Nightingales Quotes - Page 2

• Lyrical poetry is much the same an every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time.

  Heinrich Heine

  Song, Spring, Poetry

  Heinrich Heine (1888). “Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos”

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• The older women were Sunbeams and I guess we were Cherubs or Lambs, but our mothers were Nightingales.

  Janet Flanner

  Mother, Acceptance, Lambs

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• Go, little book, and wish to all
  Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,
  A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
  A house with lawns enclosing it,
  A living river by the door,
  A nightingale in the sycamore!

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Flower, Book, Wine

  'Underwoods' (1887) 'Envoy'.

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• There's nightingales calling, shooting stars falling, like jewels in the rain.

  David Gray

  Life, Stars, Rain

  Song: Everytime, Album: Sell, Sell, Sell, 1996

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• Far away beyond the pine-woods,' he answered, in a low dreamy voice, 'there is a little garden. There the grass grows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower, there the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.

  Oscar Wilde

  Stars, Flower, Moon

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.205, Wordsworth Editions

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• But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home to a leaky castle across the sea to lie awake in linen smelling of lavender, and hear the nightingale, and long for me.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Girl, Lying, Home

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (1956). “Collected Poems”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Music lives within thy lips Like a nightingale in roses.

  Philip James Bailey

  Rose, Lips, Music Life

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.254

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• The love-lorn nightingale nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.

  John Milton

  Song, Thee, Wells

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1798). “Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before the Earl of Bridgewater ...”

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• Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.

  Epictetus

  Swans

  Epictetus (1877). “Selections from Epictetus”, p.21

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• You can be a flower in somebody's garden or a pig or the sunshine or a crow or a nightingale! Be something nice in someone else's garden.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Nice, Flower, Sunshine

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• Rather than recallin these flowersthe fragrance of the past,I would like to hear this nightingale's voice,to know if his song is as sweet.

  Izumi Shikibu

  Song, Sweet, Past

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• Earl Nightingale has inspired more people toward success and fortune than any other motivational speaker on the planet.

  Zig Ziglar

  People, Inspired, Planets

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• Great people will always be mocked by those who feel smaller than them. However, a lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena. A gorilla does not budge from a banana thrown at it by a monkey. A nightingale does not stop singing its beautiful song at the intrusion of an annoying woodpecker. Whenever you should question your self-worth, remember the lotus flower. Even though it plunges to life from beneath the mud, it does not allow the dirt that surrounds it to affect its growth or beauty.

  Suzy Kassem

  Beautiful, Song, Laughter

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• Now came still evening on; and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad: Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to they grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale.

  John Milton

  Twilight, Bird, Silence

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

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• Most of us live for the critic, and he lives on us. He doesn't sacrifice himself. He gets so much a line for writing a criticism. If the birds should read the newspapers, they would all take to changing their notes. The parrots would exchange with the nightingales, and what a farce it would be!

  William Morris Hunt

  Writing, Sacrifice, Bird

  William Morris Hunt (1878). “W.M. Hunt's Talks about Art: With a Letter from J.E. Millais”

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• In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she'd ever seen with 300 percent mortality.

  Sam Kean

  War, Cutting, Men

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• America is the noisiest country that ever existed. One is waked up in the morning, not by the singing of the nightingale, but by the steam whistle.

  Oscar Wilde

  Country, Morning, America

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.7, University of Chicago Press

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• Even the song of birds, which we can bring under no musical rule, seems to have more freedom, and therefore more for taste, than a song of a human being which is produced in accordance with all the rules of music; for we very much sooner weary of the latter, if it is repeated often and at length. Here, however, we probably confuse our participation in the mirth of a little creature that we love, with the beauty of its song; for if this were exactly imitated by man (as sometimes the notes of the nightingale are) it would seem to our ear quite devoid of taste.

  Immanuel Kant

  Song, Men, Bird

  Immanuel Kant (2016). “The Critique of Judgement”, p.94, Jester House Publishing

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• Agesilaus being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying he had heard the nightingale itself.

  Plutarch

  Men, Heard, Invited

  Plutarch (2000). “The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Volume II: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.99, Modern Library

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• Disease an never be conquered, can never be quelled by emotion's willful screaming or faith's symbolic prayer. It can only be conquered by the energy of humanity and the cunning in the mind of man. In the patience of a Curie, in the enlightenment of a Faraday, a Rutherford, a Pasteur, a Nightingale, and all other apostles of light and cleanliness, rather than of a woebegone godliness, we shall find final deliverance from plague, pestilence, and famine.

  Sean O'Casey

  Prayer, Men, Light

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• The wren and the nightingale sound nothing alike, but think how dull the world would be without the songs of both birds.-Miss Kanagawa

  Kirby Larson

  Song, Thinking, Bird

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• Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Class, Perfect, Bird

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• To die, is to be banish'd from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her, Is self from self: a deadly banishment! What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she is by, And feed upon the shadow of perfection. Except I be by Silvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale; Unless I look on Silvia in the day, There is no day for me to look upon; She is my essence, and I leave to be, If I be not by her fair influence Foster'd, illumin'd, cherish'd, kept alive.

  William Shakespeare

  Night, Thinking, Light

  'The Two Gentlemen Of Verona' (1592-3) act 3, sc. 1, l. 178

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• I often compare Margaret Thatcher with Florence Nightingale. She stalks through the wards of our hospitals as a lady with a lamp. Unfortunately, it's a blowlamp.

  Denis Healey

  Florence Nightingale, Lamps, Stalking

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• The nightingale has a lyre of gold, The lark's is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, But I love him best of all. For his song is all the joy of life, And we in the mad spring weather, We two have listened till he sang Our hearts and lips together.

  William Ernest Henley

  Song, Spring, Heart

  William Ernest Henley (2016). “A Book of Verses”, Read Books Ltd

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