“This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.”

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Rainer Maria Rilke176

Austrian poet and writer 1875–1926

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“Every living thing was shunning him. Poor little Peter Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for a bird, he was sitting on his wrong part. It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.”

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“The birds can fly,
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" Darius Green and his Flying-Machine http://books.google.com/books?id=GwsaAQAAMAAJ&q=%22The+birds+can+fly+An'+why+can't+I%22&pg=PA115#v=onepage," Our Young Folks: an illustrated magazine ( March 1867 http://books.google.com/books?id=4eOvXvxRjZYC&q=%22The+birds+can+fly+An'+why+can't+I%22&pg=PA130#v=onepage).