Breathe Quotes
From 'The New Colossus', inscribed at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, New York harbour,1883.
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More Breathe Quotes
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— 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.
Bright-eyed Fancy, hov'ring o'er, Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.
thomas gray— III. 3, Line 2.
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love … then make that day count!
steve maraboli— p. 144 (Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010))
He bore a simple wild-flower wreath: Narcissus, and the sweet brier rose; Vervain, and flexile thyme, that breathe Rich fragrance; modest heath, that glows With purple bells; the amaranth bright, That no decay, nor fading knows, Like true love's holiest, rarest light; And every purest flower, that blows In that sweet time, which Love most blesses, When spring on summer's confines presses.
thomas love peacock— Rhododaphne, Canto I, line 107.
We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.
Christopher Charles Herbert Lehmann-Haupt— 1984 On Peter Brooks Reading for thePlot (1984). In the NewYork Times,11 Jul.
The bird of truth would not be able to fly if it weren't for the air of lies we breathe.
eugene j. martin— from E.J. Martin's website at [3]
Making money out of paper, making paper out of trees We’re making so much money we can hardly breathe
todd snider— "Stuck on a Corner" (2008)
“We are able to breathe, drink, and eat in comfort because millions of organisms and hundreds of processes are operating to maintain a liveable environment, but we tend to take nature's services for granted because we don't pay money for most of them.”
— Eugene Odum (1975) A Bridge Between Science and Society as cited in: Edward Goldsmith (2002) "Ecology – a bridge"
But I have lived, and have not lived in vain: My mind may loose its force, my blood its fire, And my frame perish even in conquering pain; But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire. Something unearthly, which they deem not of, Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre, Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love.
Rochdale— 1812-18 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza137.
The advantage of pure, and the disadvantage of impure air are experienced each time we breathe, and all who understand the causes of disease know that an impure atmosphere is most unfavourable to the enjoyment of health, and an efficient cause to shorten human existence within the natural life of man. It is therefore most desirable that decisive measures should be devised and generally adopted to ensure to all a pure atmosphere, in which to live during their lives.
Robert Owen— 3rd Part (The Book of the New Moral World (1836-1844))
I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, And sounds as if it should be writ on satin, With syllables which breathe of the sweet South, And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in, That not a single accent seems uncouth, Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural, Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.
lord byron— Stanza 44 (Beppo (1818))
Instead of the poems I had hoped for, there came only a shuddering blackness and ineffable loneliness; and I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had ever dared to breathe before the unwhisperable secret of secrets The fact that this city of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Old New York as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite dead, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in life.
h. p. lovecraft— "He" - Written 11 August 1925; first published in Weird Tales, Vol. 8, No. 3 (September 1926)
In the dark room where I began My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her.
John Edward Masefield— 1910 'C.L.M.'.
Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast, When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last.
Alexander Pope— 1714 The Rape of the Lock, canto 3, l.157-8.
Stop...Stop what you're doing...Stop what you're doing and breathe.
dan bern— From "Breathe", album Breathe.
Any great work of art ... revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world — the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
Leonard Bernstein— "What Makes Opera Grand?", Vogue (December 1958)
We are close to dead. There are faces and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway, in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin, preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.
norman mailer— Introducing our Argument
Happy the man whose wish and careA few paternal acres bound,Content to breathe his native airIn his own ground.
Alexander Pope— "Ode on Solitude", st. 1 (c. 1700).
Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast,When husbands, or when lapdogs, breathe their last.
Alexander Pope— Canto III, line 157.
It may be objected that a man cannot subsist in the sun; but does it follow from thence, that God cannot or has not constituted a nature peculiar to that fiery region, and caused it to be as natural and necessary for it to suck in and breathe out flames of fire, as it is for us to do the like in air.
ethan allen— Ch. II Section III - Of The Eternity and Infinitude of Divine Providence
“The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.”
henry george— Book VII, Ch. 1
If I could only have you near To breathe a sigh or two I would be happy just to hold the hands I love On this winters night with you
gordon lightfoot— Song For A Winter's Night, Track 10, United Artists YouTube video
It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.
alexis de tocqueville— Letter to Pierre Freslon, 23 September 1853 Selected Letters, p. 296 as cited in Toqueville's Road Map p. 103
As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future , that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful , will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness !
— "On Optimism and Pessimism, on the Twentieth Century, and on Many Other Things" (1901), as quoted in The Prophet Armed : Trotsky, 1879-1921 (2003) by Isaac Deutscher , p. 45
It is the nature of the noble and the good and the wise that they impart to us of their nobility and their goodness and their wisdom while they live, making it natural for us to breathe the air they breathe and giving us confidence in our own untested powers. And the same influence in more ethereal fashion they continue to exert after they are gone.
— Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
There's a tiredness of abstract inteligence, and it's the most horrible of tirednesses. It doesn't weight on you like the tiredness of the body, nor does it worry you like the tiredness of knowledge and emotion. It's a weightiness of the conscience of the world, an inability of the soul to breathe.
— Original: Há um cansaço da inteligência abstracta, e é o mais horroroso dos cansaços. Não pesa como o cansaço do corpo, nem inquieta como o cansaço do conhecimento e da emoção. É um peso da consciência do mundo, um não poder respirar da alma.
— Ibid., p. 69
Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.
— Alfred Tennyson, The Princess, (1847), Part III, Song: Sweet and Low, st. 1.
Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea!
— Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), Song, End of Part II.
