1.
I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.
Maeve Binchy
2.
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.
Bonnie Raitt
3.
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.
David Hume
5.
There was no reason for Bella Swan to cross paths with me. She would be avoided like the plague she was.
Stephenie Meyer
7.
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
Stephenie Meyer
8.
You cannot dance an arabesque in 'Swan Lake' and 'Nutcracker' the same way.
Natalia Makarova
9.
Swan Lake is the most difficult thing to portray for a female ballet dancer; it really requires such specific qualities of articulation, agility, strength, and the arm work is something that takes a lot of training.
Benjamin Millepied
10.
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.
Natalia Makarova
11.
The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
12.
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.
Wilkie Collins
14.
There's a double beauty whenever a swan
Swims on a lake with her double thereon.
Thomas Hood
15.
I'm telling you, the gorgeous of the world can actually look pretty intimidating when they scowl. Imagine a snow-white swan with a scary tattoo holding a chain saw. There's just no way to really prepare for that.
Jim Benton
16.
Millions of years ago, in my previous incarnations, I must have been related to swans... because I can still feel that affinity.
Jean Sibelius
17.
Swans in the winter air
A white perfection have
W. H. Auden
18.
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.
Bill Bailey
19.
no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.
Karl Popper
21.
Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.
Michael Gira
22.
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.
Dr. Seuss
23.
Those who awaken never rest in one place. Like swans, they rise and leave the lake. On the air they rise and fly an invisible course. Their food is knowledge. They live on emptiness. They have seen how to break free. Who can follow them?
Gautama Buddha
24.
If you're looking for monogamy, you'd better marry a swan.
Nora Ephron
26.
There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain's tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.
Federico Garcia Lorca
28.
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.
Sathya Sai Baba
29.
In the story of Ugly Duckling, when did the Ugly Duckling stop feeling Ugly? When he realized that he was a Swan. Each of us has something Special, a swan of some sort, hidden inside somewhere. But until we recognize that it's there, what can we do but splash around, treading water? The Wise are Who They Are. They work with what they've got and do what they can do.
Benjamin Hoff
30.
I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.
Thomas Harris
31.
The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
32.
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.
Rufus Wainwright
33.
Always praise your kid even if he/she is unresponsive to learning. By insulting them and putting them down, you will only push them away and make them feel inadequate around other kids. Have faith that your child's brain is an evolving planet that rotates at its own speed. It will naturally be attracted to or repel certain subjects. Be patient. Just as there are ugly ducklings that turn into swans, there are rebellious kids that turn into serious innovators and hardcore intellectuals.
Suzy Kassem
34.
I already know how strong you are. You didn't have to break the furniture." —Bella Swan
Stephenie Meyer
35.
It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water - and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood.
Bernard DeVoto
36.
Yeah, it's an off day when I don't get somebody telling me how edible I smell." - Bella Swan.
Stephenie Meyer
37.
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
Stephenie Meyer
38.
And strangely enoughthe only emotion I ever feel, is what the beaver must feel, as he bears each stick to his hidden construction, which creates the tranquil pond and gives the mallards somewhere to paddle, and the pair of swans a place to conceal their young
Billy Collins
41.
After eighteen years of being utterly ordinary, I finally found that I can shine" -Bella Swan <3
Stephenie Meyer
42.
The swan is not without cause dedicated to Apollo,
because foreseeing his happiness in death,
he dies with singing and pleasure.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
43.
I had seen the ballet of Swan Lake as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.
Walter Dean Myers
44.
She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox’s tongue. She tastes like hope.
Laini Taylor
45.
You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve.
Socrates
46.
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.
Walter de La Mare
47.
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.
Chanakya
48.
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.
Jung Chang
49.
So the world is much more correlated than we give credit to. And so we see more of what Nassim Taleb calls "black swan events" - rare events happen more often than they should because the world is more correlated.
Richard Thaler
50.
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.
Maeve Binchy