Air Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Like the lark that soars in the air, first singing, then silent, content with the last sweetness that satiates it, such seemed to me that image, the imprint of the Eternal Pleasure.

Dante Alighieri

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

William Shakespeare

The air came laden with the fragrance it caught upon its way, and the bees, upborne upon its scented breath, hummed forth their drowsy satisfaction as they floated by.

Charles Dickens

A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded.
It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior.

There is no secrecy comparable to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, it flies so swift that it outruns the eye.

I stepped out into the night air that nobody had yet found out how to option. But a lot of people were probably trying. They'd get around to it.

Raymond Chandler

Gavroche had fallen only to rise again; he sat up, a long stream of blood rolled down his face, he raised both arms in air, looked in the direction whence the shot came, and began to sing.

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Edgar Allan Poe

America's Army is the best-trained, best-equipped land force on the planet. Our Navy is the largest and most lethal in the world. The precision of, and reach of, our Air Force is unmatched. Our Marines are the world's only truly expeditionary force. We have the world's finest Coast Guard. We have the most capable fighting force in history — and we're going to keep it that way.

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The revolutionary atmosphere remained as I had first known it. General and private, peasant and militiaman, still met as equals; everyone drew the same pay, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and called everyone else 'thou' and 'comrade'; there was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class.

The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

Physics is unable to stand on its own feet, but needs a metaphysics on which to support itself, whatever fine airs it may assume towards the latter.

Arthur Schopenhauer

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 rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.

Charles Dickens

Fresh air and innocence are good if you don't take too much of them — but I always remember that most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

Bertrand Russell

Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Even sound seemed to fail in this air, like the air was worn out with carrying sounds so long.

William Faulkner

Given the prevailing lack of discipline, it would have been impossible to use Congolese machine-gunners to defend the base from air attack: they did not know how to handle their weapons and did not want to learn,

We'll go where the air is pure, where all sounds are soothing, where, no matter how proud one may be, one feels humble and finds oneself small- in short, we'll go to the sea. I love the sea as one loves a mistress and I long for her when I haven't seen her for some time

Alexandre Dumas

Tunes and airs have in themselves some affinity with the affections, — as merry tunes, doleful tunes, solemn tunes, tunes inclining men's minds to pity, warlike tunes, — so that it is no marvel if they alter the spirits, considering that tunes have a predisposition to the motion of the spirits.

He said twice over before he knew himself:
"Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?" "Not you!'—'Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.'—
I don't know rightly whether any man can."

And thus it came to pass that the Silmarils found their long homes: one in the airs of heaven, and one in the fires of the heart of the world, and one in the deep waters.

J. R. R. Tolkien

A soft Sea washed around the House A Sea of Summer Air And rose and fell the magic Planks That sailed without a care — For Captain was the Butterfly For Helmsman was the Bee And an entire universe For the delighted crew.

Emily Dickinson

If I can only get out into the fresh air I'll always revive. These days I'm worn out and pasty-faced but give me a day in the air and I'll be like new.