Beaks Quotes - Page 3

• High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed

  Hendrik Willem van Loon

  Years, Land, Long

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• A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shadows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically.

  John Steinbeck

  Snakes, Water, Shadow

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• The Mercy of Allah is an Ocean, Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean.It only has to open it's beak

  Leila Aboulela

  Ocean, Tree, Clay

  Leila Aboulela (2015). “Minaret”, p.5, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I was always either so unreasonably and pointlessly happy that no one place could seem to contain me, or so melancholy, so sick and silly with sadness that there was no place I could stomach the thought of entering. I hated it here. And I have never been as happy as when I was here. And these two things together confront me with the beak and claws of the True.

  David Foster Wallace

  Silly, Sadness, Two

  David Foster Wallace (2004). “The Broom of the System: A Novel”, p.183, Penguin

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• Please also remember the pitiful gasping/thirsty little mouths/ beaks in summer. They'll appreciate abundant/fresh/cool/clean/ water! Food they can get easily in parks/sidewalks!

  Adela Popescu

  Summer, Animal, Appreciate

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• As you may know, KFC is under worldwide pressure to eliminate its cruelest abuses of chickens, such as cutting the beaks off baby birds; breeding chickens to grow so large, so quickly that many suffer crippling injuries; and slitting the birds' throats or dropping them into tanks of scalding-hot water while they are still alive and able to feel pain.

  Pamela Anderson

  Baby, Pain, Cutting

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• It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun
  And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men:
  But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done, would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again.

  Joyce Kilmer

  Heart, Men, Fire

  Joyce Kilmer (1917). “Main Street, and Other Poems”

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• God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars-- If all the stars and the earth, and the living flesh of the night that flows in between them, and whatever is beyond them Were that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears.

  Robinson Jeffers

  God, Stars, Night

  Robinson Jeffers, Tim Hunt (1988). “The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: 1938-1962”, p.292, Stanford University Press

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• Good-morrow to thy sable beak, And glossy plumage, dark and sleek, Thy crimson moon and azure eye

  Joanna Baillie

  Eye, Dark, Moon

  Joanna Baillie, Jennifer Breen (1999). “The Selected Poems of Joanna Baillie, 1762-1851”, p.79, Manchester University Press

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• I must confess that I and a few others are burdened with heavy responsibilities regarding the future of criticism. I am certainly, if not the inventor, then at least one of the first systematizers of an absurd critical practice that, as soon as it had peeked its beak out of the nest, flapping its new wet wings, took flight in the minds of the young, becoming a wild ox and sowing avant-garde literature with the mighty tomes of what might as well be called the abstract bear.

  Louis Aragon

  Responsibility, Practice, Wings

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• Across from me at the next row of supports Jim raised his hand and touched his fingers to his thumb a few times, imitating an opening and closing beak. Negotiate. He wanted me to engage a lunatic who had already turned four people into smoking meat. Okay. I could do that. “Alright, Jeremy!” I yelled into the night. “Give me the salamander and I won’t cut your head off!” Jim put his hand over his face and did some shaking. I thought he was laughing, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Ilona Andrews

  Cutting, Night, Hands

  Ilona Andrews (2008). “Magic Burns”, p.16, Penguin

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• Can you imagine any better example of divine creative accomplishment that the consummate flying machine that is a bird? The skeleton, very flexible and strong, is also largely pneumatic - especially in the bigger birds. The beak, skull, feet, and all the other bones of a 25-pound pelican have been found to weigh but 23 ounces.

  Guy Murchie

  Strong, Skeletons, Skulls

  Guy Murchie (2016). “Song of the Sky”, p.220, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• While it is not always profitable to analogize "fact" to "fiction," La Fontaine's fable of the crow, the cheese, and the fox demonstrates that there is a substantial difference between holding a piece of cheese in the beak and putting it in the stomach.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Differences, Crow, Fiction

  "Alleghany Corp. v. Breswick & Co., 353 U.S. 151". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 22, 1957.

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