Quotes about wind
page 7

Howard Bloom photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Voltairine de Cleyre photo
Brandon Boyd photo

“Will I ever get to where I'm going?
If I do, will I know when I'm there?
If the wind blew me in the right direction,
Would I even care?
I would.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Make Yourself (1999)

John Ogilby photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Daniel T. Gilbert photo
Robert Lowell photo
Jane Roberts photo
Edward Bulwer-Lytton photo

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Probably the most parodied and ridiculed opening line in literature. It is the inspiration for a satirical prize, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Used by Charles M. Schultz in the Peanuts cartoons.
Paul Clifford (1830)

John Hall photo
Osama bin Laden photo

“Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion. The wind of faith is blowing.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Video statement broadcast on the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera TV station. (7 October 2001) http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/world/0302/timeline.bin.laden.audio/content.1.html.
2000s, 2001

William Sharp (writer) photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“I should like one of these days to be so well known, so popular, so celebrated, so famous, that it would permit me to break wind in society, and society would think it a most natural thing.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Je voudrais, un jour, avoir un nom si connu, si populaire, si célèbre, si glorieux enfin, qu'il m'authorisât, à p[éter] dans le monde, et que le monde trouvât ça tout naturel.
Quoted in the Journals of Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, also known as Mémoires de la vie littéraire, vol. I http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14799/14799-8.txt (1887), translated by Lewis Galantière, entry for 1855-10-13.

Haruki Murakami photo
Lydia Maria Child photo
Wallace Stevens photo

“On Bill Clinton: "If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied. Besides, no one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal."”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

Introduction to You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You. Salon.com, The quotable Ivins http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2000/12/12/ivins_quotes/index.html, Dec. 12, 2000. Retrieved February 1, 2007.

Vitruvius photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Arthur Waley photo
Christopher Golden photo
Thomas Browne photo

“A little water makes a sea, a small puff of wind a Tempest.”

Thomas Browne (1605–1682) English polymath

On Dreams

Thomas Bailey Aldrich photo
Tim Flannery photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
William Julius Mickle photo
Du Fu photo
Nampo Jomyo photo

“To hell with the wind!
Confound the rain!
I recognize no Buddha.
A blow like the stroke of lightning -
A world turns on its hinge.”

Nampo Jomyo (1235–1309)

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6
Other translation:
I rebuke the wind and revile the rain,
I do not know the Buddha and patriarchs;
My single activity turns in the twinkling of an eye,
Swifter even than a lightning flash.
Isshu Miura and Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Zen Dust, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World p. 206; cited in Richard Bryan McDaniel (2013)

Robert Graves photo

“There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The Cool Web," lines 9–12, from Poems 1914-1926 (1927).
Poems

Thomas Gray photo

“The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 1
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

Richard Dawkins photo

“There is more than just grandeur in this view of life, bleak and cold though it can seem from under the security blanket of ignorance. There is deep refreshment to be had from standing up and facing straight into the strong keen wind of understanding: Yeats's 'Winds that blow through the starry ways.”

Compare: "Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own." Bertrand Russell, What I Believe (1925)
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Anthony Burgess photo
Subcomandante Marcos photo
Djuna Barnes photo

“I’m a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet, under a cow pat.”

Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 5 : Watchman, What of the Night?

Charlotte Brontë photo
Aldo Leopold photo

“How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! … Even so, I think there is some virtue in eagerness, whether its object prove true or false.”

“June: The Alder Fork”, p. 39.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "May: Back from the Argentine," "June: The Alder Fork," "July: Great Possessions," and "July: Prairie Birthday"

Jane Roberts photo
Damian Pettigrew photo

“We lunched in Fregene: grilled sardines sprinkled with parsley and lemon. Federico ate daintily, like someone with no appetite. The beach was deserted, the wind brisk. In the distance stood the abandoned lighthouse he filmed for 8 1/2. Like someone about to propose a toast, he stood up and "recited" from King Lear :
Hark! Have you heard the news? The king fell off a cliff.
O horrible! Were you very close to him?
Indeed, sir. Close enough to push.
We laughed until he brusquely sat down again, scraping the fish scales off his fingers, staring at the age spots that covered his hands. The beautiful adolescent waitress asked for his autograph. He drew himself as a man-lion in a hat and scarf with huge paws chasing her, and signed it "Féfé." We spent the afternoon visiting Ostia and returned to Rome in a sweltering twilight. He asked to be driven home for a change of clothes. We invited Giulietta, who wore a green velvet turban, to join us for dinner. (Had she already lost her hair from chemotherapy?) Graciously, she declined while smoking cigarette after cigarette. At Cesarina's, Federico drew hilarious, pornographic sketches on the table napkin saying, "If you have not made love today then you have lost a day!"”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

The entire restaurant was at his feet. He was twenty years old now and as thin as Kafka. He was Rome. He had adopted us the way Rome adopts everyone, and we loved him.
On Fellini's final years
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Peter Gabriel photo
Osbert Sitwell photo

“Your way leads you to lands of rain and wind—
mine takes me back to our old room, our bed.”

Đặng Trần Côn (1710–1745) writer

Source: Chinh phụ ngâm, Lines 53–54

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“For love is like the breathing wind,
That everywhere may entrance find.”

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

The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
The Golden Violet (1827)

Arun Shourie photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Pete Doherty photo
Johnny Mercer photo
James Dickey photo

“Drunk on the wind in my mouth,
Wringing the handlebar for speed,
Wild to be wreckage forever.”

James Dickey (1923–1997) American writer

Cherrylog Road (l. 106–108).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

Wassily Kandinsky photo

“The more freely abstract the form becomes, the purer, and also the more primitive it sounds. Therefore, in a composition in which corporeal elements are more or less superfluous, they can be more or less omitted and replaced by purely abstract forms, or by corporeal forms that have been completely abstracted... Here we are confronted by the question: Must we not then renounce the object altogether, throw it to the winds and instead lay bare the purely abstract? This is a question that naturally arises, the answer to which is at once indicated by an analysis of the concordance of the two elements of form (the objective and the abstract). Just as every word spoken (tree, sky, man) awakens an inner vibration, so too does every pictorially represented object. To deprive oneself of the possibility of this calling up vibrations would be to narrow one's arsenal of expressive means. At least, that is how it is today. But apart from today's answer, the above question receives the eternal answer to every question in art that begins with 'must.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

There is no 'must' in art, which is forever free.
Quote from: Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, eds. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, 2 Vols. (transl. Peter Vergo); Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., (1982), p. 195; as cited in: Samet, Jennifer Sachs. Painterly Representation in New York, 1945-1975. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010. p. 25
1910 - 1915

Vanessa L. Williams photo
Robert Seymour Bridges photo

“The storm is over, the land hushes to rest:
The tyrannous wind, its strength fordone,
Is fallen back in the west.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

The Storm is Over, The Land Hushes to Rest, l. 1-3.
Poetry

Isa Genzken photo
Clarence Darrow photo

“Life cannot be reconciled with the idea that back of the universe is a Supreme Being, all merciful and kind, and that he takes any account of the human beings and other forms of life that exist upon the earth. Whichever way man may look upon the earth, he is oppressed with the suffering incident to life. It would almost seem as though the earth had been created with malignity and hatred. If we look at what we are pleased to call the lower animals, we behold a universal carnage. We speak of the seemingly peaceful woods, but we need only look beneath the surface to be horrified by the misery of that underworld. Hidden in the grass and watching for its prey is the crawling snake which swiftly darts upon the toad or mouse and gradually swallows it alive; the hapless animal is crushed by the jaws and covered with slime, to be slowly digested in furnishing a meal. The snake knows nothing about sin or pain inflicted upon another; he automatically grabs insects and mice and frogs to preserve his life. The spider carefully weaves his web to catch the unwary fly, winds him into the fatal net until paralyzed and helpless, then drinks his blood and leaves him an empty shell. The hawk swoops down and snatches a chicken and carries it to its nest to feed its young. The wolf pounces on the lamb and tears it to shreds. The cat watches at the hole of the mouse until the mouse cautiously comes out, then with seeming fiendish glee he plays with it until tired of the game, then crushes it to death in his jaws. The beasts of the jungle roam by day and night to find their prey; the lion is endowed with strength of limb and fang to destroy and devour almost any animal that it can surprise or overtake. There is no place in the woods or air or sea where all life is not a carnage of death in terror and agony. Each animal is a hunter, and in turn is hunted, by day and night. No landscape is beautiful or day so balmy but the cry of suffering and sacrifice rends the air. When night settles down over the earth the slaughter is not abated. Some creatures are best at night, and the outcry of the dying and terrified is always on the wind. Almost all animals meet death by violence and through the most agonizing pain. With the whole animal creation there is nothing like a peaceful death. Nowhere in nature is there the slightest evidence of kindness, of consideration, or a feeling for the suffering and the weak, except in the narrow circle of brief family life.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 383

Peter Gabriel photo
Plutarch photo

“Why does pouring oil on the sea make it clear and calm? Is it for that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves?”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Symposiacs, book viii. Question IX
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Kate Bush photo

“Watching storms
Start to form
Over America.
Can't do anything.
Just watch them swing
With the wind
Out to sea.”

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

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

Park Chung-hee photo

“Like a Long Magnolia Blossom Bending to the Wind. Under heavy silence. Of a house in mourning. Only the cry of cicadas. Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. Seem to long for you who is now gone. Under the August sun. The Indian Lilacs turn crimson. As if trying to heal the wounds of the mind. My wife has departed alone. Only I am left. Like a lone magnolia blossom bending to the wind. Where can I appeal. The sadness of a broken heart.”

Park Chung-hee (1917–1979) Korean Army general and the leader of South Korea from 1961 to 1979

Poem (August 1974), as quoted in Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781846680670 (2013), by Sheila Miyoshi Jager, London: Profile Books, p. 414.
1970s

Bryan Adams photo
Willa Cather photo
Ernst von Glasersfeld photo

“As a metaphor - and I stress that it is intended as a metaphor - the concept of an invariant that arises out of mutually or cyclically balancing changes may help us to approach the concept of self. In cybernetics this metaphor is implemented in the ‘closed loop’, the circular arrangement of feedback mechanisms that maintain a given value within certain limits. They work toward an invariant, but the invariant is achieved not by a steady resistance, the way a rock stands unmoved in the wind, but by compensation over time. Whenever we happen to look in a feedback loop, we find the present act pitted against the immediate past, but already on the way to being compensated itself by the immediate future. The invariant the system achieves can, therefore, never be found or frozen in a single element because, by its very nature, it consists in one or more relationships - and relationships are not in things but between them.
If the self, as I suggest, is a relational entity, it cannot have a locus in the world of experiential objects. It does not reside in the heart, as Aristotle thought, nor in the brain, as we tend to think today. It resides in no place at all, but merely manifests itself in the continuity of our acts of differentiating and relating and in the intuitive certainty we have that our experience is truly ours.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Source: Cybernetics, Experience and the Concept of Self, 1970, pp.186-7 cited in: Vincent Kenny (2010) Remembering Ernst von Glasersfeld http://www.oikos.org/vonen.htm at oikos.org, retrieved Oct 11, 2012.

Hugo Black photo
Jane Yolen photo
George Borrow photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Christopher Smart photo
John Muir photo

“Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds, or the written music of water written in river-lines?”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

August 1875, page 220
John of the Mountains, 1938

William Golding photo

“Sleep is when all unsorted stuff comes as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.”

Source: Pincher Martin (1956), Chapter six, as cited in [Robert Andrews, The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, https://books.google.com/books?id=VK0vR4fsaigC&pg=PT657, 30 October 2003, Penguin Books Limited, 978-0-14-196531-4, 657]

Bayard Taylor photo
John Masefield photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Wisława Szymborska photo

“Toy balloon
once kidnapped by the wind —
come home, and I will say:
There are no children here.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Still Life with a Balloon"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Calling Out to Yeti (1957)

Abby Sunderland photo

“The winds were blowing from west to east, pushing Abby’s boat toward the rocks as Abby struggled with the autopilots below. If Wild Eyes reached those islands, she wouldn’t run aground, keel in the sand. She would be smashed into pieces.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 111

Stephen King photo
Charles Churchill (satirist) photo

“Wherever waves can roll, and winds can blow.”

Charles Churchill (satirist) (1731–1764) British poet

The Farewell (1764), line 38; comparable with: "Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam", Lord Byron, The Corsair, canto i. stanza 1

William Wordsworth photo

“Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Surprised by Joy, l. 1 (1815).

Woody Guthrie photo
Arthur Hugh Clough photo
Joseph Conrad photo

“He feared neither God, nor devil, nor man, nor wind, nor sea, nor his own conscience. And I believe he hated everybody and everything. But I think he was afraid to die. I believe I am the only man who ever stood up to him.”

Referring to Mr. Burns. Compare to Heart of Darkness' manager: "He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I could see that very well..."
The Shadow Line (1915)

Vitruvius photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Louise Imogen Guiney photo

“Seething over inwardly
With fierce indignation,
In my bitterness of soul,
Hear my declaration.
I am of one element,
Levity my matter,
Like enough a withered leaf
For the winds to scatter.”

Estuans intrinsecus<br/>ira vehementi<br/>in amaritudine<br/>loquar meę menti:<br/>factus de materia<br/>levis elementi<br/>similes sum folio<br/>de quo ludunt venti.

Archpoet (1130–1165) 12th century poet

Estuans intrinsecus
ira vehementi
in amaritudine
loquar meę menti:
factus de materia
levis elementi
similes sum folio
de quo ludunt venti.
Source: "Confession", Line 1

Thomas Dekker photo
Elfriede Jelinek photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
William Morris photo

“The wind is not helpless for any man's need,
Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow

H. G. Wells photo
Omar Khayyám photo
David Brin photo
Joan Miró photo

“[to] think, in a certain way, of the power and severity of Romanesque paintings... Go to the beach and make graphic signs in the sand, draw by pissing on the dry ground, design in space by recording the songs of the birds, the sounds of water and wind.... and the chant of insects.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

'Working notes of Miro, 1940 – 1941'; as quoted in: Calder Miró, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 69
1940 - 1960

Baba Amte photo
Diogenes Laërtius photo
Macarius of Egypt photo