Of course, most men would say they are far more intelligent than crows. And perhaps the crows would say they were more intelligent than men. Henry Ward Beecher said,
If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
Maybe the truth is somewhere in between.
What a great idea! I love words and ravens and word play… and t-shirts. =)
The Jackdaw sat in the Cardinal’s chair! Bishop and Abbot and Prior were there, Many a monk and many a friar, Many a knight and many a squire, With a great many more of lesser degree,– In sooth a goodly company; And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee. Never, I ween, Was a prouder seen, Read of in books or dreamt of in dreams, Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims.
—Richard Harris Barham
An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money, and hide them in a hole, which a cat observing, asked, “Why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no use of?” “Why,” said the jackdaw, “my master has a whole chestfull, and makes no more use of them that I do.”
—Jonathan Swift
Only last night he felt deadly sick, and, after a great deal of pain, two black crows flew out of his mouth and took wing from the room.
—Unattributed Author
To shoot at crows is powder flung away.
—Unattributed Author
Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, And crying havoc on the slug and snail. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to th’ rooky wood. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, While night’s black agents to their prey do rouse.
—William Shakespeare
The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark When neither is attended; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many thing by season seasoned are To their right praise and true perfection!
—William Shakespeare
As the many-winter’d crow that leads the clanging rookery home.
—Lord Alfred Tennyson
Some quotes about ravens,
If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
—Friedrich Nietzsche
To the raven her own chick is white.
—Irish Proverb
And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.
—Bible
Censure acquits the raven, but pursues the dove.
—Juvenal
That Raven on yon left-hand oak (Curse on his ill-betiding croak) Bodes me no good.
—John Gay
The Raven’s house is built with reeds,– Sing woe, and alas is me! And the Raven’s couch is spread with weeds, High on the hollow tree; And the Raven himself, telling his beads In penance for his past misdeeds, Upon the top I see.
—Thomas D’Arcy McGee
The raven once in snowy plumes was drest, White as the whitest dove’s unsullied breast, Fair as the guardian of the Capitol, Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl His tongue, his prating tongue had changed him quite To sooty blackness from the purest white.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
And still the Raven, never flitting, Still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas Just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming Of a demon’s that is dreaming, And the lamplight o’er him streaming Throws his shadow on the floor, And my soul from out that shadow, That lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted–nevermore.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the Nightly shore,– Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore! Quoth the Raven “Nevermore!”
—Edgar Allan Poe
Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.
—William Shakespeare
The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements.
—William Shakespeare
Thou said’st–O, it comes o’er my memory As doth the raven o’er the infected house, Boding to all!–He had my handkerchief.
—William Shakespeare
Did ever raven sing so like a lark That gives sweet tidings of the sun’s uprise?
—William Shakespeare
