Wings Quotes - page 22
There is, as it were, a degradation a gnostic fall, in thus folding one's wings and going back again into the vulgar shell of one's own individuality. Without grief, which is the string of this venturesome kite, man would soar too quickly and too high, and the chosen souls would be lost for the race, like balloons which, save for gravitation, would never return from the empyrean.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Hawks are better soarers than buzzards but more often resort to flapping because they wish greater speed. A damp day is unfavorable for soaring unless there is a high wind. No bird soars in a calm.
The object of the tail is to increase the spread of surface in the rear when the wings are moved forward in light winds and thus preserve the centre of pressure at about the same spot. It seems to be used as a rudder very little. In high winds it is folded up very narrow.
Wilbur Wright
Blithe spirits bringing a myriad colours to our gardens, magic, ephemeral wings -- butterflies -- with short life-spans of a week to a few months. But why such an unpoetic name for a delicate daughter of nature? The Germans call them Schmetterlinge (even less onomatopoetic), the Russians call them бабочка (not to be confused with Бабушка, which means grandmother), the Greek πεταλουδα (which makes you think of petals), the French call them papillons (which is closer to the Latin papilio). Perhaps the more congenial, smoother descriptions are the Spanish mariposa and the delicate Dutch vlinder.
Alfred de Zayas
The Goldberg Variations are, as explained in my booklet-text, in short, music that observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution, music that, like Baudelaire's lovers, "rests lightly on the wings of the unchecked wind.” Gould is referring here to the circular design of the work, a circularity whose development is polarized, inspired, and fed by more and more new energy fields. The result is a universe that in its significance resembles the alpha and omega of music in general, music that evolves out of nothing and disappears back into nothing as if in a state in which time stands still.
Burkard Schliessmann
A thousand ardent oilers swung the long spout 'twixt their nods,
And tried to glimpse a meaning in the challenge of the gods.And then one night there landed on a Mineola swale
A plane that looked like pewter, with a carrier of mail.Its wings were tinged like tea-box skins, each truss of shadow gray,
Its cabin but an alcove slung beneath a metal ray. The Spirit of St. Louis was inscribed upon the lee;
It came from out a province that had never seen the sea.
Nathalia Crane
And the eyes of all look upward seeing sign-word drawing nigh,
The stony wings of Egypt coming back across the sky;We hear the clinking tamborine of Miriam anew;
We believe in every miracle since Lindbergh flew the blue - The wonder of the long draw when the bowstring is a thread -
The beauty of a courage that can raise the wings of lead.
Nathalia Crane
