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

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