"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return"
About this Quote
The subtext is classic Renaissance: human capability is expandable, and appetite grows with each expansion. Da Vinci isn’t romanticizing escapism so much as naming the cost of discovery. Break the boundary once and the old enclosure becomes visible forever. That longing “to return” reads like a blueprint for ambition itself: progress is propelled not by duty, but by nostalgia for the moment you first exceeded your limits.
Context sharpens the stakes. Da Vinci sketched flying machines centuries before powered flight, studying birds, airflow, and anatomy with an artist’s eye and an engineer’s obsession. In that world, flight was not an everyday metaphor; it was a speculative frontier, bordering on heresy and myth. So the sentence doubles as persuasion. It sells the idea that pursuing the impossible is not vanity but an inevitable human response to glimpsing a larger realm.
The intent, then, is to dignify obsession. If you’ve ever caught a glimpse of what could be, da Vinci suggests, you won’t be able to fully pretend you’re satisfied with what is.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wanderlust |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Vinci, Leonardo da. (2026, January 15). For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/for-once-you-have-tasted-flight-you-will-walk-the-22366/
Chicago Style
Vinci, Leonardo da. "For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/for-once-you-have-tasted-flight-you-will-walk-the-22366/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/for-once-you-have-tasted-flight-you-will-walk-the-22366/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.











