The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough

The Wright family book collection, however, was neither modest nor commonplace. Bishop Wright, a lifelong lover of books, heartily championed the limitless value of reading.

There could be found the works of Dickens, Washington Irving, Hawthorne, Mark Twain, a complete set of the works of Sir Walter Scott, the poems of Virgil, Plutarch’s Lives, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Thucydides.

“But it isn’t true,” Orville responded emphatically, “to say we had no special advantages . . . the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.”

He and his brother made the conquest of the sky their existence. They needed this ambition and profound, almost religious, faith in order to deliberately accept their exile to the country of the dunes, far away from all. . . . Wilbur is phlegmatic but only in appearance. He is driven by a will of iron which animates him and drives him in his work.

Then, in the way of a fatherly sermon, he added, “We learn much by tribulation, and by adversity our hearts are made better.”

“the grit and indomitable perseverance that characterize American efforts in every department of activity.”

He thought it fair to say he was well-to-do, rather than wealthy, and loved to quote his father: “All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden to others.”