I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs. – Joseph Addison, The Spectator, 1712

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away. – Henry Ward Beecher

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. – Henry David Thoreau