Outside, you don't hear a single bird, and a deathly, oppressive silence hangs over the house and clings to me as if it were going to drag me into the deepest regions of the underworld.... I wander from room to room, climb up and down the stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars.
It is impossible to think about the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is impossible for a bird to fly on only one wing.
Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), `you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.' And what does IT live on?' Weak tea with cream in it.' A new difficulty came into Alice's head. `Supposing it couldn't find any?' she suggested. Then it would die, of course.' But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked thoughtfully. It always happens,' said the Gnat.
For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength and breath And the want Of thought is death Then am I A happy fly If I live Or if I die
I praise her (Fortune) while she lasts; if she shakes her quick wings, I resign what she has given, and take refuge in my own virtue, and seek honest undowered Poverty.
You have been professing yourself reluctant to throw off your load of illusion because truth was uncertain. Well, it is certain now, yet the burden still weighs you down, while other people are given wings on freer shoulders, people who have not worn themselves out with research, nor spent a decade and more reflecting on these questions.
We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.