulting decoction through cheesecloth and diluted it in a ten-to-one solution, and capped the bottles you’d drained it into and kept them away from light, because what you were left with was thiothixene HCl, known commercially as Navane, which I took in oral suspension because the doctor thought without it I might see or hear bad things.

Dominika. He would see her soon, if nothing went wrong in the next two days. He played in his head what he would say to her in Istanbul. Gable would be hovering, watching them, his big sheepdog head turned into the wind, sniffing. Jesus, he wanted to hold Dominika in his arms, put his hands on her back, and pull her tight against him. If he dis that, Gable would feed him to the lions. He knew, just knew, however, that Dominika would fly into a rage if he fended her off; she had done so before. She was of the view that she could be a spy and still be in love with her CIA handler, whom she desire. And she dis not sympathize one bit with his conundrum that his superiors disapproved of them doing what they both wanted to do. She would see to it he was not fired. If they loved each other, that should be enough. If you love me, then nothing else matters, Dominika had told him. Nate resented being in this situation, resented Benford looking over his shoulder all the time, resented Gable’s acuity, resented Dominika’s damn Russian incorrigibility.

bumps, dangles, peddlers, old whores, burn notices, drops, caches, headhunters, scalps, dry cleaning, rabbits, chicken feed, barium enemas, 201s, PRQs, natural reverses, flipping, fluffing, fluttering,

Soon after DIVA’s recruitment, Nate had committed the unthinkable operational transgression by sleeping with her. Risking everything. Risking her, his agent’s life. Risking a career that kept him whole and independent, risking the work that defined him. But her blue eyes and edgy temper and wry smile had blinded him. Her ballerina’s body was matchless and responsive. Her passion for her country and her rage at those who coveted power had him in awe of her. And he could still hear the way she said his name—Neyt. Their lovemaking had been drastic, clutching, urgent, guilty. They were professional intelligence officers and both knew how badly they were behaving. Typically, Dominika didn’t care. As a woman, she desired him outside the limits of the agent–case officer relationship. Nate could not—would not—commit to such an arrangement, for he worried about his standing, about operational security, about tradecraft. The irony of the situation was not lost on either of them: The hidebound Russian was more willing to break the rules to feed their passion than was the informal, loose-limbed American. But until she reappeared, until he knew she was still alive, Nate had a new Russian to handle.

Even pigeons were once cherished in American cities, before all the handouts and garbage we’ve given them to eat allowed their numbers to explode. In 1878, the New York Times described pigeons as “honest birds” whose “right to feed in the street” was being challenged by sparrows. In

Why, I'd never do such things now!" She laughed. "Unless you're foxed." "Unless I'm foxed." "Perhaps you should stop drinking, then." "And perhaps you should start eating, my dear wife. I've seen sparrows with bigger appetites. Here, try some of this Cheshire. It is splendid." He plucked a small bit of cheese from the dish and, leaning across the table, held the morsel to her lips. Juliet hesitated — the gesture seemed uncomfortably intimate — but the wine had relaxed her, taking the edge off her inevitable wedding-night jitters, and she suddenly felt ridiculous for being so skittish. Especially when she looked into those romantic blue eyes across from her and saw shadows of Charles in that familiar de Montforte face, in that lazy de Montforte smile. Currents fluttered out along her nerve endings. Warmth settled in the pit of her belly. Slowly, she opened her mouth and accepted the cheese, trembling at the warm brush of his fingers against her lips. She chewed and swallowed, her gaze still trapped by his, until she finally blushed and looked away, her face rosy and hot, her hands gripped tightly beneath the tablecloth. When she finally dared to look back up at him, he was gazing at her with an amused little half-smile. "Well, what do you think of it?" he asked, topping up her wine glass. "Delicious."  Every nerve in her body was thrumming in response to the intimate gesture they'd just shared, her lips tingling where his fingers had brushed them. "But I think I prefer the Cheddar." "Oh. I haven't tried that one yet." "You haven't?" "No."  His eyes were teasing, challenging, inviting her to summon her courage and — Good God, he wants me to feed him! Heat prickled through her. He was still watching her, little sparkles of laughter dancing in his eyes, his mouth twitching at the corners. "You want me to force you to try some, then," she declared, her bold tone belying her shaky courage. "My dear Juliet, I shall never force you to do anything that you do not wish to do." She looked across the table at him. He gazed back, calm, relaxed, amused. Dear God, but he looked handsome in the candlelight. Handsome under any light. And now his grin was spreading, as though he was ready to burst out laughing at her predicament. What a rogue he was! 

Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry” Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned to pieces of snow Riding a gradient invisible From silver aslant to random, white, and slow. There came a moment that you couldn’t tell. And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

You’re very clever, aren’t you, Mr. Neyt Nash?” she said. “I came here to cry on your shoulder, to tell you about my mission against you, to tell you I helped you.” “I am grateful for all that,” said Nate, not wanting to show how scandalously relieved he was. Dominika could see it in his face nonetheless. “But you’re not asking me to work with you to avenge Marta, nor to get back at my uncle, or Volontov, or the rest of them, nor to try to reform my beloved country.” “I don’t have to tell you any of that,” he said. “Of course you don’t,” she said. “You’re too careful for that.” Nate looked at her without saying anything. “All you do is ask me what I want to do.” “That’s right,” said Nate. “Instead, suppose you tell me what you want me to do.” “I think we should begin working together. Stealing secrets,” Nate said immediately, his heart in his mouth. “For revenge, for Marta, for Rodina, for—” “No, none of those,” interrupted Nate. Gable’s words came into his head. Dominika looked at him. His purple halo had spread like the rays of a rising sun. “Because you need it, Dominika Egorova, because it helps you feed that temper of yours, because it’ll be something you own, for once in your life.

Reaganomics, as the dominant economics of this period came to be called, was quite open about the fact that the benefits of growth would come at the cost of some inequality. The idea was that the rich would benefit first but the poor would eventually benefit. This is the famous trickle-down theory, never better described than by Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith, who claimed this was what used to be called the “horse and sparrow” theory in the 1890s: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”28 Indeed, the 1980s ushered a dramatic change in the social contract in the US and the UK. Whatever economic growth happened since 1980 has been, for all intents and purposes, siphoned off by the rich. Was Reaganomics or its UK version responsible for it?

The good Lord even feeds the sparrow, but it has to get its little butt off the branch to get the worm.

I liked when Crowley was living with Allan Bennett and keeping a human skeleton in the front room, to which they would try to restore human life by using toothbrushes to “feed” its bones a viscous mess of blood and sparrow meat.