Quotations about Breathing

When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath. ~Svatmarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika


A healthy mind has an easy breath. ~Author Unknown


If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have another chance. ~Andrea Boydston


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. ~Krishnamacharya


Breathing is the greatest pleasure in life. ~Giovanni Papini


Smile, breathe and go slowly. ~Thich Nhat Hanh


Breath is Spirit. The act of breathing is Living. ~Author Unknown


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


The nose is for breathing, the mouth is for eating. ~Proverb


Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. ~Thich Nhat Hanh


Walking through the house at night is wonderful to me; a symphony of breath, each person a separate instrument as they collectively breathe in time to the metronome of life itself. ~Edwin Leap, www.edwinleap.com


To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven, - to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
~John Keats, Sonnet XIV


He lives most life whoever breathes most air. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. ~Thich Nhat Hanh


Focusing on the act of breathing clears the mind of all daily distractions and clears our energy enabling us to better connect with the Spirit within. ~Author Unknown


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. ~Erich Fromm


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. ~Nicephorus the Solitary


I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am. ~Sylvia Plath


Freedom is strangely ephemeral. It is something like breathing; one only becomes acutely aware of its importance when one is choking. ~William E. Simon


Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours. ~Swedish Proverb


The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. ~Robert Louis Stevenson


Fear is excitement without the breath. ~Fritz Perls


Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again. ~L. Frank Baum


Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life? ~Mary Oliver


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


What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. ~John Updike


We too should make ourselves empty, that the great soul of the universe may fill us with its breath. ~Laurence Binyon


Learn how to exhale, the inhale will take care of itself. ~Carla Melucci Ardito


There is one way of breathing that is shameful and constricted. Then, there's another way: a breath of love that takes you all the way to infinity. ~Rumi


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


The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again. Erma Bombeck


In an underdeveloped country, don't drink the water; in a developed country, don't breathe the air. ~Changing Times magazine


We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss. ~Alexander Lowen


I love to breathe. Oxygen is sexy! ~Kris Carr


To live is not breathing it is action. ~Jean-Jacques Rousseau


Angels are all around us, all the time, in the very air we breathe. ~Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994