We fly, but we have not 'conquered' the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and the use of such of her forces as we may understand. It is when we presume to intimacy, having been granted only tolerance, that the harsh stick fall across our impudent knuckles and we rub the pain, staring upward, startled by our ignorance. Beryl Markham
About This Quote

St. Augustine said, "we fly, but we have not 'conquered' the air." In other words, we do not own the air and we should be grateful for our access to it. We must remember that there is an order of being from which we have been granted only tolerance. In other words, we have been granted a lesser amount of influence than we would have had if we had not been granted access to the air at all. We must always remember that nature presides in all her dignity and permits us a study and a use of such of her forces as we may understand.

Source: West With The Night

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