Betool > Betool's Quotes

“Caged Bird

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”
― Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems

“Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“If you're for the right thing, you do it without thinking.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“To the world you may be one person but to one person you may be the world.”
― Bill Wilson

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“In suffering we find our truest selves.”
― Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist

“Pity, unlike hate, can be boxed and put away.”
― Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist

“Every woman is the architect of her own fortune.”
― Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist

“There is nobility in the struggle, you don't have to win.”
― Sharon Pollock

“Memories are worse than bullets.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Making money isn't hard in itself... What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one’s life to.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened,”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.”
― Zig Ziglar

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Epictetus

“Now this court will learn
that I am the greatest in wit and courage.

I am he whose writing the blind see
and whose words grant hearing to the deaf.

Content with complete verses, I sleep,
while others strain for simple rhymes.

I laughed at the frauds and their ignorance
until, with discerning hand and mouth, I destroy them.

If you see the lion bare his teeth,
do not assume he is smiling!”
― Al Mutanabbi

“على قدر أهل العزم تأتي العزائم
وتـأتـي على قدر الكريم الكرائم
وتكبر في عين الصغير صغارها
وتصغر في عين العظيم العظائم”
― أبو الطيب المتنبي

“In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream- Lingering in the golden gleam- Life, what is it but a dream?”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”
― Voltaire

“You can kill a man but you cant kill a idea.”
― Sophocles

“Look and you will find it - what is unsought will go undetected.”
― Sophocles

“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan