Quotes about wing (979 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

“The function which the wing performs against the air when the air is motionless is the same as that of the air moved against the wings when these are without motion.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

“You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 26

Life

“Remember that your bird should have no other model than the bat, because its membranes serve as an armour or rather as a means of building together the pieces of its armour, that is the framework of the wings.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

Bird

“Philosophy leaps ahead on tiny toeholds; hope and intuition lend wings to its feet. Calculating reason lumbers heavily behind, looking for better footholds, for reason too wants to reach that alluring goal which its divine comrade has long since reached.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous), p. 40

Hope

“In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive socialist, which I was. That meant I think people should get their false teeth and their health looked after, all the rest of it. But apart from that, I worked for money and I wanted to be rich. So what the hell — if that's a paradox, then I'm a socialist. But I am not anything. What I used to be is guilty about money. That's why I lost it, either by giving it away or by allowing myself to be screwed by so-called managers.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Playboy interview (1980)

Money , People , Health , Hell

“I see the Four-fold Man.
The Humanity in deadly sleep,
And its fallen Emanation. The Spectre & its cruel Shadow.
I see the Past, Present & Future, existing all at once
Before me; O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings!”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 1, plate 15, lines 6-9

Sleep , Past , Future

“Pity him who lives at home
Happy with his life,
Without a dream, a flexing of wings,
To make him relinquish
Even the warmest ember of his hearth!

Pity him who is happy!
He lives because life lasts.
Nothing within him whispers
More than the primeval law:
That life leads to the grave.”

Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem

Original: Triste de quem vive em casa,
Contente com o seu lar,
Sem que um sonho, no erguer de asa,
Faça até mais rubra a brasa
Da lareira a abandonar!Triste de quem é feliz!
Vive porque a vida dura.
Nada na alma lhe diz
Mais que a lição da raiz-
Ter por vida a sepultura.
Poem "O Quinto Império" http://www.inverso.pt/Mensagem/Encoberto/QuintoImperio.htm, lines 1–10
Message

Life , Law , Dreams , Home

“Every body that is moved continues to move so long as the impression of the force of its mover is retained in it, therefore the movement of this wing with violence… will come to move the whole bird with it until the impetus of the moved air has been consumed.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

Bird

“I do not regard the rise of woman as a bad sign. Rather do I fancy that her traditional subordination was itself an artificial and undesirable condition based on Oriental influences. Our virile Teutonic ancestors did not think their wives unworthy to follow them into battle, or scorn to dream of winged Valkyries bearing them to Valhalla. The feminine mind does not cover the same territory as the masculine, but is probably little if any inferior in total quality. To expect it to remain perpetually in the background in a realistic state of society is futile—despite the most feverish efforts of Nazis and Fascisti. However—it will be some time before women are sufficiently freed from past influences to form an active factor in national life. By the time they do gain influence, they will have lost many of the emotional characteristics which now impair their powers of judgment. Many qualities commonly regarded as innate—in races, classes, and sexes alike—are in reality results of habitual and imperceptible conditioning.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 64
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life , Women , Dreams , Sex

“Even with broken wings
Even with shattered dreams
I'm still gonna try
I'm still gonna fly
Even with broken wings
I can do anything
I found a strength I never knew I had in me
With these broken wings.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Broken Wings
Resurrection (2014)

Dreams , Flying

“Those who gave away their wings are sad not to see them fly.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Los que dieron sus alas están tristes, de no verlas volar.
Voces (1943)

Sadness , Flying

“Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

September 1913 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1576/, st. 3
Responsibilities (1914)

Wolf , Dead

“Space is a wind that does not blow
On Betelgeuse and time – oh time – is a bird,
Whose wings have never stirred
The golden avenues of leaves
On Betelgeuse.”

Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940) English poet

"Betelgeuse", from The Unknown Goddess (London: Methuen, [1925] 1927) p. 34.

Bird , Time

“Surely, God could have caused birds to fly with their bones made of solid gold, with their veins full of quicksilver, with their flesh heavier than lead, and with their wings exceedingly small. He did not, and that ought to show something. It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Notes in a copy of Jean-Baptiste Morin's "Famous and ancient problems of the earth's motion or rest, yet to be solved" (published 1631), as quoted in The Crime of Galileo (1976) by Giorgio De Santillana, p. 167
Other quotes

God , Bird , Flying

“O YE PEOPLE THAT HAVE MINDS TO KNOW AND EARS TO HEAR!
The first call of the Beloved is this: O mystic nightingale! Abide not but in the rose-garden of the spirit. O messenger of the Solomon of love! Seek thou no shelter except in the Sheba of the well-beloved, and O immortal phoenix! dwell not save on the mount of faithfulness. Therein is thy habitation, if on the wings of thy soul thou soarest to the realm of the infinite and seekest to attain thy goal.”

Bahá'u'lláh book The Hidden Words

The Hidden Words

Love , People , Faith , Soul

“The GAA is the sporting wing of the IRA.”

Sammy Wilson (1953) British politician

The Irish News (September 6, 1989)

Sport

“The climbing soul, leaving all that she has grasped already as too narrow for her needs, will thus grasp the idea of that magnificence which is exalted far above the heavens. But how can any one reach to this, whose ambitions creep below? … He therefore who keeps away from all bitterness and all the noisome effluvia of the flesh, and raises himself on the aforesaid wings above all low earthly ambitions, or, more than that, above the whole universe itself, will be the man to find that which is alone worth loving, and to become himself as beautiful as the Beauty which he has touched and entered.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 11

Love , Beauty , Soul , Idea

“Lenin's methods [of "hard" centralism and mistrust of the working class] lead to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a "dictator" substitutes himself for the central committee. … The party must seek the guarantee of its stability in its own base, in an active and self-reliant proletariat, and not in its top caucus … which the revolution may suddenly sweep away with its wing.”

Leon Trotsky book Our Political Tasks

"Our Political Tasks" (1904), as quoted in The Prophet Armed (1963) by Isaac Deutscher

“Love is enough: cherish life that abideth,
Lest ye die ere ye know him, and curse and misname him;
For who knows in what ruin of all hope he hideth,
On what wings of the terror of darkness he rideth?”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song VI: Cherish Life that Abideth
Context: Love is enough: cherish life that abideth,
Lest ye die ere ye know him, and curse and misname him;
For who knows in what ruin of all hope he hideth,
On what wings of the terror of darkness he rideth?
And what is the joy of man's life that ye blame him
For his bliss grown a sword, and his rest grown a fire?

Love , Life , Hope

“To equip a dull, respectable person with wings would be but to make a parody of an angel.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Context: All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete. The follies of youth have a basis in sound reason, just as much as the embarrassing questions put by babes and sucklings. Their most antisocial acts indicate the defects of our society. When the torrent sweeps the man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory. Shelley, chafing at the Church of England, discovered the cure of all evils in universal atheism. Generous lads irritated at the injustices of society, see nothing for it but the abolishment of everything and Kingdom Come of anarchy. Shelley was a young fool; so are these cocksparrow revolutionaries. But it is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and such blushing and confusion of countenance for all those who have been wise in their own esteem, and have not learnt the rough lessons that youth hands on to age. If we are indeed here to perfect and complete our own natures, and grow larger, stronger, and more sympathetic against some nobler career in the future, we had all best bestir ourselves to the utmost while we have the time. To equip a dull, respectable person with wings would be but to make a parody of an angel.

Angels , Personality

“We must not only open our eyes, but our arms, our wings.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch, XXI - No!
Context: Ah, there are cloudy moments when one asks himself if men do not deserve all the disasters into which they rush! No — I recover myself — they do not deserve them. But we, instead of saying "I wish" must say "I will." And what we will, we must will to build it, with order, with method, beginning at the beginning, when once we have been as far as that beginning. We must not only open our eyes, but our arms, our wings.

“In February, if the days be clear,
The waking bee, still drowsy on the wing,
Will sense the opening of another year
And blunder out to seek another spring.”

Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English writer and gardener

"Bee-Master", p. 40
The Land (1926)

Spring , Sense , Bee

“The danger to India, mark you, is not Communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Context: [When asked in 1963 that "now that there is Communist government in Kerala, what would happen if communists came to power at the Centre?"] - Communists, communists! Why are you all so obsessed with communism and communists? What is that the communists can do what we cannot do and have not done?... Why do you imagine the communists will ever be voted to power at the Centre? The danger to India, mark you, is not Communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism. (Jawaharlal Nehru, a Biography; by Sankar Ghose, p 180.)

Communication

“I buoyed me on the wings of dream,
Above the world of sense;
I set my thought to sound the scheme,
And fathom the Immense”

Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921) British poet

"The Chantry Of The Cherubim" in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917) by D. H. S. Nicholson.
Context: p>I buoyed me on the wings of dream,
Above the world of sense;
I set my thought to sound the scheme,
And fathom the Immense;
I tuned my spirit as a lute
To catch wind-music wandering mute.Yet came there never voice nor sign;
But through my being stole
Sense of a Universe divine,
And knowledge of a soul
Perfected in the joy of things,
The star, the flower, the bird that sings.Nor I am more, nor less, than these;
All are one brotherhood;
I and all creatures, plants, and trees,
The living limbs of God;
And in an hour, as this, divine,
I feel the vast pulse throb in mine.</p

World , Dreams , Sense

“O dream on your black wings
you come when I am sleeping.

Sweet is the god but still I am
in agony and far from my strength.

for I had hope (none now) to share
something of the blessed gods,

nor was I so foolish
as to scorn pleasant toys.

Now may I have
all these things.”

Sappho (-630–-570 BC) ancient Greek lyric poet

Fragment 63 Voigt
The Willis Barnstone translations, Dream

God , Dreams , Hope , Sleep

“LATER than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof. In his dream these had been carrier pigeons from someplace far across the ocean, landing and taking off again one by one, each bearing a message for him, but none of whom, light pulsing in their wings, he could ever quite get to in time.”

Thomas Pynchon book Vineland

First lines
Vineland (1990)
Context: LATER than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof. In his dream these had been carrier pigeons from someplace far across the ocean, landing and taking off again one by one, each bearing a message for him, but none of whom, light pulsing in their wings, he could ever quite get to in time. He understood it to be another deep nudge from forces unseen, almost surely connected with the letter that had come along with his latest mental-disability check, reminding him that unless he did something publicly crazy before a date now less than a week away, he would no longer qualify for benefits. He groaned out of bed.

Dreams , Light , Time , Summer

“The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1855/feb/23/supply-ministerial-explanations to the House of Commons (23 February 1855) opposing the Crimean War.
1850s
Context: The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal.

Death , Angels

“As I was brought up in this tradition myself I can recognise it under strange disguises, and also sympathise with it, for even at its stupidest and most sentimental it is a comelier thing than the shallow self-righteousness of the left-wing intelligentsia.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

From a review of Malcolm Muggeridge's The Thirties, in New English Weekly (25 April 1940)
Context: It is all very well to be "advanced" and "enlightened," to snigger at Colonel Blimp and proclaim your emancipation from all traditional loyalties, but a time comes when the sand of the desert is sodden red and what have I done for thee, England, my England? As I was brought up in this tradition myself I can recognise it under strange disguises, and also sympathise with it, for even at its stupidest and most sentimental it is a comelier thing than the shallow self-righteousness of the left-wing intelligentsia.

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”

Axel Munthe (1857–1949) Swedish physician

Source: supanet.com/find/famous-quotes-by/axel-munthe/a-man-can-stand-a-lot-as-fqb50991/

Soul , Imagination , Law , Universe

“There's always some wiseacre who stands in the wings and criticizes. You've got two choices. You either buy these wiseacres off by giving them jobs… or you scare them off. If they don't scare, you take them in the alley. When they get out of the hospital, if they still want to squawk, you get rid of them.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

“Simplicity and purity are the two wings by which a man is lifted above all earthly things. Simplicity is in the intention — purity in the affection. Simplicity tends to God,— purity apprehends and tastes Him.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 545.

God

“The cock does not crow till it has thrice flapped its wings; the parrot in moving among boughs never puts its feet excepting where it has first put its beak. Vows are not made till Hope is dead.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Hope , Dead

“One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the city park and reciting poetry. At that age I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe's Faust. The sun was just setting and reminded me of a glorious passage:
Sie rückt und weicht, der Tag ist überlebt,
Dort eilt sie hin und fördert neues Leben.
O! daß kein Flügel mich vom Boden hebt,
Ihr nach und immer nach zu streben!
Ein schöner Traum, indessen sie entweicht.
Ach! zu des Geistes Flügeln wird so leicht
Kein körperlicher Flügel sich gesellen![The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!
A glorious dream! though now the glories fade.
Alas! the wings that lift the mind no aid
Of wings to lift the body can bequeath me.
(tr. Bayard Taylor)
As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and my companion understood them perfectly. The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him, "See my motor here; watch me reverse it."”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

I cannot begin to describe my emotions. Pygmalion seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally, I would have given for that one which I had wrested from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence …

On the Invention of the Induction Motor
My Inventions (1919)

Sun , Dreams , Heart , Truth

“Lenin was a right-wing deviation of the socialist movement and he was so regarded…by the mainstream Marxists… Bolshevism was a right-wing deviation.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Speech on “Lenin, Trotsky and Socialism and the Soviet Union”, (March 15, 1989) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsceZ9skQI
Quotes 1960s–1980s, 1980s

“Not every pigeon is a rat with wings. Not every rat with wings is a dove of peace.”

Giannina Braschi (1953) Puerto Rican writer

Peace

“O dream on your black wings
you come when I am sleeping.”

Sappho (-630–-570 BC) ancient Greek lyric poet

The Willis Barnstone translations, Dream

Sleep , Dreams

“A man without ambition is like a bird without wings”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/10/14/wings/

Bird

“Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Way

“What has been called the Right Wing appears to have been largely a combination of executioner worshippers and deceiving, enemy agents for many decades.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Revolution by Number

Appearance

“Friendship, 'tis said, is love without his wings,
And friendship, sir, is sweet enough for me.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Savonarola (1881), Candida to Valori in Act I, sc. ii; p. 35.

Friendship , Love

This quote waiting for review.

“Latin America’s right-wing has no shame in throwing itself at the highest bidder — their morals shift to match whoever’s holding the purse strings.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: 1480 AM Rock&Pop. Guadalajara, Mexico.

“Each day has been chained to the previous one. But the weeks have wings. Anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live my life.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life

“Do you know how pale & wanton thrillful
comes death on a strange hour
unannounced, unplanned for
like a scaring over-friendly guest you've
brought to bed
Death makes angels of us all
& gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Death , Angels

“Till swollen with cunning, of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And, melting, Heavens conspir'd his overthrow.”

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator

Source: The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus

“Great loves have legs and wings. They are substantial. They do not dissapate so easily… Great loves have staying power. Or so I told myself.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Source: Sappho's Leap

Love

“Then there were those famous wings. Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure?”

Alison Bechdel (1960) American cartoonist, author

Source: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Disappointment , Failure , Sea

“Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Way

“Sometimes grace works like water wings when you feel you are sinking.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

Feeling , Water

“Love will not be constrain'd by mastery.
When mast'ry comes, the god of love anon
Beateth his wings, and, farewell, he is gone.
Love is a thing as any spirit free.”

Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales

Source: The Canterbury Tales

Love , God

“They're on their way to the foreign-language wing. That's no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they'll choke to death on too much American.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Death , Way , Time

“To the heavens on the wings of a pig.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

“The man with no imagination has no wings.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

For Men , Imagination

“Be a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Feeling , Bird , Singing

“Wasn't there a spell for making yourself happy? Somebody must have invented one. How could he have missed it? Why didn't they teach it? Was it in the library, a flying book fluttering just out of reach, beating its wings against some high window?”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Books , Flying , Happiness

“If the butterfly wings its way to the sweet light that attracts it, it's only becasue it doesn't know that the fire can consume it.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Way , Light

“He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Books , Dance

“Life is chaotic and unpredictable. If a butterfly flaps its wings in
one part of the world, it could cause people at the opposite end of the globe to watch a Discovery Channel special on butterflies”

Stephen Colbert book I Am America (And So Can You!)

Source: I Am America

Life , People , World , Parting

“To a Young Poet

Time cannot break the bird's wing from the bird.
Bird and wing together
Go down, one feather.

No thing that ever flew,
Not the lark, not you,
Can die as others do.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Collected Poems

Bird , Time

“Excuse me, have you seen Death? Big guy with black feathery wings? Likes to reap souls?”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Death , Guy , Soul

“When I only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts.”

Anzia Yezierska (1880–1970) American writer

World , Reading , Forgetting

“Very
soon he
will vanish
completely in the wings
of his own
wordless
stanza.
[ ]

but
his
stanza
is not
completely
empty
[ * ]”

Mark Z. Danielewski (1965) Novelist

“But I've never despised myself so much as I did that day - she was so small and - so fierce, so, it was like breaking a hawk's wings, stopping up a clear spring with bricks - digging up roses to make space to park your tank. Pointless and ugly.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Spring

“The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Bird , Strong

“Wings of PURIFICATION”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Nightfall

“God gave the Angels wings and humans chocolate.
Mrs. Miracle”

Debbie Macomber (1948) American writer

Source: Mrs. Miracle

God , Angels

“I have felt the wind on the wing of madness.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Madness

“A rune, hovering like an angel: a shape like two wings joined by a single bar.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Angels

“… her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Flying

“If you want to find the trail, if you want to find yourself, you must explore your dreams alone. You must grow at a slow pace in a dark cocoon of loneliness so you can fly like wind, like wings, when you awaken.”

Francesca Lia Block book Dangerous Angels

Source: Dangerous Angels

Dreams , Loneliness , Flying

“You mean other than the wings? I once ate nine snicker bars in a row without barfing. It was a record.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

“Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad…”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Sadness

“Without love, we are birds with broken wings.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

Love , Bird

“These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Hope , Summer , Childhood , Flying

“You seemed so far away," Miss Honey whispered, awestruck.

"Oh, I was. I was flying past the stars on silver wings," Matilda said. "It was wonderful.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Star , Past , Flying

“Whathat!" Tyson gasped.
"Those are the stables for the pegasi," I replied, "You know, winged horses?"
"Whasthat!"
"Um… those are the toilets.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Horse

“I don't see that we have much choice," I said, "since we don't have anyone who can grow wings."
"I will push you off this mountain," Sam warned.
"All right," Blitzen decided, "let's try it. I mean the rune, not pushing Magnus off the mountain.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Mountain

“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Dreams," from the anthology Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers, ed. Arna Bontemps (1941)

Wise , Heartbreaking , Hope , Life

“Goodnight sweet prince, may flights of devils wing you to your rest.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

“The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

Variant: The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence

Birthday , Children

“Would a fly without wings be called a walk?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Flying

“You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Way , Time

“Ari felt like, Hellooo, I have wings! I turn into a wolf! Blending is out is out of the question!”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Question , Wolf

“If bringing down the wall would require you to fly, you must believe you can fly. Otherwise, when the decisive moment comes, you will surely discover you ahve no wings.”

Patrick Carman book The Dark Hills Divide

Source: The Dark Hills Divide

Decision , Flying

“They say that shoulder blades are where your wings were, when you were an angel," she said. "They say they're where your wings will grow again one day.”

David Almond book Skellig

Source: Skellig

Angels

“Innocence ain't all it's cracked up to be, you know. Innocent little kids rip the wings off flies, because they don't know any better. innocence.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

“People don't need wings to survive"
"Mockingjays do.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

People

“I want more of this feeling - fire and wings.”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Feeling

“In every message she spoke of birds, of flight, of the world away. Even back then, she flew against what was presented to her. I wanted to cling to her wings and soar, no matter how intimidated I was.”

Lisa See book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Source: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

World , Bird

“Why does she have wings?'
So she can fly.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Flying

“Alongside the practical thought something else struggled and, like an escaped butterfly, took wing: the assurance of something wonderful awaiting her. Just around the corner……”

Norah Lofts (1904–1983) British writer

“If I fall out, pull this ring? What happens then? I sprout wings and fly?" -Spader in "The Never War”

D.J. MacHale book The Never War

Source: The Never War

War , Flying

“Archer reddened to the temples but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock if it were left undisturbed.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

World

“The first time her laughter unfurled its wings in the wind, we knew that the world would never be the same”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

World , Laughter , Time

“My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring and carried aloft on the wings of the breeze.”

Anne Brontë book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day (1842)
Context: My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze; For above and around me the wild wind is roaring, Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.
Context: My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

Soul