Quotes about breath
page 3

Amitabh Bachchan photo
Novalis photo
W.B. Yeats photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“Crying amid the glittering sea,
Naming it with the ecstatic breath,
Because it had such dignity,
By the sweet name of Death.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

His Dream http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1509/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
Context: I swayed upon the gaudy stern
The butt-end of a steering-oar,
And saw wherever I could turn
A crowd upon a shore.
And though I would have hushed the crowd,
There was no mother's son but said,
'What is the figure in a shroud
Upon a gaudy bed?'
And after running at the brim
Cried out upon that thing beneath
--It had such dignity of a limb--
By the sweet name of Death.
Though I'd my finger on my lip,
What could I but take up the song?
And running crowd and gaudy ship
Cried out the whole night long,
Crying amid the glittering sea,
Naming it with the ecstatic breath,
Because it had such dignity,
By the sweet name of Death.

Lady Gaga photo

“The outlet for my work is not just the music and the videos, it's every breathing moment of my life. I'm always saying something about art and music and fame.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

The world goes crazy for Lady Gaga (2009)
Context: I don't want to see Bowie in a tracksuit. He never let anyone see him that way. The outlet for my work is not just the music and the videos, it's every breathing moment of my life. I'm always saying something about art and music and fame. That's why you don't ever catch me in sweatpants.

W.B. Yeats photo

“A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1441/
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
Context: I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My county is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Robert Browning photo

“Thus shall he prosper, every day's success
Adding, to what is he, a solid strength —
An aery might to what encircles him,
Till at the last, so life's routine lends help,
That as the Emperor only breathes and moves,
His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk
Become a comfort or a portent, how
He trails his ermine take significance, —
Till even his power shall cease to be most power,
And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare
Peril their earth its bravest, first and best,
Its typified invincibility.”

Valence of Prince Berthold, in Act IV.
Colombe's Birthday (1844)
Context: p>He gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.
One great aim, like a guiding-star, above—
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize;
A prize not near — lest overlooking earth
He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote,
So that he rest upon his path content:
But day by day, while shimmering grows shine,
And the faint circlet prophesies the orb,
He sees so much as, just evolving these,
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength,
To due completion, will suffice this life,
And lead him at his grandest to the grave.
After this star, out of a night he springs;
A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones
He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he mounts,
Nor, as from each to each exultingly
He passes, overleaps one grade of joy.
This, for his own good: — with the world, each gift
Of God and man, — reality, tradition,
Fancy and fact — so well environ him,
That as a mystic panoply they serve —
Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind,
And work his purpose out with half the world,
While he, their master, dexterously slipt
From such encumbrance, is meantime employed
With his own prowess on the other half.
Thus shall he prosper, every day's success
Adding, to what is he, a solid strength —
An aery might to what encircles him,
Till at the last, so life's routine lends help,
That as the Emperor only breathes and moves,
His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk
Become a comfort or a portent, how
He trails his ermine take significance, —
Till even his power shall cease to be most power,
And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare
Peril their earth its bravest, first and best,
Its typified invincibility.Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends—
The man of men, the spirit of all flesh,
The fiery centre of an earthly world!</p

W.B. Yeats photo

“Come near, come near, come near — Ah, leave me still
A little space for the rose-breath to fill!”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time
The Rose (1893)
Context: Come near, come near, come near — Ah, leave me still
A little space for the rose-breath to fill!
Lest I no more hear common things that crave;
The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,
The field-mouse running by me in the grass,
And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;
But seek alone to hear the strange things said
By God to the bright hearts of those long dead,
And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.
Come near; I would, before my time to go,
Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.

Emily Brontë photo

“He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive, and he said mine would be drunk; I said I should fall asleep in his, and he said he could not breathe in mine.”

Catherine Linton (Ch. XXIV).
Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: One time, however, we were near quarrelling. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most perfect idea of heaven's happiness — mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above; and not only larks, but throstles, and blackbirds, and linnets, and cuckoos pouring out music on every side, and the moors seen at a distance, broken into cool dusky dells; but close by great swells of long grass undulating in waves to the breeze; and woods and sounding water, and the whole world awake and wild with joy. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive, and he said mine would be drunk; I said I should fall asleep in his, and he said he could not breathe in mine.

Joseph Stalin photo

“Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Telegram to government aviation production plant superintendents by Stalin in the autumn of 1941, warning them to produce more Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack aircraft for national defense.

Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews
Context: You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government's patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning.

Alan Watts photo
Aristotle photo

“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts not breaths; // In feelings, not in figures on a dial. // We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives // Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

This is actually from the poem "We live in deeds..." by Philip James Bailey. This explains the strange pattern of capitalization.
Misattributed

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry photo

“No man can draw a free breath who does not share with other men a common and disinterested ideal. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Source: Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. IX Barcelona and Madrid (1936)<!-- * L’expérience nous montre qu’aimer ce n’est point nous regarder l’un l’autre mais regarder ensemble dans la même direction. /** Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.-->
Context: No man can draw a free breath who does not share with other men a common and disinterested ideal. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through union in the same high effort. Even in our age of material well-being this must be so, else how should we explain the happiness we feel in sharing our last crust with others in the desert? No sociologist's textbook can prevail against this fact. Every pilot who has flown to the rescue of a comrade in distress knows that all joys are vain in comparison with this one. And this, it may be, is the reason why the world today is tumbling about our ears. It is precisely because this sort of fulfilment is promised each of us by his religion, that men are inflamed today. All of us, in words that contradict each other, express at bottom the same exalted impulse. What sets us against one another is not our aims — they all come to the same thing — but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning.
Let us, then, refrain from astonishment at what men do. One man finds that his essential manhood comes alive at the sight of self-sacrifice, cooperative effort, a rigorous vision of justice, manifested in an anarchist's cellar in Barcelona. For that man there will henceforth be but one truth — the truth of the anarchists. Another, having once mounted guard over a flock of terrified little nuns kneeling in a Spanish nunnery, will thereafter know a different truth — that it is sweet to die for the Church. If, when Mermoz plunged into the Chilean Andes with victory in his heart, you had protested to him that no merchant's letter could possibly be worth risking one's life for, Mermoz would have laughed in your face. Truth is the man that was born in Mermoz when he slipped through the Andean passes.

Jawaharlal Nehru photo
Ennio Morricone photo

“Music needs room to breathe.”

Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor
Tupac Shakur photo

“I want, when they see me, They know that everyday when I'm breathing is for us to go further. Everytime I speak I want the truth to come out. Not one person even realizes that I have white relatives, my cousin just had a son who is “White” but everytime I speak I want a shiver so yes, I do omit things that I feel are not accurately portraying my “character.””

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

I don't want them to be like; they know what I'm gonna say, because it's polite. Im not saying I'm gonna rule the world or I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee you that I will spark the brain that will change the world. And that's our job, It's to spark somebody else watching us. We might not be the one's, but let's not be selfish and because we not gonna change the world let's not talk about how we should change it. I don't know how to change it, but I know if I keep talking about how dirty it is out here, somebody's gonna clean it up.
1990s, MTV interview (1994)

Sanju Samson photo

“The kind of batting that he has got when he is on song, he just takes your breath away.”

Sanju Samson (1994) Indian cricketer

About him
Source: Sanjay Manjrekar on Samson's batting. Samson takes your breath away- Sanjay Manjrekar https://www.indiatvnews.com/sports/cricket/pant-wins-you-games-in-10-minutes-samson-takes-your-breath-away-sanjay-manjrekar-641243

Salman Aziz photo

“Fashion is the thing! The thing you can put on confidently. And at least you can breathe with comfort.”

Salman Aziz (1993) Bangladeshi independent author and artist

Sources:
https://everydaypower.com/fashion-quotes/
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8897547-fashion-is-the-thing-the-thing-you-can-put-on
https://www.quoteambition.com/fashion-quotes/
https://allauthor.com/quotes/341306/
https://www.have-clothes-will-travel.com/fashion-quotes-instagram-caption/

Vera Stanley Alder photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Desiderius Erasmus photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

Page 15

O. Henry photo

“She had
become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the
air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Source: The Complete Life of John Hopkins

John Galsworthy photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Anna Gavalda photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“For, in the final analysis, our most common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”

1963, American University speech
Variant: For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal.
Source: Profiles in Courage
Context: In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours — and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest. So, let us not be blind to our differences — but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“You have a choice. Live or die.
Every breath is a choice.
Every minute is a choice.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.”

Variant: Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.
Source: Survivor

John Updike photo

“What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic
Rick Riordan photo
Elizabeth Hoyt photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Alice Hoffman photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo
Gordon Korman photo
Nick Hornby photo
L. Frank Baum photo

“Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

“You are the pinch in my heart. The catch in my breath. The reason my stomach tumbles…”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: Any Man of Mine

Nicholas Sparks photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Annie Dillard photo
Dave Eggers photo
Rick Riordan photo
Leonard Cohen photo

“I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove she was moving too,
And every single breath that we drew was
Hallelujah.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Hallelujah"
Various Positions (1984)

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Margaret Mitchell photo
Karen Marie Moning photo

“He lives.
I breathe.
I want. Him. Always.
Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever.
-Mac”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Kim Harrison photo
David Levithan photo
Paul Celan photo

“How you die out in me:

down to the last
worn-out
knot of breath
you're there, with a
splinter
of life.”

Paul Celan (1920–1970) Romanian poet and translator

Source: Poems of Paul Celan

Hettie Jones photo
Jean Rhys photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo

“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
To gain all while you give,
To roam the roads of lands remote,
To travel is to live.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Source: The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo

“Don’t move, and breathe only if you have to. (Caleb)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

David Levithan photo

“Help me, I can’t breathe, your ego is pushing all the air out of the room.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Jeanette Winterson photo
Adrienne Rich photo
Holly Black photo
Jasper Fforde photo

“Were you listening to a word I said '
'I kind of switched off when you drew breath.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

Karen Blixen photo
Michael Crichton photo

“Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.”

Seventh Configuration "Departure"
Source: The Lost World (1995)
Context: A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies. And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

Cassandra Clare photo

“We live and breathe words.”

Source: Clockwork Prince

George Eliot photo
Jacqueline Woodson photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Richelle Mead photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Flannery O’Connor photo
Jeff Lindsay photo
Dan Abnett photo

“Have you noticed we can breathe in here too?
Gosh, I wouldn't have picked up on that.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

Source: Hereticus

Jodi Picoult photo