Sonya Hartnett Quotes

Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,- When he beats his bars and would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings- I know why the caged bird sings!

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

He who is conceived in a cage yearns for the cage.

Little islands are all large prisons: one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.

I'm like a caged animal sometimes. Let me yearn to breathe free.

We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.

I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!

Chains tie us down by land and sea; And wishes, vain as mine, may be All that is left to comfort thee.

If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?

What use would wings be to a man bound in iron fetters? They would only drive him to even greater despair.

Of what use were wings to a man fast bound in chains of iron?

I've come out of a small jail and entered a bigger one.

In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

I have watched patients stand and gaze longingly toward the city they in all likelihood will never enter again. It means liberty and life; it seems so near, and yet heaven is not further from hell.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

You'll never know how sweet freedom can be unless you've lost it for eight and a half years.

A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.