This Bird Has Flown Quotes

Maybe I can stand alone. Maybe I'm strong as stone. Even though the bird has flown, maybe you'll fly on home.

Youth, like a magic bird, has flown away He sang a little morning-hour in May Sang to the rose, his love, that too is gone-- Whither is more than you or I can say.

Say to my friends, when they look upon me, dead, Weeping for me and mourning me in sorrow, ‘Do not believe that this corpse you see is myself, In the name of God, I tell you, it is not I, I am a spirit, and this is naught but flesh, It was my abode and my garment for a time. I am a treasure, by a talisman kept hid, Fashioned of dust, which served me as a shrine, I am a pearl, which has left it’s shell deserted, I am a bird, and this body was my cage, Whence I have now flown forth and it is left as a token, Praise to God, who hath now set me free, And prepared for me my place in the highest of the Heavens, Until today I was dead, though alive in your midst. Now I live in truth, with the grave – clothes discarded. Today I hold converse with the Saints above, With no veil between, I see God face to face. I look upon “Loh-i-Mahfuz” and there in I read, Whatever was and is, and all that is to be. Let my house fall in ruins, lay my cage in the ground, Cast away the talisman, it is a token no more, Lay aside my cloak, it was but my outer garment. Place them all in the grave, let them be forgotten, I have passed on my way and you are left behind, Your place of abode was no dwelling place for me. Think not that death is death, nay, it is life, A life that surpasses all we could dream of here, While in this world, here we are granted sleep, Death is but sleep, sleep that shall be prolonged Be not frightened when death draweth nigh, It is but the departure for this blessed home, Think of the mercy and love of your Lord, Give thanks for His Grace and come without fear. What I am now, even so shall you be, For I know that you are even as I am, The souls of all men come forth from God, The bodies of all are compounded alike, Good and evil, alike it was ours. I give you now a message of good cheer May God’s peace and joy forever more be yours.

John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he sat in his Katy-bereft 10×12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has flown — or in other no less florid and true utterances?

She was wearing pink gauze—was that possible? She seemed, anyhow, all light, glowing, like some bird or air ball that has flown in, attached itself for a moment to a bramble... Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it—a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down) she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you. The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

Following Someone is always falling in love with you: men and women, infants and children, octogenarians and adolescents. A tenant of heaven-haven on the pearly doorstep hopes you will wave your hand in passing. Where you stood just now a white bird has flown into a ponderosa pine and a black bee hovers in a bush of yellow flowers. People would like to discuss you, but hold back. Mystery is a fragile substance, too easy to tear. Several persons, however, have noticed that you are followed not by the usual shadow but by a shaft of sunlight. Even on a day of fog or light rain. Even after sunset. When you are not present, you still walk quietly through our minds, and we tell ourselves little stories or small poems about you, like this one. When a bird sings, we listen carefully hoping your name will be mentioned.

Here’s how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years: You stand in the middle of the field. You look around to be sure that no one is going to hear you. You breathe in a couple of times to get as much air in your chest as you can. You stretch your neck up like the Great Esquimaux Curlew. You imagine that it’s Game Seven of the World Series and it’s the bottom of the ninth and Joe Pepitone is rounding third base and the throw is coming in and the catcher has his glove up waiting for the ball and Joe Pepitone is probably going to be out and the game will be over and the Yankees will lose. Then you let out your shriek, because that’s how everyone in Yankee Stadium would be shrieking right then. That’s how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years. And you keep doing it over and over again until all the birds in Marysville have flown away.

It’s as if a gorgeous, delicate bird has just flown to me and sat directly on my shoulder, and if I don’t make the exact right move, it might fly away.

She was speaking again, her voice like the chirp of a bird who has flown into a black tunnel but does not yet know it.

I explained my symptoms. My dad asked how much coffee I’d had, and I said, “Don’t ask.” He prescribed listening to “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead, three times, stat. “You know what else works kid? Pick up your guitar.

I began to relax into it. To love it. To love the caress of the notes, vibrating in my throat, the exhilaration of setting them free, letting them sail into the air. The best kind of flying—no seat belts, no turbulence, only clear blue skies

I began to relax into it. To love it. To love the caress of the notes, vibrating in my throat, the exhilaration of setting them free, letting them sail into the air. The best kind of flying—no seat belts, no turbulence, only clear blue skies.

The Aftermath When the fierce pure pleasure has clawed through, ripped open my tent of separateness, I lay in my lover's arms, weeping and exposed. I can't help seeing my sister, new widow whose heart hangs heavy, a side of beef in the ice box of her chest. I imagine her entering a bedroom like this, maples flaming beyond the window against a perfectly useless blue sky. And then my mother-in-law stops at the library on the way home from her husband’s funeral, picks up the book they've been holding. It sits in the passenger seat while she stares at the windshield, stunned, a bird flown into glass. Even my friend whose wife hasn’t died yet appears in this sex-drenched air. Tears pool in the shallows under his eyes. If his soul were a tin can, it would be sliced, the thick soup leaking out. The night is soaked with suffering. My dumb body, sprung open, can’t tell the difference between this blaze of pleasure and the sorrow it drags in. As I gaze out into the gathering darkness it seems I almost comprehend the mystery, glimpse the water of life pouring through my form into theirs, theirs back to mine, misery and ecstasy swirled like the blue white planet seen from space, but it lasts less than a moment-- the arms of my own dear one haul me back into my body, her flesh so ostentatiously alive.

As long as this imitation-thinking continues to be recognised by the state, the lasting effect of a true philosophy will be destroyed, or at any rate circumscribed; nothing does this so well as the curse of ridicule that the representatives of the great cause have drawn on them, for it attacks that cause itself. And so I think it will encourage culture to deprive philosophy of its political and academic standing, and relieve state and university of the task, impossible for them, of deciding between true and false philosophy. Let the philosophers run wild, forbid them any thoughts of office or civic position, hold them out no more bribes,—nay, rather persecute them and treat them ill,—you will see a wonderful result. They will flee in terror and seek a roof where they can, these poor phantasms; one will become a parson, another a schoolmaster, another will creep into an editorship, another write school-books for young ladies' colleges, the wisest of them will plough the fields, the vainest go to court. Everything will be left suddenly empty, the birds flown: for it is easy to get rid of bad philosophers,—one only has to cease paying them. And that is a better plan than the open patronage of any philosophy, whatever it be, for state reasons.

Lily likes to feed the birds outside our house. She has two feeders in the backyard, which she hangs from hooks close to the trees and fills with seeds. She loves to stand at the back window and watch them. Even in the dead of winter, when the birds should have flown somewhere south, where it’s warm, I wake up to the sound of birdsong. The birds come in droves, and because of it, despite Lily’s best efforts, she can’t always keep up with feeding them. Eventually the feeders go dry and the birds disappear, and then the backyard becomes quiet and still. Days pass without seeing a bird so that you’d think they were long gone. Lily goes to the store. She gets more seed. She trudges outside, sometimes in the cold, sometimes through a foot of snow, to fill the feeders.

Mrs. Barnstable took her to a beautiful room with windows overlooking the gardens. “This is yours,” the housekeeper said. “No one has occupied it before.” The bed was made of light blue upholstered panels, the bedclothes of white linen. There was a graceful lady’s writing desk in the corner, and a satin maple wardrobe with a looking glass set in the door. “Mr. Merripen personally selected the wallpaper,” Mrs. Barnstable said. “He nearly drove the interior architect mad with his insistence on seeing hundreds of samples until he found this pattern.” The wallpaper was white, with a delicate pattern of flowering branches. And at sparse intervals, there was the motif of a little robin perched on one of the twigs. Slowly Win went to one of the walls and touched one of the birds with her fingertips. Her vision blurred. During her long recuperation from the scarlet fever, when she had grown tired of holding a book in her hands and no one had been available to read to her, she had stared out the window at a robin’s nest in a nearby maple tree. She had watched the fledglings hatch from their blue eggs, their bodies pink and veined and fuzzy. She had watched their feathers grow in, and she had watched the mother robin working to fill their ravenous beaks. And Win had watched as, one by one, they had flown from the nest while she remained in bed. Merripen, despite his fear of heights, had often climbed a ladder to wash the second-floor window for her. He had wanted her view of the outside world to be clear. He had said the sky should always be blue for her. “You’re fond of birds, Miss Hathaway?” the housekeeper asked. Win nodded without looking around, afraid that her face was red with unexpressed emotion. “Robins especially,” she half-whispered.

I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, show no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dear like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you. The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, your open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you. The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

It is said that, as he wandered the streets of the City, an ancient jackbird cycled three times above him, then came to rest upon Sam's shoulder, saying: "Are you not Maitreya, Lord of Light, for whom the world has waited, lo, these many years–he whose coming I prophesyed long ago in a poem?" "No, my name is Sam," he replied, "and I am about to depart the world, not enter into it Who are you?" "I am a bird who was once a poet. All morning have I flown, since the yawp of Garuda opened the day. I was flying about the ways of Heaven looking for Lord Rudra, hoping to befoul him with my droppings, when I felt the power of a weird come over the land. I have flown far, and I have seen many things, Lord of Light." "What things have you seen, bird who was a poet?" "I have seen an unlit pyre set at the end of the world, with fogs stirring all about it. I have seen the gods who come late hurrying across the snows and rushing through the upper airs, circling outside the dome. I have seen the players upon the ranga and the nepathya, rehearsing the Masque of Blood, for the wedding of Death and Destruction. I have seen the Lord Vayu raise up his hand and stop the winds that circle through Heaven. I have seen all-colored Mara atop the spire of the highest tower, and I have felt the power of the weird he lays–for I have seen the phantom cats troubled within the wood, then hurrying in this direction. I have seen the tears of a man and of a woman. I have heard the laughter of a goddess. I have seen a bright spear uplifted against the morning, and I have heard an oath spoken. I have seen the Lord of Light at last, of whom I wrote, long ago: Always dying, never dead; Ever ending, never ended; Loathed in darkness, Clothed in light, He comes, to end a world, As morning ends the night. These lines were writ By Morgan, free, Who shall, the day he dies, See this prophecy." The bird ruffled his feathers then and was still. "I am pleased, bird, that you have had a chance to see many things," said Sam, "and that within the fiction of your metaphor you have achieved a certain satisfaction. Unfortunately, poetic truth differs considerably from that which surrounds most of the business of life." "Hail, Lord of Light!" said the bird, and sprang into the air. As he rose, he was pierced through by an arrow shot from a nearby window by one who hated jackbirds. Sam hurried on.

It's not a bird, though feathered, and it has a mobile nest. It's quick in flight and, having flown, it always stops to rest.

And if an essential thing has flown between us, rare intellectual bird of communication, let us seize it quickly : let our preference choose it instead of softer things to screen us each from the other's self : muteness or hesitation, nor petrify live miracle by our indifference.

That when you find love, you must do everything in your power to hold on to it. I

Where do the winds go? What does the rain know? Where is the egg when the bird has flown? Where does the moon sleep? What makes the sea deep? Where is the soul when the breast is bone? What makes the mouth sing? What loves listening? Where is the tune when the song is done? Where is our joined heart, when at last our hands part And we have returned to be sea, to be sun?

Love is a four-letter curse. No bird I know of—who’s been struck by it—has ever flown quite the same way. She may have the looks to rival every woman I’ve ever fucked, a pussy made for worship. She may even be a decent conversationalist and reading partner, but I. Will. Not. Be. Domesticated.

It's not a bird, though feathered, and it has a mobile nest. It's quick in flight and, having flown, it always stops to rest.

But how on earth could the delicate weight of a little bird, an exhausted little bird who has flown across the entire world with hardly a thing to eat, who has already done so much, survive this?

For example, long-distance migrating birds commonly eat more prior to their big flights. These birds become quite fat, which provides the energy they need to make the journey. The European garden warbler will risk crossing the Sahara Desert to its winter habitat in tropical Africa once it has enough fat stores. But the record breaker for distance is the bar-tailed godwit, a seashore bird that uses its long beak to probe sand or mud for insects and crustaceans and builds up fat stores in both its body and liver in late fall before migration. One godwit was documented to have flown seven thousand miles in an eight-day nonstop flight from Alaska to New Zealand.

6. It's not a bird, though feathered, and it has a mobile nest. It's quick in flight and, having flown, it always stops to rest.

The repressed freedom in my chest wants to soar away... like a virgin bird who has never flown...

This year Britain has become our last stronghold. A fortress defended with small aircraft flown by these strange, unknown young men.’ His glance flicked over Andrew and Bryan. ‘But are they unknown? Look at them and you will realise you do know them. They are our sons, our nephews, friends of our sons and daughters. Each a vibrant spark of God’s beloved humanity. All of them welcome in our houses and at our tables. ‘Cast your mind back a few short years. We watched them in those summer days when our stronghold was nothing but their playground. They picnicked on the village greens amongst the sweet bird-chatter. They laughed and played on the beaches, kicking the water with bare toes. And later they watched and then loved the young girls dressed in coloured frocks like the most wonderful of God’s flowers. ‘Now the flowers have faded to khaki and the bird-chatter is stilled under the clattering machines of war. These young men have stepped forward, separated in their blue, to become the winged warriors at the end of the trails that track the vaults above our heads. ‘George has gone, but he is not so far away that he cannot still see England’s face. The woods he played in, the fields he crossed, the town where he grew up and the prettiest flowers that remain unpicked. ‘He has flown on English air to a new world. But he can still see the world he knew just a few days past. And, in our hearts, we may yet see his frozen trail looped white across the heavens. For the air was his kingdom and he was a shield for those who lived under his wings. ‘His brief life has been given up as a ransom, that we might one day be free again. He has given up the richness of days not yet lived, the chance to hear his child’s voice and the solace of true love to ease his years of frailty. All this lost in a moment of willing sacrifice. ‘No thanks we may give him can weigh sufficiently against what he gave. But the clouds in our English skies can entwine with our eternal remembrance and together we may bind a wreath of honour that is worthy for his grave.’ ◆◆◆

Honora smiled beneficently, her softly weathered face close, and I thought of Japanese raked sand gardens, mesmerizing and lovely, though I’d only ever seen them in photographs.

Hi,” I said, feeling caught, but also swooning from the sight of his ocean-colored irises, the magnificence of a singular sturdy shoulder poking from beneath the crisp white sheet, tanned and faintly freckled, the palpable sense of the rest of his solid, simmering body so near.

What would you say to a little excursion? This weekend, or even... this afternoon?” He inched the chair closer still, capturing my bare legs between his knees. Yum. To be trapped this way, his body heat radiating through the fabric of his jeans. “Excursions are good... and I’m good, with any of those options.

(Knife) Something just now moved through my heart like the thinnest of blades as that red-tail pumped once with its great wings and flew above the gray, cracked rock wall. It wasn’t about the bird, it was something about the way stone stays mute and put, whatever goes flashing by. Sometimes, when I sit like this, quiet, all the dreams of my blood and all outrageous divisions of time seem ready to leave, to slide out of me. Then, I imagine, I would never move. By now the hawk has flown five miles at least, dazzling whoever else has happened to look up. I was dazzled. But that wasn’t the knife. It was the sheer, dense wall of blind stone without a pinch of hope or a single unfulfilled desire sponging up and reflecting, so brilliantly, as it has for centuries, the sun’s fire.

It was a book for when the birds had flown south, the wood was stacked by the fireplace, and the fields were white with snow; that is, for when one has no desire to venture out and one's friends had no desire to venture in.

In that night, it rained, darkened closed windows and two lights of a car!

The bird has flown as in former days, more birds have flown.

Piper, beware, your end is near, The Adder’s power dwindles. He writhes, he goes in mortal fear, Nothing his strength rekindles. Though you seek the Jay in country and town, No sword can wound him, no hound run him down, And when you think you’ll succeed in your quest, You find that the bird has flown the nest.

The Ice Crystal blue has flown my bird in the snow Polar.