| 25 Swans Quotes
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“All our geese are swans.”
Robert Burton Quotes Source: Anatomy of Melancholy (pt. I, sec. II, memb. 3, subsect. 14)
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“Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing save the waves and I
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die.”
Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron) Quotes Source: Don Juan (canto III, st. 86, 16)
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“The jelous swan, agens hire deth that syngith.”
Geoffrey Chaucer Quotes Source: The Parlement of Fowles (l. 342)
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“The swan is not without cause dedicated to Apollo, because
foreseeing his happiness in death, he dies with singing and
pleasure.
[Lat., Cignoni non sine causa Apoloni dicata sint, quod ab eo
divinationem habere videantur, qua providentes quid in morte boni
sit, cum cantu et voluptate moriantur.]”
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) Quotes Source: Tusculanarum Disputationum (I, 30)
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“Death darkens his eyes, and unplumes his wings,
Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings:
Live so, my Love, that when death shall come,
Swan-like and sweet it may waft thee home.”
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) Quotes Source: Tusculanarum Disputationum (I, 30)
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“The immortal swan that did her life deplore.”
Giles Fletcher ("The Younger") Quotes Source: Temptation and Victory of Christ
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“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 Quotes Source: Purple Island (canto I)
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“The swan in the pool is singing,
And up and down doth he steer,
And, singing gently ever,
Dips under the water clear.”
Heinrich Heine Quotes Source: Book of Songs--Lyrical Interlude (no. 64)
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“And over the pond are sailing
Two swans all white as snow;
Sweet voices mysteriously wailing
Pierce through me as onward they go.
They sail along, and a ringing
Sweet melody rises on high;
And when the swans begin singing,
They presently must die.”
Heinrich Heine Quotes Source: Early Poems--Evening Songs (no. 2)
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“The swan, like the soul of the poet,
By the dull world is ill understood.”
Heinrich Heine Quotes Source: Early Poems--Evening Songs (no. 2)
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“There's a double beauty whenever a swan
Swims on a lake with her double thereon.”
Thomas Hood Quotes Source: Her Honeymoon
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“The swan murmurs sweet strains with a flattering tongue, itself
the singer of its own dirge.”
Marcus Valerius Martial Quotes Source: Epigrams (bk. XIII, ep. LXXVII)
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“The swan, with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet.”
John Milton Quotes Source: Paradise Lost (bk. VI, l. 438)
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“Thus does the white swan, as he lies on the wet grass, when the
Fates summon him, sing at the fords of Maeander.”
John Milton Quotes Source: Paradise Lost (bk. VI, l. 438)
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“Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue--the swan's down-feather
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.”
William Shakespeare Quotes Source: Antony and Cleopatra (Antony at III, ii)
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“We bodged again, as I have been a swan
With bootless labor swim against the tide
And spend her strength with overmatching waves.”
William Shakespeare Quotes Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part III (Plantagenet, Duke of York at I, iv)
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“I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of fraity sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.”
William Shakespeare Quotes Source: The Life and Death of King John (Prince Henry at V, vii)
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“Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then if he lose he makes a swanlike end,
Fading in music.”
William Shakespeare Quotes Source: The Merchant of Venice (Portia at III, ii)
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“I will play the swan,
And die in music.”
William Shakespeare Quotes Source: Othello the Moor of Venice (Emilia at V, ii)
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“Coal-black is better than another hue
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.”
William Shakespeare Quotes Source: Titus Andronicus (Aaron at IV, ii)
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“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.”
Socrates Quotes Source: see Plato's "Phaedo", 77
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“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.”
Lord Alfred Tennyson Quotes Source: The Dying Swan
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“Some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs.”
Lord Alfred Tennyson Quotes Source: Passing of Arthur
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“The stately-sailing swan
Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale;
And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet
Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier isle,
Protective of his young.”
James Thomson (1) Quotes Source: Seasons--Spring (l. 775)
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“The swan on still St. Mary's lake
Float double, swan and shadow!”
William Wordsworth Quotes Source: Yarrow Unvisited
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Swans Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings
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