Nightingales Quotes

• Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades.

  Boris Pasternak

  Running, Sweet, Night

  LIFE magazine, June 13, 1960.

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• The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others; Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Heart, Sleep

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• It is modest of the nightingale not to require anyone to listen to it; but it is also proud of the nightingale not to care whether any one listens to it or not.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Care, Proud, Modest

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• Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth.

  John Keats

  Divine

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1829). “The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Complete in One Volume”

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• The nightingale appear'd the first, And as her melody she sang, The apple into blossom burst, To life the grass and violets sprang.

  Heinrich Heine

  Apples, Violet, Firsts

  Heinrich Heine (1859). “The Poems of Heine, complete: Translated in the original Metres: With a Sketch of Heine's Life. By Edgar Alfred Bowring”, p.169

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• I am the dust in the sunlight,
  I am the ball of the sun . . .
  I am the mist of morning,
  the breath of evening . . . .
  I am the spark in the stone,
  the gleam of gold in the metal . . . .
  The rose and the nightingale
  drunk with its fragrance.
  I am the chain of being,
  the circle of the spheres,
  The scale of creation,
  the rise and the fall.
  I am what is and is not . . .
  I am the soul in all.

  Rumi

  Morning, Fall, Dust

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• Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.

  Leonard Cohen

  Love, Singing, Thee

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• Soft as Memnon's harp at morning, To the inward ear devout, Touched by light, with heavenly warning Your transporting chords ring out. Every leaf in every nook, Every wave in every brook, Chanting with a solemn voice Minds us of our better choice.

  John Keble

  Morning, Voice, Light

  John Keble (1829). “The Christian year, thoughts in verse for the Sundays and holydays throughout the year [by J. Keble].”, p.52

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• A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Sweet, Cheer, Being Alone

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.34

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• Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.

  John Keats

  Night, Voice, Bird

  "Ode to a Nightingale" l. 61 (1820)

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• The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark When neither is attended; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many thing by season seasoned are To their right praise and true perfection!

  William Shakespeare

  Thinking, Perfection, Crow

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 5, sc. 1, l. 102

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• There's a story... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.

  Colleen McCullough

  Smile, God, Song

  "Fictional character: Ralph de Bricassart". "There are no ambitions noble", www.imdb.com. 1983.

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• One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Dark, Woods, Hungry

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.226

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• Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song.

  John Milton

  Song, Sweet, Bird

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• The mute grain turns to love songs when swallowed by the nightingale.

  Khalil Gibran

  Song, Mute, Grain

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• Music exists when rhythmic, melodic or harmonic order is deliberately created, and consciously listened to, and it is only language-using, self-conscious creatures ... who are capable of organizing sounds in this way, either when uttering them or when perceiving them. We can hear music in the song of the nightingale, but it is music that no nightingale has heard.

  Roger Scruton

  Music, Song, Self

  Roger Scruton (2016). “Understanding Music: Philosophy and Interpretation”, p.13, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• The nightingale is sovereign of song.

  Edmund Spenser

  Song, Sovereign

  Edmund Spenser, George Gilfillan (1859). “The poetical works of Edmund Spenser: With memoir and critical dissertations”, p.286

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• Nightingales are put in cages because their songs give pleasure. Whoever heard of keeping a crow?

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Song, Giving

  Rumi (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.263, Penguin UK

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• O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still; Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill While the jolly hours lead on propitious May.

  John Milton

  Heart, May, Woods

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1801). “The Poetical Works of John Milton”, p.449

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• Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning it was not a Word, but a chirrup.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Crush, Time, Jesus

  D. H. Lawrence, Simonetta de Filippis (2002). “Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays”, p.36, Cambridge University Press

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• Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?

  John Keats

  Dream, Sleep, Past

  'Ode to a Nightingale' (1820) st. 8

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• For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed, So poets live upon the living light.

  Philip James Bailey

  Light, Poet, Worms

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.411

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• Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompany'd; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleas'd. Now glow'd the firmament With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

  John Milton

  Life, Queens, Twilight

  'Paradise Lost' (1667) bk. 4, l. 598

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• The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.

  T. S. Eliot

  Fall, Heart, Singing

  "Sweeney Among the Nightingales" l. 35 (1919)

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• It is quiet and peaceful here, the air is good, there are numerous gardens, and in them nightingales sing and spies lurk under the bushes.

  Maxim Gorky

  Garden, Air, Peaceful

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