Flight Of Quotes & Sayings

Though I work in New York City, in an office about a mile from the World Trade Center, I was not in New York City when the planes struck. I was on a plane above the Atlantic Ocean, heading back to New York from a family reunion and celebration in Europe. I had said good-bye to my husband in London; he was staying for a wedding of a business friend. I couldn't wait to see my kids and my parents, who would be waiting for me at a Little League game in our town, about thirty-five miles from New York City. An hour and a half into the flight, I suddenly had the feeling that the plane was making a slow turn. Nobody else seemed to notice. I sat nervously, hoping I was imagining it. But then a stewardess made an announcement. "There has been a catastrophic event affecting all of North American airspace," she said. "We are returning — Lauren Tarshis

I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois's learning and Baldwin's love and Langston's humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art's redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels. — Barack Obama

The word was born in the blood, grew in the dark body, beating, and took flight through the lips and the mouth. Farther away and nearer still, still it came from dead fathers and from wondering races, from lands which had turned to stone, lands weary of their poor tribes, for when grief took to the roads the people set out and arrived and married new land and water to grow their words again. And so this is the inheritance; this is the wavelength which connects us with dead men and the dawning of new beings not yet come to light. — Pablo Neruda

You see, it's essential that one of us stays awake during the flight [ballon]. So, rather than using the comfortable Virgin seats which we used to cross the Atlantic, we've asked British Airways for two of theirs. — Richard Branson

The wind? I am the wind. The sea and the moon? I am the sea and the moon. Tears, pain, love, bird-flights? I am all of them. I dance what I am. Sin, prayer, flight, the light that never was on land or sea? I dance what I am. — Isadora Duncan

By the death of Mr. O. Chanute the world has lost one whose labors had to an unusual degree influenced the course of human progress. If he had not lived the entire history of progress in flying would have been other than it has been. — Wilbur Wright

A friend told me about the casting notice for 'Queer Eye.' I was in Chicago and I had a contract with 'Esquire' magazine, so had been coming to New York City regularly and thought I'd catch a cheap flight, crash on a friend's sofa and do this hilarious audition that I had no chance of winning. — Ted Allen

Each time we consider a miracle impossible, or assume that we ourselves are not capable of working it, then we're choosing not to take flight ... — Marianne Williamson

How long the flight took on one of those old prop aircraft on any given day depended on the size of the bugs that hit the windshield and slowed it down. — Gene Kranz

Of course risk is part of spaceflight. We accept some of that to achieve greater goals in exploration and find out more about ourselves and the universe. — Lisa Nowak

No, but I am,' Elliot says, quick as a flash. 'That's why I need Penny's help.' 'Oh.' Dad frowns and scratches his head. He doesn't look convinced at all. 'Well, when you've sorted your French crisis, come down and have some breakfast. I'm making eggs over easy,' he says in an American accent, 'and we need to talk about New York.' 'Will do,' I call over my shoulder as Elliot and I race up the second flight of stairs. As soon as we're in my room, I shut the door tight. 'Why didn't you tell me?' Elliot says. 'I was too embarrassed.' I sink down on to — Zoe Sugg

I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality ... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth ... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is. — Eugene Ionesco

No matter how evolved humans think they are, we still have the same flight-or-fight instincts of our caveman ancestors. — Ernessa T. Carter

Maybe it was the challenge of flight, the opportunity to fly, the competition of summer camp and the inspiration and discipline of West Point. I think all of those things helped me to develop a dedication and inspired me to get ahead. — Buzz Aldrin

We all leave something behind us. A bird in flight will lose a snow-white feather, and flowers in the hedgerows will drop their petals. And people? We leave memories. Footprints in the dust and fingerprints on everything we've touched, warmth in every hand we've held. We become stories that are spoken of, for always. And in this way, we carry on. — Susan E. Fletcher

I remember this scene because it was embarrassing to live through it, and because remembering it is a way of knowing that I am half-true to my beliefs when the time comes. I sit silently defending them and I don't sell them out, but I put on a face that lets people think I'm on the winning team, that I'm laughing along with them instead of just standing among them. I save the best parts for myself and savor them in silence. Number three, power of flight. Number four, marauder. Enough vision to really see something. A stack of gold coins and a ledger. People want all kinds of things out of life, I knew early on. — John Darnielle

One knew, of course, that it was not the red cape any more than it was the boots, the tights, the trunks, or the trademark "S" that gave Superman the ability to fly. That ability derived from the effects of the rays of our yellow sun on Superman's alien anatomy, which had evolved under the red sun of Krypton. And yet you had only to tie a towel around your shoulders to feel the strange vibratory pulse of flight stirring in the red sun of your heart. — Michael Chabon

Later, I could get that drizzle feeling just about any time I saw a kid on a swing. The hopelessness of it - the forward excitement, the midflight return. The futile belief that the next time around, the next flight forward, you wouldn't get dragged back again. You wouldn't have to start over, and over. — Emily Fridlund

No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp, — Stella Young

Democracy triumphed in the cold war because it was a battle of values - between one system that gave preeminence to the state and another that gave preeminence to the individual and freedom. Not long ago, I was told about an incident that illustrated this difference: An American scholar, on his way to the airport before a flight to the Soviet Union, got into a conversation with his cab driver, a young man who said that he was still getting his education. The scholar asked, "When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?" The young man answered, "I haven't decided yet." After the scholar arrived at the airport in Moscow, his cab driver was also a young man who happened to mention he was still getting his education, and the scholar, who spoke Russian, asked, "When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?" The young man answered: "They haven't told me yet. — Ronald Reagan

But unlike Mama, I would not go to heaven. My secrets padlocked the gates. I'd be a torn kite stuck in the dead branches of a tree, unable to fly. — Ruta Sepetys

Some say men continually war against circumstances, but I say they perpetually flee. What are the works of men if not a momentary respite, a hiding place soon to be discovered by catastrophe? Life is endless flight before the hunter we call the world. - EKYANNUS VIII, 111 APHORISMS Spring, — R. Scott Bakker

NOT THEY WHO SOAR Not they who soar, but they who plod Their rugged way, unhelped, to God Are heroes; they who higher fare, And, flying, fan the upper air, Miss all the toil that hugs the sod. 'Tis they whose backs have felt the rod, Whose feet have pressed the path unshod, May smile upon defeated care, Not they who soar. High up there are no thorns to prod, Nor boulders lurking 'neath the clod To turn the keenness of the share, For flight is ever free and rare; But heroes they the soil who 've trod, Not they who soar! — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Dolly'd given him a white silk scarf as a parting present. He didn't know how she'd managed the money for it and she wouldn't let him ask, just settled it round his neck inside his flight jacket. Somebody'd told her the Spitfire pilots all wore them, to save the constant collar chafing, and she meant him to have one. It felt nice, he'd admit that. Made him think of her touch when she'd put it on him. He pushed the thought hastily aside; the last thing he could afford to do was start thinking about his wife, if he ever hoped to get back to her. And he did mean to get back to her. Where — Diana Gabaldon

Their elegant shape, showy colours, and slow, sailing mode of flight, make them very attractive objects, and their numbers are so great that they form quite a feature in the physiognomy of the forest, compensating for the scarcity of flowers. — Henry Walter Bates

Tegner's Drapa

I heard a voice that faintly said
"Balder the beautiful lies dead, lies dead . . ."
a voice like the flight of white cranes overhead -
ghostly, haunting the sun, life-abetting,
but a sun now irretrievably setting.

Then I saw the sun's carcass, blackened with flies,
fall into night's darkness, to nevermore rise,
borne grotesquely to Hel through disconsolate skies
as blasts from the Nifel-heim rang out with dread,
"Balder lies dead, gentle Balder lies dead! . . ."

Lost, lost forever - the runes of his tongue;
the blithe warmth of his smile; his bright face, cherished, young;
the lithe grace of his figure, all the girls' hearts undone
O, what god could have dreamed such strange words might be said
as "Balder lies dead, our fair Balder lies dead! — Esaias Tegner

Love is not a verb. Love is a noun. Love's activity is people breathing, cells dividing, a dove taking a flight.
This grammar of life not all can see. — Mohit Parikh

To write a diary is to make a series of choices about what to omit, what to forget.
A memorable sandwich, an unmemorable flight of stairs. A memorable bit of conversation surrounded by chatter that no one records. — Sarah Manguso

SCHOOL BEGINS IN August this year. I live nearby, and so I walk and skip the bus. I read while I walk to school up the two hills, one sidewalk, a more or less straight line. I pretend the streets I pass through are empty. I have been reading about the Neutron Bomb. I want to be like that, radiant and deadly, a ghost of an impact, to pass through walls, to kill everyone, in flight among the empty houses, punching through molecules like a knife through a paper bag. See me. I am five feet and two inches tall. I am still thin, freckled, large eyes, small nose. My hair waves and grows long, to my neck. I pick flowers for my mother as I walk. The neighborhood kids call me Nature Boy. I want to die. Help — Alexander Chee

The Welsh were a god-cursed, stiff-necked, and utterly vexatious people, John said bitterly, but they did have an inexplicable ability to rise phoenixlike from the ashes of defeat, to soar upwards on wings too scorched for flight. — Sharon Kay Penman

Even the bees I'd swear were sent to protect us in the delicate business of hives and honey are stung to silence by the news that something winged has lost its flight. — Kristen Henderson

No risk is more terrifying than that taken by the first root. A lucky root will eventually find water, but its first job is to anchor -- to anchor an embryo and forever end its mobile phase, however passive that mobility was. Once the first root is extended, the plant will never again enjoy any hope (however feeble) of relocating to a place less cold, less dry, less dangerous. Indeed, it will face frost, drought, and greedy jaws without any possibility of flight. The tiny rootlet has only once chance to guess what the future years, decades -- even centuries -- will bring to the patch of soil where it sits. It assesses the light and humidity of the moment, refers to its programming, and quite literally takes the plunge. — Hope Jahren

Whoever is related to me in the height of his aspirations will experience veritable ecstasies of learning; for I come from heights that no bird ever reached in its flight, I know abysses into which no foot ever strayed. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If the rest of his foursome are bunched directly behind his ball, or assume the foetal position with their backs to the tee, the golfer is reminded that his drive tends to be erratic. More cruel yet is for his opponent to stand directly in the projected line of flight, as the safest place to be. — Eric Nicol

We procured from an Indian a weasel perfectly white except the extremity of the tail which was black: great numbers of wild geese are passing to the south, but their flight is too high for us to procure any of them. — Meriwether Lewis

I am with the roots
of flowers
entwined, entombed
sending up my passionate blossoms
as a flight of rockets
and argument;
wine churls my throat,
above me
feet walk upon my brain, monkies fall from the sky
clutching photographs
of the planets,
but i seek only music
and the leisure
of my pain — Charles Bukowski

Carlisle wondered if it was still possible for him to live alongside civilization and yet be somewhat apart from it. Find a slice of quiet in the layers of noise, conduct a rain into the noise now and then for some work, take the gold and run like hell back to the quiet place....Flight was no good. You couldn't escape it, whatever 'it' was. — Robert James Waller

The Wanderer
What is she like?
I was told
she is a
melancholy soul.
She is like
the sun to the night;
a momentary gold.
A star when dimmed
by dawning light;
the flicker of
a candle blown.
A lonely kite
lost in flight
someone once
had flown. — Lang Leav

Fire up your heart for the wind is getting cold, now it always gets cold for the riders of the night. When you carry that dream when you know what lonesome is looking for a home like a bird in flight. — Jon Stewart

DOCTOR AIN WAS recognized on the Omaha-Chicago flight. A biologist colleague from Pasadena came out of the toilet and saw Ain in an aisle seat. Five years before, this man had been jealous of Ain's huge grants. Now he nodded coldly and was surprised at the intensity of Ain's response. He almost turned back to speak, but he felt too tired; like nearly everyone, he was fighting the flu.

The stewardess handing out coats after they landed remembered Ain too: A tall thin nondescript man with rusty hair. He held up the line staring at her; since he already had his raincoat with him she decided it was some kooky kind of pass and waved him on.

She saw Ain shamble off into the airport smog, apparently alone. Despite the big Civil Defense signs, O'Hare was late getting underground. No one noticed the woman.

- 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain — James Tiptree Jr.

APOPHYGE (APO'PHYGE) n.s.[ flight, or escape.]Is, in architecture, that part of a column, where it begins to spring out of its base; and was originally no more than the ring or ferrel, which anciently bound the extremities of wooden pillars, to keep them from splitting, and were afterward imitated in stone work. We sometimes call it the spring of the column.Chambers. — Samuel Johnson

Nothing will ever equal that moment of joyous excitement which filled my whole being when I felt myself flying away from the earth. It was not mere pleasure; it was perfect bliss. Escaped from the frightful torments of persecution and of calumny, I felt that I was answering all in rising above all.
[Said after making man's first ascent by hydrogen balloon in 1783] — Jacques Charles

We don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all. — Barack Obama

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. — James Baldwin

Did I live the spring I'd sought?
It's true in joy, I walked along,
took part in dance,
and sang the song.
and never tried to bind an hour
to my borrowed garden bower;
nor did I once entreat
a day to slumber at my feet.
Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song,
like morning birds they pass along,
o'er crests of trees, to none belong;
o'er crests of trees of drying dew,
their larking flight, my hands, eschew
Thus I'll say it once and true ...
From all that I saw,
and everywhere I wandered,
I learned that time cannot be spent,
It only can be squandered. — Roman Payne

And again the news offered no news: On CNN, a rerun of Larry King interviewing the widowed and the suffering. On CNN2, a rerun of Larry King interviewing a fatherless son. On CNN3, a rerun of Flight 11 flying toward the first tower, in slow motion. On CNN4, a rerun of the tower collapsing, in slow motion, and again the towers fell, again people jumped and died. On CNN5, a rerun of Larry King interviewing a motherless daughter, a daughterless father, interviewing the motherless, fatherless, wifeless, husbandless, childless, shameless
disgusted, Bill pressed POWER and beheaded King, exiled CNN, and the world went dark. They sat relieved in the silence and dark. Not much road traffic now, but somewhere in the distant overhead the honk and flap of southbound geese, instinct bound, in vees for victory. The turkey was still on the table; the sides were still out. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are tired come home. — Pearl Abraham

In my position, the right witchdoctor
Might have caught you in flight with his bare hands,
Tossed you, cooling, one hand to the other,
Godless, happy, quieted.
I managed
A wisp of your hair, your ring, your watch, your nightgown. — Ted Hughes

I want to find my golden joy," I said.
The baron laughed loudly. "Splendid," he said. "But what does that mean to you
your golden joy?"
"The golden joy," I replied, "is when a peculiar flight of free thought makes it possible to see the beauty of life. Am I making myself clear? — Victor Pelevin

I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you. — C. JoyBell C.

Sometimes I think you take photographs instead of seeing, you forget to look in your eagerness to grasp what is seen, to capture it in time's flight. You are absent from your own pictures, not only because you took them yourself, but also because you betray the moments you want to save from oblivion. — Jens Christian Grondahl

The flight from self is concealed beneath the flight from one's setting and way of life. It will be better elsewhere; it used to be better back then. In short, the here and now become unbearable. Alone and confronting himself, beneath the noonday sun, the monk can no longer see or hear himself; he no longer tolerates himself. His illusory salvation lies in desertion.1 This — Jean-Charles Nault

Girls Wanted to Enter Flight Stewardess Training Group
Here is the Career Opportunity for Which You Have Been Waiting!
If you are interested and feel you can meet all of the qualifications below, please write in detail and attach a full length photograph.
HEIGHT: Between 5'2" and 5'6"
WEIGHT: 135 pounds maximum
ATTRACTIVE: "Just below Hollywood" standards
Plenty of Personality and Poise
GENDER: Female
MARITAL STATUS: Single, Not Divorced,
Separated, or Widowed
RACE: White
AGE: 21-26 years old
EDUCATION: Registered Nurse or Two Years of College
VISION: 20/20 without glasses
Must be a US citizen and available for training within 6 months.
If you feel you qualify
— Judy Blume

Time, the foe of man's dominion,
Wheels around in ceaseless flight,
Scattering from his hoary pinion
Shades of everlasting night. — Thomas Love Peacock

The lions sing and the hills take flight. The moon by day, and the sun by night. Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool. Let the Lord of Chaos rule.
-chant from a children's game heard in Great Arvalon, the Fourth Age — Robert Jordan

If souls survive death for all eternity, how can the heavens hold them all? Or for that matter, how can the earth hold all the bodies that have been buried in it? The answers are the same. Just as on earth, with the passage of time, decaying and transmogrified corpses make way for the newly dead, so souls released into the heavens, after a season of flight, begin to break up, burn, and be absorbed back into the womb of reason, leaving room for souls just beginning to fly. This is the answer for those who believe that souls survive death. — Marcus Aurelius

We used to fuck with our Catholic roommate during Lent, trying to determine exactly how specific God's opinion was about that one. What if you ate something that you didn't know contained meat? What if you were driving east at 11:30pm and unknowingly crossed into a new time zone right before biting into a cheeseburger? During an airline flight, did God go by departure time, arrival time, or local time when determining the Hell- or Heavenbound nature of your meals? "What if you're a butcher," I remember saying, "and you're slicing up a side of beef on Friday when a stray bit of flesh becomes airborne and lodges itself in your throat. You begin to choke. You can't cough it up, but you could swallow it and save your life. What then, when your life is at stake?" Ridiculous? Sacrilegious? — Johnny B. Truant

I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies. But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks. The drinks, people. — Jim Butcher

It was an unnatural time to be awake, ... It meant nothing good. He associated it with emergency, bereavement, conspiracy, flight; the sad skulk away at the end of a one-night affair. — Robert Harris

People who think they can just do a non-stop flight to mystical, non-dual thinking, to get it out without going through the process, are usually not right. That's airy-fairy thinking. They have to wait until they are hurt themselves, or they are cheated, or lied to or betrayed, and they will see that their non-dual thinking is not tested, or truly a gift of the spirit. It's simply fuzzy thinking. — Richard Rohr

Obsession with conventional ideas of 'success' can be harmful enough, but compound that stress with relationships, family, financial woes and health concerns, and you find yourself in a constant state of fight or flight. This causes people to be more reactionary, which further perpetuates the cycle of stress. — Ariel Garten

Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by listening to the sound it made while being dropped down a flight of stairs. — Francis Crick

In flight from intellectual heaviness, [he] arrives at intelligent weightlessness. Every notion is flipped this way and that; the answer to every question is yes and no; the proliferating examples from all the arts ... overwhelm the observations that they are designed to illustrate; the general impression in one of uncontrollable articulateness. [He] does not think his thoughts; he convenes them. There is not a sign of struggle anywhere. — Leon Wieseltier

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,

Who was the Future, died full long ago.

Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,

Poor, child, and be not to thyself abhorred.

Around thine earth sun-winged winds do blow

And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;

The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord

And the long strips of river-silver flow:

Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.

Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight

About their fragile hairs' aerial gold.

Thou art divine, thou livest, - as of old

Apollo springing naked to the light,

And all his island shivered into flowers. — Trumbull Stickney

The weight of your baggage never stops true love from taking flight. — Curtis Tyrone Jones

Trying to corral the suburban stampede with a bunch of school buses was like herding cats. Actually, it was worse than herding cats. It was herding white people, earth's only species with a greater sense of entitlement than a cat. — Tanner Colby

I was once told that flying involves long hours of boredom, interrupted by moments of extreme fright. — Franklin W. Dixon

The flight experience itself is incredible. It's addictive. It's transcendent. It is a view of the grand plan of all things that is simply unforgettable. — Scott Carpenter

To me there never has been a higher source of honour or distinction than that connected with advances in science. I have not possessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight to the loftiest altitudes in the social world; and I certainly never endeavored to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of the reptile, who in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, because it is the easiest. — Humphry Davy

When it comes to creating compelling fiction, the devil may be in the details, but it is your imagination that ultimately allows your work to spread its wings and take flight. And fly it must. Only by soaring above the clouds of doubt can one truly achieve a suspension of disbelief — Max Hawthorne

The blue jay threads a flight-path through stripes of brightness and stripes of mossy dark. — David Mitchell

Trying their wings once more in hopeless flight: Blind moths against the wires of window screens.
Anything. Anything for a fix of light.
X. J. Kennedy, "Street Moths," The Lords of Misrule — X.J. Kennedy

The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. — Bede

If you are a millionaire beset by blackmailers or anyone else to whose comfort the best legal advice is essential, and have decided to put your affairs in the hands of the ablest and discreetest firm in London, you proceed through a dark and grimy entry and up a dark and grimy flight of stairs; and, having felt your way along a dark and grimy passage, you come at length to a dark and grimy door. There is plenty of dirt in other parts of Ridgeway's Inn, but nowhere is it so plentiful, so rich in alluvial deposits, as on the exterior of the offices of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow and Appleby. As you tap on the topmost of the geological strata concealing the ground-glass of the door, a sense of relief and security floods your being. For in London grubbiness is the gauge of a lawyer's respectability. — P.G. Wodehouse

When the soul opens its shell, it liberates the fundamental center that is the spirit. And once born, the spirit spreads its wings and flies with all the freedom of love, going to nestle in the heart where resides true Divine love. Love is God in full flight, and it is found inside our own selves. It is the bird coming back to its nest, the spirit returning to its reality, and the creature to the Creator, all coming together in the domain of the One who is and always was. — Alex Polari De Alverga

Anything that we do to make ourselves feel worthy and safe is a flight from the pain of powerlessness. Every pursuit of external power - every attempt to change the world or a person in order to make yourself feel valuable and safe - is a distraction from the pain of powerlessness. — Gary Zukav

Two weeks after the flight of the government from Naples, the French moved an army of six thousand soldiers into the city, and by late January a cabal of enlightened aristocrats and professors had engendered a monstrosity that called itself the Parthenopean or Vesuvian Republic. Most — Susan Sontag

That's the bittersweet joy of ministry. We see people healed, and then we watch them move on in victory. Sometimes, it means saying goodbye. We must learn to celebrate as our fledgling birds spread their wings and fly into freedom, even if that flight pattern takes them far away from us. — Katherine J. Walden

The music defied classification. If I had been writing a
review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars
didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.
The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel
it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,
where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump
into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.
That's the only way I could describe the music.
It was the sonic equivalent of flight. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

How old are you exactly?"
The corner of his mouth curved up, the grin so ridiculously sexy it made butterflies take flight in her stomach. "Thirty-two."
"Hmm, eight year difference. Not exactly robbing the cradle, but I think I might have to rethink this whole thing between us." She kept her voice light, teasing.
He snorted and pinched her butt, making her yelp. "Think all you want, I'm not going anywhere. — Katie Reus

I walk back and forth past the bird one hundred and twenty-two times. I think of you and me, us, this elegant architecture called bird. Belly-up, beak to the north, wings splayed to the poles he disintegrates daily. In two days, his eyes are sockets, in four days, his under-feathers scatter to the east. The gentle wind detonates a downy bomb on still, green grass only a few stray flight-feathers cling to the skeleton — Micheline Maylor

That the city would return to being the thriving white suburb of his youth. Cars with tail fins. Straw hats and sock hops. Episcopalians and ice cream socials. It would be the opposite of white flight, he said. "The Ku Klux influx." But when I'd ask him how, he'd just shrug and, like a conservative senator without any ideas, filibuster me with unrelated stories about the good ol' days. — Paul Beatty

Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it. — Thomas Hardy

Last year CNN brought me on live TV to discuss a proposal to create "kid-free planes," and I explained if we were really going to start segregating passengers I'd prefer to ride in an "a-hole-free plane" because babies almost never ask you to join the Mile-High Club, or clip their toenails while in flight, or do any of a plethora of horrible things I've witnessed from others. — Jenny Lawson

Though in this world there are phenomena that might justly be termed "strange," there are no phenomena that cannot -- given sufficient information -- be explained. This is not to suggest that for every effect there is a cause, of course. That is an assumption that we are not prepared to make, less it launch us ineluctably down the path of determinism. This is only to suggest, rather, that there is no "thing" that exists without some relation to at least one other "thing," and it is the matrix of a "thing's" relationship that determines its meaning in the larger context of the world. Even something strange can be explained by tracing its relational lines of flight, however casual or casual they may be. — Dustin Long

It struck me again the ways Angelo and I were like them. Angelo was my angel, and I was ever on the ground, looking up at him. It was no wonder Jon and I hadn't been able to make things work
we'd both longed for something grander. And it was no wonder Cole and Angelo had been drawn to each other, and yet, they had only brushed wings in the night, neither one of them able to stop in their flight. — Marie Sexton

Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician. — Orville Wright

In the centre of Bond was a hurricane-room, the kind of citadel found in old-fashioned houses in the tropics. These rooms are small, strongly built cells in the heart of the house, in the middle of the ground floor and sometimes dug down into its foundations. To this cell the owner and his family retire if the storm threatens to destroy the house, and they stay there until the danger is past. Bond went to his hurricane room only when the situation was beyond his control and no other possible action could be taken. Now he retired to this citadel, closed his mind to the hell of noise and violent movement, and focused on a single stitch in the back of the seat in front of him, waiting with slackened nerves for whatever fate had decided for B. E. A. Flight No. 130. — Ian Fleming

I have a unique ability to predict the flight of the ball, and my teammates have a unique ability to find me. — Abby Wambach

As the seasons age us
I close my eyes and wish for snow
Alas the Irish seasons been foretold
For Spring will dawn and I will go
Into another season Jack Frost cold.
And when its here, I wish for night
As childhood memories flash right by
To see the birds in humble flight
I wish for Summer with a sigh
And on I go to months so sweet
Dawns sweet chorus and sunbeams bright
I yearn for Autumn leaves under feet
Yet now I dream of Winters night
As Auld Lang Syne rings in New Year
Alas! I'm one year older as Spring draws near. — Michelle Geaney

I've enjoyed my time in the game, whether it be managing Luton in the top flight, taking Spurs to Wembley or, as director of football, pinpointing players such as Jermain Defoe, Paul Robinson and Robbie Keane with real sell-on value. — David Pleat

The happy man does not notice the flight of time. — Friedrich Schiller

The heroes of Flight 93 won the first battle in the War on Terror, and they should never be forgotten. — Jim Ramstad

I realize that humans cannot bear very much reality. Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your heads into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you live outside the stable to lift your head and be your own creature. Muad'Dib came to tell you about that. Without understanding his message, you cannot revere him! — Frank Herbert

Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight For the greatest tragedy of them all Is never to feel the burning light. — Oscar Wilde

I give it a fifty-fifty chance of total failure. If Kai refuses to repay a debt he legitimately owes, he'll be dishonoured in front of his entire Flight. Thunderbirds always avenge their dead, honour their word, and pay their debts. Those seem to be the only laws they have." Based on what little time I'd spent with them.
Marc frowned. "It's the 'legitimately owes' part that worries me."
"Thus the fifty-fifty shot of failure." I stared up at the nest, watching for any sign of activity. "It all depends on whether or not I'm able to bullshit him into thinking he owes us."
"The odds are always in your favour when bullshit's involved." Jace grinned, and I couldn't help returning his smile. — Rachel Vincent

The solution is so obvious, but for so many of us we would travel a hundred miles out of the way to avoid it, gather a thousand opinions on the way and take a pit stop in fear to check our map before we proceed through hell. Heaven was always a direct flight with no layovers. — Shannon L. Alder

It has thrown off its disguise as a meal and has revealed itself to me for what it is, a large dead bird. I'm eating a wing. It's the wing of a tame turkey, the stupidest bird in the world, so stupid it can't even fly any more. I am eating lost flight. — Margaret Atwood

He'd watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air. — Cormac McCarthy

I always save a huge book for a flight, because then you read it at both airports and on the plane and by the time you get home you're a quarter of the way through and it doesn't feel so unmanageable any more. — Ned Beauman

Other anatomical changes associated with long-duration space flight are definitely negative: the immune system weakens, the heart shrinks because it doesn't have to strain against gravity, eyesight tends to degrade, sometimes markedly (no one's exactly sure why yet). The spine lengthens as the little sacs of fluid between the vertebrae expand, and bone mass decreases as the body sheds calcium. Without gravity, we don't need muscle and bone mass to support our own weight, which is what makes life in space so much fun but also so inherently bad for the human body, long-term. — Chris Hadfield