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There is an art to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
- Douglas Adams
More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace mingled with an excitement that strains every
nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination.
- Wilbur Wright
The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells
the race of gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the body it partakes of the nature of the divine.
- Plato
I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.
- Antoine de St-Exupery
Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying
anyway.
- Mary Kay Ash
Flying is a lot like playing a musical instrument; you're doing so many things and thinking of so many other things,
all at the same time. It becomes a spiritual experience. Something wonderful happens in the pit of your stomach.
- Dusty McTavish
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
- G. K. Chesteron
To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. To fly is everything.
- Otto Lilienthal
I ask people who don't fly, "How can you not fly when you live in a time in history when you can fly?"
- William Langewische
"Just try and remember," I said slowly," that if God had intended men to fly He'd have given us wings. So all
flying is flying in the face of nature. It's unnatural, wicked and stuffed with risks all the time. The secret to flying
is learning to minimize the risks. Or perhaps -- the secret of life is to choose your risks?"
- Gavin Lyall
The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
In our dreams we are able to fly ... and that is a remembering of how we were meant to be.
- Madeleine L'Engle
Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician. After
you know what to look for you see things that you did not notice when you did not know exactly what to look
for.
- Orville Wright
Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the
hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a
derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.
- Beryl Markham
A soul in tension that's learning to fly,
Condition grounded, but determined to try,
Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky,
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I...
...
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly,
Out of the corner of my watering eye...
...
There's no sensation to compare with this,
Suspended animation, a state of bliss...
-Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.
- Christopher Logue
No bird soars too high,
If he soars with his own wings.
- William Blake
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth,
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God...
-J.G. Magee, Jr.
When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must
believe that one of two things will happen : there will be something solid for us to stand on, or we will learn to
fly.
- Patrick Overton
Be like the bird that, pausing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.
— Victor Hugo
Real flight and dreams of flight go together. Both are part of the same movement. Not A before B, but all together.
— Thomas Pynchon
No one can realize how substantial the air is, until he feels its supporting power beneath him. It inspires
confidence at once.
- Otto Lilienthal
To fly! to live as airmen live! Like them to ride the skyways from horizon to horizon, across rivers and forests! To
free oneself from the petty disputes of everyday life, to be active, to feel the blood renewed in one's vein ? ah!
that is life... Life is finer and simpler. My will is freer. I appreciate everything more, sunlight and shade, work and
my friends. The sky is vast. I breathe deep gulps of the fine clear air of the heights. I feel myself to have
achieved a higher state of physical strength and a clearer brain. I am living in the third dimension!
- Henri Mignot
Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: What more could you ask of life?
- Charles Lindbergh
The experienced and skilful pilot uses his skill and experience to avoid situations requiring skill and experience.
A male pilot is a confused soul who talks about women when he's flying, and about flying when he's with a woman.
There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.
'Tis better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground.
Speed is life, altitude is life insurance. No one has ever collided with the sky.
'Tis better to break ground and head into the wind than to break wind and head into the ground.
A good landing is one you walk away from. A great landing is one after which you can use your glider again.
The three most useless things to a glider pilot are altitude above you, landing zone behind you, and a second ago.
Arguing with a pilot is like wrestling with a pig in the mud, after a while you begin to think the pig likes it.
People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.
Never let a glider take you somewhere your brain didn't get to five minutes earlier.
Airspeed, altitude, and brains; you'll need at least two of these three.
XC - you can't be lost if you don't care where you are.
One of the beautiful things about a single piloted aircraft is the quality of the social experience.
Flying is safe so long as you remember that it is dangerous.
The amount of judgement required to fly an aircraft is inversely proportional to its gross weight.
- Richard Bach
Remember, the best pilot is the one that is having the most fun.
- Jocky Sanderson