quotes about Swans
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I'm crazy about ducks and swans and geese, so I don't eat foie gras. I try to eat organic.
-- Anna ChancellorSource : "My favourite table". Interview with Neil Norman, www.theguardian.com. July 22, 2007.
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Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were To see thee in our water yet appear.
-- Ben Jonson -
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In the story of Ugly Duckling, when did the Ugly Duckling stop feeling Ugly? When he realized that he was a Swan. Each of us has something Special, a swan of some sort, hidden inside somewhere. But until we recognize that it's there, what can we do but splash around, treading water? The Wise are Who They Are. They work with what they've got and do what they can do.
-- Benjamin Hoff -
Swan Lake is the most difficult thing to portray for a female ballet dancer; it really requires such specific qualities of articulation, agility, strength, and the arm work is something that takes a lot of training.
-- Benjamin MillepiedSource : "Black Swan Choreographer Benjamin Millepied on Teaching Natalie Portman to Have Swan Arms" by Rebecca Milzoff, www.vulture.com. December 3, 2010.
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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.
-- Bernard DeVoto -
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
-- Billy Collins -
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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.
-- Bonnie RaittSource : Song: Thing Called Love, Album: Nick of Time
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Where are the leaders?' Sapphique asked. 'In the fortresses,' the swan replied. 'And the poets?' 'Lost in dreams of other worlds.' 'And the craftsmen?' 'Forging machines to challenge the darkness.' 'And the Wise, who made the world?' The swan lowered its black neck sadly. 'Dwindled to crones and sorcerers in towers.
-- Catherine FisherSource : Catherine Fisher (2011). “Incarceron”, p.205, Penguin
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If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.
-- Connie WillisSource : Connie Willis (2009). “To Say Nothing of the Dog”, p.143, Bantam
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No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.
-- David Hume -
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Once-ler! You're making such smogulous smoke - my poor swomee swans, why they can't sing a note! No one can sing who has smog in his throat.
-- Dr. Seuss -
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!
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay -
But calm, white calm, was born into a swan.
-- Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth -
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.
-- Ellen Barkin -
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My duchess,†James stated, his eyes sweeping the crowd with the air of a man who has ruled the waves. “She is not a swan, because that would imply she had once been an ugly duckling.
-- Eloisa James -
Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.
-- Epictetus -
The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.
-- Gary Shteyngart -
And swans seem whiter if swart crowes be by.
-- Guillaume de Salluste Du BartasSource : Josuah Sylvester, Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (seigneur), Gui Du Faur de Pibrac, Odet de La Noue (seigneur de Téligny), Henry Smith (1967). “The Complete Works of Joshuah Sylvester: For the First Time Collected and Edited”
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Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan's egg.
-- Hans Christian AndersenSource : Hans Christian Andersen (2016). “Best Fairy Tales”, p.129, Pan Macmillan
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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.
-- Hans Christian Andersen -
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 and not do the same old you-know-what.
-- Harvey Weinstein -
You never count your chickens before they hatch. I used to keep parakeets and I never counted every egg thinking I would get all eight birds. You just hoped they came out of the nest box looking all right. I'm like a swan at the moment. I look fine on top of the water but under the water my little legs are going mad.
-- Ian Holloway -
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I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep.
-- James Elroy FleckerSource : 'Old Ships' (1915)
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The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, and still fluttered down the snow.
-- James Russell Lowell -
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.
-- James WolcottSource : "Swan Down: James Wolcott's Review". "Opera Chic" blog, December 06, 2010.
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With 'Black Swan,' the ballerina saga flips its tiara and goes on a hallucinatory bender, a scary acid trip where transfiguration and disfiguration meet.
-- James Wolcott -
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swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail.
-- Jan Struther -
Millions of years ago, in my previous incarnations, I must have been related to swans... because I can still feel that affinity.
-- Jean Sibelius -
I'm telling you, the gorgeous of the world can actually look pretty intimidating when they scowl. Imagine a snow-white swan with a scary tattoo holding a chain saw. There's just no way to really prepare for that.
-- Jim BentonSource : Jim Benton (2013). “Dear Dumb Diary #11: Okay, So Maybe I Do Have Superpowers”, p.53, Scholastic
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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.
-- John Clare -
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Xenophon wrote with a swan's quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.
-- Joseph Joubert -
While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was something more sinister.
-- Jung Chang -
no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.
-- Karl Popper -
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.
-- Laini TaylorSource : Laini Taylor (2011). “Daughter of Smoke and Bone: Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.79, Hachette UK
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I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.
-- Maeve Binchy -
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.
-- Maeve Binchy -
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.
-- Maeve Binchy -
The Singing of Swans is a remarkable narrative calling--even compelling--us to connect with our own ancestral roots, to seek our own inner wisdom, and to reclaim our own inner voices!
-- Margaret Starbird -
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People who think they know what is going to happen next are fools. Surprises - or what the brilliant author Nassim Taleb calls 'Black Swans' - are inevitable. Some are likely to be desperately unpleasant too
-- Martin Wolf -
Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
-- Matthew Arnold -
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.
-- Michael Gira -
Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.
-- Michael Gira -
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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.
-- Michel Patini -
In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term.
-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb -
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.
-- Natalia Makarova -
You cannot dance an arabesque in 'Swan Lake' and 'Nutcracker' the same way.
-- Natalia MakarovaSource : "Natalia Makarova, Kennedy Center honoree". Interview with Allan Ulrich, www.sfgate.com. December 5, 2012.
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The silver swan, who, living had no note, When death approached unlocked her silent throat.
-- Orlando GibbonsSource : 'The First Set of Madrigals and Motets of Five Parts' (1612) 'The Silver Swan'
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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.
-- Ovid -
The dying swan, when years her temples pierce, In music-strains breathes out her life and verse, And, chanting her own dirge, tides on her wat'ry hearse.
-- Phineas Fletcher -
Adjustment, that synonym for conformity that comes more easily to the modern tongue, is the theme of our swan song, the piper's tune to which we dance on the brink of the abyss, the siren's melody that destroys our senses and paralyzes our wills.
-- Robert M. Lindner -
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This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
-- Robinson Jeffers -
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
-- Robinson Jeffers -
Shiva... is the only hunter that will ever catch the wild swan; The prey she will take last is the wild white swan of the beauty of things. Then she will be alone, pure destruction, achieved and supreme, Empty darkness under the death-tent wings. She will build a nest of the swan's bones and hatch a new brood, Hang new heavens with new birds, all be renewed.
-- Robinson Jeffers -
I've developed into quite a swan. I'm one of those people that will probably look better and better as I get older until I drop dead of beauty.
-- Rufus Wainwright -
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Now, if you notice how the swan, putting its neck down into the deep water, brings up food for itself from below, then you will discover the wisdom of the Creator, in that He gave it a neck longer than its feet for this reason, that it might, as if lowering a sort of fishing line, procure the food hidden in the deep water.
-- Saint Basil -
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
-- Stephenie Meyer -
After eighteen years of being utterly ordinary, I finally found that I can shine" -Bella Swan <3
-- Stephenie Meyer -
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Yeah, it's an off day when I don't get somebody telling me how edible I smell." - Bella Swan.
-- Stephenie Meyer -
Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom. Bella Swan Stephenie Meyer
-- Stephenie Meyer -
My last night as Isabella Swan. Tomorrow night, I would be Bella Cullen. Though the whole marriage ordeal was a thorn in my side, I had to admit that I liked the sound of that. - bella swan
-- Stephenie Meyer -
I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.
-- Thomas HarrisSource : Thomas Harris (2009). “The Silence of the Lambs”, p.22, St. Martin's Press
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There's a double beauty whenever a swan Swims on a lake with her double thereon.
-- Thomas Hood -
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.
-- Van Wyck BrooksSource : Van Wyck Brooks (1941). “Opinions of Oliver Allston”, New York, Dutton
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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
-- W. H. Auden -
The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks And far beyond the discords of the wind.
-- Wallace Stevens -
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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.
-- Walter de La MareSource : Walter De la Mare (1941). “Collected poems”
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I had seen the ballet of Swan Lake as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.
-- Walter Dean Myers -
The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.
-- Wilkie Collins -
Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone....
-- William Butler Yeats -
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I have had so many great moments, but I would have to say that dancing the Swan in 'Swan Lake' was such a unique and passionate experience for me. It was such bloody hard work, even at that very early age, that I would not want to try to replicate it again now.
-- William Kempe -
This ugly duckling investment will likely need time - quarters, or even years - to blossom into a beautiful swan.
-- Barry RitholtzSource : Source: www.bloomberg.com
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Gaze not on swans, in whose soft breast, A full-hatched beauty seems to nest Nor snow, which falling from the sky Hovers in its virginity.
-- Henry Noel Brailsford -
Swans moulting die, snow melts to tears, Roses do blush and hang their heads
-- Henry Noel Brailsford -
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Björk’s wraparound swan frock . . . made her look like a refugee from the more dog-eared precincts of provincial ballet.
-- Jay Carr -
I can't even listen to Swans anymore. It doesn't do it for me at all, but I absolutely adore the early records and, on that same token, I wouldn't in any way wish for them to come back and repeat themselves.
-- Justin BroadrickSource : Source: pitchfork.com
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I have this really morbid, awesome love for the movie Black Swan.
-- Sherri Saum -
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I love the idea of species fluidity, I guess, the sense of the maiden inherent in the swan or seal, the youth inherent in the bear or deer. After all, human beings are animals.
-- Delia ShermanSource : Source: www.sfsignal.com
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So the world is much more correlated than we give credit to. And so we see more of what Nassim Taleb calls "black swan events" - rare events happen more often than they should because the world is more correlated.
-- Richard ThalerSource : Source: bigthink.com
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The name came from, erm... us all just agreeing on a name that we liked. There was talk of Swans at first, but there was already a band called Swans, way back in the eighties. An American band. So we thought, well, we can't have them, and I think Andy said, "well what about Doves?" We ruminated it around the three of us and went, well, it's not so bad, it's all right.
-- Jimi Goodwin -
One musn't overrate the culture of what used to be called "top people" before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.
-- Kenneth ClarkSource : Kenneth Clark (1969). “Civilisation”
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Björk’s wraparound swan frock . . . made her look like a refugee from the more dog-eared precincts of provincial ballet.
-- Jay Carr