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Nightingales are put in cages because their songs give pleasure. Whoever heard of keeping a crow? -- Rumi
The older women were Sunbeams and I guess we were Cherubs or Lambs, but our mothers were Nightingales. -- Janet Flanner
Someone spoke of your death, Heraclitus. It brought me Tears, and I remembered how often together We ran the sun down with talk . . . somewhere You've long been dust, my Halicarnassian friend. But your Nightingales live on. Though the Death world Claws at everything, it will not touch them. -- Callimachus
Music lives within thy lips Like a nightingale in roses. -- Philip James Bailey
One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed, So poets live upon the living light. -- Philip James Bailey
Where the nightingale doth sing Not a senseless, tranced thing, But divine melodious truth. -- John Keats
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan. -- Epictetus
Agesilaus being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying he had heard the nightingale itself. -- Plutarch
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity. -- Ambrose Bierce
The nightingale appear'd the first, And as her melody she sang, The apple into blossom burst, To life the grass and violets sprang. -- Heinrich Heine
No man had ever heard a nightingale, When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and define -- what is a bird. -- Emma Lazarus
Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song. -- John Milton
Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown. -- John Keats
Be motivated like the falcon, hunt gloriously. Be magnificent as the leopard, fight to win. Spend less time with nightingales and peacocks. One is all talk, the other only color. -- Rumi
The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonored shroud. -- T. S. Eliot
O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still; Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill While the jolly hours lead on propitious May. -- John Milton
The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others; Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep. -- W. H. Auden
Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades. -- Boris Pasternak
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep? -- John Keats
Soft as Memnon's harp at morning, To the inward ear devout, Touched by light, with heavenly warning Your transporting chords ring out. Every leaf in every nook, Every wave in every brook, Chanting with a solemn voice Minds us of our better choice. -- John Keble
The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark When neither is attended; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many thing by season seasoned are To their right praise and true perfection! -- William Shakespeare
For all her active goodness, Florence Nightingale herself was far from being the angelic figure of popular adulation: according to Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians she was a self-righteous, domineering amazon, who was ruthless in her compassion, merciless in her philantropy, destructive in friendships, obsessional in her list for power, and demonic in her saintliness. -- David Cannadine
Most of us live for the critic, and he lives on us. He doesn't sacrifice himself. He gets so much a line for writing a criticism. If the birds should read the newspapers, they would all take to changing their notes. The parrots would exchange with the nightingales, and what a farce it would be! -- William Morris Hunt
Music exists when rhythmic, melodic or harmonic order is deliberately created, and consciously listened to, and it is only language-using, self-conscious creatures ... who are capable of organizing sounds in this way, either when uttering them or when perceiving them. We can hear music in the song of the nightingale, but it is music that no nightingale has heard. -- Roger Scruton
Night after night the nightingale came to beg for divine love, but though the rose trembled at the sound of his voice, her petals remained closed to him...Flower and bird, two species never meant to mate. Yet at length the rose overcame her fear and from that single, forbidden union was born the red rose that Allah never intended the world to know. -- Susan Kay
Even nightingales can't be fed on fairy tales. -- Ivan Turgenev
Music induces nightingales to sing, pug dogs to yelp. -- Robert Schumann
There's nightingales calling, shooting stars falling, like jewels in the rain. -- David Gray
I have a million nightingales on the branches of my heart singing freedom. -- Susan Straight
Lyrical poetry is much the same an every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time. -- Heinrich Heine
It is quiet and peaceful here, the air is good, there are numerous gardens, and in them nightingales sing and spies lurk under the bushes. -- Maxim Gorky
Elvis Presley once said that I don't know anything about the music. It is because he is the music itself! The nightingales don't know anything about the music! -- Mehmet Murat ildan
His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute. -- Janet Fitch

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