Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

Although widely attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, this saying is best treated as a modern aphorism about the transformative power of an extraordinary experience. “Tasted flight” functions as a metaphor for any encounter with freedom, beauty, or heightened possibility that permanently alters one’s sense of the ordinary. After such an experience, the speaker “walk[s] the earth” changed—still grounded in daily life, yet inwardly oriented toward what was glimpsed above it. The “eyes turned skyward” suggests both aspiration and nostalgia: once you know a larger horizon is possible, you cannot fully return to a narrower one, and longing becomes a lasting companion to memory.