Nightingale

Famous quotes containing the word nightingale:

    In the merry month of May,
    Sitting in a pleasant shade,
    Which a grove of myrtles made,
    Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,
    Trees did grow, and plants did spring:
    Every thing did banish moan,
    Save the Nightingale alone.
    Richard Barnfield (1574–1629)

    Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)