45 Hummingbird Quotes That Bring Joy And Color To Your Life
Hummingbirds are part of the Trochilidae family and are closely related to the equally fast swifts. Their average weight is 0.1 to 0.2 ounces, and their length is around 2 to 4 inches. They weigh almost nothing, but surprisingly, they can still escape the colder climate by traveling hundreds to thousands of miles. That's how incredible nature is. The crown for the longest-distance migrators belongs to the Rufous Hummingbirds, which can travel almost 4,000 miles in one direction. A huge feat for a tiny fellow!
These minuscule birds pack a lot of attributes. As you read these hummingbird quotes we have prepared, may they inspire you to reflect on how amazing nature is in all its sizes and bring additional knowledge to your mind.
Related: Elsewhere exploring and appreciating the biodiversity around us, you might also like to check out some ugly animals (which we still love) and some bug facts.
Quick links to our selection of hummingbird quotes:
Best Hummingbird Quotes
Unlike other birds who flap wings up and down, hummingbird wings move in an eight-figure pattern. Their movement pushes the surrounding air around them, allowing them to not only fly forward but also backward, sideways, and straight up. When they hover, their wings beat an average of 53 times per second, causing a humming sound you can hear, hence their name. You might even see them do an aerobatics show as they somersault into the flowers.
Let's start this list with our curated best hummingbird quotes that can bring joy, courage, and hope to your life.
"Neither the hummingbird nor the flower wonders how beautiful it is."
- Unknown
"Like the hummingbird sipping nectar from every flower, I fly joyfully through my days, seeing beauty in everything."
- Amethyst Wyldfyre
"Hummingbird darts lightly through the world, spreading its message of joy and beauty, and teaching us to appreciate the wonder and magic of everyday existence."
- Unknown
"Hummingbird—with brave wings she flies."
- Anonymous
"You are Mr. Owl. I am Ms. Hummingbird. We may have come from different species, but as long as you’re a bird, I’m a bird too."
- Glad Munaiseche
"Hummingbird teaches us to transcend time, to recognize that what has happened in the past and what might happen in the future is not nearly as important as what we are experiencing now. It teaches us to hover in the moment, to appreciate its sweetness."
- Constance Barrett Sohodski
"The hummingbird is a symbol for accomplishing that which seems impossible. It will teach you how to find the miracle of joyful living from your own life circumstances."
- Ted Andrews
Quotes About Hummingbirds Fluttering In Nature
Hummingbirds have tiny brains. But compared to other fowls, hummingbirds have brains weighing 4.2% of their total body weight. In comparison, the ostrich only has 0.015%, and our brain has 2%. Their brain aids their complicated flight pattern. They are inquisitive, and nature has granted them a great memory to help them to eliminate threats. They can also remember flowers, bird feeders, and everything about their territory.
Like a hummingbird investigating its surroundings, let us also be curious to learn about these tiny birds as we read the quotes below.
"Hummingbirds that defend territories of many flowers remember which flowers they have recently emptied."
- Susan Healy
"There is a difference between our wisdom and nature's simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds."
- Alison Hawthorne Deming
"The hummingbird realized that this was a psychological tightrope that he had to navigate carefully, so he did it sideways because this was the only way he could move when perched."
- J.S. Mason
Inspirational Hummingbird Quotes To Start Your Day The Right Way
Hummingbirds have similarities with bees. Aside from the buzzing and the speed, they also help in pollination. Some scientists even describe them as feathered bees. When they dip their slender and long bills into the flowers to drink the sweet nectar, pollen gets stuck to them. Depending on the location, species of hummingbirds have evolved to have the right length of beaks for the local flowers.
Want to spread joy and beauty like these feathered bees? These inspirational hummingbird quotes can help you.
"A flash of harmless lightning, a mist of rainbow dyes. The burnished sunbeams brightening. From flower to flower he flies."
- John B. Tabb, The Hummingbird
"We’re constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed. But we should always feel like a hummingbird. I may feel insignificant, but I don’t want to be like the other animals watching the planet go down the drain. I’ll be a hummingbird, I’ll do the best I can."
- Wangari Maathai
"Hummingbird brings the gift of joy. Learn to laugh and be happy."
- Anonymous
"Obviously, he had this native intelligence—this sensitivity and this ability to move rapidly through a whole range of material. You could just feel him taking stuff in with that gadfly energy—that hummingbird energy—taking a little something from here, there and everywhere, taking a little something from everything."
- Peter Sellars
"Hummingbird is the spirit of pure joy! She is the messenger of beauty and wonder, and she reminds us to taste the sweet nectar of life."
- Anonymous
Heartfelt Hummingbird Quotes To Lift Up Your Spirits When You Need It
These small creatures do not only produce a humming sound through their wings. They can also chip, twit, and whistle like other birds. They make soft notes most of the time and aggressive calls, too, when they are defending their flowers. During mating season, males squeak in sharp trills as they nose-dive in front of the females. The best singing hummingbirds are Anna's Hummingbird, which you can find in the western coastal regions of North America.
Play this calming tune of Anna's hummingbird while reading the rest of the hummingbird quotes.
"A day so happy. Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden. Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers. There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. I know no one worth my envying him."
- Czeslaw Milosz
"You were like the hummingbird to me, and I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together. It is not that I fear the knowing. It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me—it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive."
- Georgia O’Keeffe
"A rhododendron bud lavender-tipped. Soon a glory of blooms to clash with the cardinals and gladden the hummingbirds!"
- Dave Beard
"Gentle day's flower- The hummingbird competes with the stillness of the air."
- Chogyam Trungpa
"Some people never find the right kind of love. You know, the kind that steals your breath away, like diving into snowmelt. The kind that jolts your heart, sets it beating apace, an anxious hiccuping of hummingbird wings"
- Ellen Hopkins
"You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life - you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life."
Remarkable Hummingbird quotes in art and literature
"My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums."
- Mary Oliver
"And the humming bird that hung like a jewel up among the tilted honeysuckle horns. They mesmerized and swung In the palpitating air. Drowsed with odors strange and rare. And, with whispered laughter, slipped away. And let him hanging there."
- James Whitcomb Riley
"Flutter like a hummingbird, dive like an eagle, ain't no bird that's my equal."
- Twilight Kathryn
"After a few mouthfuls of moon-flavored air, even the stubbornly drowsy can find themselves wide-eyed. All the normal noises of life were gone, leaving behind the secretive sounds, the shy sounds, the whispers and conversations of moss disputing with grass over some soft piece of earth, or the hummingbird snoring."
- N.D. Wilson
"The daily hummingbird assaults existence with improbability."
- Ursula K. Le Guin
"As long as the hummingbird had not abandoned the land, somewhere there were still flowers, and they still go on."
- Leslie Marmon Silko
"I’d like to be like a hummingbird. You see them every now and then. You don’t see them everywhere."
- Shailene Woodley
"Quick as a humming bird…she darts so eagerly, swiftly, sweetly dipping into the flowers of my heart."
- James Oppenheim
"By the way, did you fellows know that a hummingbird weighs as much as a quarter? Do you think a hummingbird also weighs the same as two dimes and a nickel? But then she asked a question of her own: How do they weigh a hummingbird?"
- Calvin Trillin
Wings are of many kinds. Butterfly's wings, vulture's wings, eagle-wings, spread wings of white swans, dragonfly's serene wings, wings of albatross, lovely wings of hummingbirds, tiny wings of a fly, or a bumble-bee-wings; and when they fly, they fly their best according to their ability of flying. We should not underestimate the size of those heavenly wings.
~ Munia Khan
I always loved those little creatures, always feeling blessed when they appeared nearby. There's a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song.
~ Leonard Cohen
Quotes about hummingbirds used as a metaphor
"May my faith always be at the end of the day like a hummingbird returning to its favorite flower."
- Sanober Khan
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"He has the attention span of a hummingbird."
- Christopher Moore
"Time passes as fast as a hummingbird flutters."
- Anonymous
"Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur."
- Mira Bartok
"She spoke quickly, her tongue feeling like a hummingbird’s wing; she was so afraid of boring him if she took too long."
- Shannon Hale
"Fashion is so rich and it is an amazing occupation because we can draw on so many different sources of inspiration- just as a hummingbird feeds on a multitude of flowers."
- Dries Van Noten
"He wasn't that good looking, he had the social skills of a wet cat and the patience of a caffeinated hummingbird."
- Karen Chance
Metaphorical Hummingbird Quotes
"In Mexico, people wear hummingbird amulets around their necks to show they are searching for love."
- Francesca Lia Block
"If I were a flower, the hummingbird would be my favorite bee; and if I were blind, the light of darkness I’d love to see."
- Munia Khan
"I'm more of a culture hummingbird."
- Jai Rodriquez
"Even a hummingbird couldn't catch Tyler at work."
- Fight Club
"Hummingbird stays for a fractional sharp sweetness, and’s gone, can’t take more than that."
- Denise Levertov
"I never answered your question, if I’d ever thought about being human. Once. I was on a track in the andes, and a hummingbird flew up to me and just hovered there staring at me. Its tiny heart was pattering like a machine gun… And I thought, ‘what a thing, you know, to have to work that hard every day just to stay alive, to be constantly on the verge of death, and how satisfying every day must be that it survived…’ And that was the only time I thought about being human."