The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.

The swan in the pool is singing, And up and down doth he steer, And, singing gently ever, Dips under the water clear.

Björk’s wraparound swan frock . . . made her look like a refugee from the more dog-eared precincts of provincial ballet.

The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare.

no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.

The swan is not without cause dedicated to Apollo, because foreseeing his happiness in death, he dies with singing and pleasure.

Millions of years ago, in my previous incarnations, I must have been related to swans... because I can still feel that affinity.

It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

I was in disbelief that I’d just explained my dreary life to this bizarre, beautiful boy who may or may not despise me. Bella Swan

Some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs.

For beauty with sorrow Is a burden hard to be borne: The evening light on the foam, and the swans, there; That music, remote, forlorn.

Swans live wherever there is water, and leave the place where water dries up; let not a man act so - and comes and goes as he pleases.

The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.

Why get married? For human beings, marriage is such an unnatural state. If you want monogamy, it has been said, you should marry a swan.

No number of sightings of white swans can prove the theory that all swans are white. The sighting of just one black one may disprove it.

Ugly ducklings don't turn into swans and glide off down the lake. Whether your sunglasses are on or off, you only see the world you make.

Gaze not on swans, in whose soft breast, A full-hatched beauty seems to nest Nor snow, which falling from the sky Hovers in its virginity.

Once-ler! You're making such smogulous smoke - my poor swomee swans, why they can't sing a note! No one can sing who has smog in his throat.

Orchestras have often been used to conjure up the natural world: Swans, sharks, trout, but not, as far as I know, the often maligned jellyfish.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

It is best to live with honor for just a day than with dishonor for many decades; better a short lived celestial swan than a century-lived crow.

I've developed into quite a swan. I'm one of those people that will probably look better and better as I get older - until I drop dead of beauty.

The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear.

Merrily, merrily goes the bark On a breeze from the northward free, So shoots through the morning sky the lark, Or the swan through the summer sea.

One musn't overrate the culture of what used to be called "top people" before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.

We were the best team in the world: European champions in 1984, we qualified without a hitch and 86 was to be the swan song for a very experienced side.

Those parents who do not educate their sons are their enemies; for as is a crane among swans, so are ignorant so are ignorant sons in a public assembly.

With 'Black Swan,' the ballerina saga flips its tiara and goes on a hallucinatory bender, a scary acid trip where transfiguration and disfiguration meet.

The dying swan, when years her temples pierce, In music-strains breathes out her life and verse, And, chanting her own dirge, tides on her wat'ry hearse.

In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term.

Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd, And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard: To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.

The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way in the world.

While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was something more sinister.

Constance Spry was one of the first people to put flowers in urns and ceramic swans and other unusual containers, but her arrangements tended to be a little less full.

The recollected go forth to lives of renunciation. They take no pleasure in a fixed abode. Like wild swans abandoning a pool, they leave one resting place after another.

Everything I do, I want to take it to the farthest possible degree. I can't just do something the plain way. I don't cook a bowl of pasta; it has to be puff pastry swans.

No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.

I love the idea of species fluidity, I guess, the sense of the maiden inherent in the swan or seal, the youth inherent in the bear or deer. After all, human beings are animals.

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying, House without air, I leave you and lock your door. Wild swans, come over the town, come over The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

Technical things are getting more mechanical. Take 'Swan Lake,' the Black Swan pas de deux. Now, my goodness, they're turning not just 32 fouettes - but double or triple pirouettes.

I have no idea! I have been writing for 35 years and from the beginning up to now the situation's almost the same. I'm kind of an ugly duckling. Always the duckling, never the swan.

Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.

The Singing of Swans is a remarkable narrative calling--even compelling--us to connect with our own ancestral roots, to seek our own inner wisdom, and to reclaim our own inner voices!

White swan of cities slumbering in thy nest . . . White phantom city, whose untrodden streets Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting Shadows of the palaces and strips of sky.

I once wrote a song so beautiful that I myself couldn't sing it. It's called Plastic Government Cheese Swan, and it's about how the world is plastic and full of government cheese swans.

My last night as Isabella Swan. Tomorrow night, I would be Bella Cullen. Though the whole marriage ordeal was a thorn in my side, I had to admit that I liked the sound of that. - bella swan

Contact lenses are for vain, weak-willed piglets who swan around showing off: 'Look everybody, I can see without spectacles. No one at first glance will ever assume I know how to surf the net.'

Do you really believe that in the late 1800s Paddy Hannan would have walked 600 miles in the hot sun from Perth to Kalgoorlie to discover gold if he had to pay the Wayne Swan resource super tax?

Coal-black is better than another hue In that it scorns to bear another hue; For all the water in the ocean Can never turn the swan's black legs to white, Although she lave them hourly in the flood.

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