Owl Quotes
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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More Owl Quotes
St. Agnes' Eve Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.
john keats— John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes.
Lovelyare the curves of the white owl sweeping Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.
George Meredith— 1851Poems,'Love in the Valley', stanza 5. The poem was revised and republished in1878.
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r The moping owl does to the moon complain.
thomas gray— St. 3. (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750))
Pussy said to the owl, "You elegant fowl!How charmingly sweet you sing!O let us be married! too long we have tarried:But what shall we do for a ring?"
Edward Lear— St. 2.
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain.
thomas gray— 1751Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.9-10.
St. Agnes' EveAh, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold.
john keats— 1820 Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems,'The Eve of St. Agnes', stanza1.
Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch, The owl very gravely got down from his perch, Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic.
james thomas fields— The Owl-Critic, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat, And thrice as blind as any noonday owl, To holy virgins in their ecstasies.
Tennyson— Idylls of the King, 'The Holy Grail', lines 862-4 (1869)
As when on some secluded branch in forest far and wide sits perched an owl, who, full of self-conceit and self-created wisdom, explains, comments, condemns, ordains and order things not understood, yet full of importance still holds forth to stocks and stones around — so sits and scribbles Mike.
michael faraday— Of himself and his writing abilities, as quoted in A Random Walk in Science (1973) by Robert L. Weber, p. 76
Understanding is always in some sense retrospective, which is what Hegel meant by remarking that the owl of Minerva flies only at night.
terry eagleton— Afterword, p. 190
"I’m an owl; you’re another. Sir Critic, good day." And the barber kept on shaving.
james thomas fields— The Owl-Critic, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Ophelia is a little walking owl, bewitched by her unconscious feminine, her father, and what "they say." She never finds her own voice. She never finds her own body or her own feelings and therefore misses life and love in the here and now. Gradually the waters of the unconscious to which she is "native and indued" swallow her.
Marion Woodman— p. 9 (The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (1980))
A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay , but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
— Ernest Hemingway, in Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16
A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act II, scene 4, line 12.
The large white owl that with eye is blind, That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow, Is carried away in a gust of wind.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Isabel's Child, Stanza 19.
The Roman senate, when within The city walls an owl was seen, Did cause their clergy, with lustrations * * * * The round-fac'd prodigy t' avert, From doing town or country hurt.
— Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto III, line 709.
The wailing owl Screams solitary to the mournful moon.
— David Mallett, Excursion. (Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations)
Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 2, line 928.
He'd undertake to prove, by force Of argument, a man's no horse. He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a Lord may be an owl, A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice, And rooks, Committee-men or Trustees.
— Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto I, line 71.
The owl does not praise the light, nor the wolf the dog.
— As quoted in Henry G. Bohn, A polyglot of foreign proverbs, (1857)
It is daffodil time, so the robins all cry, For the sun's a big daffodil up in the sky, And when down the midnight the owl calls "to-whoo"! Why, then the round moon is a daffodil too; Now sheer to the bough-tops the sap starts to climb, So, merry my masters, it's daffodil time.
— Clinton Scollard, Daffodil Time.
The sun was set; the night came on apace, And falling dews bewet around the place; The bat takes airy rounds on leathern wings, And the hoarse owl his woeful dirges sings.
john gay— John Gay, Shepherd's Week, Wednesday; or, The Dumps.
“And if anyone knows anything about anything," said Bear to himself, "it's owl who knows something about something," he said, "or my name's not Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "which it is," he added. "So there you are.”
a. a. milne— From Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), said by Pooh.
And they brought an owl, and a useful Cart, And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart, And a hive of silvery Bees. And they brought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws, And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws, and forty Bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree, And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Edward Lear— Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets, "The Jumblies" (1871)
These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only one in the forest who could spell; for owl, wise though he was in many ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTERED TOAST.
a. a. milne— Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Chapter Four.
owl was telling Kanga an Interesting Anecdote full of long words like Encyclopædia and Rhododendron to which Kanga wasn't listening.
a. a. milne— Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Chapter Eight.
"And he respects owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count."
a. a. milne— Chapter Five - Rabbit, speaking of Christopher Robin
owl took Christopher Robin's notice from Rabbit and looked at it nervously. He could spell his own name WOL, and he could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn't Wednesday, and he could read quite comfortably when you weren't looking over his shoulder and saying "Well?" all the time, and he could—
a. a. milne— Chapter Five
