The Gentle Falcon (1957)
Context: I think hawking is the nearest thing to flying in this world. There you sit high up and poised light as air, the horse swift beneath you. You unhood your bird, let the jesses go and watch your falcon, its bells a-jingle, like some wild spirit take the air … and your own spirit goes with it. <!-- p. 51
“In this world of ours, the sparrow must live like a hawk if he is to fly at all.”
“Those who want fewest things are nearest to the Gods.”
Diogenes Laertius
Variant: [H]e was nearest to the gods in that he had the fewest wants.
Arthur Wesley Dow & American Arts & Crafts, Nancy E Green & Jessica Poesch Exhibt Cat. New York (1999)
Other
Leaving Me Behind, appeared on Family Tree (2007)
Song lyrics
Source: As quoted in National Observer (3 February 1964)
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928), The Wings of Lead
Context: The gods released a vision on a world forespent and dull;
They sent it as a challenge by the sea hawk and the gull.It roused the Norman eagerness, the Albion cliffs turned red:
"You fly the wings of logic — can you fly the wings of lead?
“Socrates said, "Those who want fewest things are nearest to the gods."”
Socrates, 11.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers
“It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.”
Remark to Thomas Creevey (18 June 1815), using the word nice in an older sense of "uncertain, delicately balanced", about the Battle of Waterloo. Creevy, a civilian, got a public interview with Wellington at headquarters, and quoted the remark in his book Creevey Papers (1903), in Ch. X, on p. 236; the phrase "a damned nice thing" has sometimes been paraphrased as "a damn close-run thing."
Context: It has been a damned serious business... Blucher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. … By God! I don't think it would have been done if I had not been there.
