flight quotes

And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

- Matthew Arnold
  'Dover Beach', stanza 4.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

- Ernest Millar Hemingway
  Letter, 23  Jul.

Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight, With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white.

-John Keats
  'I Stood Tip-Toe upon a Little Hill', l.57^8.

Dark and terrible beyond any season within my remembrance of political affairs was the day of their flight.Far darkerand moreterrible will be the dayof their return.

-1st Baron
On the defeat of the Tory Government, House of Commons, 20 Sep.

Who shall tempt with wand'ring feet The dark unbottomed infinite abyss And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight Upborne with indefatigable wings Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive The happy isle.

-John Milton
  Beelzebub. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.404^10.

Meanwhile the Adversary of God and man, Satan with thoughts inflamed of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell Explores his solitary flight.

-John Milton
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.629^32.

Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, belove'  d Night Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
  'To Night'.

Swiftly walk o'er the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joyand fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, Swift be thy flight!

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
'To Night' (published1824).

Caged birds accept each other but flight is what they long for.

-TennesseeThomas Lanier Williams
  Marguerite. Camino Real, block 7.