White Wing Patches

Famous quotes containing the words white, wing and/or patches:

    The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. In our hands it develops and changes, through more or less arbitrary and deliberate revisions and additions of our own, more or less directly occasioned by the continuing stimulation of our sense organs. It is a pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any white ones.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    As if her velvet helmet high
    Did turret rationality.
    She fans her wing up to the winde
    As if her Pettycoate were lin’de
    With reasons fleece, and hoises saile
    And humming flies in thankfull gaile
    Edward Taylor (1645–1729)

    A good story is one that isn’t demanding, that proceeds from A to B, and above all doesn’t remind us of the bad times, the cardboard patches we used to wear in our shoes, the failed farms, the way people you love just up and die. It tells us instead that hard work and perseverance can overcome all obstacles; it tells lie after lie, and the happy ending is the happiest lie of all.
    Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)