Nightingale Quotes

Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan. (Epictetus)
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
No man had ever heard a nightingale, When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and define - what is a bird. View quote
Emma Lazarus
Agesilaus being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying he had heard the nightingale itself. View quote
Plutarch
Seek for a fresh invoice of grace. Unbelief can scoff or growl; faith is the nightingale that sings in the darkest hour. Faith can draw honey out of the rock and oil out of the flint. With Christ in possession and heaven in reversion, it marches to the time of the One-hundred-and-third Psalm over the roughest road, and against the most cutting blast. View quote
Theodore L. Cuyler
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. View quote
Percy Bysshe Shelley
When Whitney Houston died, I felt great sadness. My sadness, of course, was about our collective loss - when you listened to this nightingale sing, your body would drop into a chair, your head would tilt up, a small smile would creep across your face, and inside you knew that there was a higher power somewhere: gifted, beautiful, spiritual. View quote
James Belushi
Our homeward step was just as light/As the tap-dancing feet of Astaire/And, like an echo far away,/A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. View quote
Fred Astaire
Through the gloomy clouds break / Blue sky, sunshine, / On the heights and in the valley / Sing the lark and the nightingale God, I thank you that I live / Not forever in this world / Strengthen me that my soul rise / Upward toward your firmament. View quote
Caspar David Friedrich
The breathing of the air, The song of the sweet nightingale, The grove and its beauty In the serene night, With the flame that consumes, and gives no pains. ~ 39. View quote
John of the Cross
Pack, clouds, away! and welcome, day! With night we banish sorrow. Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft To give my Love good-morrow! Wings from the wind to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow: Bird, prune thy wing! nightingale, sing! (Thomas Heywood)
A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better. View quote
Robert Burton
There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream, And the nightingale sings round it all the day long; In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream, To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song. View quote
Thomas Moore
Pleasant, liquors of the mead-brewer to the multitude; Also pleasant, a songster generous, amiable. Pleasant, the open field to cuckoos and the nightingale; Also pleasant when the weather is serene. View quote
Taliesin
p>Ye living lamps, by whose dear light The nightingale does sit so late And studying all the summer night Her matchless songs does meditate;Ye country comets, that portend No war, nor prince's funeral, Shining unto no higher end Than to presage the grasses's fall;Ye glow-worms whose officious flame To wandering mowers shows the way, That in the night have lost their aim And after foolish fires do stray;Your courteous lights in vain you waste, Since juliana here is come, For she my mind hath so displaced That I shall never find my home. View quote
Andrew Marvell
The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale: The nightingale with feathers new she sings; The turtle to her make hath told her tale; Summer is come, for every spray now springs. View quote
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
But now he sleeps endlessly. Now the moss and the grass open with sure fingers the flower of his skull. And now his blood comes out singing; singing along marshes and meadows, slides on frozen horns, faltering souls in the mist stumbling over a thousand hoofs like a long, dark, sad tongue, to form a pool of agony close to the starry Guadalquivir. Oh, white wall of Spain! Oh, black bull of sorrow! Oh, hard blood of Ignacio! Oh, nightingale of his veins! View quote
Federico García Lorca
In the weightiest matters we must go to school to the animals, and learn spinning and weaving from the spider, building from the swallow, singing from the birds,-from the swan and the nightingale, imitating their art. View quote
Democritus
The nightingale is sovereign of song. View quote
Edmund Spenser
He was known to his countrymen as the Nightingale, but his own sweet-sounding name of Bird's-meadow (Vogelweide) suggests even more directly the pure, true, flute-like strain which he poured into Europe's choir of voices. View quote
Walther von der Vogelweide
Night after night the nightingale came to beg for divine love, but though the rose trembled at the sound of his voice, her petals remained closed to him... Flower and bird, two species never meant to mate. Yet at length the rose overcame her fear and from that single, forbidden union was born the red rose that Allah never intended the world to know. (Susan Kay)
Death continued to stare at the emperor with his cold, hollow eyes, and the room was fearfully still. Suddenly there came through the open window the sound of sweet music. Outside, on the bough of a tree, sat the living nightingale. She had heard of the emperor's illness, and was therefore come to sing to him of hope and trust. And as she sung, the shadows grew paler and paler; the blood in the emperor's veins flowed more rapidly, and gave life to his weak limbs; and even Death himself listened, and said, "Go on, little nightingale, go on." View quote
Hans Christian Andersen
I have now learnt to despise you," he said. "You refused an honest prince; you did not appreciate the rose and the nightingale; but you did not mind kissing a swineherd for his toys; you have no one but yourself to blame! View quote
Hans Christian Andersen
But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home to a leaky castle across the sea to lie awake in linen smelling of lavender, and hear the nightingale, and long for me. View quote
Edna St. Vincent Millay
It is modest of the nightingale not to require anyone to listen to it; but it is also proud of the nightingale not to care whether any one listens to it or not. View quote
Soren Kierkegaard