Quotes about fly

A collection of quotes on the topic of fly, flying, likeness, doing.

Quotes about fly

Douglas Adams photo

“I love deadlines. I like the whoosing sound they make as they fly by.”

Variant: I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Kurt Cobain photo

“If you're really a mean person you're going to come back as a fly and eat poop.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in Monk Magazine (1992-10).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

Snoop Dogg photo

“If the ride is more fly, you must buy”

Snoop Dogg (1971) American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor
Zhuangzi photo
Rumi photo

“I feel like flying when I take my drone out into the desert or over the tall skyscrapers in the UAE (Dubai) to capture beautiful imagery.”

NasserTone (1994) Nasser Ali Albahrani is a director, cinematographer, photographer, producer, & YouTuber, who was born on April 3…

Vice Magazine Article (July 18, 2018)

Louis Sachar photo
Alejandro Jodorowsky photo

“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

As quoted in Investing with Impact: Why Finance is a Force for Good (2016) by Jeremy Balkin

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Shahrukh Khan photo
Elton John photo

“A dream will fly
The moment that you open up your eyes.
A dream is just a riddle,
Ghosts from every corner of your life.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Original Sin
Song lyrics, Songs from the West Coast (2001)

Anne Sexton photo
Langston Hughes photo
Frida Kahlo photo

“Feet, what do I need them for
If I have wings to fly.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Pies, para qué los quiero
Si tengo alas para volar.
Diary illustration, dated 1953, preceding a foot amputation in August of that year; reproduced on page 415 of Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera (1983)
1946 - 1953

Walter O'Brien photo
Mike Tyson photo

“I don't have the desire to hurt anyone anymore. I see a fly, but I don't have the nerve to get up and kill it.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/saraceno/2005-06-12-saraceno-tyson_x.htm
On boxing

Leonardo DiCaprio photo
Kurt Cobain photo

“And the flowers sing in D minor
And the birds fly happily.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Spank Thru.
Song lyrics, B-sides and compilation tracks (1989-1993)

Eminem photo

“What, you're tryin' to be my new wife? What're you, Mariah? Fly through twice!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Superman"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

George Orwell photo

“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.”

The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), Part I: England Your England http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/lionunicorn.html
"The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941)
Source: The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
Context: As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life.

William Shakespeare photo
Tom Robbins photo
Nick Carter photo
Martin Luther photo
Paul McCartney photo

“Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Source: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999

Erich Maria Remarque photo
Luciano De Crescenzo photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Dante Alighieri photo

“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?”

Canto XII, lines 95–96 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

John Kricfalusi photo

“Not all cartoon humor is just about having bugged-out eyes and tongues flying out of people's heads.”

John Kricfalusi (1955) Canadian animator

Dixon, Collected Interviews, 90–91

Mikhail Bakunin photo
Milkha Singh photo
Ayrton Senna photo
Vladimir Tatlin photo

“The dream [of flying] is as old as Icarus... I too want to give back to man the feeling of flight [with his 'Letatlin'-air-bike, 1929-1932]. This we have been robbed of by the mechanical flight of the aeroplane. We cannot feel the movement of our body in the air.”

Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953) Russian artist

quote, c. 1930; https://utopiadystopiawwi.wordpress.com/constructivism/vladimir-tatlin/letalin/ cited by Christina Lodder, in Russian Constructivism; Yale University Press, Connecticut, 1983, p. 213
The 'Letatlin' was a glider, what Tatlin called an 'air bike', since it would be manually pedaled by the user and contain no motor
Quotes, 1926 - 1954

Mary Howitt photo

“"Will you walk into my parlour?" said a spider to a fly;
"'T is the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy."”

The Spider and the Fly, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Socrates photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo

“O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

5
The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)
Context: I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.

Taras Shevchenko photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo

“See the nigger fly the airplane!”

Hocus Pocus (1990)

Virginia Woolf photo
Ron White photo
Swami Samarpanananda photo

“Love is the space in which one finds the freedom to fly.”

Swami Samarpanananda Monk, Author, Teacher

Junglezen Sheru ( Page 17 )

Nora Roberts photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Mark Twain photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

Variant: If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.
Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 8

Bruce Lee photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
William Shakespeare photo
Malcolm X photo

“They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Malcolm X on Zionism (1964)

Alicia Keys photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Christopher Paolini photo
Kenneth Oppel photo
Galway Kinnell photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Juliet Marillier photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Thomas Mann photo
Cinda Williams Chima photo
Douglas Adams photo
Sharon Creech photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“We must keep moving. If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

"Keep Moving from this Mountain" http://www5.spelman.edu/about_us/news/pdf/70622_messenger.pdf – Founders Day Address at the Sisters Chapel, Spelman College (11 April 1960)
1960s

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Terry Pratchett photo
John Keats photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Clarice Lispector photo
Pablo Neruda photo
Mario Vargas Llosa photo
Anne Bradstreet photo

“Leave not thy nest, thy dam and sire,
Fly back and sing amidst this choir.”

Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) Anglo-American poet

In Reference to her Children, 23 June 1659.

Jesse Owens photo
Rajneesh photo

“The ordinary society is like a paperweight on you: it won't allow you to fly.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

Tantra: the Supreme Understanding (1984)

Kurt Vonnegut photo
Emperor Wu of Han photo

“Autumn wind rises, white clouds fly.
Grass and trees wither; geese go south.”

Emperor Wu of Han (-156–-87 BC) emperor Wu-Ti

The Autumn Wind 127 BC (translated by Arthur Waley), Dictionary of Quotations, Chambers: Edinburgh, U.K, 2005, p. 930
Quote

Adam Mickiewicz photo

“For mum we're fly. What mum you don't know who am I? I am Józio. And this is my sister Rózia. Now we're fly in sky! There is better than mum. See how heads in ray. Clothes with lucifer light. And on my hand as butterfly airfoil in sky we have all what we want, every day other toy, where we go here is grass, where we touch here is a flower. But we have what we want, torture us boring and trepidation. Oh mum for Your children road to heaven has been closed! On Always!”

Do mamy lecim do mamy! Cóż to, mamo nie znasz Józia? Ja to Józio ja ten samy. A to moja siostra Rózia. My teraz w raju latamy, Tam nam lepiej niż u mamy. Patrz jakie główki w promieniu, Ubiór z jutrzenki światełka, A na oboim ramieniu Jak u motylków skrzydełka, w raju wszystkiego dostatek, Co dzień to inna zabawka, gdzie stąpim wypływa trawka, gdzie dotkniem rozkwita kwiatek. Lecz choć wszystkiego dostatek dręczy nad nuda i trwoga. Ach mamo dla twoich dziatek zamknięta do nieba droga!
Part two.
Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/polpoet/mic_fore.htm

Ed Sheeran photo
Volodymyr Melnykov photo
Statius photo

“A Nemean steed in terror of the fight bears the hero from the citadel of Pallas, and fills the fields with the huge flying shadow, and the long trail of dust rises upon the plain.”
Illum Palladia sonipes Nemeaeus ab arce devehit arma pavens umbraque inmane volanti implet agros longoque attollit pulvere campum.

Source: Thebaid, Book IV, Line 136 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Statius photo

“Hear oh hear, if my prayer be worthy and such as you yourself might whisper to my frenzy. Those I begot (no matter in what bed) did not try to guide me, bereft of sight and sceptre, or sway my grieving with words. Nay behold (ah agony!), in their pride, kings this while by my calamity, they even mock my darkness, impatient of their father's groans. Even to them am I unclean? And does the sire of the gods see it and do naught? Do you at least, my rightful champion, come hither and range all my progeny for punishment. Put on your head this gore-soaked diadem that I tore off with my bloody nails. Spurred by a father's prayers, go against the brothers, go between them, let steel make partnership of blood fly asunder. Queen of Tartarus' pit, grant the wickedness I would fain see.”
Exaudi, si digna precor quaeque ipsa furenti subiceres. orbum visu regnisque carentem non regere aut dictis maerentem flectere adorti, quos genui quocumque toro; quin ecce superbi —pro dolor!—et nostro jamdudum funere reges insultant tenebris gemitusque odere paternos. hisne etiam funestus ego? et videt ista deorum ignavus genitor? tu saltem debita vindex huc ades et totos in poenam ordire nepotes. indue quod madidum tabo diadema cruentis unguibus abripui, votisque instincta paternis i media in fratres, generis consortia ferro dissiliant. da, Tartarei regina barathri, quod cupiam vidisse nefas.

Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 73

Lewis Hamilton photo
Ennius photo

“Let no one pay me honor with tears, nor celebrate my funeral rites with weeping. Why? I fly, living, through the mouths of men.”
Nemo me lacrumis decoret neque funera fletu faxit. Cur? volito vivos per ora virum.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Cicero in Tusculanae Disputationes, Book I, chapter XV, section 34

Ronald Reagan photo

“We're going forward with research on a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the decade, take off from Dulles Airport, accelerate up to 25 times the speed of sound, attaining low Earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within two hours.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

State of the Union address http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/20486a.htm, , quoted in [1986-03-05, Michael Kilian, Hypersonic flight just a hyperbolic Reagan rhapsody, The Evening Independent, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19860305&id=bmJQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=t1kDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4836,1112899]
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast; get too angry; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we fly in faster planes to arrive there quicker, to do less and return sooner; we sign more contracts only to realize fewer profits; we talk too much; love too seldom and lie too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things; we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice; we write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less; we make faster planes, but longer lines; we learned to rush, but not to wait; we have more weapons, but less peace; higher incomes, but lower morals; more parties, but less fun; more food, but less appeasement; more acquaintances, but fewer friends; more effort, but less success. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; drive smaller cars that have bigger problems; build larger factories that produce less. We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, but short character; steep in profits, but shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure and less fun; higher postage, but slower mail; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces; these quick trips, disposable diapers, cartridge living, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer, to prevent, quiet or kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stock room.”

"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Words Aptly Spoken (1995)

Bede photo

“The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.”
Talis...mihi uidetur, rex, vita hominum praesens in terris, ad conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniens unus passeium domum citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidue praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda videtur.

Book II, chapter 13
This, Bede tells us, was the advice given to Edwin, King of Northumbria by one of his chief men, at a meeting where the king proposed that he and his followers should convert to Christianity. It followed a speech by the chief priest Coifi, who also spoke in favor of conversion.
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People)

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Fly without wings; dream with open eyes.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Muse II http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/muse-ii/
From the poems written in English

Morihei Ueshiba photo
Matthew McConaughey photo

“I've lost 38 pounds. I feel good now. Overall, probably got 35 percent less energy, but there's been plateaus, like getting past 170 was really hard, but then once you get [to] 167 the next seven come off easy. Getting past 160, really hard. But then you fly down to 150. Getting past 150 was really hard and then, bam! Got down to 143 and that's where I want to be. So, once you get past the plateau, your body seems to understand, ‘O. K., this is where we're leaving now, this is where we are’ and so the energy rises.”

Matthew McConaughey (1969) American actor

" Matthew McConaughey reveals how he lost 38 pounds and ponders a 'Magic Mike' sequel http://www.hitfix.com/awards-campaign/oscar-contender-matthew-mcconaughey-reveals-how-he-lost-38-pounds-and-ponders-a-magic-mike-sequel" on hitfix.com by Gregory Ellwood, November 14, 2012 : On his weight loss for the film The Dallas Buyer's Club.

Jesse Owens photo

“I decided I wasn't going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

On his final record-breaking leap in the long-jump competition.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)