Quotes about air

A collection of quotes on the topic of air, likeness, use, doing.

Karl Lagerfeld quote: “Music gives color to the air of the moment.”

Quotes about air

“I'd rather be called a boy and play with paper air-planes than be called a man and play with a girl's heart.”

Niall Horan (1993) Irish singer and songwriter

Dare to Dream by One Direction, https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6422638.Niall_Horan

Girl, Boy, Heart

“Today is filled with anger, fueled with hidden hate.
Scared of being outkast, afraid of common fate.
Today is build on tragedies which no one want's to face.
Nightmares to humanity and morally disgraced.
Tonight is filled with Rage, violence in the air.
Children bred with ruthlessness cause no one at home cares.
Tonight I lay my head down but the pressure never stops,
knowing that my sanity content when I'm droped.
But tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new,
build on spirit intent of heart and ideas based on truth.
Tomorrow I wake with second wind and strong because of pride.
I know I fought with all my heart to keep the dream alive.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Hate, Fate, Children, Truth

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Motivational, Deep, Happy, Inspirational

“Oh, to be alive in such an age, when miracles are everywhere, and every inch of common air throbs a tremendous prophecy, of greater marvels yet to be.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Age

“Music to me is the air I breathe it's the blood that pumps through my veins that keeps me alive”

Green Day

Music

“The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Truth, World, Food, Nature

“Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Walking the Path of Compassion (2015)

Truth, Light

“We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them. Our Air Force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued. It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that vengeance is inevitable.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

2015-11-17, vowing to retaliate against the Islamic militants responsible for the destruction of a Russian airliner over the Sinai on October 31, 2015. Tribune India, http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/russians-up-strikes-in-french-fury/159736.html (17 November 2015) <br class="br">2011 - 2015

Way, Understanding

“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping it's dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.”

Tupac Shakur book The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Beauty, Law, Dreams, Nature

“By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology

Health, Water, Change

“I love it when you call me Big Poppa; throw your hands in the air if you's a true player.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Big Poppa"

Love

“When travel outside the city is desired, computer-guided vehicles for land, sea, air, space and beyond can transport passengers and freight. For rapid movement of passengers on land across via ducts, bridges, and tunnels, high-speed mag-lev trains span great distances and will efficiently replace most aircraft transportation.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Designing the Future (2007)

Training, Travel, Sea, Speed

“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Life, Water, Dependency

“The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Feeling

“Sometimes I think I should just buy a blow-up party doll. Same level of intelligence, plastic, and full of air.

The problem is, I'd probably fall in love.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

Love, Intelligence, Problem, Thinking

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Children, Color, Game, Coffee

“Any great work of art … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world — the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

"What Makes Opera Grand?", Vogue (December 1958)

World, Art, Time, Success

“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Beauty, Life, Beauty, Loneliness

“We have 7 billion people on this planet. It’s not that there’s not enough room on this planet for 7 billion people, it’s that the energy needs for 7 billion people are 7 billion people’s worth of energy needs, as opposed to, say, 2 billion. Imagine how much pollution would be in the air and the oceans if there were only 2 billion people putting it in? So yeah, we’re already overpopulated.”

Morgan Freeman (1937) American actor, film director, and narrator

Source: [Stern, Marlow, Janbuary 28, 2014, Morgan Freeman on God, Satan, and How the Human Race Has ‘Become A Parasite’, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/morgan-freeman-kerry-washington-celebrate-oscars-science-at-breakthrough-prize-ceremony-1064160, The Daily Beast, New York, December 4, 2017]

People, Imagination

“There is a saying that a glass is half empty or half full, depending on how you look at it. Well, we all know that one. But we cannot just say, okay so half full is how we should look at things. No. We have to go even further in our observation and realize that the glass is actually 100 percent full: 50 percent with water and 50 percent with air.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

Game Is Not Over - 2005 Oxford Union Address http://www.jeclique.com/onoweb/news-oxfordjune2005.html

Water, Dependency

“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Life

“To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one's lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Future, Drawing

“Human minds are more full of mysteries than any written book and more changeable than the cloud shapes in the air.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

Source: The Abbot's Ghost: A Christmas Story

Books

“By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Dreams, Heart

“I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

Love

“Fire wants to burn
Water wants to flow
Air wants to rise
Earth wants to bind
Chaos wants to devour
Cal wants to live”

Cassandra Clare book The Iron Trial

Source: The Iron Trial

Water

“Music gives color to the air of the moment.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Music, Color

“And then I saw him and nothing was ever the same again.

The sky was never the same colour, the moon never the same shape: the air never smelt the same, food never tasted the same. Every word I knew changed its meaning, everything that once was stable and firm became as insubstantial as a puff of wind, and every puff of wind became a solid thing I could feel and touch.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

Food, Feeling, Change

“A soft Sea washed around the House
A Sea of Summer Air
And rose and fell the magic Planks
That sailed without a care —
For Captain was the Butterfly
For Helmsman was the Bee
And an entire universe
For the delighted crew.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Universe, Bee, Summer, Housing

“Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries
were echoing across the starless air,
so that, as soon as I set out, I wept.
Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,
accents of anger, words of suffering,
and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands—
all went to make a tumult that will whirl
forever through that turbid, timeless air,
like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto III, lines 22–30 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Suffering, Anger

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Collected Writings Vol. I (1926) edited by Bernhard Aschner, p. 110

Water

“Like the lark that soars in the air, first singing, then silent, content with the last sweetness that satiates it, such seemed to me that image, the imprint of the Eternal Pleasure.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XX, lines 73–77 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

Pleasure, Singing

“Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Toast to the artists Juan Luna and Felix Hidalgo: Madrid, Spain (25 June 1884)

Light, Country

“Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait,
Though fanned by Conquest's crimson wing
They mock the air with idle state.”

Thomas Gray The Bard

I. 1. lines 1-4
The Bard (1757)

Waiting

“The use of the sea and air is common to all; neither can a title to the ocean belong to any people or private persons, forasmuch as neither nature nor public use and custom permit any possession thereof.”

Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603

To the Spanish Ambassador (1580).

People, Nature, Personality, Sea

“How sweet the air does smell — even the air of a back-street in the suburbs — after the shut-in, subfaecal stench of the spike!”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 27, on the morning after Orwell is let out of his first tramps' accommodation, or 'spike'.

“Upon the earth are animals and men, some in a middle region, others dwelling about the air as we dwell about the sea; others in islands which the air flows round, near the continent; and in a word, the air is used by them as the water and the sea are by us, and the ether is to them as the air is to us. Moreover, the temperament of their seasons is such that they have no disease, and live much longer than we do, and have sight and hearing and smell, and all the other senses, in far greater perfection, in the same degree that air is purer than water or the ether than air. Also they have temples and sacred places in which the gods really dwell, and they hear their voices and receive their answers and are conscious of them and hold converse with them, and they see the sun, moon, and stars as they really are, and their other blessedness is of a piece with this.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Men, God, Disease, Star

“Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose — out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air — it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

The Discipline Of Transcendence (1978)

Search, Thinking, Effort, Tree

“Lying in a featherbed
will not bring you fame, nor staying beneath the quilt,
and he who uses up his life without achieving fame
leaves no more vestige of himself on Earth
than smoke in the air or foam upon the water.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XXIV, lines 47–51.
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Life, Lying, Water

“The dream [of flying] is as old as Icarus... I too want to give back to man the feeling of flight [with his 'Letatlin'-air-bike, 1929-1932]. This we have been robbed of by the mechanical flight of the aeroplane. We cannot feel the movement of our body in the air.”

Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953) Russian artist

quote, c. 1930; https://utopiadystopiawwi.wordpress.com/constructivism/vladimir-tatlin/letalin/ cited by Christina Lodder, in Russian Constructivism; Yale University Press, Connecticut, 1983, p. 213 <br class="br">The 'Letatlin' was a glider, what Tatlin called an 'air bike', since it would be manually pedaled by the user and contain no motor <br class="br">Quotes, 1926 - 1954

Dreams, Feeling, Flying

“Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice. You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer. All things belong to you — the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the wings of the air and all green things that live. You have set the powers of the four quarters to cross each other. The good road and the road of difficulties you have made to cross; and where they cross, the place is holy. Day in and day out, forever, you are the life of things.
Therefore, I am sending a voice, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, forgetting nothing you have made, the stars of the universe and the grasses of the earth.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)

Life, Star, Grass, Universe

“Day was departing, and the embrowned air
Released the animals that are on earth
From their fatigues.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto II, lines 1–3 (tr. Longfellow)
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Animals

“It's like there's this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds upon the essence of the spirit, feeds upon the essence of the human being, the spirit. This predator energy can take fossil fuel and other resources out of the Earth, turn it into fuel, to run a machine system. But in order for there to be a need for that system, and in order for that system to work, they have to mine our minds to get at the essence of our spirit. In the same way the external mining takes place, it pollutes—we see now, people understand how it poisons the environment, the water, the air pollution—the mining of the essence, the mining of the spirit, mining our minds … the pollution from that is all the neurotic, distorted, insecure behavior patterns that we develop. That's the pollution. Because in order for this predatory system, this disease, to work, we must not be able to use our minds in a clear coherent manner. Because if we use our minds in a clear coherent manner, we will not accept the unacceptable.”

John Trudell (1946–2015) Native American rights activist, musician, poet

Columbus Day Speech, San Francisco (1992)

People, Disease, Way, Behavior

“The revolutionary atmosphere remained as I had first known it. General and private, peasant and militiaman, still met as equals; everyone drew the same pay, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and called everyone else 'thou' and 'comrade'; there was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Source: Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Food, Imagination, Chance, Clothes

“I shall speak twice over. As upon a time One came to be alone out of many, so at another time it divided to be many out of One: fire and water and earth and the limitless vault of air, and wretched Strife apart from these, in equal measure to everything, and Love among them, equal in length and breadth.”

Empedocles book On Nature

from fr. 17
Variant translations:
But come! but hear my words! For knowledge gained/Makes strong thy soul. For as before I spake/Naming the utter goal of these my words/I will report a twofold truth. Now grows/The One from Many into being, now/Even from one disparting come the Many--/Fire, Water, Earth, and awful heights of Air;/And shut from them apart, the deadly Strife/In equipoise, and Love within their midst/In all her being in length and breadth the same/Behold her now with mind, and sit not there/With eyes astonished, for 'tis she inborn/Abides established in the limbs of men/Through her they cherish thoughts of love, through her/Perfect the works of concord, calling her/By name Delight, or Aphrodite clear.
tr. William E. Leonard
On Nature
Context: But come, hear my words, since indeed learning improves the spirit. Now as I said before, setting out the bounds of my words, I shall speak twice over. As upon a time One came to be alone out of many, so at another time it divided to be many out of One: fire and water and earth and the limitless vault of air, and wretched Strife apart from these, in equal measure to everything, and Love among them, equal in length and breadth. Consider [Love] in mind, you, and don't sit there with eyes glazing over. It is a thing considered inborn in mortals, to their very bones; through it they form affections and accomplish peaceful acts, calling it Joy or Aphrodite by name.

Love, Water, Time

“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 32, Phillip Marlowe
Context: What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

Sleep, Water, Parting, Dead

“This bounded terminal speed will be called the maximum that such a heavy body can naturally attain through the air”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Salviati, Day Four, 278-279 Stillman Drake translation (1974)
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Context: The speed of the ball—thanks to opposition from the air—will not go on increasing forever. Rather, what will happen is seen in bodies of very little weight falling through no great distance; I mean, a reduction to equable motion, which will occur also in a lead or iron ball after the descent of some thousands of braccia. This bounded terminal speed will be called the maximum that such a heavy body can naturally attain through the air...

Nature, Speed

“Oh, the air is sultry and pregnant with lightning.
And therefore we call to our deluded brothers: Repent, repent, the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand!”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

"The Reaction in Germany" (1842)
Context: Everywhere, especially in France and England, social and religious societies are being formed which are wholly alien to the world of present-day politics, societies that derive their life from new sources quite unknown to us and that grow and diffuse themselves without fanfare. The people, the poor class, which without doubt constitutes the greatest part of humanity; the class whose rights have already been recognized in theory but which is nevertheless still despised for its birth, for its ties with poverty and ignorance, as well as indeed with actual slavery – this class, which constitutes the true people, is everywhere assuming a threatening attitude and is beginning to count the ranks of its enemy, far weaker in numbers than itself, and to demand the actualization of the right already conceded to it by everyone. All people and all men are filled with a kind of premonition, and everyone whose vital organs are not paralyzed faces with shuddering expectation the approaching future which will utter the redeeming word. Even in Russia, the boundless snow-covered kingdom so little known, and which perhaps also has a great future in store, even in Russia dark clouds are gathering, heralding storm. Oh, the air is sultry and pregnant with lightning.
And therefore we call to our deluded brothers: Repent, repent, the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand!

“He is very strong at defending, both on the ground and in the air. He is a complete player and has no faults. He is a modern defender because he is as strong defensively as many others, but has something more than the rest. When he has the ball, he knows what to do.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Carlo Ancelotti (PSG), 2013 http://www.sambafoot.com/en/news/45256_psg_coach_carlo_ancelotti__thiago_silva_is_best_defender_in_the_world.html <br class="br">From coaches and club directors

Strong

“Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, and clouds and storms, and all the weather, through which you give your creatures sustenance.”

Francis of Assisi Canticle of the Sun

Canticle of the Sun

Weather

“And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.”

George Orwell book A Hanging

Source: "A Hanging", in The Adelphi (August 1931)

Understanding, Food, World, Life

“The life of this people greatly accords with my taste, which is naturally somewhat indolent and melancholy... To repose on voluptuous ottomans and smoke superb pipes, daily to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which requires half a dozen attendants for its perfection; to court the air in a carved caïque, by shores which are a perpetual scene; and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a barb; this is, I think, a far more sensible life than all the bustle of clubs, all the boring of drawing-rooms, and all the coarse vulgarity of our political controversies.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Edward Lytton Bulwer from Constantinople, Turkey (27 December 1830), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 174

Drawing, Perfection, Nature, Thinking

“Fire wants to burn
Water wants to flow
Air wants to rise
Earth wants to bind
Chaos wants to devour
-Iyana Sharpe”

isharpe001

Water

“Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
and I eat men like air.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

"Lady Lazarus"
Ariel (1965)
Variant: p>Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
Beware.
Beware.Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.</p
Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

Men

“May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Good Night, Kiss, Night

“You look at me, you look at me closely, each time closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other closer each time and our eyes grow, they grow closer, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other, breathing confusion, their mouths find each other and fight warmly, biting with their lips, resting their tongues lightly on their teeth, playing in their caverns where the heavy air comes and goes with the scent of an old perfume and silence. Then my hands want to hide in your hair, slowly stroke the depth of your hair while we kiss with mouths full of flowers or fish, of living movements, of dark fragrance. And if we bite each other, the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a short and terrible surge of breath, that instant death is beauty. And there is a single saliva and a single flavour of ripe fruit, and I can feel you shiver against me like a moon on the water.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Death, Pain, Beauty, Feeling

“You are not separate from the whole. You are one with the sun, the earth, the air. You don’t have a life. You are life.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Life, Sun

“A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 162.

Guy

“Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Surprise.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Water

“Can I help you with something?"
Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. "Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you."
Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. "Of course they are," he said, "I am stunningly attractive.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Cars, Girl, Help

“Every moment there are a million miracles happening around you: a flower blossoming, a bird tweeting, a bee humming, a raindrop falling, a snowflake wafting along the clear evening air. There is magic everywhere. If you learn how to live it, life is nothing short of a daily miracle.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Life, Flowers, Bird, Learning

“You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: Tragedy of Coriolanus

Love, Men, Hate, Cry

“… it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. II, st. 9
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Love, Life, Dance

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Variant: Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
Source: Macbeth

“Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.”

Yukio Mishima book Runaway Horses

Source: Runaway Horses

Summer, Cry, Clothes

“Wherever I sat — on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok — I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 15

Depressing

“The air they drove through was clear and crisp. They kept the windows up and their expectations down. The call was a suicide run. They”

Michael Connelly (1956) Novelist, journalist

Source: Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories

Suicide

“Let's be in awe
which doesn't mean
anything but the courage
to gape like fish at the surface
breaking around our mouths
as we meet the air.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Courage, Fish

“Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Books, Season

“Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Bird, Laughter, Flying

“Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

In recent years this has often been misquoted as: "Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish".
Oration at Plymouth (1802)
Context: Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. These qualities have ever been displayed in their mightiest perfection, as attendants in the retinue of strong passions.

Courageous, Courage, Perseverance

“I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women