Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

What, wouldst thou have me turn pelican, and feed thee out of my own vitals?

By them there sat the loving pelican, Whose young ones, poison'd by the serpent's sting, With her own blood to life again doth bring.

Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey, Alive and wriggling in the elastic net, Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks; Till, swoln, with captures, the unwieldy burden Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land, These mighty hunters of the deep return'd. There on the cragged cliffs they perch'd at ease, Gorging their hapless victims one by one; Then full and weary, side by side, they slept, Till evening roused them to the chase again.

Nature's prime favourites were the Pelicans; High-fed, long-lived, and sociable and free.

The nursery of brooding Pelicans, The dormitory of their dead, had vanish'd, And all the minor spots of rock and verdue, The abodes of happy millions, were no more.