Quotes about fly
page 11
Civil-suit deposition against the Herring-Curtiss Company (1909), reported in The Dayton News (31 May 1912) http://home.dayton.lib.oh.us/archives/wbcollection/wbscrapbooks1/WBScrapbooks10079.html
Context: My brother and I became seriously interested in the problem of human flight in 1899... We knew that men had by common consent adopted human flight as the standard of impossibility. When a man said, “It can’t be done; a man might as well try to fly,” he was understood as expressing the final limit of impossibility. Our own growing belief that man might nevertheless learn to fly was based on the idea that while thousands of the most dissimilar body structures, such as insects, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, were flying every day at pleasure, it was reasonable to suppose that man might also fly... We accordingly decided to write to the Smithsonian Institution and inquire for the best books relating to the subject.... Contrary to our previous impression, we found that men of the very highest standing in the profession of science and invention had attempted to solve the problem... But one by one, they had been compelled to confess themselves beaten, and had discontinued their efforts. In studying their failures we found many points of interest to us.
At that time there was no flying art in the proper sense of the word, but only a flying problem. Thousands of men had thought about flying machines and a few had even built machines which they called flying machines, but these were guilty of almost everything except flying. Thousands of pages had been written on the so-called science of flying, but for the most part the ideas set forth, like the designs for machines, were mere speculations and probably ninety per cent was false. Consequently those who tried to study the science of aerodynamics knew not what to believe and what not to believe. Things which seemed reasonable were often found to be untrue, and things which seemed unreasonable were sometimes true. Under this condition of affairs students were accustomed to pay little attention to things that they had not personally tested.
Source: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (c.1565), Ch. XXV. "Divine Locutions. Discussions on That Subject" ¶ 26 & 27
Variant translation: I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
Context: May it please His Majesty that we fear Him whom we ought to fear, and understand that one venial sin can do us more harm than all hell together; for that is the truth. The evil spirits keep us in terror, because we expose ourselves to the assaults of terror by our attachments to honours, possessions, and pleasures. For then the evil spirits, uniting themselves with us, — we become our own enemies when we love and seek what we ought to hate, — do us great harm. We ourselves put weapons into their hands, that they may assail us; those very weapons with which we should defend ourselves. It is a great pity. But if, for the love of God, we hated all this, and embraced the cross, and set about His service in earnest, Satan would fly away before such realities, as from the plague. He is the friend of lies, and a lie himself. He will have nothing to do with those who walk in the truth. When he sees the understanding of any one obscured, he simply helps to pluck out his eyes; if he sees any one already blind, seeking peace in vanities, — for all the things of this world are so utterly vanity, that they seem to be but the playthings of a child, — he sees at once that such a one is a child; he treats him as a child, and ventures to wrestle with him — not once, but often.
May it please our Lord that I be not one of these; and may His Majesty give me grace to take that for peace which is really peace, that for honour which is really honour, and that for delight which is really a delight. Let me never mistake one thing for another — and then I snap my fingers at all the devils, for they shall be afraid of me. I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? What does it mean? I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors. I have spent some years of such great anxiety, that even now I am amazed that I was able to bear it. Blessed be our Lord, who has so effectually helped me!
VIII, 48
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII
Context: The mind which is free from passions is a citadel, for man has nothing more secure to which he can fly for refuge and for the future be inexpugnable. He then who has not seen this is an ignorant man: but he who has seen it and does not fly to this refuge is unhappy.
“The shell must break before the bird can fly.”
From The Ancient Sage (1885), line 154
What is Patriotism? (1908)
Context: We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.
Such is the logic of patriotism.
“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”
"A River Runs Through It", p. 1
A River Runs Through It (1976)
Context: In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.
“The principal tenet of Jainism is non-harming. Observant Jains will literally not harm a fly.”
Q&A with Sam Harris (2005) http://www.samharris.org/press/Q&A-with-Sam-Harris.pdf
2000s
Context: The principal tenet of Jainism is non-harming. Observant Jains will literally not harm a fly. Fundamentalist Jainism and fundamentalist Islam do not have the same consequences, neither logically nor behaviorally.
2000s, God Hates Canada (2008)
Context: Our church has had a lot of bad dealings with those demon-possessed Canadians! A big Canadian flag flies at our church upside-down, the international symbol of distress. We fly it day and night, to educate and warn people about the fagi-nazi regime just to the north of us. Canadians are afraid of their tyrannical fag-run government. You can determine for yourself about Canada, and keep as far away from them as you can.
Civil-suit deposition against the Herring-Curtiss Company (1909), reported in The Dayton News (31 May 1912) http://home.dayton.lib.oh.us/archives/wbcollection/wbscrapbooks1/WBScrapbooks10079.html
Context: My brother and I became seriously interested in the problem of human flight in 1899... We knew that men had by common consent adopted human flight as the standard of impossibility. When a man said, “It can’t be done; a man might as well try to fly,” he was understood as expressing the final limit of impossibility. Our own growing belief that man might nevertheless learn to fly was based on the idea that while thousands of the most dissimilar body structures, such as insects, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, were flying every day at pleasure, it was reasonable to suppose that man might also fly... We accordingly decided to write to the Smithsonian Institution and inquire for the best books relating to the subject.... Contrary to our previous impression, we found that men of the very highest standing in the profession of science and invention had attempted to solve the problem... But one by one, they had been compelled to confess themselves beaten, and had discontinued their efforts. In studying their failures we found many points of interest to us.
At that time there was no flying art in the proper sense of the word, but only a flying problem. Thousands of men had thought about flying machines and a few had even built machines which they called flying machines, but these were guilty of almost everything except flying. Thousands of pages had been written on the so-called science of flying, but for the most part the ideas set forth, like the designs for machines, were mere speculations and probably ninety per cent was false. Consequently those who tried to study the science of aerodynamics knew not what to believe and what not to believe. Things which seemed reasonable were often found to be untrue, and things which seemed unreasonable were sometimes true. Under this condition of affairs students were accustomed to pay little attention to things that they had not personally tested.
Bat out of Hell (1977), Bat out of Hell (song)
Context: Then I'm dying at the bottom of a pit in the blazing sun
All torn and twisted at the foot of a burning bike
And I think somebody somewhere must be tolling a bell
And the last thing I see is my heart,
Still beating,
Breaking out of my body
And flying away
Like a bat out of Hell.
Journal entry (26 August 1938); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)
Context: The readiness to blame a dead pilot for an accident is nauseating, but it has been the tendency ever since I can remember. What pilot has not been in positions where he was in danger and where perfect judgment would have advised against going? But when a man is caught in such a position he is judged only by his error and seldom given credit for the times he has extricated himself from worse situations. Worst of all, blame is heaped upon him by other pilots, all of whom have been in parallel situations themselves, but without being caught in them. If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one's outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. Why should we look for his errors when a brave man dies? Unless we can learn from his experience, there is no need to look for weakness. Rather, we should admire the courage and spirit in his life. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?
"To the Virgins to Make Much of Time". Compare: "Gather the rose of love whilest yet is time", Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, book ii. canto xii. stanza 75. ; "Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds, before they be withered", Wisdom of Solomon, ii. 8.
Hesperides (1648)
Context: Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a-getting
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
Pointed to a sign on the wall: a spider with a line through it. "Oh, fair enough."
He said "I can offer you an upgrade, fifty quid, and we can include in it policies set in place by the Marquis de Laplace, the French scientist who declared that all things in the universe are predetermined, so you would be covered even if time-travel was invented during the period of rental.”
I said, "Nah, probably leave it."
Part Troll (2004)
"The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze"
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)
Context: Through the air on the flying trapeze, his mind hummed. Amusing it was, astoundingly funny. A trapeze to God, or to nothing, a flying trapeze to some sort of eternity; he prayed objectively for strength to make the flight with grace.
“But meanwhile it is flying, irretrievable time is flying.”
Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile<!--inreparabile?--> tempus.
Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus.
Book III, line 284; often quoted as tempus fugit ('time flies').
Compare Poor Richard's maxim of 1748: "Lost Time is never found again."
Georgics (29 BC)
Poems and song lyrics
Cassandra (1860)
Context: Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed.
When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind — with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?
Tinselworm (2008)
"Scholar and Carpenter", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Context: p>The while He sits whose name is Love,
And waits, as Noah did, for the dove,
To wit if she would fly to him.He waits for us, while, houseless things,
We beat about with bruised wings
On the dark floods and water-springs,
The ruined world, the desolate sea;
With open windows from the prime
All night, all day, He waits sublime,
Until the fulness of the time
Decreed from His eternity.</p
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XIV : An Assault; Gilbert Markham
On Peter Porter, 'Talking for Posterity' (Times Literary Supplement, May 14, 2010)
Essays and reviews
Context: [H]e could never have played the hero, because for him it was creativity itself that had the heroic status, beyond politics, beyond patriotism, beyond even personal happiness. It’s the reason why his work is like that. His poetry, so wonderful when it is really flying, isn’t trying to tell you how much he knows. It’s giving thanks for how much there is to be known.
“Oh darlin…
In a sky full of people, only some want to fly,
Isn't that crazy?”
"Crazy"
Seal (1991)
Context: Oh darlin...
In a sky full of people, only some want to fly,
Isn't that crazy?
In a world full of people, only some want to fly,
Isn't that crazy?
“Come, let us mount on the wings of the morning,
Flying for joy of the flight”
Dryad Song (1900)
Context: Come, let us mount on the wings of the morning,
Flying for joy of the flight,
Wild with all longing, now soaring, now staying,
Mingling like day and dawn, swinging and swaying,
Hung like a cloud in the light:
I am immortal! I feel it! I feel it!
Love bears me up, love is might!
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)
Getting Started, p. 5
How to Argue and Win Every Time (1995)
Context: While birds can fly, only humans can argue. Argument is the affirmation of our being. It is the principal instrument of human intercourse. Without argument the species would perish. As a subtle suggestion, it is the means by which we aid another. As a warning, it steers us from danger. As exposition, it teaches. As an expression of creativity, it is the gift of ourselves. As a protest, it struggles for justice. As a reasoned dialogue, it resolves disputes. As an assertion of self, it engenders respect. As an entreaty of love, it expresses our devotion. As a plea, it generates mercy. As charismatic oration it moves multitudes and changes history. We must argue — to help, to warn, to lead, to love, to create, to learn, to enjoy justice — to be.
"Communication with Alien Intelligence" http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/AlienIntelligence.html, in Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien Intelligence (1985) edited by Edward Regis <!-- Cambridge University Press --> also published in Byte Magazine (April 1985)
Context: Speed is what distinguishes intelligence. No bird discovers how to fly: evolution used a trillion bird-years to 'discover' that – where merely hundreds of person-years sufficed.
“I think hawking is the nearest thing to flying in this world.”
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
Contact with Space (1957)
Context: On March 20, 1956, 10 P. M. a thought of a very remote possibility entered my mind, which I fear will never leave me again. Am I a spaceman? Do I belong to a new race on earth, bred by men from outer space in embraces with earth women? Are my children offspring of the first interplanetary race? Has the melting-pot of interplanetary society already been created on our own planet, as the melting-pot of all earth nations was established in the U. S. A. 190 years ago? … What inspired this thought? It was seeing the science-fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still, about a spaceman who comes to Earth in a flying saucer to save us from self-destruction in a nuclear war. … All through the film I had a distinct impression that it was a bit of "my story" which was depicted there, even the actor's expressions and looks reminded me and others of myself as I had appeared 15 to 20 years ago.
Beautiful Losers (1966)
Context: What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
“God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.”
"The Fly"
Good Intentions (1942)
Variant: God in his wisdom made me fly, and then forgot to tell me why.
"Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night" final blog entry (6 January 2007) http://robertantonwilson.blogspot.com/2007/01/do-not-go-gently-into-that-good-night.html
Context: Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.
“I can't tell you the joy I felt in flying in that show … I loved it so.”
As quoted in Mary Martin : Broadway Legend (2008) by Ronald L. Davis. p. 183
Context: I can't tell you the joy I felt in flying in that show … I loved it so. The freedom of spirit that was Peter Pan was suddenly there for me. I discovered I was happier in the air than on the ground.
Poems (1917), The Great Minimum
Context: In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.
Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.
Life Without and Life Within (1859), The Captured Wild Horse
Context: p>On the boundless plain careering
By an unseen compass steering, Wildly flying, reappearing, —
With untamed fire their broad eyes glowing
In every step a grand pride showing,
Of no servile moment knowing, —Happy as the trees and flowers, In their instinct cradled hours,
Happier in fuller powers, —See the wild herd nobly ranging,
Nature varying, not changing,
Lawful in their lawless ranging.</p
“When you stand at the edge of the cliff, jump to fly, not to fall. ”
“If God wanted us to fly, he would have given us tickets. ”
“All men can fly, but sadly, only in one direction.”
“Helicopters don't fly, they vibrate so badly the ground rejects them. ”
"School strike for climate - save the world by changing the rules" https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/greta-speeches#greta_speech_tedx, TEDxStockholm (24 November 2018)
2018
"Energy and Force" (Mar 28, 1873)
Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 220
About the state and technology
Source: Экономика Цифровой Эры, LiveLib, ru, 2019-11-21 https://www.livelib.ru/author/1229982-maksim-mernes,
Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 4, “Briefings” (p. 63)
I, 1
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book I
“I’m thinking on the fly, here.”
Although now that I’m in middle management I think I’m supposed to call it “refactoring the strategic value proposition in real time with agile implementation,” or, if I’m being honest, “making it up as I go along.”
Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 9, “Speaking in Tongues” (p. 180)
1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
On the song "Before We Disappear" from his 2015 solo album Higher Truth ** Chris Cornell Flashback Q&A: 'We Have to Be Aware That Life Is So Short', Yahoo!, May 19, 2017 https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/chris-cornell-flashback-qa-aware-life-short-023857577.html,
On songwriting
NPR: Excerpt: The Best of I.F. Stone (5 September 2006)
"The Border Wall Is a Symbol of Our Symbolic Politics" https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/border-wall-immigration-debate-political-symbol/ (28 December 2018), National Review
2010s, 2018
The Ageless Wisdom (1897)
Time magazine in 10 best quotes from Narayana Murthy that will change your life, 24 October 2013, 26 December 2013, India TV News http://www.indiatvnews.com/business/india/10-best-quotes-from-narayana-murthy-that-will-change-your-life-8106.html,
Rumble In The Jungle: Ali v Foreman, p. 133
The Joke's Over (2006)
Jimmy Page – Guitarist from Led Zeppelin/The Yardbirds/solo from the BBC Documentary "Everybody Here Wants You"
Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 81
The Guardian (4 March 2005)
What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea?
Answering audience questions after a reading of The God Delusion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg, Randolph-Macon Woman's College,
Posed question: "This is probably going to be the most simplest one for you to answer, but: What if you're wrong?"
The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)
Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 11, pp. 149–150
Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 29 (p. 309)
Bequest of Pavlov to the Academic Youth of His Country. Science, Vol. 83, Issue 2155, pg. 369 (1936)
"On Flying Saucers" in Is Anyone There? (1967), pp. 215–216
General sources
Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 181-182
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)
Sermon on the Apostles' Creed (1273), prologue (trans. Joseph B. Collins)
Well, that's the question. The answer may not help him, but the question now has been asked.
The next question is what? How? And so all through the ages, people have been trying to find out the answer to that question. We've found the answer, and we do fly. This is true of every accomplishment, whether it's technology or literature, poetry, political systems or anything else. That is it. Ask the next question. And the one after that.
His explanation of the meaning of a small symbol he used when writing his signature, as quoted in an interview with David Duncan (with an image of his signature) http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/misc/duncan.html, sometime around 1980.
"We March Back to Olympus" in Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns (1977), p. 11
"Word Play"
1950's
Stanza 1
Source: The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)
The Xhosa phrase used by Trevor Noah in this quote was a purposeful mistranslation with the correct translation being: "White people don't know that I'm lying."
The Oscars February 24th, 2019
Source: Can be found under "Trevor Noah's fake translation" https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-47356329
Time Waits for No One (co-written with Keith Richards) on the Rolling Stones' 1974 album It's Only Rock 'n Roll (1973).
Lyrics
"Memorial Day"; this poem was later published in The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920)
Trees and Other Poems (1914)
Stanzas 94–95 (tr. Richard Fanshawe); the Old Man of Restelo.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto IV
Original: (pt) <p>Mas um velho d'aspeito venerando,
Que ficava nas praias, entre a gente,
Postos em nós os olhos, meneando
Três vezes a cabeça, descontente,
A voz pesada um pouco alevantando,
Que nós no mar ouvimos claramente,
C'um saber só de experiências feito,
Tais palavras tirou do experto peito:</p><p>Ó glória de mandar! Ó vã cobiça
Desta vaidade, a quem chamamos Fama!</p>O glory of commanding! O vain thirst
Of that same empty nothing we call fame!
And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."
St. 4
The Revenge (1878)
"To the Thoughtless", p. 307
The Modern Antique; Or, The Muse in the Costume of Queen Anne (1813)
2016 - 2020, Valdai Discussion Club: 15th Plenary Session (18 October 2018)
“I’m a flying bishop, like the Heavenly Father, often I am on travel.”
SYRO MALANKARA INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP PHILIPOS (1) https://www.friendsoftheword.org/syro-malankara-interview-with-bishop-philipos-1/ (December 11, 2020)
Sometimes we saw this picture continued still farther, when the poor fugitives met with another set of enemies in the air, and became the prey of birds, by endeavouring to escape the jaws of fishes.
Book I, ch. II, The Passage from Madeira to the Cape Verd Islands, and from thence to the Cape of Good Hope.
A Voyage Round the World (1777)
On why she supports Vladimir Putin in Чулпан Хаматова: «Я очень много чего боюсь» (7 June 2012) https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/sobchak_zhivem/chulpan_khamatova_ya_by_vybrala_severnuyu_koreyu_a_ne_revolyutsiyu-286479/
"Break the Chains" (song), with Rationale (Tinashé Fazakerley)
("Break the Chains" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvosF7mbrnE
Studio albums, Some Nights Last for Days (2020)
"Skies Don't Lie" (song)
("Skies Don't Lie" on YouTube (with lyrics)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJToHBj8Eb4
Studio albums, Playing in the Shadows (2011)