Ravens are mysterious creatures depicted in many legends and tales, and we’re sure these raven quotes will make you want to ponder on what they symbolize as well as some facts you might want to learn about these black-as-the-night birds.
What are you waiting for? Be sure you read through 80 of the best lines that revolve around the raven.
And with it being a symbol for a lot of things like wisdom, death, or affection, you’re sure to pick up a lot of interesting lessons from this collection.
Start reading the full list here.
And don’t forget to check out these quotes about birds and hummingbird quotes.
Best Raven Quotes
1. “The raven spread out its glossy wings and departed like hope.” – Cecilia Dart-Thornton
2. “Some battles are won with swords and spears, others with quills and ravens.” – George R.R. Martin
3. “To all new truths or renovation of old truths, it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about-to-be renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive wreath.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
4. “Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” – Edgar Allan Poe
5. “No doves come from ravens’ eggs.” – Hannah Kent
6. “Ravens are at home everywhere. They only have one enemy—humans.” – Bernd Heinrich
7. “He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.” – Seneca the Younger
8. “It wasn’t for nothing that the raven was just now croaking on my left hand.” – Plautus
9. “Like a feather in a dust storm with no direction, the raven flies through life, helpless and omitted, until night declares and the wind expires. Then it flies to the land of stones and etchings, and becomes an ember breaking away.” – Jessica Sorensen
Raven Quotes on Grief and Sorrow
10. “Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws.” – Jim Morrison
11. “For this reason, the lean wolf in the world rejoiced, and the dark raven, a bird greedy for slaughter.” – Cynewulf
12. “Needless to say, urgings by ravens are ignored at one’s peril.” – James D. Doss
13. “Ravens are the birds I’ll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens.” – Louise Erdrich
14. “The raven himself is hoarse, that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.” – William Shakespeare
15. “But the black raven, the bird over the fated men, will tell, will say to the eagle, how he succeeded at the meal, when he with the wolf plundered the slaughtered ones.” – The Beowulf Poet
16. “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” – Edgar Allan Poe
17. “Leave my loneliness unbroken.” – Edgar Allan Poe
18. “Death is inevitable, passion is eternal.” – Alison van Diepen
19. “My friends, tonight we bring you something entirely different. Something special. The poets will rest, the sonnets will be silent, and what words of love there are will not be spoken. Tonight, my friends, and I can hear you out there, sitting alone, like me, in your chairs, your beds, driving down an empty street with no one but me to listen to your weeping; tonight, I’m going to bring you Armageddon.” – Charles Grant
20. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” – Lewis Carroll
21. “To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core.” – Edgar Allan Poe
22. “The man you see here, tied up off the shore of Tortuga, is called Raven. He is an infamous pirate. He can fight, he can sail, and he fears no man. But he is not immune to mistakes.” – Matthew Laufrey
23. “Other friends have flown before—in the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.” – Edgar Allan Poe
24. “In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.” – Edgar Allan Poe
Beautiful and Wise Raven Quotes
25. “Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?” – Friedrich Nietzsche
26. “‘When you do what you want, not what you wish,’ said the first raven. ‘When you no longer seek your reflection in others’ eyes,’ said the second. ‘When you see yourselves face to face,’ said the third. ‘Then,’ the ravens intoned in unison, ‘you will have found what you truly seek.’” – Adam Gidwitz
27. “To fight the raven, you may make alliance with the serpent until the battle is done.” – Robert Jordan
28. “The music, and the banquet, and the wine, the garlands, the rose odors, and the flowers, the sparkling eyes, and flashing ornaments, the white arms, and the raven hair the braids, and bracelets, swan-like bosoms, and the necklace, an India in itself, yet dazzling not.” – Lord Byron
29. “It is said that when Raven created the first world, he made everything perfect—a world full of happiness and beauty, without pain, suffering, or ugliness. But Raven grew bored with this perfect world and started reshaping things.” – Catharine Feher-Elston
30. “Cruel birds—ravens—but wise. And creatures should be loved for their wisdom if they cannot be loved for kindness.” – Hannah Kent
31. “Day is a snow-white dove of heaven that from the East glad message brings. Night is a stealthy, evil raven, wrapped to the eyes in his black wings.” – Thomas Bailey Aldrich
32. “Sorrow is not a raven perched persistently above a chamber door. Sorrow is a thing with teeth, and while in time it retreats, it comes back at the whisper of its name.” – Dean Koontz
33. “Censure acquits the raven, but pursues the dove.” – Juvenal
34. “Entranced by the flight of a raven, I watch its shadow move effortlessly against golden, shimmering granite. I long to be that free, flying above the cluttered world of normalcy, where so many are half alive.” – Dean Potter
35. “When we were first aquent; your locks were like the raven, your bonie brow was brent. But now your brow is beld, John, your locks are like the snow.” – Robert Burns
36. “To be alright implies an impossible phase. We hope for mostly right on the best of our days.” – Marissa Meyer
37. “How sweetly did they float upon the wings of silence, through the empty-vaulted night at every fall smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smil’d.” – John Milton
38. “I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of an eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.” – Edward Abbey
39. “‘Raven? ‘Yes?’ What do you believe in? ‘I believe in finding out!’” – Ellen Schreiber
Raven Quotes on Love and Life
40. “My love, she’s like some raven at my window with a broken wing.” – Bob Dylan
41. “The cry of a young raven is nothing but the natural cry of a creature. But your cry, if it be sincere, is the result of a work of grace in your heart.” – Charles Spurgeon
42. “A fairly good crow or a raven can lay pretty nearly as good an egg.” – Henrik Ibsen
43. “Waste today, want tomorrow.” – Lauren Oliver
44. “Tying her bonnet under her chin, she tied her raven ringlets in. But not alone in the silken snare did she catch her lovely floating hair. For tying her bonnet under her chin, she tied a young man’s heart within.” – Nora Perry
45. “My handsome knight of night came over to me and kissed me softly on the cheek.” – Ellen Schreiber
46. “For out of black soul’s night have stirred dawn’s cold gleam, morning’s singing bird. Let black day die, let black flag fall, let raven call, let new day dawn of black reborn.” – George Woodcock
47. “That raven on yon left-hand oak, curse on his ill-betiding croak! Bodes me no good.” – John Gay
48. “We saw a raven very high above us. It called out, and the dome of the sky seemed to echo the sound. It called again and again as it flew onwards, and the mountains gave back the sound, seeming as if from their centre; a musical bell-like answering to the bird’s hoarse voice.” – Dorothy Wordsworth
49. “If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep inflicted lacerations never heal— cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge— so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo: caressing kindnesses—loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing death himself.” – Charlotte Bronte
50. “Love’s torments made me seek the chase; rifle in hand, I roam’d apace. Down from the tree, with hollow scoffs, the raven cried, ‘Head-off! head off!’” – Heinrich Heine
51. “When I die, let the black rag fly raven falling from the sky.” – George Woodcock
52. “There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.” – James Russell Lowell
53. “O, it comes o’er my memory, as doth the raven o’er the infected house, boding to all.” – William Shakespeare
54. “Did ever raven sing so like a lark, that gives sweet tidings of the sun’s uprise?” – William Shakespeare
Meaningful Raven Quotes
55. “Honestly, all crows are not ravens.” – Munia Khan
56. “On the road to wisdom, behave like a raven and observe everything carefully!” – Mehmet Murat İldan
57. “And the crow once called the raven black.” – George R.R. Martin
58. “One raven does not peck out another’s eyes.” – Danish proverb
59. “It was not for nothing that the raven was just now croaking on my left hand.” – John Gay
60. “Ravens bring things to people. We’re like that. It’s our nature. We don’t like it.” – Peter S. Beagle
61. “From warriors ravens grew red, and with their leader a host attacked.” – Taliesin
62. “Why is a raven like a writing desk? They are both so full of poetry, you see. Darkness and whimsy, nightmares and song.” – Marissa Meyer
63. “So lonely I make friends with the ravens that prey on lambs.” – Hannah Kent
64. “He that has no present Christ has a future, dark, chaotic, heaving with its destructive ocean; and over it there goes forever black-pinioned, winging its solitary and hopeless flight, the raven of his anxious thoughts, and finds no place to rest, and comes back again to the desolate ark with its foreboding croak of evil in the present and evil in the future.” – Alexander Maclaren
65. “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
66. “By this story—The Fox and The Raven—it is shown how much ingenuity avails, and how wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.” – Phaedrus
67. “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
68. “When I play Raven, I have to play her at the height of my intelligence.” – Lindsey Morgan
69. “I’ll ne’er distrust my God for cloth and bread while lilies flourish and the raven’s fed.” – Francis Quarles
Interesting Raven Quotes
70. “It takes a lot to be considered a Raven.” – Terrel Suggs
71. “In a pine tree behind me, an eagle waits out the rain, hunched into himself, brooding. Crows squabble, a murder chasing a raven. Seals cruise the lines of fishing nets bobbing in the water, hoping for an easy meal, the tender bellies of salmon.” – Eden Robinson
72. “There are times in my life where I’m frantic and I think to myself, ‘Okay, what would Raven do now?’ As dumb as that sounds, it’s in my head.” – Lindsey Morgan
73. “I believed then, in a deep, easy way that is impossible for me as an adult—that there was more to this world than meets the eye. Trees had spirits; the wind spoke. If you followed a toad or a raven deep into the heart of the forest, they were sure to lead you to something magical.” – Jennifer McMahon
74. “They welcomed me like I have been a Raven my whole life. It meant a lot to me. I knew what I could bring to the team, on and off the field.” – Eric Weddle
More Poetic Raven Quotes From Edgar Allan Poe
75. “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’” – Edgar Allan Poe
76. “Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.” – Edgar Allan Poe
77. “Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; this it is, and nothing more.” – Edgar Allan Poe
78. “And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting on the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.” – Edgar Allan Poe
79. “Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.” – Edgar Allan Poe
80. “For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, with such name as ‘Nevermore.’” – Edgar Allan Poe
What Does a Raven Mean to You?
Ravens have been notorious since the dawn of time. They’re depicted in the Bible, in legends, and in many other pieces of literature that influence the world such as ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe. It’s such a popular bird that’s been given many symbols—both positive and negative. While many medieval writings depict ravens as a dark and negative omen, they’re also considered as good omens in others like Hinduism and Native American beliefs. Characterized by their feathers that are as deep and dark as night, let’s not forget that ravens are also incredibly intelligent creatures who are able to adapt and look at things in their own unique perspective.
Did you get any useful lessons from this collection? Which quotes are your favorites? Tell us which animal you’d like us to make a collection on next by commenting them down below.
