Wind Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Whatever may be your desire to accomplish great deeds, the deep silence of pregnancy never comes to you! The event of the day sweeps you along like straws before the wind whilst ye lie under the illusion that ye are chasing the event,-poor fellows! If a man wishes to act the hero on the stage he must not think of forming part of the chorus; he should not even know how the chorus is made up.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't remember forms or faces now, but I know the girl was beautiful. I know she was; for in the bright moonlight nights, when I start from my sleep, and all is quiet about me, I see, standing still and motionless in one corner of this cell, a slight and wasted figure with long black hair, which streaming down her back, stirs with no earthly wind, and eyes that fix their gaze on me, and never wink or close...

Charles Dickens

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

Bertrand Russell

And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear.

Cold be hand and heart and bone, and cold be sleep under stone: never more to wake on stony bed, never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead. In the black wind the stars shall die, and still on gold here let them lie, till the dark lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land.

J. R. R. Tolkien

For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.

It gets laughed at because it is a small town, I know, but nevertheless it is a place where great men may be born any day, for fair winds and foul blow right on over it without distinction.

Henry David Thoreau

All the contagion of the south light on you,
You shames of Rome! you herd of--boils and plagues
Plaster you o'er; that you may be abhorr'd
Further than seen, and one infect another
Against the wind a mile!

William Shakespeare

Some of what these pamphlets [of astrological forecasts] say will turn out to be true, but most of it time and experience will expose as empty and worthless. The latter part will be forgotten [written on the winds] while the former will be carefully entered in people's memories, as is usual with the crowd.

Johannes Kepler

I must have liberty Withal, as large a charter as the wind, To blow on whom I please.

William Shakespeare

As soon
Seek roses in December, ice in June;
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff;
Believe a woman or an epitaph,
Or any other thing that's false, before
You trust in critics, who themselves are sore.

"Why is thy mind so entangled," said the Master [Virgil], "that thou slackenest thy pace? What is it to thee what they whisper there? Come after me and let the people talk. Stand like a firm tower that never shakes its top for blast of wind."

Dante Alighieri

Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference; as, the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say,
'This is no flattery.'

William Shakespeare

Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.

Henry David Thoreau

We fear not more the winds and wintry cold,
Than streams the banks, or wolves the bleating fold.

Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all them to falter now? — now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail — if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

Abraham Lincoln

Be like a solid tower whose brave height remains unmoved by all the winds that blow; the man who lets his thoughts be turned aside by one thing or another, will lose sight of his true goal, his mind sapped of its strength.

Dante Alighieri

Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.

Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work. The lesson one learns from yachting or planting is the manners of Nature; patience with the delays of wind and sun, delays of the seasons, bad weather, excess or lack of water.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

Henry David Thoreau

The South-wind brings Life, sunshine and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire; But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore....
But let there be spaces in your togetherness.
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

The immortals will send you to the Elysian plain at the ends of the earth, where fair-haired Rhada-manthys is. There life is supremely easy for men. No snow is there, nor ever heavy winter storm, nor rain, and Ocean is ever sending gusts of the clear-blowing west wind to bring coolness to men.

What should we speak of When we are old as you? when we shall hear The rain and wind beat dark December? how, In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse The freezing hours away?...

William Shakespeare