Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history.
—James Dickey (1923–97) American Poet, Writer
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that; so it goes on flying anyway.
—Mary Kay Ash (1918–2001) American Entrepreneur, Businessperson
There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American Aviator, Author
Even an eagle will not fly higher than the sun.
—Russian Proverb
When a heart is on fire, sparks always fly out of the mouth.
—Common Proverb
The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
Why fly? Simple. I’m not happy unless there’s some room between me and the ground.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.
—James Thurber
Never Forget!- The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
No matter how high a bird can fly, it still has to look for food on the ground.
—Danish Proverb
The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Before you can learn to fly, you must first learn to walk. You cannot fly into flying.
—Unknown
A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you’ve been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.
—Shana Alexander (1925–2005) American Journalist, Editor, Author
Falling hurts least those who fly low.
—Chinese Proverb
The roast duck can fly no more.
—Chinese Proverb
Birds of a color fly to the same place.
—Welsh Proverb
The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul.
—Walter Raleigh (1552–1618) English Courtier, Navigator, Poet
I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I’m just soul on a sunbeam.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
There is no flying without wings.
—French Proverb
I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t stop the plane, you can’t stop the storm, you can’t stop time. So one might as well accept it calmly, wisely.
—Golda Meir (1898–1978) Israeli Head of State
You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky.
—Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American Aviator
They quarrel about an egg and let the hen fly.
—German Proverb
God made low branches for birds that cannot fly so well.
—Turkish Proverb
No need to teach an eagle to fly.
—Greek Proverb
One could sit still and look at life from the air; that was it. And I was conscious again of the fundamental magic of flying, a miracle that has nothing to do with any of its practical purposes – speed, accessibility, and convenience – and will not change as they change. Looking down from the air that morning, I felt that stillness rested like a light over the earth. What motion there was took on a slow grace, like slow-motion pictures which catch the moment of outstretched beauty that one cannot see in life itself, so swiftly does it move.
And if flying, like a glass-bottomed bucket, can give you that vision, that seeing eye, which peers down to the still world below the choppy waves – it will always remain magic.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American Aviator, Author
I watched him strap on his harness and helmet, climb into the cockpit and, minutes later, a black dot falls off the wing two thousand feet above our field. At almost the same instant, a white streak behind him flowered out into the delicate wavering muslin of a parachute—a few gossamer yards grasping onto air and suspending below them, with invisible threads, a human life, and man who by stitches, cloth, and cord, had made himself a god of the sky for those immortal moments.
—Charles Lindbergh (1902–74) American Aviator, Inventor, Conservationist
Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.
—Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American Aviator
I wish I could write well enough to write about aircraft. Faulkner did it very well in Pylon but you cannot do something someone else has done though you might have done it if they hadn’t.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer