Wind Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Kahlil Gibran

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Bruce Lee

Michel de Montaigne

Seneca the Younger

Catherine the Great

John D. MacDonald

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

Seneca the Younger

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

Michel de Montaigne

I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail — sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it — but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.

Seneca the Younger

A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.

Catherine the Great

Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset.

John D. MacDonald

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever,
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators

I've seen public opinion shift like a wind and put out the very fire it lighted.

The populace is like the sea, motionless in itself, but stirred by every wind, even the lightest breeze.

A light wind swept over the corn; and all nature laughed in the sunshine.

The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding —
Riding — riding —
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

The swift wind of compromise is a lot more devastating than the sudden jolt of misfortune.

From the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!

A clear cold morning with high wind: we caught in a trap a large gray wolf, and last night obtained in the same way a fox who had for some time infested the neighbourhood of the fort.

Meriwether Lewis

Adversity is like a strong wind…it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.

Since 1990 I have been occupied creating new forms of life. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. I make skeletons that are able to walk on the wind, so they don't have to eat. Over time, these skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storm and water and eventually I want to put those animals out in herds on the beaches so they will live their own lives.

What, nephew, said the king, is the wind in that door?

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er; So calm are we when passions are no more!

The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.

That man's best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature's infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.

Lydia Maria Child