Crows

A carrion crow scavenging on a beach in Dorset, England.

Crows are birds of the genus Corvus, or more broadly a synonym for all of Corvus. The term "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species.

Quotes

• It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.
  • Antisthenes, from Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius§ 4.

• Crows are the central bird in many mythologies. The crow is at every extreme, lives on every piece of land on earth, the most intelligent bird.
  • Ted Hughes, interviewed by Drue Heinz in "Ted Hughes, The Art of Poetry No. 71" in The Paris Review No. 134 (Spring 1995).

• 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, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874), The Poet's Tale, Birds of Killingworth, Stanza 19.

• "As the crow flies"—a popular and picturesque expression to denote a straight line.
  • William Henry Maule, J., Stokes v. Grissell (1854), 23 L. J. Rep. Part 7 (N. S.), Com. PL 144.

• So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows.
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act I, scene 5, line 50.

• Light thickens; and the crow
  Makes wing to the rooky wood.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 2, line 49.

• The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark
  When neither is attended.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act V, scene 1, line 102.

• As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall (1835; 1842), Stanza 34.

• If you do not protect your own honor, the crows will peck at your flesh.
  • Uyghur proverb, as quoted in "Amsterdam’s Lonely Uyghur vs Uyghur Restaurants–Or in Favor of Them?" by Abdurehim Gheni, Bitter Winter (February 11, 2026)

• To shoot at crows is powder flung away.
  • John Gay, Epistle IV, Last line; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 152.

• 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.
  • Gesta Romanorum, Tale XLV; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 152.