Owl Quotes
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St. Agnes' Eve Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.
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More Owl Quotes
Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
jonathan swift— Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation (c. 1738), Dialogue I.
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
"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).
In the life of the academic mind, the owl of Minerva seldom flies as early as the dusk.
john n. gray— 'Definition of the Political Thought of Tlön' (p.91)
St. Agnes’ Eve Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold.
john keats— Stanza 1. (The Eve of St. Agnes)
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
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.
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good night.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act II, scene 2, line 3.
The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act II, scene 2, line 6.
When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.
— Alfred Tennyson, Song, The Owl.
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)
“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.
A falcon, touring in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.
— Old Man, Scene IV
Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event.
— Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire
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 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
The owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat.
Edward Lear— The Owl and the Pussy-Cat.
