Top 4 Quotes & Sayings by Cecil Arthur Lewis

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British aviator Cecil Arthur Lewis.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Cecil Arthur Lewis

Cecil Arthur Lewis was a British fighter ace who flew with No. 56 Squadron RAF in the First World War, and was credited with destroying eight enemy aircraft. He went on to be a founding executive of the British Broadcasting Company and to enjoy a long career as a writer, notably of the aviation classic Sagittarius Rising, some scenes from which were represented in the film Aces High.

Now shut the engines off. Come down and flatten out, feel the long float, and at the given moment pull the stick right home. She's down. Now taxi in. Switch off. It's over - but not quite, for the port engine, just as if it knew, as if reluctant at the last to let me go, kicked, kicked, and kicked again, as overheated engines will, then backfired with an angry snorting: Fool! The best is over ...But I did not hear.
And should I not, had I but known, have flung the machine this way and that, once more to feel it live under my hand, have sported in the sky and laughed and sung, knowing that never after should I feel so free, so sure in hazard, so secure, riding the daylight in the pride of youth? No more horizons wider than Hope! No more the franchise of the sky, the freedom of the blue! No more! Farewell to wings! Down to the little earth!
So let us raise a cheer ... for the insatiable spirit of Man eager for all new things! What a tale could have been written by that far off man who first saw a tree trunk roll and made a wheel and cart and harnessed in his mare and cracked his whip and drove away to disappear beyond the hill! Or that first man who made a boat and raised a sail and disappeared hull down to unknown shores!
That distant day had a significance I could not give it then. So we wheeled and came back south towards the city. The Temple of Heaven slipped by underneath, that perfect pattern in its ample park. Then the wide plain ruled to the far horizon. Soon the aerodrome.
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