Part 1 pg 1, Para 2:
But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would
fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one... single... more... inch... of... curve... Then his featliers ruffled, he stalled and fell.
Part 1 pg 1, Para 5:
Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not
flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else. Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to
fly.
Part 1 pg 2, Para 2:
"Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low
flying to the pelicans, the alhatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!"
Part 1 pg 2, Para 4:
"See here Jonathan " said his father not unkindly. "Winter isn't far away. Boats will be few and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If you must study, then study food, and how to get it. This
flying business is all very well, but you can't eat a glide, you know. Don't you forget that the reason you
fly is to eat."
Part 1 pg 2, Para 6:
It's all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a hard-won anchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him. I could be spending all this time learning to
fly. There's so much to learn!
Part 1 pg 4, Para 2:
As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within him. There's no way around it. I am a seagull. I am limited by my nature. If I were meant to learn so much about
flying, I'd have charts for brains. If I were meant to
fly at speed, I'd have a falcon's short wings, and live on mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget this foolishness. I must
fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a poor limited seagull.
Part 1 pg 4, Para 4:
He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land, grateful for what he had learned about work-saving low-altitude
flying.
Part 1 pg 4, Para 5:
But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done with everything I learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I will
fly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his wings harder, pressing for shore.
Part 1 pg 4, Para 6:
He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the Flock. There would be no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn, there would be no more challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty, just to stop thinking, and
fly through the dark, toward the lights above the beach.
Part 1 pg 5, Para 1:
Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never
fly in the dark!
Part 1 pg 5, Para 3:
Get down! Seagulls never
fly in the dark! If you were meant to
fly in the dark, you'd have the eyes of an owl! You'd have charts for brains! You'd have a falcon's short wings!
Part 1 pg 5, Para 6:
That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny little wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and
fly on just the tips alone! Short wings!
Part 1 pg 6, Para 3:
He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his fear was under control. Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings, extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged direc
fly toward the sea. By the time he passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity, the wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move no faster. He was
flying now straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles per hour. He swallowed, knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed be'd be blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull. But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.
Part 1 pg 7, Para 2:
His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull at two hundred fourteen miles per hour! It was a breakthrough, the greatest single moment in the history of the Flock, and in that moment a new age opened for Jonathan Gull.
flying out to his lonely practice area, folding his wings for a dive from eight thousand feet, he set himself at once to discover how to turn.
Part 1 pg 7, Para 5:
When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was full night. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he flew a loop to landing, with a snap roll just before touchdown. When they hear of it, he thought, of the Breakthrough, they'll be wild with joy. How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to
fly!
Part 1 pg 9, Para 4:
What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself alone; he learned to
fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had paid. Jonathan Scagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.
Part 1 pg 9, Para 5:
They came in the evening, then, and found Ionathan gliding peaceful and alone through his beloved sky. The two gulls that appeared at his wings were pure as starlight, and the glow from them was gentle and friendly in the high night air. But most lovely of all was the skill with which they flew, their wingtips moving a precise and constant inch from his own. Without a word, Jonathan put them to his test, a test that no gull had ever passed. He twisted his wings, slowed to a single mile per hour above stall. The two radiant birds slowed with him, smoothly, locked in position. They knew about slow
flying.
Part 1 pg 10, Para 5:
"Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast. And we
fly now at the peak of the Great Mountain Wind. Beyond a few hundred feet, I can lift this old body no higher."
Part 1 pg 10, Para 7:
As it had shined across him all his life, so understanding lighted that moment for Jonathan Seagull. They were right. He could
fly higher, and it was time to go home.
Part 2 pg 11, Para 5:
At two hundred fifty mlles per hour he felt that he was nearing his level-flight maximum speed. At two hundred seventy-three he thought that he was
flying as fast as he could
fly, and he was ever so faintly disappointed. There was a limit to how much the new body could do, and though it was much faster than his old level-flight record, it was still a limit that would take great effort to crack. In heaven, he thought, there should be no limits.
Part 2 pg 11, Para 7:
He was
flying over a sea, toward a jagged shoreline. A very few seagulls were working the updrafts on the cliffs. Away off to the north, at the horizon itself, flew a few others. New sights, new thoughts, new questions. Why so few gulls? Heaven should be flocked with gulls! And why am I so tired, all at once? Gulls in heaven are never supposed to be tired, or to sleep.
Part 2 pg 12, Para 4:
In the days that followed, Jonathan saw that there was as much to learn about flight in this place as there had been in the life behind him. But with a difference. Here were gulls who thought as he thought, For each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to
fly. They were magnificent birds, all of them, and they spent hour after hour every day practicing flight, testing advanced aeronautics.
Part 2 pg 14, Para 2:
One evening the gulls that were not night-
flying stood together on the sand, thinking. Jonathan took all his courage in hand and walked to the Elder Gull, who, it was said, was soon to be moving beyond this world. "Chiang..." he said a little nervously.
Part 2 pg 14, Para 3:
The old seagull looked at him kindly. "Yes, my son?" Instead of being enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by it; he could out
fly any gull in the Flock, and he had learned skills that the others were only gradually coming to know.
Part 2 pg 14, Para 8:
"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't
flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or
flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."
Part 2 pg 15, Para 3:
"Can you teach me to
fly like that?" Jonathan Seagull trembled to conquer another unknown.
Part 2 pg 15, Para 7:
"I want to learn to
fly like that," Jonathan said and a strange light glowed in his eyes. "Tell me what to do,"
Part 2 pg 15, Para 8:
Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull ever so carefully. "To
fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is," he said, "you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived ..."
Part 2 pg 16, Para 1:
"Forget about faith!" Chiang said it time and again. "You didn't need faith to
fly, you needed to understand
flying.This is jast the same. Now try again ..."
Part 2 pg 17, Para 2:
"We can start working with time if you wish," Chiang said, "till you can
fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to
fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love."
Part 2 pg 19, Para 4:
"I don't care what they say," he thought fiercely, and his vision blurred as he flew out toward the Far Cliffs. "There's so much more to
flying than just flapping around from place to place! A... a... mosquito does that! One little barrel roll around the Elder Gull, just for fun, and I'm Outcast! Are they blind? Can't they see? Can't they think of the glory that it'll be when we really learn to
fly?
Part 2 pg 19, Para 5:
"I don't care what they think. I'll show them what
flying is! I'll be pure Outlaw, if that's the way they want it. And I'll make them so sorry..."
Part 2 pg 20, Para 3:
Low and calm, the voice went on within his thought, demanding an answer. "Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to
fly?"
Part 2 pg 20, Para 4:
"YES, I WANT TO
fly!".
Part 2 pg 20, Para 5:
"Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to
fly so much that you will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help them know?"
Part 3 pg 21, Para 1:
Jonathan circled slowly over the Far Cliffs, watching. This rough young Fletcher Gull was very nearly a perfect flight-student. He was strong and light and quick in the air, but far and away more important, he had a blazing drive to learn to
fly.
Part 3 pg 21, Para 8:
By the end of three months Jonathan had six other students, Outcasts all, yet curious about this strange new idea of flight for the joy of
flying.
Part 3 pg 22, Para 2:
"Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlimited idea of freedom," Jonathan would say in the evenings on the beach, "and precision
flying is a step toward expressing our real nature.Everything that limits us we have to put aside. That's why all this high-speed practice, and low speed, and aerobatics...."
Part 3 pg 22, Para 3:
...and his students would be asleep, exhausted from the day's
flying. They liked the practice, because it was fast and exciting and it fed a hunger for learning that grew with every lesson. But not one of them, not even Fletcher Lynd Gull, had come to believe that the flight of ideas could possibly be as real as the flight of wind and feather.
Part 3 pg 23, Para 6:
"Well sure, O.K. they're Outcast," said some of the younger gulls, "but hey, man, where did they learn to
fly like that?"
Part 3 pg 24, Para 1:
"Martin Gull!" he shouted across the sky. "You say you know low-speed
flying. You know nothing till you prove it!
fly!"
Part 3 pg 24, Para 6:
When the
flying was done, the students relaxed in the sand, and in time they listened more closely to Jonathan. He had some crazy ideas that they couldn't understand, but then he had some good ones that they could.
Part 3 pg 24, Para 8:
It was a month after the Return that the first gull of the Flock crossed the line and asked to learn how to
fly. In his asking, Terrence Lowell Gull became a condemned bird, labeled Outcast; and the eighth of Jonathan's students.
Part 3 pg 25, Para 1:
The next night from the Flock came Kirk Maynard Gull, wobbling across the sand, dragging his leftwing,to collapse at Jonathan's feet. "Help me," he said very quietly, speaking in the way that the dying speak. "I want to
fly more than anything else in the world..."
Part 3 pg 25, Para 5:
"Are you saying I can
fly?"
Part 3 pg 25, Para 7:
As simply and as quickly as that, Kirk Maynard Gull spread his wings, effortlessly, and lifted into the dark night air. The Flock was roused from sleep by his cry, as loud as he could scream it, from five hundred feet up: "I can
fly! Listen! I CAN
fly!"
Part 3 pg 25, Para 9:
He spoke of very simple things - that it is right for a guil to
fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.
Part 3 pg 26, Para 2:
"How do you expect us to
fly as you
fly?" came another voice. "You are special and gifted and divine, above other birds."
Part 3 pg 26, Para 8:
A long silence. "Well, this kind of
flying has always been here to be learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do with time. We're ahead of the fashion, maybe, Ahead of the way that most gulls
fly."
Part 3 pg 26, Para 10:
It happened just a week later. Fletcher was demonstrating the elements of high-speed
flying to a class of new students. He had just pulled out of his dive from seven thousand feet, a long gray streak firing a few inches above the beach, when a young bird on its first flight glided directly into his path, calling for its mother. With a tenth of a second to avoid the youngster, Fletcher Lynd Seagull snapped hard to the left, at something over two hundred miles per hour, into a cliff of solid granite.
Part 3 pg 27, Para 3:
"The trick Fletcher is that we are trying to overcome our limitations in order, patiently, We don't tackle
flying through rock until a little later in the program."
Part 3 pg 29, Para 7:
A moment later Jonathan's body wavered in the air, shimmering, and began to go transparent. "Don't let them spread silly rumors about me, or make me a god. O.K., Fletch? I'm a seagull. I like to
fly, maybe..."
Part 3 pg 29, Para 9:
"Poor Fletch. Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to
fly."
Part 3 pg 30, Para 6:
No limits, Jonathan? he thought. Well, then, the time's not distant when I'm going to appear out of thin air on your beach, and show you a thing or two about
flying!
Found 54 matches in 238 items.