Quotes about breath

A collection of quotes on the topic of breath, life, likeness, living.

Johnny Depp quote: “Breathe. It’s only a bad day, not a bad life.”

Quotes about breath

“Breathe. It’s only a bad day, not a bad life.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Life, Motivational

“Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Love, Good Morning, love

“Hold me, I can't breathe I don't wanna die, I don't wanna OD Cup full of lean, pure codeine Ten lines deep, now I can't see”

Lil Peep (1996–2017) American rapper

Song Falling 4 Me, Album: Crybaby

“Everyone should consider his
body as a priceless gift from
one whom he loves above all, a
marvelous work of art, of
indescribable beauty, and
mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that
a word, a breath, a look, nay, a
thought may injure it.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Love, Beauty, Art

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Variant: I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.
Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 20

Heart

“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Smile

“A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Thiis was published without credit in The Best Loved Poems of the American People (1936) with the title "Friendship", and since that time has sometimes been misattributed http://www.geonius.com/eliot/quotes.html to Eliot; it is actually an adaptation of lines by Dinah Craik, in A Life for a Life (1859): Misattributed Context: Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Heart, For Friend

“When you feel the last bit of breath leaving their body, you're looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!”

Ted Bundy book The Stranger Beside Me

Quoted by Bill Hagmaier. Rule, Ann (2009). The Stranger Beside Me (Paperback; updated 2009 ed.). New York: Pocket Books pages 380–96.

God, Feeling, Personality

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

Green Day

Music

“Your humans slaughter each other because of the color of your skin, or your faith or your plitics -- or for no reason at all -- too many of you hate as easily as you draw breath. - Magneto”

Stan Lee (1922–2018) American comic book writer

Hate, Faith, Color, Drawing

“Life is not breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away.”

George Strait (1952) American country music singer, actor and music producer

Variant: Life is not the breaths you take but the moments that take your breath away.

Life, Goodbye, Cute, Romantic

“Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better!”

Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) Film actress from Sweden

Mountain

“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Painting

“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

Law, Dreams, Nature, Learning

“The mind wants to forget because it weighs so much on the heart and soul. I am tired of crying and feeling so helpless. I want to breathe again -just for a little while.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Feeling, Soul, Heart, Cry

“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Other sources Source: Banksy In His Own Words- Interview At The Sun https://web.archive.org/web/20181102203920/http://graffart.eu/blog/2010/09/banksy-in-his-own-words-interview-at-the-sun/, Graffart.eu, Retrieved 2 November 2018

Time

“Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Smile, Thinking, Father's Day, For Father

“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

“Just breathing isn't living!”

Eleanor H. Porter book Pollyanna

Source: Pollyanna

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Death, World, Way

“Are you running out of breath? Go faster!”

Emil Zátopek (1922–2000) Czech Olympic long-distance runner

Life credo

Life

“And just as he who, with exhausted breath,
having escaped from the sea to shore,
turns to the perilous waters and gazes.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto I, lines 22–24 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Water, Sea

“… And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., number 168
The Book of Disquiet

Life, Death, Hate, Fear

“All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and — how far above them —
: Truth, that's brighter than gem,
: Trust, that's purer than pearl, —
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, — all were for me
: In the kiss of one girl.
:* "Summum Bonum" (1889).”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Truth, Girl, Kiss, Universe

“Oh, the comfort —
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person —
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Thiis was published without credit in The Best Loved Poems of the American People (1936) with the title "Friendship", and since that time has sometimes been misattributed http://www.geonius.com/eliot/quotes.html to Eliot; it is actually an adaptation of lines by Dinah Craik, in A Life for a Life (1859): Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. Misattributed

Faith, Feeling, Personality

“We are the gleam of invinite,
the breath of light,
the spark of life,
the chain of being,
the circle of the spheres,
the scale of creation,
the rise and fall.
We are what we are
and we are not.
We are the soul in all.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://hellopoetry.com/alexis-karpouzos/

Life, Soul, Light

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://hellopoetry.com/alexis-karpouzos/

Life, Soul, Light

“I was just telling myself to do nothing more and nothing less, and just telling myself to breathe because in that moment I literally felt like I was going to puke, I was so nervous. My normal is good enough, so I don't do anything more or anything less, I just have to do what I normally do.”

Sunisa Lee (2003) American artistic gymnast; first Hmong American Olympic gold medalist

"Suni Lee talks gold medal win, 'cherished' backyard balance beam she trained on as a kid" in Today (30 July 2021) https://www.today.com/news/suni-lee-talks-gold-medal-win-i-still-can-t-t226952

“Life has many exciting things in store for you…so many thrilling nooks and crannies…

Don't be a "goody 2 shoes" who runs on the boring and safe side in life…. remaining on the same old path all the time.

Live life as grandly as you can imagine!

Enjoy the winding paths… feel the euphoria from your own microscopic perceptions in the universe…No one else can see what you see.

The times you were fortunate enough to have spent there…in those special places…

Those moments that took your breath away are what make you remember and feel fabulous

No one can know your perspective.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Life, Shoe, Feeling, Imagination

“Don’t waste your breath because it’s too late, it’s too late”

Simple plan (band)

“There is no pretending", Jace said with absolute clarity."I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there's a life after that, I'll love you then."
She caught her breath. He had said it-the words there was no going back from.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Love, 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

“Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Source: The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barret Barrett 1845-1846 Vol I

Life, Feeling, Drink, Passion

“What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 12
Context: Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Mathematics, Question, Universe, Science

“Breathing is hard. When you cry so much, it makes you realize that breathing is hard.”

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

Cry, Sad, Heartbreaking, Depressing

“Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying - a little shove toward the end.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

Life, Death, Disease, Birth

“Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,
our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.”

Homér Iliad

XVIII. 130–131 (tr. Robert Fagles). Cf. Iliad, XVII. 446–447.
Samuel Butler's translation:
: Man is the vainest of all creatures that have their being upon earth.
Robert Fitzgerald's translation:
: Of mortal creatures, all that breathe and move,
earth bears none frailer than mankind.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Variant: Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.
Source: The Iliad

“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Stepping into Freedom: Rules of Monastic Practice for Novices

Feeling

“The world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.”

Clarice Lispector book The Passion According to G.H.

Source: The Passion According to G.H.

World, Silence

“Whatever truth we feel compelled to withhold, no matter how unthinkable it is to imagine ourselves telling it, not to is a way of spiritually holding our breath. You can only do it for so long.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Truth, Way, Feeling, Imagination

“Being brokenhearted is like having broken ribs. On the outside it looks like nothing's wrong, but every breath hurts.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy

Hurt, Hurtful

“Drink today, and drown all sorrow;
You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow;
Best, while you have it, use your breath;
There is no drinking after death.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Death, Drink

“Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die.

True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.”

Robin Hobb book The Mad Ship

Source: The Mad Ship

Life, Death, Courage, Thinking

“Your true passion should feel like breathing; it’s that natural.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Feeling, Nature, Passion

“Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace!
And, lips, oh you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Death, Kiss

“Breath is the king of mind.”

B.K.S. Iyengar book Light on Yoga

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 28
Source: Light on Yoga
Context: Health is not to be mistaken for mere existence. It is the balance of the body, mind and self... there rests the mind. If the breath scatters, the mind wanders. If mind wanders, the breath scatters. So still the breath to still the mind. Mind is the king.

“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress (16 May 1967) “The Struggle Intensifies,” Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz (1970).

Pain, People, Fear, Confidence

“On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us — ah! what a dream, to live in that! — the other stifles us at the first breath.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

The Photographer’s Wife
Gigi (1945)

World, Dreams

“Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind, which now comes this way and now comes that, and changes name because it changes quarter.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto XI, lines 100–102 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

Way, Change

“Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

In his interview with Joseph Pearce. " An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0172.html." St. Austin Review 2 no. 2 (February, 2003). Interview with Joseph Pearce, Sr. (2003)

God

“I am going the way of my fathers, as the Scripture says, for I see myself called by the Lord. Be you wary and undo not your long service of God, but be earnest to keep your strong purpose, as though you were but now beginning. You know the demons who plot against you, you know how savage they are and how powerless; therefore, fear them not. Let Christ be as the breath you breathe; in Him put your trust. Live as dying daily, heeding yourselves and remembering the counsels you have heard from me. … So do you also be earnest always to be in union first with the Lord and then with the Saints, that after death, they also may receive you into everlasting tabernacles as known friends. Ponder these things, and mean them. … And now God save you, children, for Antony departs and is with you no more.”

Anthony the Great (251–357) Christian saint, monk, and hermit

Book IV, Chapter 20 (his last words), St. Athanasius. Trans. Dom J.B. McLaughlin, O.S.B. St. Antony of the Desert. Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc, 1995.
From St. Athanasius' Life of St. Antony

Death, God, Children, Fear

“This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other. They say in a single breath: "God and the liberty of man," "God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity of men" — regardless of the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God exists, all these things are condemned to non-existence. For, if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master, and, if such a master exists, man is a slave; now, if he is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity are possible for him. In vain, flying in the face of good sense and all the teachings of history, do they represent their God as animated by the tenderest love of human liberty: a master, whoever he may be and however liberal he may desire to show himself, remains none the less always a master. His existence necessarily implies the slavery of all that is beneath him. Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty — by ceasing to exist.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)

Love, Men, God, Justice

“I am here today, I may not be here tomorrow. But the responsibility to look after national interest is on the shoulder of every citizen of India. I have often mentioned this earlier. Nobody knows how many attempts have been made to shoot me, lathis have been used to beat me. In Bhubaneswar itself, a brickbat hit me. They have attacked me in every possible manner. I do not care whether I live or die. I have lived a long life and I am proud that I spend the whole of my life in the service of my people. I am only proud of this and nothing else. I shall continue to serve until my last breath and when I die, I can say, that every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

In: Selected Speeches of Indira Gandhi: January 1, 1982-October 30, 1984 http://books.google.com/books?id=ndA3AQAAIAAJ, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1986, p. 495. Her last speech delivered in Orissa on 30 October 1984 before she was assassinated.

Life, People

“If you will do some deed before you die,
Remember not this caravan of death,
But have belief that every little breath
Will stay with you for an eternity.”

Al-Maʿarri (973–1057) Medieval Arab philosopher

As quoted in The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala (1909) by Henry Baerlein, XLVII

Death

“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

“What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this Court, that enables them to discern that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for 200 years, is in fact unconstitutional? […] The Court must be living in another world. Day by day, case by case, it is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Board of County Commissioners, Wabaunsee County, Kansas, v. Umbehr, 518 U.S. 668 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=U20028&friend=oyez, No. 94-1654 (1996, dissenting); decided June 28, 1996. 1990s

People, Secret, World, Justice

“Do you realize sufficiently what it means to rule—to rule in a secret society? Not only over the lesser or more important of the populace, but over the best of men, over men of all ranks, nations, and religions, to rule without external force, to unite them indissolubly, to breathe one spirit and soul into them, men distributed over all parts of the world?”

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati

"Greeting to the newly integrated illuminatos dirigentes", in Nachtrag von weitern Originalschriften vol. 2 (1787) p. 45.

Men, Secret, World, Religion

“I survived
I speak, I breathe
I'm incomplete
I'm alive, hooray!
You're wrong again, 'cause I feel no love.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

"The Vampyre of Time and Memory", ...Like Clockwork (2013)
Lyrics, Queens of the Stone Age

Love, Feeling

“Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

A part of this passage appeared in The Best Loved Poems of the American People (1936) with the title "Friendship":
A Life for a Life (1859)
Context: Thus ended our little talk: yet it left a pleasant impression. True, the subject was strange enough; my sisters might have been shocked at it; and at my freedom in asking and giving opinions. But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
Somebody must have done a good deal of the winnowing business this afternoon; for in the course of it I gave him as much nonsense as any reasonable man could stand...

Faith, Feeling, Personality

“When you look deeply into yourself you may be able to see that there is, in this moment, a quality of aliveness that is animating you that is not philosophical and is not abstract. It's independent of what you think about it, what you believe about it and what you feel about it. It's always there! it is animating your breath, It is coursing the spirit, it is what makes it possible for you to think and speak and see and hear.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: The self-criticism of science

“People give their last breath when they don't have anything to give anymore.”

Teodor Burnar

People

“Our road not marked on maps.
Fugitives of the centuries,
our origin is the breathing
and our destination is exhalation,
A thousand suns are flowing in our blood,
and the vision of infinity is always chasing us.
The form cannot tame us,
Our days are a fire and our nights a sea.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://hellopoetry.com/alexis-karpouzos/

Sun, Sea, Night

“I can't breathe.”

George Floyd (1973–2020) African American man who was a victim of police violence in the United States, killed by Derek Chauvin

Source: [Collins, Jon, July 15, 2020, George Floyd killing: Police bodycam video details fatal arrest, MPR News, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/07/15/george-floyd-killing-police-bodycam-video-details-fatal-arrest, July 30, 2020]

“Life stretches between birth and death. Distance, just a breath”

Titon Rahmawan

#Life

Life, Death, Birth

“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

“Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 15
Context: Now I know exactly how dangerous the forest can be. And I hope I never forget it. Just like Crow said, the world's filled with things I don't know about. All the plants and trees there, for instance. I'd never imagined that trees could be so weird and unearthly. I mean, the only plants I've ever really seen or touched till now are the city kind -neatly trimmed and cared-for bushes and trees. But the ones here -the ones living here -are totally different. They have a physical power, their breath grazing any humans who might chance by, their gaze zeroing in on the intruder like they've spotted their prey. Like they have some dark, prehistoric, magical powers. Like deep-sea creatures rule the ocean depths, in the forest trees reign supreme. If it wanted to, the forest could reject me-or swallow me up whole. A healthy amount of fear and respect might be a good idea.

Beauty, Star, Tree

“Kabîr says, "O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath."”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Variant translation: Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath
As translated by Stephen Mitchell in The Enlightened Heart (1993)
Songs of Kabîr (1915)

God

“I dreamt my lady came and found me dead
…………
And breathed such life with kisses in my lips
That I revived and was an emperor.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Life, Kiss, Dead

“Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets

Source: Sonnets (1609), XVIII
Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Life, Men

“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

“… in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Invitation to a Beheading

Source: Invitation to a Beheading

Life, World, Dreams, Painting

“Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Variant: O my love, my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
Source: Romeo and Juliet

Death, Beauty

“At last she shut the book sharply, lay back, and drew a deep breath, expressive of the wonder which always marks the transition from the imaginary world to the real world.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Books, World

“You are the butter to my bread, and the breath to my life”

Julia Child (1921–2004) American chef

Life, Wedding

“I just found this world a hard place to be good in,’ says Bunny, then he closes his eyes and, with an expiration of breath, goes still.”

Nick Cave book The Death of Bunny Munro

Source: The Death of Bunny Munro

World

“What win I if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?”

William Shakespeare book The Rape of Lucrece

Source: The Rape of Lucrece

Dreams, Joy

“Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Source: Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Faith, Time, Night

“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

“To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“I laugh maniacally, then take a deep breath and touch my chest- expecting a heart to be thumping quickly, impatiently, but there's nothing there, not even a beat.”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

Heart

“There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1 March 1838); published in The Letters of Margaret Fuller vol. I, p. 327, , edited by Robert N. Hudspeth (1983).
Context: There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see — I think that is enough to say about them...

Life, Books

“You're all geniuses and you're all beautiful. You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace. Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Statement to the press in July 1969 after the release of the Plastic Ono Band's single "Give Peace a Chance", as quoted in The Beatles: An Oral History by David Pritchard and Alan Lysaght (1998) New York: Hyperion. ISBN: 0786864362. OCLC: 39093547. p. 285.
Context: It was just a gradual development over the years. Last year was "All You Need Is Love." This year it's "Give Peace a Chance." Remember love. The only hope for any of us is peace. Violence begets violence. If you want to get peace, you can get it as soon as you like if we all pull together. You're all geniuses and you're all beautiful. You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace. Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like. Okay?

Peace, Beauty, Thinking

“She'd thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related. Love was closer to a need, no different from the need to eat, to breathe.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Love, Happiness

“What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Love, Thinking, Tree

“Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

Life, Intelligence, Time

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

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

Widely attributed to Emerson on the internet, this actually originates with "What is Success?” http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/emerson/Ephemera/Success.html by Bessie Anderson Stanley in Heart Throbs Volume Two (1911) edited by Joseph Mitchell Chapple. Misattributed

Life, Children, People, World

“You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman… I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage…

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Women, Age, World, Religion

“A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.”

Salman Rushdie book The Moor's Last Sigh

Source: The Moor's Last Sigh

World

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 2
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
Variant: I never loved reading until I feared I would lose it. One does not love breathing.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Love, Fear, Reading

“Comfort me from wherever you are–alone, we are quickly worn out; if I place my head on the road, let it seem softened by you. Could it be that even from afar we offer each other a gentle breath?”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“In a world without air all you breathe is adventure!”

Helen Dunmore (1952–2017) British novelist

World

“There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

World, Happy

“I want to make Romeo jealous! I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pain, World, Sadness, Lovers

“Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Love, Marriage, Disease, Food

“I can tell you that solitude
Is not all exaltation, inner space
Where the soul breathes and work can be done.
Solitude exposes the nerve,
Raises up ghosts.
The past, never at rest, flows through it.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Soul, Solitude, Past

“Human beings believe just as they breathe - in order to survive.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

“O heavenly Father,
protect and bless all things
that have breath: guard them
from all evil and let them sleep in peace.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)
Context: One thing that specially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and misery. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker's yard at Colmar, haunted me for weeks. It was quite incomprehensible to me — this was before I began going to school — why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. It was quite incomprehensible to me — this was before I began going to school — why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me good-night, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: "O, heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace."

Peace, Sleep, Evil

“This time the fluttery feeling in my stomach was more intense. It made the inside of my thighs tingle and my breathing deepen.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Feeling, Time

“I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Star, Laughter, Sleep