Swans Quotes

Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.

The swan murmurs sweet strains with a flattering tongue, itself the singer of its own dirge.

The night folds her trembling hands over a weary world. Out of a pale blue rises the shining moon. My thoughts are flying to the stars like lonely swans.

When I first started doing the quieter, more acoustic material in Swans, there was a lot of derision and outright hatred from the audience and press, just as in the early days of Swans when we were rejected outright because of the bludgeoning, single-minded violence of the music.

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

If you’re looking for monogamy, you’d better marry a swan.

Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

Vinod Khosla is best known for shunning convention and taking massive risks on companies he calls ‘black swans’ -companies with a near-complete chance of failure. But, if they succeed, the world will be forever changed.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don’t become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

Technical things are getting more mechanical. Take ‘Swan Lake,’ the Black Swan pas de deux. Now, my goodness, they’re turning not just 32 fouettes – but double or triple pirouettes.

Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.

A rare bird on this earth, like nothing so much as a black swan.

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world.

I like relativity and quantum theories because I don’t understand them and they make me feel as if space shifted about like a swan that can’t settle, refusing to sit still and be measured; and as if the atom were an impulsive thing always changing its mind.

The swan in the pool is singing, And up and down doth he steer, And, singing gently ever, Dips under the water clear.

She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox’s tongue. She tastes like hope.

When turkeys mate they think of swans.

I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

Swans live wherever there is water, and leave the place where water dries up; let not a man act so – and comes and goes as he pleases.

Remember that you are a Black Swan.

With ‘Black Swan,’ the ballerina saga flips its tiara and goes on a hallucinatory bender, a scary acid trip where transfiguration and disfiguration meet.

I had daydreamed through many performances of Swan Lake, thinking the dancing tutus only ever conveyed one aspect of swans: their beauty gliding on water. I wondered what it would be like to use male dancers and bring out swans’ aggressive, muscular side.

Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were
To see thee in our water yet appear.

It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water – and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood.

The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear.

Orchestras have often been used to conjure up the natural world: Swans, sharks, trout, but not, as far as I know, the often maligned jellyfish.

I was in disbelief that I’d just explained my dreary life to this bizarre, beautiful boy who may or may not despise me. Bella Swan

Do you really believe that in the late 1800s Paddy Hannan would have walked 600 miles in the hot sun from Perth to Kalgoorlie to discover gold if he had to pay the Wayne Swan resource super tax?

Merrily, merrily goes the bark On a breeze from the northward free, So shoots through the morning sky the lark, Or the swan through the summer sea.

Sweet meat must have sour sauce.

I cry. Evil dissolves, & love, like foam; that love. Prattle of children powers me home, my heart claps like the swan’s under a frenzy of who love me & who shine.

After eighteen years of being utterly ordinary, I finally found that I can shine” -Bella Swan <3

The Water Babies “Young and Old” When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away: Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day.

Constance Spry was one of the first people to put flowers in urns and ceramic swans and other unusual containers, but her arrangements tended to be a little less full.

Swans sing before they die – ’twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.

The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud
With white neck peering to the evening clowd.
The weary rooks to distant woods are gone.
With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on
To neighbouring tree, and leaves the distant crow
While small birds nestle in the edge below.

The silver swan, who, living had no note, When death approached unlocked her silent throat.

If I was a nightingale I would sing like a nightingale; if a swan, like a swan. But since I am a rational creature my role is to praise God.

I don’t have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.

Why get married? For human beings, marriage is such an unnatural state. If you want monogamy, it has been said, you should marry a swan.

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I’ve realised, through working with so many talented actors on ‘Wild Swans’ and ‘Run,’ that I can see the training. That’s why I am back at drama school.

Swan, by Mary Oliver. Poems and prose. Reading from this book is as if visiting a very wise friend. There is wisdom and welcoming kindness on every page.

Swans in the winter air
A white perfection have

The raven once in snowy plumes was drest,
White as the whitest dove’s unsullied breast,
Fair as the guardian of the Capitol,
Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl
His tongue, his prating tongue had changed him quite
To sooty blackness from the purest white.

Such as ne’er saw swans May think crows beautiful.

And while we’re on the subject of ducks, which we plainly are, the story, ‘The Ugly Duckling’ ought be banned as the central character wasn’t a duckling or he wouldn’t have grown up into a swan. He was a cygnet.

Last year when “Black Swan,” “True Grit” and “King’s Speech” all grossed over $100 million, it gave studios and independent financiers the confidence to make daring movies. You know, and not do the same old you-know-what.

A rare bird upon the earth and very much like a black swan.

They were doing the Dying Swan at the ballet. And there was a rumor that some bookmarkers had drifted into town from upstate New York and that they had fixed the bullet. There was a lot of money bet on the swan to live.

Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day.

I always believed I was an ugly duckling in a family of swans, you know? I was such a black sheep, and it was the same way in high school… I was just kind of that awkward theater kid with a bunch of athletes… it was very Glee.

The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare.

But calm, white calm, was born into a swan.

You cannot dance an arabesque in ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Nutcracker’ the same way.

This wild swan of a world is no hunter’s game.

Would you just strap some toe shoes on and dance ‘Swan Lake?’ No. Would you just put a violin in your hand and – ? No. I felt that way about acting, and I was taught to feel that way. I didn’t come to it on my own.

‘Wild Swans’ showed me there are Chinese traditions that still affect my life. For example, it’s not that women are inferior, exactly, but my dad and my brother are the most important men in my life and I would do anything for them. I feel like I should be the one cooking and looking after them.

My mother is part albino.” Bella Swan

You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve.

We were the best team in the world: European champions in 1984, we qualified without a hitch and 86 was to be the swan song for a very experienced side.

Aren’t all ballets sexy? I think they should be. I can think of nothing more kinky than a prince chasing a swan around all night.

I’ve actually rented Bjork’s swan dress. I know that’s kind of recycling, but I saw An Inconvenient Truth.

To be born in a duck’s nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan’s egg.

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying.

Wild Swans’ showed me there are Chinese traditions that still affect my life. For example, it’s not that women are inferior, exactly, but my dad and my brother are the most important men in my life and I would do anything for them. I feel like I should be the one cooking and looking after them.

Xenophon wrote with a swan’s quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.

Ugly ducklings don’t turn into swans and glide off down the lake. Whether your sunglasses are on or off, you only see the world you make.

I don’t think you’re happier if you’re thin or beautiful or rich or married. You have to make your own happiness. My heroines do not become beautiful elegant swans, they become confident ducks and get on with life.

If swans weren’t real myths’d make up.

Slashing its way to the finish line, Black Swan is the first ballet movie for highbrow horror fans for whom ballet itself signifies little to nothing. Those of us who know and love ballet can only look on it with a different kind of horror.

And swans seem whiter if swart crowes be by.

There’s no law that says I can’t cook in my own house.” – Charlie Swan

The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks
And far beyond the discords of the wind.

For beauty with sorrow Is a burden hard to be borne: The evening light on the foam, and the swans, there; That music, remote, forlorn.

And strangely enoughthe only emotion I ever feel, is what the beaver must feel, as he bears each stick to his hidden construction, which creates the tranquil pond and gives the mallards somewhere to paddle, and the pair of swans a place to conceal their young

swans … always look as though they’d just been reading their own fan-mail.