"Bird of passage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I too, like a bird of passage that has alighted for a moment in some sheltered garden-ground, must needs go on my way. But the old house had spoken with me, had left its mark upon my spirit. And I know that in weary hours, far hence, I shall remember how it stood, peering ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... instinct prior to all experience, it is even superior to it, and often leads animals to disregard it,—the spontaneous impulse which Nature has given them being their best guide. The carrier-pigeon or the bird of passage, taken a long distance from home by a circuitous route, trusting to this "pilot-sense," flies back in a straight course; and the hound takes the shortest way home through fields where he has never previously ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... who has interfered in a family quarrel," he returned, good-naturedly. "Well, I may be only a transient here, a bird of passage nesting for a year in the towers of the Hall. I will earnestly request myself to be amused at the spectacle of a democratic aristocracy." He felt that in her heart she agreed with him, else, why did she ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the finch, the sparrow of the timbered lands. He has been out in the woods already, and is coming back now to humankind, that he likes to live with and study from all sides. Queer little finch. A bird of passage, really, but his parents have taught him that one can spend a winter in the north; and now he will teach his children that the north's the only place to spend the winter in at all. But there is still a touch of emigrant blood in him, and he remains a wanderer. One day he ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... Roger, Miss Jencks, Dolledge, Caliban and I seemed to be at home, contented, occupied, attached by every interest domestic and romantic, to the spot that was dearest on earth to us, while Margarita, a brilliant bird of passage, but lingered with us for the moment, before she took up her journey through the world—for that she was destined for the world, who could doubt? We were, to use the homely old figure, like a circle of motherly ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... I am fond of you ... as people are fond of friends. I am alone here: the friendship of a good and noble boy like yourself, capable of sacrifice for a woman whom he hardly knows, is a very comforting thing to have. Besides, that much doesn't compromise me. I am a bird of passage, you see; I have alighted here because I'm tired, ill—I don't just know what's the matter, but deeply broken in spirit anyhow. I need rest, just plain existence—a plunge into sweet nothingness, where I can forget everything; and I gratefully accept your friendship. Later on, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... tendencies which impair the national character, and to point out such remedies as it might be possible to apply; but no one is there to hear these things beside yourself, and you, to whom these secret reflections are confided, are a stranger and a bird of passage. They are very ready to communicate truths which are useless to you, but they continue to hold a different language ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... villages of the heathen; neither have the military posts become well populated or stable settlements. The center of attraction and of coherence in Filipino villages has always been, and is still, the church and the convent. The parish priest (who is not a bird of passage) is, as a rule, the most respected authority, the chief guarantee of order and peace, and the most careful guardian of morality—an indubitable and most important cause of increase in the population of every country. The numerous and important settlements, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various |
