Feather Quotes
More Feather Quotes
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod; An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Alexander Pope— 1734 An Essay on Man, epistle 4, l.247-8.
A pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
Charles Lamb— 1833 Of puns. Last Essays of Elia,'Popular Fallacies', no.9.
If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly: it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, 'a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on'.
Bruce Springsteen— Collected in Gems from Spurgeon (1859).
They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate.
hans christian andersen— The Princess and the Pea
A willing heart adds feather to the heel,And makes the clown a winged Mercury.
joanna baillie— De Montfort (1798), Act III, scene 2; in A Series of Plays.
To die for the racists is lighter than a feather, but to die for the people is heavier than any mountain and deeper than any sea.
huey p. newton— To Die for the People (1972), paraphrasing Mao Zedong's "Serve the People"
If Palin lawyer thomas van flein thinks palin has been "defamed" he is delusional. Birds of a feather....
david shuster— 7:41 PM - 5 Jul 09
It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriage, — not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much air — but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of having been abroad.
Laurence Sterne— Book IV, Ch. 31.
That eagle's fate and mine are one,Which on the shaft that made him dieEspied a feather of his own,Wherewith he wont to soar so high.
Edmund Waller— To a Lady singing a Song of his Composing; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). See also Eagles, for variations on this theme.
And elm-trees, massed like ostrich feather plumes,Are streaked and shot with fire.
dorothy wellesley— Poem: Lost Lane
To waft a feather or to drown a fly.
Edward Young— Line 154. (Night I)
If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.
lois mcmaster bujold— p. 58 (Cryoburn (2010))
"And the Bastard grant us . . . in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding."
lois mcmaster bujold— p. 44 (Cryoburn (2010))
Like feather bed betwixt a wall And heavy brunt of cannon ball.
— Canto II, line 872.
'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low: So the struck eagle , stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.
lord byron— Line 826. A number of authors have addressed this common motif of an eagle shot with an eagle-feather arrow
It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot. Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly – I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads – The allotment of death.
ted hughes— "Hawk Roosting", line 10
A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
Charles Lamb— Popular Fallacies: IX, That the Worst Puns Are the Best.
Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.
edith wharton— Journal entry (March 1926)
Private credit is wealth, public honour is security. The feather that adorns the royal bird supports his flight; strip him of his plumage, and you fix him to the earth.
junius— Letter 42. Jan. 30, 1771.
A willing heart adds feather to the heel, And makes the clown a winged Mercury.
joanna baillie— Joanna Baillie, De Montfort (1798), Act III, scene 2; in A Series of Plays.
The sun was gone now; the curled moon was like a little feather fluttering far down the gulf.
— D. G. Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel, Stanza 10.
With his silver shorts and peroxided feather do, this Aussie was more Alex Jay in a low-budget sci-fi porno than rebel retiree with an interest in the Renaissance.
— "Put an end to dangling conversations". Cape Argus (South Africa: Independent Online): p. 13. 16 September 2008.
Private credit is wealth; public honor is security; the feather that adorns the royal bird supports its flight; strip him of his plumage, and you fix him to the earth.
junius— Junius, Affair of the Falkland Islands, Vol. I, Letter XLII, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 148.
May the hinges of friendship never rust, or the wings of luve lose a feather.
Edward ramsay— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character
I am not of that feather to shake off my friend when he must need me.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 1, line 100.
Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together, Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather!
william allingham— William Allingham, The Fairies, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 253-54.
The feather, whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, Dropped from an Angel's wing.
william wordsworth— William Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Part III. V. Walton's Book of Lives.
Birds of a feather will gather together.
robert burton— Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section I. Memb. 1, Subsect. 2.
