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

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

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