Peafowl

And there they placed a peacock in his pride,
Before the damsel.

Peafowl can refer to either of two species of birds in the genus Pavo of the pheasant family, Phasianidae. Peafowl are best known for the male's extravagant tail, which it displays during courtship. The male is called a peacock, and the female a peahen.

Sourced

• Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
  • Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977), on why a peacock can't fly much better than a chicken.
• For Sheer attractiveness,adorning ability,and adaptability,the Indian peafowl is clearly unsurpassable and incomparable.No other bird can claim such Triple'A' ranking.Regal and resplendent,yet common and plebian,it stands in a class of its own,a true symbol of India in all its beauty and colourful splendour.It is rightly the National Bird of India
  • Samar Singh,"Behold the National Bird (2012).English Balbharti Book 9th grade Maharashtra State Board,India.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 591.

• For everything seemed resting on his nod,
  As they could read in all eyes. Now to them,
  Who were accustomed, as a sort of god,
  To see the sultan, rich in many a gem,
  Like an imperial peacock stalk abroad
  (That royal bird, whose tail's a diadem,)
  With all the pomp of power, it was a doubt
  How power could condescend to do without.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto VII, Stanza 74.

• To frame the little animal, provide
  All the gay hues that wait on female pride:
  Let Nature guide thee; sometimes golden wire
  The shining bellies of the fly require;
  The peacock's plumes thy tackle must not fail,
  Nor the dear purchase of the sable's tail.
  • John Gay, Rural Sports, Canto I, line 177.

• To Paradise, the Arabs say,
  Satan could never find the way
  Until the peacock led him in.
  • Charles Godfrey Leland, The Peacock.

• "Fly pride," says the peacock.
  • William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act IV, scene 3, line 81.

• Let frantic Talbot triumph for a while
  And like a peacock sweep along his tail.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I (c. 1588-90), Act III, scene 3, line 5.

• Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock,—a stride and a stand.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act III, scene 3, line 251.

• And there they placed a peacock in his pride,
  Before the damsel.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Gareth and Lynette.