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

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies:
And from the west,
Where the sun, his days work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, gray city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace. – William Ernest Henley

Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers – a living prismatic gem…. it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to mock all description. – W.H. Hudson, Green Mansions