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Wind

flow of gases or air on a large scale

Wind, while simply "the flow of air or other gases that compose an atmosphere (including that of the planet Earth)," has since ancient times been a significant and pervasive metaphor and symbol in human discourse.


Quotes

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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.,
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, (1858)
 
You too, ye winds! that now begin to blow
With boisterous sweep, I raise my voice to you.
Where are your stores, ye viewless beings! say,
Where your aerial magazines reserv’d,
Against the day of tempest perilous?
In what untravel'd country of the air,
Hush'd in still silence, sleep you, when 'tis calm?
—James Thomson,
The Seasons, Winter, (1726)
 
Come as the winds come, when
Forests are rended,
Come as the waves come, when
Navies are stranded.
—Walter Scott,
Pibroch of Donald Dhu, St. 4 (1816)
 
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau.
Mock on, mock on—'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
—William Blake,
Poems from Blake's Notebook, (c. 1804), "Mock On", st. 1
 
I came like Water, and like Wind I go.
—Omar Khayyam,
The Rubaiyat, XXVII
 
A rush of wind comes furiously now, down from the mountaintop. "The ancient Greeks," I say, "who were the inventors of classical reason, knew better than to use it exclusively to foretell the future. They listened to the wind and predicted the future from that. That sounds insane now. But why should the inventors of reason sound insane?"
—Robert M. Pirsig,
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, (1974)
 
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail.
—John Muir,
Our National Parks, (1901)
 
ਬੋਲੈ ਪਉਣੁ ॥ ਬੁਝੁ ਰੇ ਗਿਆਨੀ ਮੂਆ ਹੈ ਕਉਣੁ ॥
The body is dust; the wind speaks through it. Understand, O wise one, who has died.
—Guru Granth Sahib, "On Death"
 
A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
My Lost Youth, (1858), refrain
 
The night was not very dark; there was a full moon, across which large clouds were driving before the wind. This produced alternations of light and shade, out-of-doors eclipses and illuminations, and in-doors a kind of twilight. This twilight, enough to enable him to find his way, changing with the passing clouds, resembled that sort of livid light which falls through the window of a dungeon before which men are passing.
—Victor Hugo,
Les Misérables, (1862),
Book II—The Fall, "Chapter X—The Man Awakes,"
trans. Charles Wilbour, (1862 - 1863)
 
"Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night," he had said. "You must not try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses."
—Sherwood Anderson,
Winesburg, Ohio, (1919), "Death"
 
How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern danger — one of the waxen wings of flight.
—Charles Lindbergh,
Reader's Digest (November 1939),
"Aviation, Geography, and Race," pp. 64-67
 
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley,
The Indian Serenade, (1819), st. 1
 
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
—Edward Gibbon,
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
(1776), v. 1, ch. 68.
 
The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass --
I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
—Henry David Thoreau,
Walden, (1854), "Chapter 8—The Village"
  • The wind shrieks, the wind grieves;
    It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again;
    And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams
    And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.
  • "Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night," he had said. "You must not try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses."
  • We are the voices of the wandering wind,
    Which moan for rest and rest can never find;
    Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life,
    A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife.
  • Nature, with equal mind,
    Sees all her sons at play
    Sees man control the wind,
    The wind sweep man away.
  • The hushed winds wail with feeble moan
    Like infant charity.
    • Joanna Baillie, Orra (1812), Act III, scene 1, "The Chough and Crow"; in Plays on the Passions, Volume III.
  • Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
  • Therefore we should not try to alter circumstances but to adapt ourselves to them as they really are, just as sailors do. They don't try to change the winds or the sea but ensure that they are always ready to adapt themselves to conditions. In a flat calm they use the oars; with a following breeze they hoist full sail; in a head wind they shorten sail or heave to. Adapt yourself to circumstances in the same way.
  • Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau.
    Mock on, mock on—'tis all in vain!
    You throw the sand against the wind,
    And the wind blows it back again.
    • William Blake, Poems from Blake's Notebook, (c. 1804), "Mock On", st. 1.
  • There's the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever.
  • I didn't believe what I'd been hearing; maybe this wind blowing in just came from the ocean.
  • Come in, dear wind, and be our guest
    You too have neither home nor rest.
    • Bertolt Brecht, Berliner Börsen-Courier, (1924), "Weinachtslegende," trans. Poems, 1913-1956, (1976), "Christmas legend," p. 100.
  • There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
    • Raymond Chandler, published in Trouble Is My Business, (1939), "Red Wind" (short story, 1938).
  • And the wind will whip your tousled hair,
    The sun, the rain, the sweet despair,
    Great tales of love and strife.
    And somewhere on your path to glory
    You will write your story of a life.
  • The old
    Old winds that blew
    When chaos was, what do
    They tell the clattered trees that I
    Should weep?
  • [In Adelie Land, Antarctica, a howling river of] wind, 50 miles wide, blows off the plateau, month in and month out, at an average velocity of 50 m.p.h. As a source of power this compares favorably with 6,000 tons of water falling every second over Niagara Falls. I will not further anticipate some H. G. Wells of the future who will ring the antarctic with power-producing windmills; but the winds of the Antarctic have to be felt to be believed, and nothing is quite impossible to physicists and engineers.
    • Frank Debenham speaking at convention of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Norwich (1935). As quoted in Science: One Against Darwin, Time (23 Sep 1935).
  • After this I saw four angels standing upon the four corners of the earth, holding tight the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow upon the earth or upon the sea or upon any tree.
  • Perhaps the wind
    Wails so in winter for the summer's dead,
    And all sad sounds are nature's funeral cries
    For what has been and is not.
  • But certain winds will make men's temper bad.
  • What joy have I in June's return?
    My feet are parched—my eyeballs burn,
         I scent no flowery gust;
    But faint the flagging Zephyr springs,
    With dry Macadam on its wings,
         And turns me "dust to dust."
  • The way of the Wind is a strange, wild way.
    • Ingram Crockett, The Wind, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
    An old man in a draughty house
    Under a windy knob.
    • T.S. Eliot, Poems, (1920), "Gerontion".
  • Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.
  • The shadow of a dove
    Falls on the cote, the trees are filled with wings;
    And down the valley through the crying trees
    The body of the darker storm flies; brings
    With its new air the breath of sunken seas
    And slender tenuous thunder . . .
    But I wait . . .
    Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain—
    Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate,
    Happier winds that pile her hair;
    Again
    They tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air
    Upon me, winds that I know, and storm.
  • 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.
  • Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
    While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
    In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;
    Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
    Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
    That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
  • ਬੋਲੈ ਪਉਣੁ ॥ ਬੁਝੁ ਰੇ ਗਿਆਨੀ ਮੂਆ ਹੈ ਕਉਣੁ ॥
    • The body is dust; the wind speaks through it. Understand, O wise one, who has died.
    • Guru Granth Sahib, "On Death".
  • He who will establish himself on a certain height must yield according to circumstances, like the weather-cock on a church-spire, which, though it be made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it remained obstinately immovable, and did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind.
  • The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows — a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose.
  • A little wind kindles, much puts out the fire.
  • To a crazy ship all winds are contrary.
  • 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.
  • For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind…
    • Hosea 8:7 (KJV)
    • Variant translations:
    • They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. (NIV).
  • There, like the wind through woods in riot,
    Through him the gale of life blew high;
    The tree of man was never quiet:
    Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.
  • La nuit n'était pas très obscure; c'était une pleine lune sur laquelle couraient de larges nuées chassées par le vent. Cela faisait au dehors des alternatives d'ombre et de clarté, des éclipses, puis des éclaircies, et au dedans une sorte de crépuscule. Ce crépuscule, suffisant pour qu'on pût se guider, intermittent à cause des nuages, ressemblait à l'espèce de lividité qui tombe d'un soupirail de cave devant lequel vont et viennent des passants.
    • The night was not very dark; there was a full moon, across which large clouds were driving before the wind. This produced alternations of light and shade, out-of-doors eclipses and illuminations, and in-doors a kind of twilight. This twilight, enough to enable him to find his way, changing with the passing clouds, resembled that sort of livid light which falls through the window of a dungeon before which men are passing.
    • Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, (1862), Book II—The Fall, "Chapter X—The Man Awakes," trans. Charles Edwin Wilbour, (1862 - 1863).
  • O that our souls could scale a height like this,
    A mighty mountain swept o'er by the bleak
    Keen winds of heaven; and, standing on that peak
    Above the blinding clouds of prejudice,
    Would we could see all truly as it is;
    The calm eternal truth would keep us meek.
  • "Tomorrow, go forth and stand before the Lord. A great and strong wind will blow over you and rend the mountains and break in pieces the rocks, but the Lord will not be in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord will not be in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord will not be in the fire. And after the fire a gentle, cooling breeze. That is where the Lord will be." This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, the earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow.
  • It is sunlight in modified form which turns all the windmills and water wheels and the machinery which they drive. It is the energy derived from coal and petroleum (fossil sunlight) which propels our steam and gas engines, our locomotives and automobiles. ... Food is simply sunlight in cold storage.
  • Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro —
    And what should they know of England who only England know?
  • L'absence diminue les médiocres passions, et augmente les grandes, comme le vent éteint les bougies et allume le feu.
    • Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and fan a fire.
    • François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims, (1665–1678), Maxim 276.
  • There is something peculiarly mournful in the sound of the autumn wind. It has none of the fierce mirth which belongs to that of March, calling aloud, as with the voice of a trumpet, on all earth to rejoice ; neither has it the mild rainy melody of summer, when the lily has given its softness and the rose its sweetness to the gentle tones. Still less has it the dreary moan, the cry as of one in pain, which is borne on a November blast ; but it has a music of its own — sad, low, and plaintive, like the last echoes of a forsaken lute — a voice of weeping, but tender and subdued, like the pleasant tears shed over some woful romance of the olden time, telling some mournful chance of the young knight falling in his first battle, or of a maiden pale and perishing with ill-requited love.
  • Of all the forces of nature, I should think the wind contains the largest amount of motive power—that is, power to move things. Take any given space of the earth's surface— for instance, Illinois; and all the power exerted by all the men, and beasts, and running-water, and steam, over and upon it, shall not equal the one hundredth part of what is exerted by the blowing of the wind over and upon the same space. And yet it has not, so far in the world's history, become proportionably valuable as a motive power. It is applied extensively, and advantageously, to sail-vessels in navigation. Add to this a few windmills, and pumps, and you have about all. … As yet, the wind is an untamed, and unharnessed force; and quite possibly one of the greatest discoveries hereafter to be made, will be the taming, and harnessing of it.
    • Abraham Lincoln, Lecture Discoveries and Inventions, (1860) in Discoveries and Inventions (1915).
  • How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern danger — one of the waxen wings of flight. It may cause our civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it, unless we realize that human character is more important than efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere accumulation of knowledge.
    • Charles Lindbergh, Reader's Digest (November 1939), "Aviation, Geography, and Race," pp. 64-67.
  • A boy's will is the wind's will,
    And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
  • When the wind carries a cry which is meaningful to human ears, it is simpler to believe the wind shares with us some part of the emotion of Being than that the mysteries of a hurricane's rising murmur reduce to no more than the random collision of insensate molecules.
    • Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself, (1959), "Advertisement for Myself on the Way Out".
  • It is the winterwind that blows, wailing all night long, wailing for the far-off day; the branches toss, the boughs sway, it is the winterwind that blows... And the winds of winter sing a song of loneliness and silent sorrow; echo-less their lament dies away over the empty veld in the night, sighing through the grass seeds, and drawn is far away.
  • The wind is not helpless for any man's need,
    Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed.
    • William Morris, Love is Enough, (1872), "Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow".
  • Mournfully, oh, mournfully,
    The midnight wind doth sigh,
    Like some sweet plaintive melody
    Of ages long gone by.
  • The example of a believer is like a fresh tender plant; from whichever direction the wind blows, it bends the plant. But when the wind dies down, (it) straightens up again.
    • Muhammad, Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 4, Number 1.
  • Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail.
  • Look when the clouds are blowing
    And all the winds are free:
    In fury of their going
    They fall upon the sea.
    But though the blast is frantic,
    And though the tempest raves,
    The deep immense Atlantic
    Is still beneath the waves.
  • We love the kindly wind and hail,
    The jolly thunderbolt,
    We watch in glee the fairy trail
    Of ampere, watt, and volt.
    • Ogden Nash, Many Long Years Ago, (1945), "A Watched Example Never Boils".
  • Indoors or out, no one relaxes
    In March, that month of wind and taxes,
    The wind will presently disappear,
    The taxes last us all the year.
    • Ogden Nash, Versus (1949), "Thar She Blows".
  • A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm.
    • John Neal, reported in The Journal of Education for Upper Canada Vol. III (1850).
  • A rush of wind comes furiously now, down from the mountaintop. "The ancient Greeks," I say, "who were the inventors of classical reason, knew better than to use it exclusively to foretell the future. They listened to the wind and predicted the future from that. That sounds insane now. But why should the inventors of reason sound insane?"
  • I chose none to ask
    why the wind was blowing there
    chasing the fogs
  • The wind is blowing, adore the wind.
    • Pythagoras (c. 582 - c. 496 BC), The Symbols, "Symbol 8".
  • "I thought you understood," he said. "The world is your teacher. It will be all around you. The ocean and the wind and the stars and the moon will all teach you many things."
    • Jane Roberts, Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers (1979) p. 10.
  • Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.
    • E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered, (1973).
  • Come as the winds come, when
    Forests are rended,
    Come as the waves come, when
    Navies are stranded.
  • Ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est.
    • If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.
    • Seneca the Younger, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, no. 71, sect. 3; trans. Philip Gaskell Landmarks in Classical Literature (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999) p. 151.
  • Rough wind, the moanest loud
    Grief too sad for song;
    Wild wind, when sullen cloud
    Knells all the night long;
    Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
    Bare woods, whose branches strain,
    Deep caves and dreary main, —
    Wail, for the world's wrong!
  • I arise from dreams of thee
    In the first sweet sleep of night,
    When the winds are breathing low,
    And the stars are shining bright.
    • Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Indian Serenade, (1819), st. 1.
  • We hear the wail of the remorseful winds
    In their strange penance. And this wretched orb
    Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world,
    Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.
  • Let the winds blow! a fiercer gale
    Is wild within me! what may quell
    That sullen tempest? I must sail
    Whither, O whither, who can tell!
  • I listen to the wind
    To the wind of my soul
    Where I'll end up well I think,
    Only God really knows
    • Cat Stevens, Teaser and the Firecat, (1971) "The Wind".
  • I have grown weary of the winds of heaven.
    I will not be a reed to hold the sound
    Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow,
    Turning my torment into music for them.
    They gave me life; the gift was bountiful,
    I lived with the swift singing strength of fire,
    Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel —
    Beauty in all things and in every hour.
    The gods have given life — I gave them song;
    The debt is paid and now I turn to go.
    • Sara Teasdale, Rivers to the Sea, (1915), "Sappho (Rivers to the Sea)".
  • It is difficult to believe, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that since time immemorial man has had at his disposal a fairly good machine which has enabled him to utilize the energy of the ambient medium. This machine is the windmill. Contrary to popular belief, the power obtainable from wind is very considerable. Many a deluded inventor has spent years of his life in endeavoring to "harness the tides," and some have even proposed to compress air by tide- or wave-power for supplying energy, never understanding the signs of the old windmill on the hill, as it sorrowfully waved its arms about and bade them stop. The fact is that a wave- or tide-motor would have, as a rule, but a small chance of competing commercially with the windmill, which is by far the better machine, allowing a much greater amount of energy to be obtained in a simpler way. Wind-power has been, in old times, of inestimable value to man, if for nothing else but for enabling him, to cross the seas, and it is even now a very important factor in travel and transportation. But there are great limitations in this ideally simple method of utilizing the sun's energy. The machines are large for a given output, and the power is intermittent, thus necessitating the storage of energy and increasing the cost of the plant.
  • You too, ye winds! that now begin to blow,
    With boisterous sweep, I raise my voice to you.
    Where are your stores, ye viewless beings! say?
    Where your aerial magazines reserv’d,
    Against the day of tempest perilous?
    In what untravel'd country of the air,
    Hush’d in still silence, sleep you, when ‘tis calm?
  • A fresher Gale
    Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream,
    Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;
    While the Quail clamors for his running mate.
  • You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass -- I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
  • First, there is the power of the Wind, constantly exerted over the globe.... Here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it! It only serves to turn a few mills, blow a few vessels across the ocean, and a few trivial ends besides. What a poor compliment do we pay to our indefatigable and energetic servant!
    • Henry Thoreau In Paradise (To Be) Regaine, Democratic Review (Nov 1848). Collected in A Yankee in Canada: with Anti-slavery and Reform Papers (1866), 188-89.
  • There will be great winds by reason of which things of the East will become things of the West; and those of the South, being involved in the course of the winds, will follow them to distant lands.
    • Leonardo da Vinci, (1452 - 1519), The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, XX, trans. Jean Paul Richter (1888).
  • I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind
    That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind
    All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved
    Or boyish intellect approved,
    With some appropriate commentary on each;
    Until imagination brought
    A fitter welcome; but a thought
    Of that late death took all my heart for speech.
  • Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
    My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
    Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
    A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
    The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
    And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

edit
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 872-74.
  • Blow, Boreas, foe to human kind!
    Blow, blustering, freezing, piercing wind!
    Blow, that thy force I may rehearse,
    While all my thoughts congeal to verse!
  • The faint old man shall lean his silver head
    To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
    And dry the moistened curls that overspread
    His temples, while his breathing grows more deep.
  • Where hast thou wandered, gentle gale, to find
    The perfumes thou dost bring?
  • A breeze came wandering from the sky,
    Light as the whispers of a dream;
    He put the o'erhanging grasses by,
    And softly stooped to kiss the stream,
    The pretty stream, the flattered stream,
    The shy, yet unreluctant stream.
  • When the stormy winds do blow;
    When the battle rages loud and long,
    And the stormy winds do blow.
  • The wind is awake, pretty leaves, pretty leaves,
    Heed not what he says, he deceives, he deceives;
    Over and over
    To the lowly clover
    He has lisped the same love (and forgotten it, too).
    He will be lisping and pledging to you.
  • The winds that never moderation knew,
    Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;
    Or out of breath with joy, could not enlarge
    Their straighten'd lungs or conscious of their charge.
  • The wind moans, like a long wail from some despairing soul shut out in the awful storm!
  • The wind, the wandering wind
    Of the golden summer eves—
    Whence is the thrilling magic
    Of its tunes amongst the leaves?
    Oh, is it from the waters,
    Or from the long, tall grass?
    Or is it from the hollow rocks
    Through which its breathings pass?
  • An ill wind that bloweth no man good—
    The blower of which blast is she.
  • Madame, bear in mind
    That princes govern all things—save the wind.
  • He stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind.
    • Isaiah, XXVII. 8.
  • The wind bloweth where it listeth.
    • John, III. 8.
  • I hear the wind among the trees
    Playing the celestial symphonies;
    I see the branches downward bent,
    Like keys of some great instrument.
  • Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear
    Has grown familiar with your song;
    I hear it in the opening year,
    I listen, and it cheers me long.
  • The winds with wonder whist,
    Smoothly the waters kisst.
  • While rocking winds are piping loud.
  • When the gust hath blown his fill,
    Ending on the rustling leaves,
    With minute drops from off the eaves.
  • Never does a wilder song
    Steal the breezy lyre along,
    When the wind in odors dying,
    Wooes it with enamor'd sighing.
  • When the stormy winds do blow.
  • Who walketh upon the wings of the wind.
    • Psalms. CIV. 3.
  • A young man who had been troubling society with impalpable doctrines of a new civilization which he called "the Kingdom of Heaven" had been put out of the way; and I can imagine that believer in material power murmuring as he went homeward, "it will all blow over now." Yes. The wind from the Kingdom of Heaven has blown over the world, and shall blow for centuries yet.
  • O the wind is a faun in the spring time
    When the ways are green for the tread of the May!
    List! hark his lay!
    Whist! mark his play!
    T-r-r-r-l!
    Hear how gay!
  • Take a straw and throw it up into the air, you may see by that which way the wind is.
  • There are, indeed, few merrier spectacles than that of many windmills bickering together in a fresh breeze over a woody country; their halting alacrity of movement, their pleasant business, making bread all day with uncouth gesticulation; their air, gigantically human, as of a creature half alive, put a spirit of romance into the tamest landscape.
  • Emblem of man, who, after all his moaning
    And strain of dire immeasurable strife,
    Has yet this consolation, all atoning—
    Life, as a windmill, grinds the bread of Life.
  • Yet true it is as cow chews cud,
    And trees at spring do yield forth bud,
    Except wind stands as never it stood,
    It is an ill wind turns none to good.
    • Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie, Description of the Properties of Winds, Chapter XII.
  • I dropped my pen; and listened to the wind
    That sang of trees uptorn and vessels tost;
    A midnight harmony and wholly lost
    To the general sense of men by chains confined
    Of business, care, or pleasure,—or resigned
    To timely sleep.
    • William Wordsworth, sonnet composed while the author was engaged in writing a tract occasioned by the Convention of Cintra.

See also

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