Eagles

Eagles are large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae that mainly inhabit Eurasia and Africa, with a few species in the Americas and Australia. The eagle has been used by many nations as a national symbol, depicting power, beauty and independence, and is also a sacred or religious symbol in many cultures.

• When God made the oyster, he guaranteed his absolute economic and social security. He built the oyster a house, his shell, to shelter and protect him from his enemies... But when God made the Eagle, He declared, "The blue sky is the limit—build your own house!"… The Eagle, not the oyster, is the emblem of America.
  • Author unknown; reported in Jacob M. Braude, Braude's Source Book for Speakers and Writers (1968), p. 14; Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). (Almost 30 years ago!)

• He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
  Close to the sun in lonely lands,
  Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
  
  The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
  He watches from his mountain walls,
  And like a thunderbolt he falls.
  • Alfred Tennyson, "The Eagle" (1851).

• The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
  And is not careful what they mean thereby.
  • William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act iv, scene 4, line 83.

• And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.
  • Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851), "The Try-Works".

• The chief is the chief. He is the eagle who flies high and cannot be touched by the spit of the toad.
  • Mobutu Sésé Seko, October 1991, in Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa, p. 525.

• And thus among these rocks he lived,
  Through summer heat and winter snow:
  The Eagle, he was lord above,
  And Rob was lord below.
  • William Wordsworth, Rob Roy's Grave.

• Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change.
  • Louis Sullivan, "The tall office building artistically considered" in Lippincott's Magazine (March 1896).

• Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.
  • Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris (1935).

• I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird.
  • Benjamin Franklin, letter to Sarah Bache (January 26, 1784).

• Yet spirit immortal, the tomb can not bind thee,
  But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun
  Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee
  A name which before thee no mortal hath won.
  • Lyman Heath, The Grave of Bonaparte.

• The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes.
  We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
  • Aesop, The Eagle and the Arrow.

• So in the Libyan fable it is told
  That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
  Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
  "With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
  Are we now smitten."
  • Aeschylus, Fragment 123 (Plumptre's Translation).

• So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
  No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
  View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
  And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.
  • Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), line 826.

• Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume
  To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,
  See their own feathers pluck'd to wing the dart
  Which rank corruption destines for their heart.
  • Thomas Moore, Corruption.

• That eagle's fate and mine are one,
  Which on the shaft that made him die
  Espied a feather of his own,
  Wherewith he wont to soar so high.
  • Edmund Waller, To a Lady singing a Song of his Composing, Epistle XIV.

• Let them make their war.
  Whence come night and day?
  Whence will the eagle become gray?
  Whence is it that night is dark?
  Whence is it that the linnet is green?
  The ebullition of the sea,
  How is it not seen?
  • Taliesin, The First Address of Taliesin, Priv Cyfarch as translated by W. F. Skene (1858).

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 208-09.

• Tho' he inherit
  Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
  That the Theban eagle bear,
  Sailing with supreme dominion
  Thro' the azure deep of air.
  • Thomas Gray, Progress of Poesy.

• King of the peak and glacier,
  King of the cold, white scalps,
  He lifts his head at that close tread,
  The eagle of the Alps.
  • Victor Hugo, Swiss Mercenaries.

• Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.
  • Matthew, XXIV, 28.

• The bird of Jove, stoop'd from his aery tour,
  Two birds of gayest plume before him drove.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book XI, line 184.

• Bird of the broad and sweeping wing,
  Thy home is high in heaven,
  Where wide the storms their banners fling,
  And the tempest clouds are driven.
  • James Gates Percival, To the Eagle.

• And little eagles wave their wings in gold.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays. Epistle to Addison, line 30.

• I saw Jove's bird, the Roman eagle, wing'd
  From the spungy south to this part of the west,
  There vanish'd in the sunbeams.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act IV, scene 2, line 348.

• But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,
  Leaving no track behind.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 1, line 49.

• Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling
  With clangs of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Revolt of Islam, Canto I, stanza 10.

• Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens?
  If all the world were falcons, what of that?
  The wonder of the eagle were the less,
  But he not less the eagle.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Golden Year, line 37.

• He was the sultan of the sky, and earth
  Paid tribute to his eyry.
  • Thomas Campbell, "The Dead Eagle (Written at Oran)"

• Eagle-bone whistle