Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

Boys flying kites haul in their white winged birds; You can’t do that way when you’re flying words. Careful with fire, is good advice we know Careful with words, is ten times doubly so. Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead; But God Himself can’t kill them when they’re said.

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.

A foolish dog barks at a flying bird

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

The curve of life is like the parabola of a projectile which, disturbed from its initial state of rest, rises and then returns to a state of repose… Like a projectile flying to its goal, life ends in death. Even its ascent and its zenith are only steps and means to this goal… For, enlightenment or no enlightenment, consciousness or no consciousness, nature prepares itself for death.