Vultures

Vulture is the name given to two groups of convergently evolved, usually scavenging birds of prey: the New World vultures, including the Californian and Andean condors; and the Old World vultures, including the birds that are seen scavenging on carcasses of dead animals on African plains. New World vultures are found in North and South America; Old World vultures are found in Europe, Africa and Asia, meaning that between the two groups, vultures are found on every continent except Australia and Antarctica.


 * CONTENT : A - F, G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

 * Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

 * If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture — that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves.
 * Edward Abbey in: John F. Mongillo, Bibi Booth Environmental Activists, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, p. 4.


 * The [...] kills wild bulls in the foothills, and it kills the stags in the high mountains.
 * Anonymous, Nanshe and the birds (Nanshe C),.


 * I imagine that some one there is declaiming a great poem, that some one is speaking of Prometheus. He has stolen light from the gods. In his entrails he feels the pain, always beginning again, always fresh, gathering from evening to evening, when the vulture steals to him as it would steal to its nest. And you feel that we are all like Prometheus because of desire, but there is neither vulture nor gods.
 * Henri Barbusse in: The Inferno (Hell), Digireads.com Publishing, 1 January 2010, p. 3.


 * An Extremely Goofy Movie current culture that those with large stature are overlooked-except by vultures-with no regard to the depth of their souls, the height of their passion. Here is a list of fearful things: The jaws of sharks, a vulture's wings, The rabid bite of the dog's of war, The voice of one who went before. But most of all, the mirror’s gaze, which counts us out our numbered days.
 * Clive Barker in: M Teresa Clayton Judith, Lulu.com, p. 14
 * But these are they of which ye shall not eat: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray, And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after his kind, And every raven after his kind, And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind, The little owl, and the great owl, and the swan, And the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the cormorant, And the stork, and the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.
 * Bible in: The Pictorial Bible, Being the Old and New Testaments, Volume 1, Charles Knight, 1836.


 * There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen.
 * Bible in: Adam Clarke The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments;, G. Lane, 1837, p. 124.


 * Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime, Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?
 * Lord Byron in: Noble Butler A Practical and Critical Grammar of the English Language, John P. Morton, 1874, p. 296.


 * The Vulture is a Patient Bird Like a Hole in the Head An Ace Up My Sleeve Want to Stay Alive
 * James Hadley Chase in: The Vulture is a Patient Bird, Hachette UK, 14 June 2013, p. 143.


 * Owls and bats may wander where they will in darkness, and for them as for the sceptics the universe may have no centre; kites and vultures may linger as they like over carrion, and for them as for the plutocrats existence may have no origin and no end; but it was far back in the land of legends, where instincts find their true images, that the cry went forth that freedom is an eagle, whose glory is gazing at the sun.
 * G. K. Chesterton in What I Saw in America, Anthem Press, 1 April 2008, p. 257.


 * A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who is not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such a creature?
 * Cicero in: Tedd Adamovich The Price of Liberty: Benjamin Franklin Wept, AuthorHouse, 1 December 2000, p. 209.


 * I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.
 * John Gregory Dunne in: Crooning: A Collection, Simon and Schuster, 01May 1991, p. 266


 * Jatayu, a divine bird, the king of the vultures. He was Sampati. According to Ramayana and Mahabharata, he was the son of Aruna and Shyeni. In the Ramayana he tried to prevent Ravana from carrying away Sita, but was wounded and killed. Rama and Lakshmana performed his last rites, and he ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire. In the Puranas, he helped the King Dasharatha, and saved him from being consumed by Shani. In some text he is described as son of Garuda.
 * Roshen Dalal in: Hinduism: An Alphabetical Guide, Penguin UK, 18 April 2014, p. 572.


 * What flocks of critics hover here to-day, As vultures wait on armies for their prey, All gaping for the carcass of a play!
 * John Dryden in: Poetical Works, Macmillan, 1874, p. 432.


 * First the utensils turned to gold, then the counters, then the silverware. And that's when they turned against me. Like vultures. Greedy little genius vultures. I thought intelligent men were above such things.
 * Eureka (TV series) in: All That Glitters, tv.com.


 * Prometheus, I have no Titan's might, Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart, For daytime's vulture talons tear apart The tender alcoves built by love at night.
 * Philip José Farmer, in "In Common" in Starlanes #14 (April 1954); re-published in Pearls From Peoria(2006) also in Poems: Philip José Farmer, The Official Philip José Farmer Web Page.


 * Lions, tigers, scorpions, rats. Even vultures when they're in captivity... Vultures need personal space? They need time.
 * David K Fraser in: Quarantine - Extreme Spoilers!, cervenytrpaslik.cz

G - L

 * There you are! Dad always said that milk is good for your eyesight. Vultures are good for one thing and one thing only - their talons. They make great mental acuity that I would care to call consciousness. But I am also confident—without wrapping myself in unresolvable arguments about definitions—that vultures and sloths, as close evolutionary relatives with the same basic set of organs.
 * Stephen Jay Gould in: Leonardo's Mountain Of Clams, Random House, 31 October 2010, p. 124.


 * If your friend is already dead, and being eaten by vultures, I think it's okay to feed some bits of your friend to one of the vultures, to teach him to do some tricks. But only if you're serious about adopting the vulture.
 * Jack Handy in: Deep Thoughts, boche.net.


 * In bird terms, a kettle is a group of raptors flying together. When you see a cluster of vultures circling over a field, that's a kettle. They are all being carried on the same thermal. During migration, literally hundreds of broad-winged hawks may fly together in a kettle, an unforgettable sight. Why is it called a kettle? We can only speculate that the sight of all these raptors boiling upwards must have reminded someone of bubbles rising through a kettle of boiling water
 * Harry Harnish in: Deborah L. Martin Best-Ever Backyard Birding Tips: Hundreds of Easy Ways to Attract the Birds You Love to Watch, Rodale, 1 January 2008, p. 250.


 * I'm a culture vulture, and I just want to experience it all.
 * Debbie Harry in: Details, Volume 25, Issues 8-10, Details Publishing Company, 2007,


 * God-sent are all religions blest; And Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life, TO Give the heavy-laden rest, And peace from sorrow, … At his request the Universal Spirit came. TO ALL THE CHURCHES, not to one alone; On Pentecostal morn a tongue of flame Round EACH apostle as a halo shone. Since then, as vultures ravenous with greed, We oft have battled for an empty name, And sought by dogma, edict ...
 * Max Heindel in: The Rosicrucian Mysteries, Lulu.com, 1 January 2003, p. 60.


 * Sin, O, goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.
 * Homer in: Homer - the Iliad and the Odyssey, Special Edition Books, 01-Jan-2006, p. 9
 * Our swords are rust. Our guns will thunder no more. The vultures that once wheeled over our heads must be buried with their prey. Whatever of glory must be won in the council or the closet, never again in the field. I do not repine. We have shared the incommunicable experience of war; we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top.
 * Oliver Wendel Homes Jr., in: Ian Frederick Finseth The American Civil War: An Anthology of Essential Writings, Taylor & Francis, 2006, p. 526.


 * I know there is a law in life. That blood begets more blood as dog begets dog. Death generates death. The vulture breeds the vulture. But the voice I heard on the hill today said, 'Love your enemy. Do good to those who despite fully use.
 * Ben-Hur (1959 film) in: Ben-Hur (1959), filmsite.org


 * Andean Condor (Vultur gryphus) has a moderately small global population which is suspected to be declining significantly owing to persecution by man. It is consequently classified as Near Threatened. It  occurs throughout the Andes, in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay south to Argentina and Chile. This species is described as uncommon and probably declining. Its population is estimated to number at least 10,000 individuals in total roughly equivalent to 6,700 mature individuals. It is found principally over open grassland and alpine regions up to 5,000 m, descending to lowland desert regions in Chile and Peru
 * BirdLife International in: Vultur gryphus iucnredlist.org, 2012.


 * The eagle, soaring, clear-eyed, competitive, prepared to strike, but not a vulture. Noble, visionary, majestic, that people can believe in and be inspired by, that creates such a lift that it soars. I can see that being a good logo for the principled company.
 * Ira Jackson In: Investors Chronicle, Volume 148, Issues 1878-1890, inancial Times Business Pub., 2004, p. 82.


 * When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the age.
 * Joseph Lewis, Robert Green Ingersoll in: Ingersoll the Magnificent: To which Has Been Added a Special Arrangement of Some Gems from Ingersoll for Inspiration, Wisdom, and Courage, Freethought Press Association, 1957, p. 41.


 * ...from new-picked skulls— a friend of the mountain buzzards and feeder of seacoast vultures— a blond beast of eternal snows and frozen oceans — a prayer to Odin.
 * H. P. Lovecraft in: Timo Airaksinen The Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft: The Route to Horror, Peter Lang Pub Incorporated, 1999, p. 40.


 * Hate is ravening vulture beaks descending on a place of skulls.
 * Amy Lowell in: Quotes about Hatred, Quotations Book, p. 5.


 * Vultures are one of the few bird species that are afraid of their own dead. But only when they're hung at the roost site. If you hang them anywhere else then they'll eat them.
 * Martin Lowney in: Lawrence Winkler Westwood Lake Chronicles, Lawrence Winkler, 6 August 2012, p. 15.

M - R

 * In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, [{w:Hostile|hostile]] and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
 * W. Somerset Maugham in: M.P. Singh Quote Unquote (A Handbook of Quotations), Lotus Press, 1 January 2005, p. 79.


 * Understand this, tell others: in my dream vultures chase me into my burning house. There, they pick out the brains of my family, dismember them, devour. I emerge from my home and I am burning, skin falling away like a snake as the structure crumbles into a black skeleton. I cannot fight off the vultures. A young man or woman emerges from the ashes. He/she doesn't save me, because he/she is holding my cracked and swollen heart in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. I can read it. It discusses and compares in great detail the differences between me and the vultures. He wraps my heart in the paper and tosses it to the ground. Can you see?
 * Marilyn Manson in: Vacation: Quotes...from other rockstars. Like, oh em gee., Icy-Blues, 19 July 2008.


 * You have no idea how fortunate you are, because I'm a particularly loathsome guest and I eat like a vulture. Unfortunately, the resemblance doesn't end there.
 * Groucho Marx in: The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx, Simon and Schuster, 14 August 2007, p. 211


 * Vultures, which are brought to the brink of extinction by exposure to veterinary drugs, are proposed to be conserved by building two aviaries so that the ancient tradition [of Parsis] of leaving corpses in so-called Towers of Silence to be picked apart by the giant scavenging birds can resume. This tradition being revitalized by the Parsi community of Mumbai. It is an effort initiated by the Parsi community to revive a centuries-old practice that seeks to protect the ancient elements — air, earth, fire and water — from being polluted by either burial or Cremation.
 * Mat McDermott in: Feeding Dead to Vultures to Resume in India's Parsi Community, treehugger.com, 5 December 2012.


 * God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.
 * Herman Melville in : On Melville, Duke University Press, 1988, p. 35.


 * It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.
 * Moliere Le Misantrope in: Devon Pitlor The Strange Fiction of Devon Pitlor: Volume III, AuthorHouse, 27 May 2014, p. 241
 * w:Condor:Conde is the largest by far of the vultures who have begun to gather around the ailing Conte regime.
 * Olly Owen in: Thousands welcome Guinea opposition leader, IOL News, 4 July 2005.


 * He can wax poetic about pigeons and even has kinde words for vultures. Vultures are homely, but they clean up all the garbage and that's good. And they're elegant in the sky.
 * Roger Tory Petersn in: Lisa W. Foderaro In The Studio With Roger Tory Peterson; Reluctant Earthling, The New York Times Press, 26 August 1993.


 * I think it was his eye, yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture— a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus myself rid of the eye forever.
 * Edgar Allan Poe in: Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 18 April 2012, p. 121
 * Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering, To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dread beneath the tamarind tree?
 * Edgar Allan Poe in: Jean Elizabeth Ward Poe: an Homage To, Lulu.com, 2008, p. 80.


 * Live with vultures, become a vulture; live with crows, become a crow
 * Laotian Proverb in: Jon R. Stone The Routledge Book of World Proverbs, Routledge, 27-Sep-2006, p. 230.


 * That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures—because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer—because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
 * Ayn Rand in Ayn Rand Novel Collection, Penguin, 06-Sep-2011, p. 873.


 * Real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism. Venture capitalism we like. Vulture capitalism, no. And the fact of the matter is that.
 * Mitt Romney in: Felicia Sonmez Rick Perry doubles down on ‘vulture capitalist’ criticism of Mitt Romney, Washington Post, 1 November 2012.


 * The one term I don't like to be called is a 'vulture. Because to me, a vulture is a kind of asset-stripper that eats dead flesh off the bones of a dead creature. Our bird should be the phoenix, the bird that reinvents itself, recreates itself from its ashes. And that's much closer to what it is that we really do.
 * Wilbur Ross in: I am American Business, CNBC.com,

S - Z

 * The Old Glory draped an American shield on which a vulture replaced the bald eagle. The bottom caption exclaimed, "Criminals because they were born ten years before we took the Philippines”.
 * General Jacob Smith in New York Journal-American, May 5. 1902 quoted in: Frans Welman Face of the New Peoples Army of the Philippines: Volume Two Samar,Booksmango, 30 November 2012, p. 136
 * General Smith was court martialed and forced to retire.


 * I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer.
 * Lemony Snicket in the The Beatrice Letters]] in: A LoveLetter to end all LoveLetters: Lemony Snicket’s The Beatrice Letters, 14 February 2011.


 * Great was the stench of death. After our fathers and grandfathers succumbed, half of the people fled to the fields. The dogs and the vultures devoured the bodies. The mortality was terrible. Your grandfathers died, and with them died the son of the king and his brothers and kinsmen. So it was that we became orphans, oh, my sons. We were born to die.
 * Quoted from the Memorial de Solola, by Recinos and Goetz, 1953, pp. 115-16, quoted in: Arturo Arias, David Stoll The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, U of Minnesota Press, 2001, p. 178.


 * I heard footsteps approaching. A local farmer herding his cows noticed me and took pity. Pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, he looked skyward toward the vultures and understanding my predicament, lifted me onto a bullock cart. As we jostled along the muddy paths, the vultures followed overhead.
 * Radhanath Swami in: In every crisis lies the seed of opportunity, Radhanath Swami's Journey, 22 October 2013
 * A vulture on board ; bald, red, queer-shaped head, featherless red places here and there on his body, intense great black eyes set in featherless rims of inflamed flesh ; dissipated look ; a business-like style, a selfish, conscienceless, murderous aspect — the very look of a professional assassin, and yet a bird which does no murder. What was the use of getting him up in that tragic style for so innocent a trade as his ? For this one isn't the sort that wars upon the living, his diet is offal — and the more out of date it is the better he likes it. Nature should give him a suit of rusty black ; then he would be all right, for he would look like an undertaker and would harmonize with his business ; whereas the way he is now he is horribly out of true.
 * Mark Twain in: Following the Equator - A Journey around the World, Hartford: American Publishing Co., and New York: Doubleday & McLure Co., 1897, p. 334
 * Recited in: The Writings of Mark Twain: Author's National Edition Volume VI, Harper & Brothers Publishing, 1 January 1909, p. 15.


 * It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.
 * Leonardo da Vinci cited in Freud, 1947 pp.33-34 quoted in in: Richard Ryckman Theories of Personality, Cengage Learning, 13 March 2012, p. 12.


 * Spain stooped on South America, like a vulture on its prey. Every thing was force. Territories were acquired by fire and sword.
 * Daniel Webster et al., in: The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster: With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style, Little, Brown, & Company, 1879, p. 145.


 * For an author Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking, most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked.
 * P. G. Wodehouse in Pigs have Wings quoted in: Collier's: Incorporating Features of the American Magazine, Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, 1952, p. 58.


 * Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not.
 * Malcolm X in: I am A. Freeman Seeds of Revolution: A Collection of Axioms, Passages and Proverbs, Volume 1, Volume 1, iUniverse, 26-Mar-2014, p. 298
 * Variant:
 * It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.
 * Malcolm X in Interview in Young Socialist quoted in : Cornel West Prophesy Deliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary, Westminster John Knox Press, 1 January 2002, p. 93.

Carrion Dreams 2.0: A Chronicle of the Human-Vulture Relationship
Benjamin Jeol Wilkinson in: Carrion Dreams 2.0: A Chronicle of the Human-Vulture Relationship, Abominationalist Productions, 15 November 2013
 * The vulture is the highest flying of all birds...It depends on nothing and no one, coming and going at will, soaring above the clouds for miles on end, alighting on the highest peaks. It has an imperturbable and strong will to live.
 * Pan Gongkai in Art and China’s revolution translated by Phil Tinari quoted in p. 11.


 * ...he will always be for most persons, just a plain old buzzard up there in the sky.
 * In: P.11.


 * The living vultures are divided into two geographic groups. New World and Old World – the farmer Lives in the Americas, and the latter in Africa and Eurasia. There are no vultures inhabiting Australia, Antarctica and most Oceanic islands.
 * In: p. 18.


 * When a vulture is perched or grounded, the airfoils must be stowed away; and their great size can make them a bit cumbersome... many vultures regularly fight members of their own or other species at carcasses, and loose, coarse feathers provide better protection against blows than would tight, fine plumage.
 * In: p. 32.


 * Some cultures believe that vulture feathers retain their aerodynamic qualities when wetted with blood, one reason why they were favoured over the feathers of other birds when fletching arrows...The Old World vultures generally have flatter, shorter talons than more typically predatory raptors like most eagles.
 * In p. 32.


 * The Song of Hiawatha: Never stoops the soaring vulture On his quarry in the desert, On the sick or wounded bison, But another vulture, watching From his high aerial look-out Sees the downward plunge, and follows; And a third pursues the second, Coming from invisible ether, First a speck, and then a vulture, Till the air is dark with pinions.
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in: p. 35.


 * The existence [Vultures in Pre-history] of such a large raptorial bird in company with the “Pigmy Elephant” . . . is certainly suggestive that the old fable of the “Roc” carrying off the Elephant may possibly have had a foundation in fact.
 * Richard Lydekker, “On Some Large Extinct Birds From Malta”(1890), quoted in p. 38.


 * Among the many interesting forms of Vertebrates taken from the Quaternary  asphalt  of the rancho La Brea beds in Southern California, there have appeared several specimens of a very large bird [Vultures in Pre-history]... a raptorial bird of gigantic size...
 * Loye Holmes Miller in “Teratornis, A New Avian Genus From Rancho La Brea,”, (1909} quoted in: p. 38.


 * ...the view of the great vulture in sailing flight inspires at once the desire for imitation; it is a dirigible parachute which man may hope to re-produce.
 * Louis-Pierre Mouillard in "Empire of the Air", p. 401.