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.
Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather Boa!
Allen Ginsberg— 1960 Journalentry, Oct. Collected in Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties,'NewYork City'.
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.
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
The male is colored much more gorgeously than the female so that he can be shot and made into feather embroidery.
will cuppy— The Hummingbird
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.
The feather, whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, Dropped from an Angel's wing.
william wordsworth— Part III, No. 5 - Walton's Book of Lives. Compare: "The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly sing / Made of a quill from an angel's wing", Henry Constable, Sonnet; "Whose noble praise / Deserves a quill pluckt from an angel's wing", Dorothy Berry, Sonnet.
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))
What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.
Herman Melville— Bk. IV (Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852))
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.
The falcon and the dove sit there together, And th' one of them doth prune the other's feather.
Michael Drayton— Michael Drayton, Noah's Flood; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 256.
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.
Birdes of a feather will flocke togither.
— John Minsheu (1599).
