Quotes about Breath

The Earth with its layers of land and water and air provides the space within which all living things are nurtured and the context within which humans attain their identity. If in the excitement of a secular technology reverence for the Earth has diminished in the past, especially in the western world, humans now experience a sudden shock at the devastation they have wrought on their own habitation. The ancient human-Earth relationship must be recovered in a new context, in its mystical as well as in its physical functioning. There is need for awareness that the mountains and rivers and all living things, the sky and its sun and moon and clouds all constitute a healing, sustaining sacred presence for humans which they need as much for their psychic integrity as for their physical nourishment. This presence whether experienced as Allah, as Atman, as Sunyata, or as the Buddha-nature or as Bodhisattva; whether as Tao or as the One or as the Divine Feminine, is the atmosphere in which humans breathe deepest and without which they eventually suffocate.

Wisdom is like the breath.  We have to replenish it constantly.

Man found that he was faced with the acceptance of "spiritual" forces, that is to say such forces as cannot be comprehended by the senses, particularly not by sight, and yet having undoubted, even extremely strong, effects. If we may trust to language, it was the movement of the air that provided the image of spirituality, since the spirit borrows its name from the breath of wind (animus, spiritus, Hebrew: ruach = smoke). The idea of the soul was thus born as the spiritual principle in the individual ... Now the realm of spirits had opened for man, and he was ready to endow everything in nature with the soul he had discovered in himself.

Shallow breathing is the root of all evil but conscious deep breathing restores and secures our souls.

When you
died I didn't
weep nor dream but knew you
like a god breathe in
each healing we begin.

The true man breathes with his heels. 

No food or drug will ever do for you what a fresh supply of oxygen will. 

He lives most life who breathes most air.

Space is the breath of art.

A human being is only breath and shadow.

In the inhalation and exhalation there is an energy and a lively divine spirit, since He, through his spirit supports the breath of life, giving courage to the people who are in the earth and spirit to those who walk on it.

Find patience in the breath of life.

And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.

It is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep. A bower for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing

What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Breathe.  Let go.  And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.

What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?

You know that our breathing is the inhaling and exhaling of air.  The organ that serves for this is the lungs that lie round the heart, so that the air passing through them thereby envelops the heart.  Thus breathing is a natural way to the heart.  And so, having collected your mind within you, lead it into the channel of breathing through which air reaches the heart and, together with this inhaled air, force your mind to descend into the heart and to remain there. 

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.

For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth.

Smile, breathe and go slowly.

Breathing is the greatest pleasure in life

Inhale, and God approaches you.  Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you.  Exhale, and you approach God.  Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God. 

A healthy mind has an easy breath.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

I am a whole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through; listen to this music.  

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnnoticed & that necessary.

"He began to see that the key to liberation lay in each breath, each step, each small pebble along the path."

~Thich Nhat Hanh~