Famous quotes containing the words isle and/or bird:
“It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands. Behind every man’s busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“but as an Eagle
His cloudless thunderbolted on thir heads.
So vertue giv’n for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seem’d,
Like that self-begott’n bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay e’re while a Holocaust,
From out her ashie womb now teem’d
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deem’d,
And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird ages of lives.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)