Wind

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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.


Contents


[edit] Literary

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)
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
He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars;
Winds take a pensive tone and stars a tender fire
And visions rise and change which kill me with desire —
—Emily Brontë,
The Prisoner, (1845)
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)
It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills,
And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.
—John Masefield,
Salt-Water Ballads, (1902), "The West Wind"
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.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
    With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars;
    Winds take a pensive tone and stars a tender fire
    And visions rise and change which kill me with desire —
  • 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 Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.
  • The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.
  • The old
    Old winds that blew
    When chaos was, what do
    They tell the clattered trees that I
    Should weep?
  • Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. 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.
  • 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.
    • Heinrich Heine, English Fragments (1828), Ch. 11 : The Emancipation
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I came like Water, and like Wind I go.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;
    I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
    For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills,
    And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.
  • 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?"
  • The wind is blowing, adore the wind.
    • Pythagoras (c. 582 - c. 496 BC), The Symbols, "Symbol 8"
  • 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"
  • Sweet and low, sweet and low,
    Wind of the western sea,
    Low, low, breathe and blow,
    Wind of the western sea!
    Over the rolling waters go,
    Come from the dying moon, and blow,
    Blow him again to me;
    While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.
    • Alfred Tennyson, The Princess, (1847), Pt. III, Song: Sweet and Low, st. 1.
  • 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)"
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • William Butler Yeats, "In Memory Of Major Robert Gregory", st. 12, The Wild Swans at Coole, (1919)

[edit] Proverbs

Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.
—T.S. Eliot, "Gerontion," Poems, (1920)
  • اتق الأحمق أن تصحبه إنما الأحمق كالثوب الخلق كلما رقعت منه جانبا صفقته الريح وهنا فانخرق
    • Arabic proverb
    • Literally: Be aware of the idiot, for he is like an old dress. Every time you patch it, the wind will tear it back again.
  • إذا هَبَّتْ رياحك فاغتنمها
    • Arabic proverb
    • Literally: If a wind blows, ride it!
    • Figuratively: If a chance comes, take advantage of it.
  • 空 穴 来 风 未 必 无 因
    • Chinese proverb
    • Literally: If the wind comes from an empty cave, it's not without a reason.
    • Figuratively: There is no smoke without fire.
  • 见 风 转 舵
    • Chinese proverb
    • Literally: See the wind, turn the rudder
    • Figuratively: Change one's technique or goal when having difficulties.
  • Wie wind zaait, zal storm oogsten.
    • Dutch proverb
    • Literally: He who seeds wind, shall harvest storm.
    • Figuratively: Who causes trouble, will be a victim of trouble.
  • Hoge bomen vangen veel wind
    • Dutch proverb
    • Literally: High trees catch lots of wind.
    • Figuratively: The more important the person the more criticism they get.
  • Hann fær byr, ið bíðar, og havn, ið rør.
    • Faroese proverb
    • Literally: He gets wind in his sails who waits, and harbour who rows.
    • Figuratively: You reap what you sow.
  • qoH vuvbe' SuS
  • باد آورده را باد میبرد
  • Água e vento são meio sustento.
    • Portuguese proverb
    • Literally: Water and wind are [already] half your share.
    • Figuratively: You're alive, that's not bad at all, you can go for the rest now.
  • Ищи́ ве́тра в по́ле.
    • Russian proverb
    • Literally: Look for wind in a field.
    • Figuratively: What's lost cannot be found.
  • Fa'amatagi
    • Samoan proverb
    • Literally: From the direction of the wind.
    • Figuratively: Tell the story from the beginning.
  • Eisd ri gaoth nam beann gus an traoigh na h-uisgeachan.
  • Alçak yerde yatma sel alır, yüksek yerde yatma yel alır.
    • Turkish proverb
    • Literally: Don't lie down in low places, flood will take you, don't lie down in high places, wind will take you.
    • Figuratively: Danger lies in extremes, stay casual.

[edit] External links

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