Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
—Chinese Proverb
Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little something.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
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
They quarrel about an egg and let the hen fly.
—German Proverb
To fall is not painful for those who fly low.
—Chinese Proverb
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?—it is the same the angels breathe.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.
—Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American Aviator
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
Don’t try to fly before you have wings.
—French Proverb
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
There is an art, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
—Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English Novelist, Scriptwriter
The life of an aviator seemed to me ideal. It involved skill. It brought adventure. It made use of the latest developments of science. Mechanical engineers were fettered to factories and drafting boards while pilots have the freedom of wind with the expanse of sky. There were times in an aeroplane when it seemed I had escaped mortality to look down on earth like a God.
—Charles Lindbergh (1902–74) American Aviator, Inventor, Conservationist
The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers.
—Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus) (c.250–184 BCE) Roman Comic Playwright
Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.
—Common Proverb
Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history.
—James Dickey (1923–97) American Poet, Writer
Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, But, they also get more notoriety when they crash.
—Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American Aviator
Flying. Whatever any other organism has been able to do man should surely be able to do also, though he may go a different way about it.
—Samuel Butler
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
The desire to reach for the sky runs deep in our human psyche.
—Cesar Pelli (1926–2019) Argentinean-born American Architect
I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
Even an eagle will not fly higher than the sun.
—Russian Proverb
The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul.
—Walter Raleigh (1552–1618) English Courtier, Navigator, Poet
No matter how high a bird can fly, it still has to look for food on the ground.
—Danish Proverb
I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.
—Bill Maher (b.1956) American Comedian, TV Personality, Social Critic, Author, Actor
There is no flying without wings.
—French Proverb
Never Forget!- The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky.
—Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American Aviator
No need to teach an eagle to fly.
—Greek Proverb
Of all the inventions that have helped to unify China perhaps the airplane is the most outstanding. Its ability to annihilate distance has been in direct proportion to its achievements in assisting to annihilate suspicion and misunderstanding among provincial officials far removed from one another or from the officials at the seat of government.
—Soong Mei-ling (1898–2003) First Lady of the Republic of China
Why fly? Simple. I’m not happy unless there’s some room between me and the ground.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American 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
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
When a heart is on fire, sparks always fly out of the mouth.
—Common Proverb
God made low branches for birds that cannot fly so well.
—Turkish Proverb
The roast duck can fly no more.
—Chinese Proverb
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
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
Birds of a color fly to the same place.
—Welsh Proverb
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
Flying birds have no master.
—French Proverb
Falling hurts least those who fly low.
—Chinese Proverb
Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind.
I began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the element of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted a wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.
—Charles Lindbergh (1902–74) American Aviator, Inventor, Conservationist
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