Sea Birds Quotes

• To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.

  Rachel Carson

  Running, Moving, Years

  Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson (1972). “The house of life: Rachel Carson at work”

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• One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Summer, Nature, Children

  155 Copy quote

• Fly silly sea bird, no dreams can possess you, no voices can blame you for sun on your wings.

  Joni Mitchell

  Dream, Philosophy, Silly

  Song: Song To A Seagull, Album: Song to a Seagull

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• The twilight is sad and cloudy, The wind blows wild and free, And like the wings of sea-birds Flash the white caps of the sea.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Twilight, Blow, Wind

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1871). “The Poetical Works”, p.131

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• God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.

  Jacques Deval

  Life, Funny Love, Men

  "A Dictionary of Environmental Quotations" by Barbara K. Rodes and Rice Odell, (p. 22), 1992.

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• ...recognize and respect Earth's beautiful systems of balance, between the presence of animals on land, the fish in the sea, birds in the air, mankind, water, air, and land. Most importantly there must always be awareness of the actions by people that can disturb this precious balance.

  Margaret Mead

  Beautiful, Respect, Animal

  54 Copy quote

• ...as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.

  Daphne du Maurier

  Beach, Winter, Autumn

  James A. Michener, Alan C. Collins, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Daphne du Maurier, Sixta, A.J. Cronin, Captain J. Y. Cousteau with Frederic Dumas (1953). “THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI, THE STORY OF AVIATION, THE SWIMMING POOL, KISS ME AGAIn, STRANGER, RIVETS, ADVENTURES IN TWO WORLDS, THE SILENT WORLD, SHORT STORIES OF DE MAUPASSANT”

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• Everything in life is built on principles - plants, seas, birds, all of the natural elements of nature, they all follow and obey certain basic fundamental principles.

  Myles Munroe

  Sea, Bird, Principles

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• There in the windy flood of morning Longing lifted its weight from me, Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering, Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.

  Sara Teasdale

  Morning, Cheer, Sea

  Sara Teasdale (1915). “Rivers to the Sea”

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• Dwelling beside a body of water is tonic for the weary psyche. Sea smells, sea birds, seawrack, sands - alternately cool, warm, moist and dry - a taste of brine and the presence of the rocking, slopping bluegraygreen spit-flecked waters, has the effect of rinsing the emotions, bathing the outlook, bleaching the conscience.

  Roger Zelazny

  Sea, Smell, Dwelling

  Roger Zelazny (2001). “Isle of the Dead ; Eye of Cat”, Ibooks

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• All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away.

  Charles Dickens

  Country, Nature, Lying

  Charles Dickens (2015). “Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Export”, p.652, Jester House Publishing via PublishDrive

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• Sitting at our back doorsteps, all we need to live a good life lies about us. Sun, wind, people, buildings, stones, sea, birds and plants surround us. Cooperation with all these things brings harmony, opposition to them brings disaster and chaos.

  Bill Mollison

  Good Life, Lying, Wind

  81 Copy quote

• How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.

  Virginia Woolf

  Coffee, Sea, Knives

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “The Waves”, p.253, Collector's Library

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• Hark! o'er the dread abyss the sea-bird screams-- The rocks resound--again the lightning gleams!

  John Ramsay

  Rocks, Sea, Bird

  John Ramsay (1836). “Poems”, p.9

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• If we had better hearing, and could discern the descants of sea birds, the rhythmic tympani of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonics of midges hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet.

  Lewis Thomas

  School, Sea, Feet

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• Out of the choked Devonian waters emerged sight and sound and the music that rolls invisible through the composer's brain. They are there still in the ooze along the tideline, though no one notices. The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back to the water. There are things still coming ashore.

  Loren Eiseley

  Sight, Air, Sea

  Loren Eiseley (2011). “The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature”, p.54, Vintage

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• War wreaked on you his hideous ravishment;
  We, we alone, Nereids inviolate,
  Remain to weep, with the sea-birds to chant:
  Corinth is lost, Corinth is desolate.

  Hilda Doolittle

  War, Loss, Sea

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.338, New Directions Publishing

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• WE DASH THE BLACK RIVER, ITS flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring. The sea birds hang above it, they wheel, disappear. We flash the wide river, a dream of the past. The deeps fall behind, the bottom is paling the surface, we rush by the shallows, boats beached for winter, desolate piers. And on wings like the gulls, soar up, turn, look back.

  James Salter

  Dream, Lying, Fall

  James Salter (2011). “Light Years”, p.3, Vintage

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• I did not think I should be ever loved: do you indeed Love me so much as now you say you do? Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea, Ask of the roses if they love the rain, Ask of the little lark, that will not sing Till day break, if it loves to see the day: And yet, these are but empty images, Mere shadows of my love, which is a fire So great that all the waters of the main Can not avail to quench it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Rain, Thinking, Fire

  Oscar Wilde (2008). “The Duchess of Padua: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.39, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• I say that almost everywhere there is beauty enough to fill a person's life if one would only be sensitive to it. but Henry says No: that broken beauty is only a torment, that one must have a whole beauty with man living in relation to it to have a rich civilization and art. . . . Is it because I am a woman that I accept what crumbs I may have, accept the hot-dog stands and amusement parks if I must, if the blue is bright beyond them and the sunset flushes the breasts of sea birds?

  Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth

  Dog, Art, Sunset

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