Wind Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

William Shakespeare

The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or dreaming.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Charles Dickens

My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.

Charles Dickens

A pair of jaybirds came up from nowhere, whirled up on the blast like gaudy scraps of cloth or paper and lodged in the mulberries, where they swung in raucous tilt and recover, screaming into the wind that ripped their harsh cries onward and away like scraps of paper or of cloth in turn.

William Faulkner

Of those cities will remain what passed through them, the wind!

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting.

In carrying on your government, why should you use killing [the unprincipled for the good of the unprincipled] at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.

Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows

Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as though a chink in the dark: light out of the past. It was actually pleasant, I think, to hear a kindly voice agin, bringing up memories of wind, and trees, and sun on the grass, and such forgotten things.

J. R. R. Tolkien

He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man.

Though the sex to which I belong is considered weak you will nevertheless find me a rock that bends to no wind.

Elizabeth I of England

Spring is Christ,
Raising martyred plants from their shrouds.
Their mouths open in gratitude, wanting to be kissed.
The glow of the rose and the tulip means a lamp is inside.
A leaf trembles. I tremble in the wind-beauty like silk from Turkestan.
The censer fans into flame. This wind is the Holy Spirit.
The trees are Mary.

Who has a book of all that monarchs do, He's more secure to keep it shut than shown; For vice repeated is like the wand'ring wind, Blows dust in others' eye, to spread itself; And yet the end of all is bought thus dear, The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear To stop the air would hurt them.

William Shakespeare

It is always the under side of the branches of any plant that show themselves to the wind which strikes it, and one leans against the other.

Leonardo da Vinci

If you desire what is good, the people will be good. The character of a ruler is like wind and that of the people is like grass. In whatever direction the wind blows the grass always bends.

Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed.
When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind — with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?

Florence Nightingale

In France, for example, it is not unusual for a husband to have a wife and a mistress. However, if in addition to these two he's also having a fling with a fringe tootsie, both the wife and the mistress are outraged and the combination lover, husband, and cheat may well wind up with a large French bread knife between his ribs.

When asked where to place a podium for a speech by Neville Chamberlain:

It doesn't matter where you put it as long as he has the sun in his eyes and the wind in his teeth.

Winston Churchill

DIRECTIONS FOR USING: For THINKING:—Wind the Clockwork Man under his left arm, (marked No. 1). For SPEAKING:—Wind the Clockwork Man under his right arm, (marked No. 2). For WALKING and ACTION:—Wind Clockwork Man in the middle of his back, (marked No. 3). N. B.—This Mechanism is guaranteed to work perfectly for a thousand years.

There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.

Arthur Conan Doyle

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face.

William Shakespeare

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson