Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. – Author unknown, quoted in The Ladies Repository: A Monthly Periodical, Devoted t

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We like to praise birds for flying. But how much of it is actually flying, and how much of it is just sort of coasting from the previous flap? – Jack Handey, Deeper Thoughts: All New, All Crispy

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 von Goethe