Quotes about breath
page 10

“p>Dear Land of Flowers, forgive me!—that I took
These snatches from thy glittering wealth of song,
And twisted to the uses of a book
Strains that to alien harps can ne'er belong.Thy gems shine purer in their native bed
Concealed, beyond the pry of vulgar eyes;
And there, through labyrinths of language led,
The patient student grasps the glowing prize.Yet many, in their race toward other goals,
May joy to feel, albeit at second-hand,
Some far faint heart-throb of poetic souls
Whose breath makes incense in the Flowery Land.”

Herbert Giles (1845–1935) British sinologist and diplomat

Chinese Poetry in English Verse http://library.umac.mo/ebooks/b25541080.pdf, Dedication (dated October 1898)

Books, Feeling, Soul, Flowers

“But so fair,
She takes the breath of men away
Who gaze upon her unaware.”

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

Bianca Among the Nightingales http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=3035&poem=127031, st. 12 (1862).

Men

“"Truth," said a traveller,
"Is a rock, a mighty fortress;
"Often have I been to it,
"Even to its highest tower,
"From whence the world looks black.""Truth," said a traveller,
"Is a breath, a wind,
"A shadow, a phantom;
"Long have I pursued it,
"But never have I touched
"The hem of its garment."And I believed the second traveller;
For truth was to me
A breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom,
And never had I touched
The hem of its garment.”

Stephen Crane book The Black Riders and Other Lines

Source: The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895), XXVIII

Truth, World, Travel

“One of the loveliest daughters of that land,
Divinest Greece! that taught the painter's hand
To give eternity to loveliness;
One of those dark-eyed maids, to whom belong
The glory and the beauty of each Song
Thy poets breathed, for it was theirs to bless
With life the pencil and the lyre's dreams,
Giving reality to visioned gleams
Of bright divinities.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Leander and Hero from The London Literary Gazette (22nd February 1823)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Life, Beauty, Dreams, Reality

“And we will be ready, at the end of every day will be ready, will not say no to anything, will try to stay awake while everyone is sleeping, will not sleep, will make the shoes with the elves, will breathe deeply all the time, breathe in all the air full of glass and nails and blood, will breathe it and drink it, so rich, so when it comes we will not be angry, will be content, tired enough to go, gratefully, will shake hands with everyone, bye, bye, and then pack a bag, some snacks, and go to the volcano.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

Shoe, Drink, Sleep, Time

“It is characteristic of the technocracy to render itself invisible. Its assumptions about reality and its values become as unobtrusively pervasive as the air we breathe…. the technocracy increases and consolidates its power… following the dictates of industrial efficiency, rationality, and necessity…. the technocracy assumes a position similar to that of the purely neutral umpire in an athletic contest…. we tend to ignore the man… Yet… he alone sets the limits and goals of the competition and judges the contenders.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Reality

“I never seem to have excuses good enough to not to create every day. I cannot help it, creating is like breathing for me, involuntary, necessary, and the fuller I do it, the more alive I feel.”

Marjo-Riikka Makela (1977) Finnish actress

Los Angeles lecture on being an artist at Chekhov Studio International while teaching a workshop with Matthew Davis January 11th & 12th 2014

Feeling, Help

“More dreams have been assassinated by guilt than ever were ended by waking up. The dream of freedom is a yearning towards growth, a need for self-knowledge, not an escape from some half seen, half felt bogeyman. We all have a need, mostly unsatisfied and rarely spoken, to measure ourselves against nature as we were meant to do. To see how far our muscles and our breath and our unaided minds can take us. In a culture that lets us do little for ourselves we have this curious and hidden need to make our way to paradise on our own two feet. Being carried to paradise on a palanquin was, I am sure, as unsatisfying as being carried there on a jet. To sleep away your passage in silk draped sloth, or to murder space in a turbine’s roar, gives us no measure of ourselves and the measure of self is the meaning of life.”

Reese Palley (1922–2015)

“Unlikely Passages” 1984

Life, Dreams, Way, Nature

“Every toiling Manchester, its smoke and soot all burnt, ought it not, among so many world-wide conquests, to have a hundred acres or so of free greenfield, with trees on it, conquered, for its little children to disport in; for its all-conquering workers to take a breath of twilight air in? You would say so! A willing Legislature could say so with effect. A willing Legislature could say very many things! And to whatsoever 'vested interest,' or such like, stood up, gainsaying merely, "I shall lose profits,"—the willing Legislature would answer, "Yes, but my sons and daughters will gain health, and life, and a soul."—”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Life, Children, Health, World

“There is no other Úa than the one who has always lived with me and never gone from me for a single moment. She is closer to me than the flower of the field and the light of the glacier, because she is fused with my own breath. The one thing that remains is what lives deepest within yourself, even though you glide from one galaxy to another. Nothing can change that. And now let us have more shark meat.
- Pastor Jón talking with EmBi”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Flowers, Light, Change

“He didn’t like concentrated responsibility. Agreement with other people who he thought were good, right minded, and trying to do the right thing by the world was almost as necessary to him as air to breathe.”

Frances Perkins (1882–1965) American politician

The Roosevelt I Knew (1946), ch. 12

People, World

“He changes his opinions as he does his friends, and much on the same account. He has no comfort in fixed principles; as soon as anything is settled in his own mind, he quarrels with it. He has no satisfaction but the chase after truth, runs a question down, worries and kills it, then quits it like a vermin, and starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Character of Cobbett" <br class="br"> Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Truth, Game, Question, Change

“After thirteen hours we arrived at Bangkok airport and I raced for the smoking room. Smoking room was a big name for a small Perspex cubicle that was opaque from the outside because of the grey pressure of the fumes within. I opened the door, saw all the other smokers sitting there face to face in two tight rows, and I realised that I would have to smoke in the standing position. Then I realised I didn’t have to light up. All I had to do was breathe in. It was the moment of truth.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Smoking the Memory', on giving up smoking
Television and radio, Radio 4: A Point of View

Truth, Light

“Oh, that we had our eyes more and more steadily fixt on the risen Savior! Oh, that we could ever be learning more and more from Him to breathe out blessing, as He did when He imparted His Spirit to the disciples! Oh, that we were more and more learning like Him to encourage the foolish and slow of heart to joyful faith in the divine promises, to active obedience to the divine will of their Lord and Master, to the glad enjoyment and use of all the heavenly treasures that He has thrown open to us! Oh, that we were ever speaking more effectively to all connected with us, of the kingdom of God and of our inheritance in it, so that they might see why it was necessary for Christ to suffer, but also into what glory He has gone! These are our desires, and they are not vain desires.”

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) German theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar

Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christ's Resurrection an Image of Our New Life The World's Great Sermons, Volume 3 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11713 by Grenville Kleiser

God, Faith, Suffering, Learning

“There come moments to every man when he is thankful to be alive, and every breath drawn is a delight; so at that hour I praised my Maker for His good earth, and for sparing me to rejoice in it.”

John Buchan book Salute to Adventurers

Source: Salute to Adventurers (1915), Ch. 16 "The Ford of the Rapidan"

“I can enchant the trees and rocks, and fill
The dumb brown lips of earth with mystery,
Make them reveal or hide the god. I breathe
A deeper pity than all love, myself
Mother of all, but without hands to heal:
Too vast and vague, they know me not.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Love, God, Tree

“As always, when the opportunity arose, Joe took a long, astute look at the girl whom, if he could have managed it, he would have had as his mistress, or, even better, his wife. It did not seem possible that Wendy Wright had been born out of blood and internal organs like other people. In proximity to her he felt himself to be a squat, oily, sweating, uneducated nurt whose stomach rattled and whose breath wheezed. Near her he became aware of the physical mechanisms which kept him alive; within him machinery, pipes and valves and gas-compressors and fan belts had to chug away at a losing task, a labor ultimately doomed. Seeing her face, he discovered that his own consisted of a garish mask; noticing her body made him feel like a low-class windup toy. All her colors possessed a subtle quality, indirectly lit. Her eyes, those green and tumbled stones, looked impassively at everything; he had never seen fear in them, or aversion, or contempt. What she saw she accepted. Generally she seemed calm. But more than that she struck him as being durable, untroubled and cool, not subject to wear, or to fatigue, or to physical illness and decline. Probably she was twenty-five or -six, but he could not imagine her looking younger, and certainly she would never look older. She had too much control over herself and outside reality for that.”

Philip K. Dick book Ubik

Source: Ubik (1969), Chapter 5 (pp. 58-59)

People, Fear, Color, Feeling

“Still as the holy of holies breathes the vast
Within its crystal depths the stars grow dim;
Fire on the altar of the hills at last
Burns on the shadowy rim.
Moments that holds all moments; white upon
The verge it trembles; then like mists of flowers
Break from the fairy fountain of the dawn
The hues of many hours.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

"Dawn"
By Still Waters (1906)

Star, Flowers

“Breathe slumbrous music round me, sweet and slow,
To honied phrases set!
Into the land of dreams I long to go.
Bid me forget!”

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907) British writer

Mandragora, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Dreams, Music, Forgetting

“Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."”

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

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality
Variant: Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life".

Life, Dead

“Voice is a flowing breath of air, perceptible to the hearing by contact. It moves in an endless number of circular rounds, like the innumerably increasing circular waves which appear when a stone is thrown into smooth water, and which keep on spreading indefinitely from the centre unless interrupted by narrow limits, or by some obstruction which prevents such waves from reaching their end in due formation. When they are interrupted by obstructions, the first waves, flowing back, break up the formation of those which follow.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Alternate translation: The voice is a flowing breath, made sensible to the organ of hearing by the movements it produces in the air. It is propagated in infinite numbers of circular zones, exactly as when a stone is thrown into a pool of standing water countless circular undulations are generated therein, which, increasing as they recede from the center, spread out over a great distance, unless the narrowness of the locality or some obstacle prevent their reaching their termination; for the first line or waves, when impeded by obstructions, throw by their backward swell the succeeding circular lines of waves into confusion. Quoted by Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of its Development (1893, 1960) Tr. Thomas J. McCormack
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V, Chapter IV, Sec. 6

Water, Appearance

“Gary: Beryl Willard is extremely competent. Beryl Willard has been extremely competent, man and boy, for forty years. In addition to her extreme competence, she has contrived, with uncanny skill, to sustain a spotless reputation for being the most paralysing, epoch-making, monumental, world-shattering, God-awful bore that ever drew breath…I will explain one thing further - it is this. No prayer, no bribe, no threat, no power, human or divine, would induce me to go to Africa with Beryl Willard. I wouldn't go as far as Wimbledon with Beryl Willard.
Liz: What he's trying to say is that he doesn't care for Beryl Willard.”

Noel Coward Present Laughter

Present Laughter (1939)

God, World, Boy

“There is a flower, a purple flower
Sown by the wind, nursed by the shower,
O'er which Love has breathed a power and spell
The truth of whispering hope to tell.
(According to the Lady’s Book of Flowers, 1842, this is the centaury)”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Love, Truth, Books, Hope

“What we used to think of as exotic can now only be found in countries that cannot afford Americanization. Meaning no home comforts, peppers, unleavened bread. It is a kind thing to take one’s bit of tourist money there, to the deserving, and not put it in the hands of the disdainful Nicois or Cannois. If you can get into a country which is politically oppressed, that too is a good thing for the natives, for you are bringing a breath of freedom. Increasingly, perhaps, one ought to be travelling for the benefit of those who cannot afford or are not permitted to travel. We all belong to one another now, and no foreign country ought to be merely a sideshow….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

"Thoughts on Travel".
Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Money, Travel, Home, Thinking

“When raging love with extreme pain
Most cruelly distrains my heart;
When that my tears, as floods of rain,
Bear witness of my woful smart;
When sighs have wasted so my breath
That I lie at the point of death:
I call to mind the navy great
That the Greeks brought to Troyè town:
And how the boisterous winds did beat
Their ships, and rent their sails adown;
Till Agamemnon's daughter's blood
Appeased the gods that them withstood.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"The Lover Comforteth Himself with the Worthiness of his Love", line 1.

Love, Death, God, Pain

“You will probably have noticed that three of the defendants have very wisely chosen to exercise their inalienable right not to go into the witness box to answer a lot of impertinent questions. I will merely say that you are not to infer from this anything other than that they consider the evidence against them so flimsy that it was scarcely worth their while to rise from their seats and waste their breath denying these ludicrous charges…”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

The Secret Policeman's Ball (1979)

Exercises, Question, Box

“And weeping fast as she had breath
Janet implored us, "Wake her from her sleep!"
And would not be instructed in how deep
Was the forgetful kingdom of death.”

John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974) American poet

"Janet Waking", line 25, from Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927).

Death, Sleep, Forgetting

“We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Address to Civil, Naval, Military and Air Force Officers of Pakistan Government, Karachi (11 October 1947)

Men, Justice, Light

“Riches, glory, power are mere smoke, vanity! The rich man will find a richer than himself; the greater glory of another will eclipse a man who is famous; a strong man will be conquered by a stronger. But can Cæsar himself, can any god even, experience greater delight or be happier than a simple mortal at the moment when at his breast there is breathing another dear breast, or when he kisses beloved lips? Hence love makes us equal to the gods, O Lygia.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Quo Vadis

Marcus Vinicius to Lygia, in Ch. 2
Quo Vadis (1895)

Love, God, Kiss, Strong

“The planted seed consigned to common earth,
Disdains to moulder with the baser clay;
But rises up to meet the light of day,
Spreads all its leaves, and flowers, and tendrils forth;
And, bathed and ripened in the genial ray,
Pours out its perfume on the wandering gales,
Till in that fragrant breath its life exhales.”

Anne Lynch Botta (1815–1891) writer, poet, socialite

Aspiration

Life, Flowers, Light

“Herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be willfully corrupted by this stinking smoke.”

James I of England (1566–1625) king during union of English and Scottish crowns

A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604)

God

“Ooh, their breath is warm
And they smell like sleep,
And they say they take me home.
Like poppies heavy with seed
They take me deeper and deeper.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave

Home, Sleep

“Meanwhile Medea, though she was singing and dancing with her maids, could think of one thing only. There was no melody, however gay, that did not quickly cease to please. Time and again she faltered and came to a halt. To keep her eyes fixed on her choir was more than she could do. She was for ever turning them aside to search the distant paths, and more than once she well-nigh fainted when she mistook the noise of the wind for the footfall of a passer-by. But it was not so very long before the sight of Jason rewarded her impatient watch. Like Sirius rising from Ocean, brilliant and beautiful but full of menace for the flocks, he sprang into view, splendid to look at but fraught with trouble for the lovesick girl. Her heart stood still, a mist descended on her eyes, and a warm flush spread across her cheeks. She could neither move towards him nor retreat; her feet were rooted to the ground. And now her servants disappeared, and the pair of them stood face to face without a word or sound, like oaks or tall pines that stand in the mountains side by side in silence when the air is still, but when the wind has stirred them chatter without end. So these two, stirred by the breath of Love, were soon to pour out all their tale.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 948–972

Love, Beauty, Search, Girl

“That's just great," someone said under his breath. "We've got a bloody queen mother alien living with us. She could blow into a million new buggers at any moment.”

Stephenie Meyer book The Host

Anonymous man about Wanderer, p. 351
The Host (2008)

“I would resign the words of praise which now
Make my cheek crimson and my pulses beat.
Could I but deem that when my heart is cold
And my lip passionless, my songs would be
Numbered 'mid the young minstrels' first delights,
And murmured by the lover where his suit
Calls upon poetry to breathe of love.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

[This passage is in Erinna, altered]
The London Literary Gazette, 1825

Love, Lovers, Heart

“I am sure I do not know why the beauty of Monte Carlo should not satisfy more than it does. The bluest of all seas is nowhere bluer than when you see it between the marble balustrades of the long white terrace before the casino, palms are nowhere greener than in that high garden which the mountain screen from every unkind breath, no colours could be more rich and various than those of the red and purple Alps that tower up behind the town, on whose summit such violent thunderstorms gather and break. But for me, at least, there was not at all the pleasure I had anticipated in this dazzling white and blue, these feathery palms and ragged Alps. …I had a continual restless feeling that there was nothing at all real about Monte Carlo; that the sea was too blue to be wet, the casino too white to be anything but pasteboard, and that from their very greenness the palms must be cotton. … in atmosphere and spirit the entire kingdom of Monaco is an extension of the casino.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

Source: Willa Cather in Europe (1956), Ch. 14 (16 September 1902)

Pleasure, Beauty, Feeling, Mountain

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”

Robin Sloan (1979) American writer

Source: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), Chapter 31 “Epilogue” (p. 288; closing words)

Books, Hope, Way, Light

“Here one cries sudden on a sobbing breath,
Gripped in the clutch of some incarnate fear
What terror through the darkness draweth near?
What memory of carnage and ofdeath
What vanished scenes of dread to his closed eyes appear?”

Eva Dobell (1876–1963) British poet

Unsourced, Night Duty

Fear, Appearance, Memory

“I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.
And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

III Of the Ceremony of the Introit, including what is called the "Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church" http://www.hermetic.com/egc/creed.html. <br class="br">Liber XV : The Gnostic Mass (1913)

Life, Men, Secret, Star

“Said Periander, "Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, 14
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Roger: We will be hanging out for an extended amount of time in Europe. From November 1st until the end of our lives, it’s a very long tour. We’re playing the Fest on Halloween, which is my birthday in Florida – in Gainesville. We’re playing the Fest, my other band, Rehasher, is playing the Fest and we’re just going to be taking a little bit of time to breathe in January and probably be out on the road again pretty soon in the states. We’re doing some international stuff Australia, Japan, South America – that’s going on but nothing going on in the states quite yet.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Birthday, Time

“Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,
The bee's collected treasures sweet,
Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet
The still small voice of gratitude.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

Ode for Music http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=ocmu (1769), V, line 8

Music, Bee, Gratitude

“And His that gentle voice we hear,
Soft as the breath of even.”

Harriet Auber (1773–1862) British poet, hymnwriter

Our Blest Redeemer, ere He breathed

“Oxygen is an accident. Breath is intentional.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

“Growing up in Texas gave me many things I'm thankful for. And one of them is an appreciation of the Hispanic culture. In Texas, it's in the air you breathe; Hispanic life, Hispanic culture and Hispanic values are inseparable from the life of our state, and have been for many generations. The history of Mexican-American relations has had its troubled moments, but today our peoples enrich each other in trade and culture and family ties.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Radio address (May 2001)

Life, People, Family, History

“Emilio and I like projects to breathe and grow. We started with a concept -- write songs, make demos, then let the guest stars listen to them and then afffect the writing process. For Jose Feliciano, I had written a chorus and a bit of a melody. He started playing the chorus and ad-libbing. I went, "This is the [stuff]! Forget my melody!" Carlos Santana worked just the other way. He wanted me to record a plished take singing first, so his playing could recreate my emotion. I got goose bumps [writing "90 Millas"]. Like in "Esperando," which is addressed to Cubans on the island. Those of us in America, we're like the bogeyman, but I wanted Cubans at home to know: Whatever happened doesn't matter. The future is for us to heal. Adn also: because we're here, we latched onto any part of our culture. Yes and no [this is a political record]. Politics is life, so yes. but it's not specific. Saying that 90 miles haven't divided us sends a message about freedom for Cuba -- and for everyone.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.huffingtonpost.com (September 7, 2007)
2007, 2008

Life, Way, Home, Star

“A flower may fade before 'tis noon,
And I this day may lose my breath.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 13: "The Danger of Delay".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

Flowers

“Stand back, leave me alone, submerged people,
Go away. I haven't dispossessed anyone,
Haven't usurped anyone's bread.
No one died in my place. No one.
Go back into your mist.
It's not my fault if I live and breathe,
Eat, drink, sleep and put on clothes.”

Primo Levi book Collected Poems

"The Survivor" (1984)
Collected Poems (1984)

People, Drink, Sleep, Clothes

“Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is, a nature religion. I hate the idealism that wrenches man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not, like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I know further that I am a finite moral being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Lecture V, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), pp. 35-36 <br class="br"> Lectures on the Essence of Religion http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/lectures/index.htm (1851)

Hate, Religion, Hope, Nature

“He read at wine, he read in bed, He read aloud, had he the breath, His every thought was with the dead, And so he read himself to death.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"Tarquin of Cheapside"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Death, Wine, Reading, Dead

“We had found an accursed country. On the fringe of an unspanned continent along whose gelid coast our comrades had made their home—we knew not where—we dwelt where the chill breath of a vast, Polar wilderness, quickening to the rushing might of eternal blizzards, surged to the northern seas.”

Douglas Mawson (1882–1958) Australian geologist, Antarctic explorer and academic

The Home of the Blizzard (1915)

Home, Sea, Country

“Date not the life which thou hast run by the mean of reckoning of the hours and days, which though hast breathed: a life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, — by deeds, not years…”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) Irish-British politician, playwright and writer

Pizarro (first acted 24 May 1799), Act iv, Scene 1. Compare: "Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours / Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours", Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii.

Life

“…the sin of gluttony, also the sin of lecherous intent toward an honourable and high-placed matron…. But more sin is to come, and that sin a double one, namely of lechery in act, perhaps venial in the young but by no means to be condoned, and of adultery, which Saint John saith shall be punished by fire for the act and brimstone for the stink of the ordure of the partners in that sin…. She is but a heathen…. With the instinct of her kind she knoweth the best and most secret places for lechery…. thou are bent on sin, the act of darkness…. On her breath is no honey but the smell of strong drink, the potent mingling of barley and juniper in deadly ferment…. One man is from the Antipodes but, contrary to the superstition of the vulgar, he is like other men…. It is he who seeth the cabin where thy lust worketh itself out, he remembereth lewd advice of the charioteer of Cathay…. approacheth on tiptoe the sound of beastly gratification…. Lust croucheth now above in the rooftree, his wings fearfully foldeth…. But in his rage he spareth not her, calling her Jezebel and harlot….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Devil of a State (1961)

Men, Secret, Drink, Strong

“Hey, I get enough exercise; I breathe in and I breathe out.”

Robert Mitchum (1917–1997) American film actor, author, composer and singer

Responding to a request that Mitchum join Stuart Whitman and friends for some skeet shooting, concluding with the Whitman's observation,"You need some exercise"; as quoted by Whitman during a post-screening Q & A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALqddyqgUdc#t=649 at the on Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs on May 18, 2013

Exercises

“Solitude matters, and for some people it is the air that they breathe.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

"Susan Cain: Quiet revolutionary" speaker profile at TED.com, February 2012 (est.)

People, Solitude

“Cover me, when I sleep
Cover me, when I breathe
You throw your pearls before the swine
Make the monkey blind
Cover me, darling please.
Monkey, monkey, monkey.
Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Shock The Monkey
Song lyrics, Peter Gabriel (IV), Security (1982)

Sleep, Swine

“Farewell!
For in that word, that fatal word,—howe'er
We promise, hope, believe,—there breathes despair.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Canto I, stanza 15.
The Corsair (1814)

Hope, Despair

“The Triumph of Wit is to make your good Nature subdue your Censure; to be quick in seeing Faults, and slow in exposing them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called a Good Name, is made up of the Breath of Numbers that speak well of you; so that if by a disobliging Word you silence the meanest, the Gale will be less strong which is to bear up your Esteem.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

The Lady's New Year's Gift: or Advice to a Daughter (1688)

Nature, Strong, Silence

“To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a human being might be free. That was my idea about sound. It still is, that they should breathe … not to be used for the vested interest of an idea. I feel that music should have no vested interests, that you shouldn't know how it's made, that you shouldn't know if there's a system, that you shouldn't know anything about it … except that it's some kind of life force that to some degree really changes your life … if you're into it.”

Morton Feldman (1926–1987) American avant-garde composer

Quoted in a 1976 interview, published in Desert Plants by Walter Zimmermann.

Life, Music, Feeling, Idea

“All this breathing in
Never breathing out.”

Ben Folds (1966) American musician

"Fair", Whatever and Ever Amen (1997).
Song lyrics, With Ben Folds Five

“Go to sleep, you stunning sky, gently creep, cunning by
A quiet hum is amplified by your thumb that you suck dry
A hundred raging waters snare the lonely sigh
Hold your breath and clasp at Cassiopeia.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Cassiopeia
The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)

Sleep, Water, Rage

“of the body was immediately agitated with convulsive movements resembling a violent shuddering from cold. … On moving the second rod from hip to heel, the knee being previously bent, the leg was thrown out with such violence as nearly to overturn one of the assistants, who in vain tried to prevent its extension. The body was also made to perform the movements of breathing by stimulating the phrenic nerve and the diaphragm. When the supraorbital nerve was excited 'every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expressions in the murderer's face, surpassing far the wildest representations of Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted.”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

Andrew Ure (1819) Quart. J. Sci., vol. 6, pp. 283-294. quoted by: W.S.C. Copeman, (1951). "Andrew Ure, M.D., F.R.S. (1778-1857)". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine. Royal Society of Medicine. 44 (8): pp. 658–59,

Fear, Smile, Rage, Despair

“… we've got so many laws you can't breathe without breaking something.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XIV

Law

“The oxygen crisis that began only two billion years ago prompted the evolution of respiring bacteria. These microbes that used oxygen to derive biochemical energy more efficiently than ever before eventually took over most of the world. Some of the oxygen-breathing bacteria became symbiotic, merging with different (oxygen-eschewing) bacteria to form nucleated cells, which, after becoming sexual, evolved into fungi, plants, and animals.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

with Dorion Sagan, Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature (2007).

World, Animals

“Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers,
Lull'd by the faint breezes sighing through her hair;
Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers
Breathed to my sad lute 'mid the lonely air.”

George Darley (1795–1846) Irish poet, novelist, and critic

Poem Sweet in her green dell http://www.bartleby.com/101/640.html

Sadness, Beauty, Flowers, Sleep

“I'm the one who started spreading that particular factoid, about Bendis, Azz and me all being bald Brian's from Cleveland, just to get my name mentioned in the same sentence as two much-better writers, and it's worked like a goddamn charm. Next up, I'm going to grow a big, disgusting beard, just so people will start talking about Alan Moore and me in the same breath.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Ain't It Cool News interview http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=17832

People

“The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names.”

Neil Gaiman book Coraline

Coraline (2002)

Memory, Heart

“She with one breath attunes the spheres,
And also my poor human heart.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Inspiration, Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900

Heart

“If dreams of flying are the last hope of freedom, I will pray for wings with my last breath.”

Steven Erikson book The Crippled God

The Crippled God (2011)

Dreams, Hope, Freedom, Flying

“The ceremony took only a minute or so because Archie insisted on getting it over with quickly before anyone knew what was going on. The less drama, the better. Don't let Obie and Carter build it up. Thus, before any protest could be made, Archie had shot out his hand and pulled a marble from the box. White. Obie's jaw dropped in surprise. Things were moving too fast. He'd wanted Archie to squirm; he'd wanted the audience to realize what was going on here. He'd wanted to prolong the ceremony, to get as much of the drama and suspense out of the situation as possible. Archie's hand shot out again and it was too late for Obie to prevent the action. He drew in his breath. The marble was hidden in Archie's closed fist. He held the fist out, toward the audience. Archie held his back stiff. The marble had to be white. He hadn't come this far to be denied at the last moment. He let a smile play over his lips as he faced the audience, gambling everything in his show of confidence. He opened his palm and held up the marble for all to see. White.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 245-246

Smile, Confidence, Box

“Hand took a breath and opened his palms, as if accepting the gift of rain. "YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY!" he bellowed into the cold exhausted city.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”

Crowfoot (1830–1890) Chief of the Siksika

Crowfoot's last words, 1890; reported in ‎Clark Tibbitts, Aging in the Modern World: Selections from the Literature of Aging for Pleasure and Instruction (1957), p. 222.

Life, Grass, Night

“And 't is my faith, that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Source: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Lines written in Early Spring.

Faith, Flowers

“When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

On Dramatic Poetry (1758)

Imagination, Time, Painting

“This Parliament is led by Scotland's first minority Government. That innovation was unintended - very un intended - but it is one which has breathed new life into our political debate.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Third Session of Parliament (June 30, 2007)

Life

“The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

"And the Rock Cried Out" (1953), reprinted in The Day It Rained Forever (1959)

Silence

“"Jubal," the face said, "I am thy loved Past,
The soul that makes thee one from first to last.
I am the angel of thy life and death,
Thy outbreathed being drawing its last breath.
Am I not thine alone, a dear dead bride
Who blest thy lot above all men's beside?”

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

The Legend of Jubal (1869)

Love, Life, Death, Men

“Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

No. 1, p. 172 in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: A New Edition, v. VIII. London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1815
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

Law

“I am a vegetarian and so is my baby! … I became a vegetarian in small stages starting at the ripe old age of 16 years old! … When I turned 16 I started to get a little freaked out if while I was eating my KFC, I looked at my chicken drum sticks too long. If I noticed the veins or cartilage etc. … I started to see that it was once an actual living breathing animal. … I have this beautiful baby girl and I have a choice to make. Do I feed her meat? Or no? I went with my gut, I had learned over the years how to feed myself healthy, and made sure I got enough iron, so I would do the same for Luna Marie… I knew nothing else.”

Constance Marie (1965) actress

"No “MOO” for Me and Luna Marie", in her official website ConstanceMarie.net (11 August 2010) http://constancemarie.net/2010/no-moo-for-me-and-luna-marie.

Age, Beauty, Girl, Learning

“We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.”

Thomas Hood The Death-Bed

The Death-Bed; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Life, Night

“I'm scared of him," said Piggy, "and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's alright really, an' then when you see him again; it's like asthma an' you can't breath. I tell you what. He hates you too, Ralph —"
"Me? Why me?"
"I dunno. You got him over the fire; an' you're chief an' he isn't."
"But he's Jack Merridew!"
"I been in bed so much I done some thinking. I know about people. I know about me. And him. He can't hurt you: but if you're standing out of the way he'd hurt the next thing. And that's me."
"Piggy's right, Ralph. There's you and Jack. Go on being chief.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 5: Beast from Water

Hate, People, Way, Thinking

“You need to love this with your heart and soul. You need to breathe music. My best advice — perform as much as you can. With every mistake, progress.”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Interview with Shelia M. Goss, "Women In Music" at BellaOnline (2009) http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art44926.asp

Love, Music, Soul, Heart

“And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights — the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation — the right to breathe air as nature provided it — the right of future generations to a healthy existence?”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, American University speech

Fear, Peace, Nature, Future

“At this period of his existence, meat and blood, entrails, and all that had ever lived and breathed disgusted him as food, for an animal dies in pain just as man does, and it repelled him to be digesting death's agony.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book The Abyss

Source: The Abyss (1968), p. 190

Death, Pain, Food, Animals

“And all that we built, and all that we breathed
And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds
Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably
And we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)

Silence

“I've seen how violently animals raised for food are treated, and I don't want to support that. … The fact that the meat on my plate was once a living, breathing creature became something I could no longer ignore or justify as food. … As someone who felt they were a confirmed meat-eater, I guess ultimately if I can do it, then anyone can, you know―it’s a really easy choice to make. And it’s a humane choice to make.”

Owain Yeoman (1978) British actor

“Owain Yeoman’s ‘Veggie Testimonials’,” in PETA.org (12 May 2009) https://www.peta.org/features/owain-yeomans-veggie-testimonials/.

Food, Support, Animals

“The two cops dragging the little guy out stopped dead still. The other one washing the bloodstains from the seat quit swishing the brush over the wicker and held his breath. Nobody ever spoke that way to Dilwick. Nobody from the biggest politician in the state to the hardest apple that ever stepped out of a pen. Nobody ever did because Dilwick would cut them up into fine pieces with his bare hands and enjoy it. That was Dilwick, the dirtiest, roughest cop who ever walked a beat or swung a nightstick over a skull. Crude, he was. Crude, hard and dirty and afraid of nothing. He'd sooner draw blood from a face than eat and everybody knew it. That's why nobody ever spoke to him that way. That is, nobody except me.
Because I'm the same way myself.”

Mickey Spillane book The Twisted Thing

The Twisted Thing (1966)

Way, Guy, Drawing, Dead

“Do these things for the sake of your country during the war. Do them for the sake of your country after the war. When the smoke of this great conflict has been dissolved in the atmosphere we breathe there will reappear a new Britain. It will be the old country still, but it will be a new country. Its commerce will be new, its trade will be new, its industries will be new. There will be new conditions of life and of toil, for capital and for labour alike, and there will be new relations between both of them and for ever. (Cheers.) But there will be new ideas, there will be a new outlook, there will be a new character in the land. The men and women of this country will be burnt into fine building material for the new Britain in the fiery kilns of the war. It will not merely be the millions of men who, please God! will come back from the battlefield to enjoy the victory which they have won by their bravery—a finer foundation I would not want for the new country, but it will not be merely that—the Britain that is to be will depend also upon what will be done now by the many more millions who remain at home. There are rare epochs in the history of the world when in a few raging years the character, the destiny, of the whole race is determined for unknown ages. This is one. The winter wheat is being sown. It is better, it is surer, it is more bountiful in its harvest than when it is sown in the soft spring time. There are many storms to pass through, there are many frosts to endure, before the land brings forth its green promise. But let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Loud cheers.
Speech in his constituency of Carnavon Boroughs (3 February 1917), quoted in The Times (5 February 1917), p. 12
Prime Minister

Life, Women, Men, God

“There was Johnson (Lyndon) who had compromised too many contradictions and now the contradictions were in his face: when he smiled the corners of his mouth squeezed gloom; when he was pious, his eyes twinkled irony; when he spoke in a righteous tone, he looked corrupt; when he jested, the ham in his jowls looked to quiver. He was not convincing. He was a Southern politician, a Texas Democrat, a liberal Eisenhower; he would do no harm, he would do no good, he would react to the machine, good fellow, nice friend -- the Russians would understand him better than his own. … Johnson gave you all of himself, he was a political animal, he breathed like an animal, sweated like one, you knew his mind was entirely absorbed with the compendium of political fact and maneuver.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)

Smile, Understanding, Animals

“Why prattle we like children at their play,
Spending thus idle breath, enough to freight
An able vessel of the primer rate?
Our tongues are voluble, and store of words
Invention on all arguments affords,
Scatter'd on fresh occasions here and there,
And what thou say'st thou shalt from others hear.
Let us no longer vainly thus contend,
Like fenceless women, railing to no end.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book XX
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)

Women, Children

“I was a vocal opponent of the George W. Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq, a strategic blunder made worse by slapdash execution. As we have seen, this star-crossed action took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, breathed new life into a moribund al Qaeda, and enhanced Iranian influence in this critical region - all outcomes which damaged both the United States and our ally Israel.”

Merrill McPeak (1936) United States Air Force general

How to Secure Israel: Demilitarized land for peace is the key to a settlement (April 2008)

Life, Star, Decision

“One should work to his last breath. Idleness should always be avoided.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Karma yoga
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 25 December 1981

“If you are a believer in evolution, answer this. Did the first fish that crawled out of the ocean to become an animal have lungs or gills? If he had lungs (which were needed to breathe while on land), why did they evolve while he was underwater? If he had only gills (which were needed to survive while underwater, he wouldn't survive on land for more than two minutes.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

Fish, Animals

“Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

"Form and Intelligibility," from The Radcliffe Manuscripts (1949); written in 1895 as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College

Help

“You, whom I made for man's worship when earth was younger and fairer, hearken, and learn why I breathe new life into husks from my scrap-heaps! Gods of old days, discrowned, disjected, and treated as rubbish, hark to the latest way of the folk whose fathers you succored! They have discarded you utterly.”

James Branch Cabell book Figures of Earth

Miramon, in Ch. XXXII : The Redemption of Poictesme
Figures of Earth (1921)

Life, God, Way, Learning

“When I sit near the ocean in the morning and write my verses and breathe the salty wind which is coming from the water, I rejoice in God and I am blissful, as I was as a child.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Wenn ich morgens am Meere sitze und Verse dichte und atme dabei den salzigen Wind, der vom Wasser herüberspringt, dann gehe ich auf in Gott und bin glücklich, wie ich es nur noch in der Kinderzeit war.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

God, Water