Kite String Quotes & Sayings

One of the first problems to be faced at Niagara was how to get a wire over the gorge and its violent river. Ellet solved that nicely by offering five dollars to the first American boy to fly a kite over to the Canadian side. The prize was won by young Homer Walsh, who would tell the story for the rest of his days. Once the kite string was across, a succession of heavier cords and ropes was pulled over, and in a short time the first length of wire went on its way. After that, when the initial cable had been completed, Ellet decided to demonstrate his faith in it in a fashion people would not forget. He had an iron basket made up big enough to hold him and attached it to the cable with pulleys. Then stepping inside, on a morning in March 1848, he pulled himself over the gorge and back again, all in no more than fifteen minutes' time, and to the great excitement of crowds gathered along both rims. — David McCullough

On breezy days when the wind was not too light and not too strong, Will and Pamela and the children flew their homemade kites in Peaceful Park until they were specks in the blue sky. When the wind was just right, the kites felt so strong and safe up there that Honor imagined nothing could budge them.
'Ho bum, boasted Will, 'I could stand here all day and this kite would hold. It's like fishing.'
'Fishing in reverse,' said Pamela. 'Sky fishing.'
'What do you fish for in the air?' asked Honor.
Pamela and Will started laughing. 'Oh, planets,' said Will. 'The occasional comet. An asteroid or two.'
Honor held one kite string, and Will held the other. Pamela held Quintilian. On those afternoons, four did not seem like the wrong number for a family. Four seemed just right. — Allegra Goodman

The history omankind seems like kite flying; sometimes, when the wind is favorable, we let go the string a little and the kite soars a little higher; sometimes the wind is too rough and we have to lower it a little, and sometimes it gets caught among the tree branches; but to reach the upper strata of pure bliss-ah, perhaps never. — Lin Yutang

Someone once told me that children are like kites. You struggle just to get them in the air; they crash; you add a longer tail. Then they get caught in a tree; you climb up and bring them down, and untangle the string; you run to get them aloft again. Finally, the kite is airborne, and it flies higher and higher, as you let out more string, until it's so high in the sky, it looks like a bird. And if the string snaps, and you've done your job right, the kite will continue to soar in the wind, all by itself. — Charmian Carr

I know he didn't mean to be popular
to have everyone string along behind him like the tail of a kite. — Jodi Picoult

I went to the park and saw this kid flying a kite. The kid was really excited. I don't know why, that's what they're supposed to do. Now if he had had a chair on the other end of that string, I would have been impressed. — Mitch Hedberg

I was a kite miles out to sea. I was soaring without a string. — Mark Schreiber

Hope has no feathers
Hope takes flight
tethered with twine
like a tattered kite,
slave to the wind's
capricious drift
eager to soar
but needing lift

Hope waits stubbornly
watching the sky
for turmoil, feeding on
things that fly:
crows, ashes, newspapers,
dry leaves in flight
all suggest wind
that could lift a kite

Hope sails and plunges
firmly caught
at the end of her string -
fallen slack, pulling taught,
ragged and featherless.
Hope never flies
but doggedly watches
for windy skies. — Elizabeth Wein

You can't tell how high a kite can fly without being willing to let all the string out. — Ken Liu

He held to it in the way of a man who holds the string of a kite that is so high he can't see it anymore, knowing that any moment it may break and the only way he will know it has broken will be by the sudden ripple of the string as it dances slowly groundward. — Steve Erickson

Happiness was a little like flying, she thought, like being a kite. It depended on how much one let the string out. — Patricia Highsmith

Let me not anchor you to a bed of weary rocks, but let me be the kite's string that guides you in your flight. — Richard Ronald Allan

And I began to let him go. Hour by hour. Days into months. It was a physical sensation, like letting out the string of a kite. Except that the string was coming from my center. — Augusten Burroughs

It was almost painful to watch,that kite of mine.
Tethered to the string in my hand. Dancing in the sky all alone.
My breath caught in my throat, my pulse beating wild and crazy on my chest. My heart soaring with every dip and turn of the kite,as if I were flying along,instead of standing with my two feet on the ground, squinting against the sun to see the dance.
What if it fell?
What if the breeze took it away?
I counted the seconds until I could reel it back in.
I was that kite.
Fragile against the wind. Soaring one minute. Spiraling straight down next. Just looking for something to hold me up.
Before I spun out of control and flew away.
Dissappearing fron sight. — Jenny B. Jones

A Tribute to the Kite ...
Oh such joy what a splendor has never
been heard, of a string that would lend you the wings of a bird. — Sara Loo

If a painting contains no abstraction nor impressionistic elements, it is a kite that will never fly. But if the painting completely breaks the connection between human feeling and the object portrayed, the kite string has been broken. I try to keep the line unbroken. — Wu Guanzhong

Like a kite Cut from the string, Lightly the soul of my youth Has taken flight. — Takuboku Ishikawa

I knew it was nothing more than the vaguest sense of connection, the kite-string tug of an intriguing stranger. But I simply wasn't ready to feel these things again.
To gather up the dust of my heart and scatter it again on the winds of hope. — Alexis Hall

. . .Consciousness came and went.

Consciousness went and came like the errant winds of spring, and I, who so often have had difficulty in falling asleep among the besieging shades of memory, now fought to stay awake as a child struggles to lift a faltering kite by the string. — Gene Wolfe

You need to grab your dream out of the sky like it's a kite and pinch the string through your fingers until you reach the spool. — Augusten Burroughs

Karou loved Zuzana for her willingness to play out such silliness on a long kite string. — Laini Taylor

Sibyl, she's not of the earth but of the air. She's like a kite, all her life, darting about in the wind with no one holding onto her string ... You're of the earth ... You have your feet firmly planted on the ground. She's lucky to find someone like that, like you, willing to let her dart about happily in the wind but still keeping her tethered to the ground. — Kristen Ashley

Like the kite that caught up to the sky,
painted with clouds, I lost track of it,
but it was connected
by string, something I was holding,
something I could always
bring back. — Kelli Russell Agodon

Father and son

No sound - a spell- on, on out
where the wind went, our kite sent back
its thrill along the string that
sagged but sang and said, "I'm here!
I'm here!" - till broke somewhere,
gone years ago, but sailed forever clear
of earth. I hold-whatever tugs
the other end-I hold that string. — William Stafford

To her it was like being alone in the ocean, holding a kite string in one hand and an anchor chain in the other and finding the balance so she wouldn't sink. — Kate Evangelista

It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry. — Alfred North Whitehead

A relationship between two people is made up, for the most part, of invisible things: memories, shared experiences, hopes and fears. When one person disappears, the other is left alone, as if holding a string with no kite. Memories can do a lot to sustain you, but the invisible stuff of the relationship is lost, even as unresolved issues remain: arguments never settled, kind words never uttered, things left un-said. They become like a splinter beneath the skin-unseen, but painful nevertheless. Until they're exposed, coping with the loss is impossible. — David Dosa

Children Are Like Kites
You spend years trying to get them off the ground.
You run with them until you are both breathless. They crash ... they hit the roof ... you patch, comfort and assure them that someday they will fly.
Finally, they are airborne.
They need more string, and you keep letting it out.
They tug, and with each twist of the twine, there is sadness that goes with joy.
The kite becomes more distant, and you know it won't be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that binds you together and will soar as meant to soar ... free and alone.
Only then do you know that you have done your job. — Erma Bombeck

I am a kite in a tornado, but I have a long string. — Karen Marie Moning

Dating a man is like flying a kite. You only need to know when to wind up the string or let it out. — Jenna Alatari

You will find truth more quickly through delight than gravity. Let out a little more string on your kite. — Alan Cohen

And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven. — Truman Capote

And yet - and yet - one's kite will rise on the wind as far as ever one has string to let it go. It tugs and tugs and will go, and one is glad the further it goes, even if everybody else is nasty about it. — D.H. Lawrence

I dreamed you a field of running horses, Selah. For you, Bianca, a balloon the size of the sky, my body a kite you can throw into the air.Pull me by string and horse.Tell me everything won't end in death. That everything doesn't end with February. Dead wildflowers wrapped around a crying baby's throat.I've slowed my heartbeat to three beats a minute. I've redrawn the clouds into birds, a fox chasing them into the mountains.I'm going to move my hand today.I vomit ice cubes.There's a ghost next to me.Get up, Dad.(Light Boxes) — Shane Jones

Romantic love is the kite that catches the wind and tenaciously heads for the sky;
wisdom is the string that tugs downward, holding it back — Joshua Harris

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting. — Dr. Seuss

Art is like a kite. You have to pull the string hard in order to stretch it to its limit, but you don't want to pull it so hard that you break the thread, because the thread connects you to the land and its peoples. — Wu Guanzhong

We need to look at less obvious paths, things like the wind in the jet stream, which is very high up. The material science of what type of kite string you would need to connect up to that. That's still at the basic research level. — Bill Gates

A kite can't really fly free,that's just an expression. In order to soar high in the sky the string of a kite needs to be anchored. If the string breaks the kite drops back to the ground. The kite's freedom depends on it not being as free as he thinks it is. — Simon Napier-Bell