Learning To Fly

At first I didn't think I'd get anything out of a book about learning to fly on the trapeze. When T handed it over to me I thought, "Um, yeah. I'll get right on it!" And yet it took me a week to pick it up and start reading it, hesitantly I might add. But I did learn quite a bit from it and was able to add several new quotes to my ever-growing list:

"Death says, 'Play it safe.' Life says, 'Risk it.'"

"We learn to fly not by becoming fearless, but by the daily practice of courage."

"Do not go the way fear bids you to go." ~Persian poet Rumi

"All passions are strange to those who do not share them."

"Without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith." ~Sören Kierkegaard

"To know yourself you have to sit still, wait and meditate, but to be yourself, you have to act."

"If I live by the clock, I will die by the clock."

"A writer, like an acrobat, must occasionally try a stunt that is too much for him [or her]."~E.B. White

"The disease of professionalism that infects teachers, physicians, and lawyers, no less than flyers, begins when goals become more important than process, when practice becomes a means rather than a source of enjoyment. Focusing on a distant goal, we never cherish the moment. We mortgage the present to make a down payment on a future that keeps receding. The great trick is to make the pleasure of living each day our most important 'goal.'"