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.
Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again.
rené char— A statement written soon after the end of World War II, as quoted in René Char : This Smoke That Carried Us : Selected Poems (2004) edited by Susanne Dubroff
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.
Birds of a feather will gather together.
robert burton— Section 1, member 1, subsection 2, Love's Beginning, Object, Definition, Division.
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)
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.
Birds of a feather flock together.
— Meaning: "It is a fact worthy of remark, that when a set of men agree in any particulars, though never so trivial, they flock together, and often establish themselves into a kind of fraternity for contriving and carrying into effect their plans. According to their distinct character they club together, factious with factious, wise with wise, indolent with indolent, active with active et cetera."
— Source for meaning: Porter, William Henry (1845). Proverbs: Arranged in Alphabetical Order .... Munroe and Company. p. 41.
— Alike people goes a long well.
"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.
The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— St. 1 (The Day is Done (1845))
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.
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— Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), line 826.
That eagle's fate and mine are one, Which on the shaft that made him die Espied a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to soar so high.
Edmund Waller— Edmund Waller, To a Lady singing a Song of his Composing, Epistle XIV.
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.
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.
