air quotes

  • Sir Roger told them, with the air of a man who would not give his judgement rashly, that much might be said on both sides.

    -Joseph Addison
      In The Spectator, no.122, 20  Jul.

  • And nowe in the winter, when men kill the fat swine They get the bladder and blow it great and thin, With many beans and peason put within: It ratleth, soundeth, and shineth clere and fayre While it is throwen and caste up in the ayre, Each one contendeth and hath a great delite With foote and with hands the bladder for to smite; If it fall to grounde, they lifte it up agayne, But this waye to labour they count in no payne.

    -Anonymous
    Medieval verse, one of the earliest descriptions of football in England.

  • I am very fond of fresh air and royalties.

    - Daisy Mary Margaret Ashford
      TheYoung Visiters, or Mr Salteena's Plan, ch.5.

  • I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

    - Margaret Eleanor Atwood
    True Stories,'Variation on the Word Sleep'.

  • Some thirty inches from my nose The frontier of my Person goes, And all the untilled air between Is private pagus or demesne. Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes I beckon you to fraternize, Beware of rudely crossing it: I have no gun, but I can spit.

    -W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
      'Prologue:  The Birth of  Architecture', postscript.

  •    Purpose apart, perched like an umpire, dozes, Dreams golden balls whirring through indigo. Clay blurs the whitewash but day still encloses The albinos, bonded in their flick and flow. Playing in musicked gravity, the pair Score liquid Euclids in foolscaps of air.

    - Margaret Avison
      Winter Sun,'Tennis'.

  • We wove a web in childhood, A web of sunny air; We dug a spring in infancy Of water pure and fair; We sowed in youth a mustard seed, We cut an almond rod; We are now grown up to riper age Are they withered in the sod?

    - Charlotte Bronte« 
      'We Wove a Web in Childhood'.

  •   If I should die, thinkonly this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich dust a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

    - Rupert Chawner Brooke
      'The Soldier'.

  • We redesigned everything but the air in the tires.

    - Philip Caldwell
      Of the development of the Taurus, which was to become America's best-selling car. In Fortune, 3  Apr.

  • The creation of music is just as natural as the air we breathe.I believemusic isreallya freething, and any way you can enjoy it, you should.

    - Ornette Coleman
      Sleeve-note, Something Else!

  • Belove'  d, what are names but air? Choose thou whatever suits the line; Call me Sappho, call me Chloris, Call me Lalage or Doris, Only, only call meThine.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'Names', a translation from G E Lessing's German original (first published in the Morning Post,1803).

  • Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum.

    -William Collins
      Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Evening', l.9^14.

  • While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve! While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light; While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely rends thy robes.

    -William Collins
      Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Evening', l.41^8.

  • The evil of it is, that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushingofthelarger worlds, and cannot seethemasthey circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^3  Of the world of fashion. Bleak House, ch.2.

  • Musicians wrestle everywhere All dayamong the crowded air I hear the silver strife Andwakinglong before the morn Such transport breaks upon the town I think it that 'New Life!'

    - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
    c.1860  Complete Poems, no.157 (first published1891).

  • Inebriate of Airam I And Debauchee of Dew Reelingthro endless summer days From inns of Molten Blue

    - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
    c.1860  Complete Poems, no.214 (first published1861).

  • I will not look upon the quickening sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run; The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages.

    -John Donne
    c.1595  Elegies, no.12,'His Parting from Her'.

  • The air isnot sofull of motes, of atoms, asthe church is of mercies.

    -John Donne
      Sermons,'Christmas Day,1624'.

  •    Neat Marlowe, bathed in theThespian springs, Had in him those brave translunary things That the first poets had; his raptures were All air and fire, which made his verses clear, For that fine madness still he did retain Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.

    - Michael Drayton
      'To My Most Dearly Loved Henry Reynolds, Esquire, of Poets and Poesie'.

  • My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require.

    - Sir Edward Elgar
    Quoted in R  J Buckley Sir Edward Elgar (1905), ch.4.

  • Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'Ash Wednesday'.

  •    Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take the stonefromthestone, taketheskinfromthearm, takethe muscle from bone, and wash them.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Murder in the Cathedral, pt.2.

  • Dust in the air suspended Marks the place where a story ended.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.2.

  • The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.4.

  • I must confess I am a fop in my heart; ill customs influence my very senses, and I have been so used to affectation that without the help of the air of the court what is natural cannot touch me.

    - Sir George Etherege
      Letter to Mr Poley,12  Jan.

  • I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair, Floating, like a vapour, on the soft summer air.

    - Stephen Collins Foster
      'Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair'.

  • Fromthefirst place of liquid darkness, within thesecond place of air and light, I set down the following record with itsmixture of fact and truths and memories oftruths and its direction always toward theThird Place, where the starting point is myth.

    -Janet Paterson also known as Jean PatersonFrame Frame
      To the Is-land, ch.1,'In the Second Place'.

  • Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'For  John F Kennedy: His Inauguration', 20  Jan.

  • The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscapes on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

    -Thomas Gray
    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.1^8.

  • An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his sail Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carollings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through 382 His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

    -Thomas Hardy
      'The Darkling Thrush'.

  •    Wild air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'The Blessed Virgin Compared to the  Air  We Breathe'.

  • Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies! O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'The Starlight Night'.

  • Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those?

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
      A Shropshire Lad, no.40.

  • Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore ishewearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
    'Additional Poems', no.18, in Collected Poems (1939).

  • Luftslotter,de er safi   nemme at ty o‹  u" nd i, de.Og nemme at bygge ogsafi  . Castles intheairtheyare so easy totake refuge in. And so easy to build, too.

    - HenrikJohan Ibsen
      Bygmester Solness (The Master Builder), act 3.

  • A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

    - Philip Arthur Larkin
      'Church Going'.

  • And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

    - Philip Arthur Larkin
      'High Windows'.

  • Get yourroom full of good air, thenshut up thewindows and keep it. It will keep for years. Anyway, don't keep using your lungs all the time. Let them rest.

    - Stephen Butler Leacock
      Literary Lapses,'How to Live to Be 200'.

  • We'll all go together when we go, Every Hottentot and every Eskimo, When the air becomes uranious, We'll all go simultaneous, Yes, we'll all go together when we go.

    -Tom (Thomas Andrew) Lehrer
      'We'll  All Go Together When We Go', satirical song.

  • The air moves like a river and carries the clouds with it; just as running water carries all the things that float upon it.

    -Leonardo daVinci
    Notebooks. Quoted in Vincent Cronin The Flowering of the Renaissance (1969).

  • Just as a stone flung into the water becomes the centre and cause of many circles, and as sound diffuses itself in circles in the air; so any object, placed in the luminous atmosphere, diffuses itself in circles, and fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself.

    -Leonardo daVinci
    Quoted in Irma  A Richter (ed) Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1977).

  •   O, he flies through the air with the greatest of ease, This daring young man on the flying trapeze.

    - George pseudonym of  Joseph Saunders Leybourne
      'The DaringYoung Man on the Flying Trapeze'.

  • I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      'The  Arrow and the Song'.

  •    When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered to her eye; The Gods, that wanton in the air Know no such liberty.

    - Richard Lovelace
      Lucasta,'To  Althea, from Prison'.

  • Gentlemen know that fresh air should be kept in its proper placeout of doorsand that,God having given us indoors and out-of-doors, we should not attempt to do away with that distinction.

    - Dame (Emilie) Rose Macaulay
      Crewe Train, pt.1, ch.5.

  • The American character looks always as if it just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

    -Joseph R(aymond) McCarthy
      'America the Beautiful', in Commentary, Sep.

  • Wildness and silence disappeared fromthe countryside, sweetness fell from the air, not because anyone wished them to vanish or fall but because throughways had to floor the meadows with cement to carry the automobiles which advancing technology produced.

    - Archibald MacLeish
      'The Great  American Frustration', in the Saturday Review, 9  Jul.

  • Todayart is moving in a direction of which our fathers would never even have dreamed.We stand before the new pictures as in a dream and we hear the apocalyptic horsemen in the air.

    - Franz Marc
      Subscription prospectus of the Blaue Reiter Almanac,  Jan.

  •    You stars that reigned at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist, Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud, That when you vomit forth into the air, My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to heaven.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1592  Doctor Faustus (published1604), act 5, sc.2.

  • For some time I watch the coming of the night† Above is the glistening galaxy of childhood, now hidden in the Western world by air pollution and the glare of artificial light; for my children's children, the power, peace and healing of the night will be obliterated.

    - Peter Matthiessen
      Of the night sky in Nepal. The Snow Leopard,'Northward, October18'.

  • A wind sways in the pines, And below Not a breath of wild air; Still as the mosses that glow On the flooring and over the lines Of the roots here and there. The pine tree drops its dead; Theyare quiet, as under the sea. Overhead, overhead Rushes life in a race, As the clouds the clouds chase; And we go, And we drop like the fruits of the tree, Even we, Even so.

    - George Meredith
      A Reading of Earth,'Dirge in the Woods'.

  • Away with systems! Away with a corrupt world! Let us breathe the air of the Enchanted island.Golden lie the meadows; golden run the streams; red gold is on the pine-stems. The sun's coming down to earth, and walks the fields and the waters. The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts.

    - George Meredith
      The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, ch.19.

  • Thus I hurl My dazzling spells into the spongyair.

    -John Milton
      Comus,  A Mask, l.153^4.

  • And filled the air with barbarous dissonance.

    -John Milton
      Comus,  A Mask, l.550.

  • Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.

    -John Milton
      The Reason of Church Government, bk.2, introduction, 'Plans and Projects'.

  • The pure marble air.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.3, l.564.

  • This having learnt, thou hast attained the sum Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars Thou knew'st by name, and all th'ethereal powers, All secrets of the deep, all nature's works, Or works of God in heav'n, air, earth, or sea, And all the riches of this world enjoy'dst, And all the rule, one empire; onlyadd Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith, Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love, By name to come called charity, the soul Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A paradise within thee, happier far.

    -John Milton
      Michael to  Adam. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.12, l.575^87.

  •    Let them bestow on every airth a limb, Then open all my veins that I may swim To thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake; Then place my parboiled head upon a stake, Scatter my ashes, strew them in the air Lord! since thou knowest where all these atoms are, I'm hopeful thou'lt recover once my dust, And confident thou'lt raise me with the just.

    -James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose
      'Lines Composed on the Eve of his Execution'.

  • The man lies late since he has lost his job, smokes on one elbow, letting his coughs fall thinly into an air too poor to rob.

    - Edwin George Morgan
      'Glasgow Sonnets, I'.

  • Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour; Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath close'  d Helen's eye. I am sick, I must die. Lord, have mercy on us!

    -Thomas Nashe
      'A Litany in Time of Plague'.

  • PoetryontheairsoundsliketheMusesinstripedtrousers.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      'Poetry and the Microphone'.

  • I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible.From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.

    -JesseJames Cleveland Owens
    Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • The whole wide world is a cathedral; I stand inside, the air is calm, And from afar at times there reaches My ear the echo of a psalm.

    - Boris Pasternak
      When It Clears Up (translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater).

  • The people die so, that now it seems theyare fain to carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in. And my Lord Mayor commands people to be within at 9 at night, all (as they say) that the sick may have liberty to go abroad for ayre.

    - Samuel Pepys
      Diary entry,12 Aug.

  •    Your anger was a climate I inhabited like a desert in a dry frigid weather of high thin air and ivory sun, sand dunes the wind lifted into stinging clouds that blinded and choked me where the only ice was in the blood.

    - Marge Piercy
      Stone, Paper, Knife,'TheWeight'.

  • People ask me why I ride with my bottom in the air.Well, I've got to put it somewhere.

    - Lester Keith Piggott
    Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.

    - Sylvia Plath
      'Lady Lazarus', published posthumously byTed Hughes (Ariel,1965).

  • Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air, In his own ground.

    - Alexander Pope
      'Ode on Solitude'.

  • Tawny are the leaves turned but they still hold, And it is harvest; what shall this land produce? A meagre hill of kernels, a runnel of juice; Declension looks from our land, it is old. Therefore let us assemble, dry, gray, spare, And mild as yellow air.

    -John Crowe Ransom
      Chills and Fever,'Antique Harvesters'.

  • Information, freefrominterestorprejudice, freefromthe vanity of the writer or the influence of a Government, is as necessary to the human mind as pure air and water to the human body.

    -William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg
      Christian Science Monitor, 22 Sep.

  • I was born into wealth and there was nothing I could do about it. It was there like food or air.

    - David Rockefeller
      In Merchants and Masterpieces,WETA TV broadcast, 31 Dec.

  • Lyndon gave me that instead of the Hawaii air route.

    - Laurance S Rockefeller
    Of the Medal of Freedom which he received from President Johnson after Eastern Airlines failed to receive permission to fly a coveted route. Quoted in Peter Collier and David Horowitz The Rockefellers (1978).

  • A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who hasnever learned towalk forwards. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.

    - Franklin D(elano) Roosevelt
      Radio broadcast, Oct.

  • Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling,Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills', l.90^7.

  • I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die, For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'The Cloud'.

  • You will see Coleridgehe who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind, Which, through its own internal lighting blind, Flags wearily through darkness and despair A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owls You will see Huntone of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would smell like what it isa tomb.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Letter to Maria Gisborne' l.202^11.

  • And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air The soul of her beautyand love lay bare.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'The Sensitive Plant', pt.1, l.29^32.

  • I cannot remember things I once read A few friends, but theyare in cities. Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup Looking down for miles Through high still air.

    - Gary Sherman Snyder
      Riprap,'Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout'.

  • The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre. Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun, And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'I Think Continually ofThose'.

  • He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

    -Jonathan Swift
      Gulliver'sTravels,'A Voyage to Laputa, etc.'ch.5.

  • Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be Where air might wash and long leaves cover me; Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers, Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      'LausVeneris'.

  • I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'Guinevere', l.640^3.

  • As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: All was black, In heaven no single star, on earth no track; A brooding hush without a stir or note; The air so thick it clotted in my throat.

    -James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis Thomson
      The City of Dreadful Night, pt.4.

  •   It is essential that broadcasting be surrounded with such safeguards as will prevent the air becoming what might be described as an atmospheric billboard.

    - Sir Henry Thornton
      Address to theAdvertising Clubs of theWorld, Philadelphia, 21 Jun. Quoted in E AustinWeir The Struggle for National Broadcasting in Canada (1965).

  • Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure EŁ  parse au vent crispe   du matin Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym. Et tout le reste est litte  rature. May your verse be a glorious adventure Strewn by the crisp morning air Which helps the mint and the thyme grow. Everything else is mere literature.

    - Paul Verlaine
      Jadis et nague'  re,'Art poe  tique'.

  • Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels.

    - Richard Wilbur
      Things ofThisWorld,'Love Calls Us to theThings ofThis World'.

  • Fabulous the insects Stud the air Or walk on running water, Klee-drawn saints And bright as angels are.

    - Anne Wilkinson
      The HangmanTies the Holly,'InJune and Gentle Oven'.

  •    The feelings withwhichwe facethisnewage of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercyare reconciled, and the judge and the brother are one.

    - (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson
      Inaugural address, 4 Mar.

  •    Liberty isthemotherof virtue, and if women be, by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of freedom, they must ever languish like exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws in nature.

    - Mary also known as Mrs Godwin Wollstonecraft
      AVindication of the Rights ofWoman, pt.1, ch.2.

  • Earth hath not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will; Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

    -William Wordsworth
      Of London.'Composed uponWestminster Bridge', complete poem. (Published1807).

  • Rose of all Roses,Rose of all the World! The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled Above the tide of hours, trouble the air, And God's bell buoyed to be the water's care.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'The Rose of Battle', l.1^4. Collected in The Rose (1893).

  • Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, And dream about the great and their pride; They have spoken against you everywhere, But weigh this song with the great and their pride; I made it out of a mouthful of air, Their children's children shall say they have lied.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'HeThinks ofThose who have Spoken Evil of His Beloved', complete poem. Collected in TheWind Among the Reeds (1899).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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