That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Which on the shaft that made him die
Espied a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high.
--
To a Lady singing a Song of his Composing; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). See also Eagles, for variations on this theme.Edmund Waller
» Edmund Waller - all quotes »
'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low:
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.Lord Byron
The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
Aesop
The first mine I visited consisted of an immense horizontal shaft cut several hundred feet into a hill-side... upon which the proprietors had already sunk, in the brief space of one year, the enormous sum of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars! Such is often the fate of the speculative miner, whose vocation is closely allied to gaming, and equally precarious.
Josiah Gregg
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When hosts of foes with foes engage,
And round th' anointed hero rage,
The cleaving fauchion I misguide,
And turn the feather'd shaft aside.Joseph Addison
Waller, Edmund
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor
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