Air, Wind, Clouds
Fog, Sky, Light, Stars, Lightening, Heavens

"For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually.  For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value."
-  Claude Monet  

"O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
-  Percy Bysshe Shelley    

"Listen!  the wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!"
-  Humbert Wolfe 

"The sky and the strong wind have moved the spirit inside me till I am carried away trembling with joy."
-  Uvavnuk   

"Air is the name given to atmosphere used in breathing and photosynthesis. Dry air contains roughly (by volume) 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1%. While air content and atmospheric pressure vary at different layers, air suitable for the survival of terrestrial plants and terrestrial animals is currently only known to be found in Earth's troposphere and artificial atmospheres.  The atmosphere of Earth is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention (greenhouse effect), and reducing temperature extremes between day and night (the diurnal temperature variation).  Atmospheric stratification describes the structure of the atmosphere, dividing it into distinct layers, each with specific characteristics such as temperature or composition. The atmosphere has a mass of about 5×10¹⁸ kg, three quarters of which is within about 11 km (6.8 mi; 36,000 ft) of the surface. The atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner with increasing altitude, with no definite boundary between the atmosphere and outer space. An altitude of 120 km (75 mi) is where atmospheric effects become noticeable during atmospheric reentry of spacecraft. The Kármán line, at 100 km (62 mi), also is often regarded as the boundary between atmosphere and outer space.  The average atmospheric pressure at sea level is about 1 atmosphere (atm)=101.3 kPa (kilopascals)=14.7 psi (pounds per square inch)=760 torr=29.92 inches of mercury (symbol Hg). Total atmospheric mass is 5.1480×10¹⁸ kg (1.135×10¹⁹ lb),^[15] about 2.5% less than would be inferred from the average sea level pressure and the Earth's area of 51007.2 megahectares, this portion being displaced by the Earth's mountainous terrain. Atmospheric pressure is the total weight of the air above unit area at the point where the pressure is measured. Thus air pressure varies with location and weather.  If the atmosphere had a uniform density, it would terminate abruptly at an altitude of 8.50 km (27,900 ft). It actually decreases exponentially with altitude, dropping by half every 5.6 km (18,000 ft) or by a factor of 1/e every 7.64 km (25,100 ft), the average scale height of the atmosphere below 70 km (43 mi; 230,000 ft)."
-  Air- Wikipedia

"Brew me a cup for a winter's night.
For the wind howls loud and the furies fight;
Spice it with love and stir it with care,
And I'll toast our bright eyes,
my sweetheart fair."
-  Minna Thomas Antrim

"Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet.  We all breathe the same air.  We all cherish our children's future.  And, we are all mortal."
-  John F. Kennedy 

Weather Lore and Clichés

"No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place."
-   Edna St. Vincent Millay  

"The leaves lay like hands upon the ground.
When the wind rustles them, they applaud softly."
-  Laura E. Stevens    

"Every dewdrop and raindrop had a whole heaven within it."
-  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"No cloud above, no earth below,
A universe of sky and snow."
-  John Greenleaf Whittier    

"We are the stars which sing,
We sing with our light;
We are the birds of fire,
We fly over the sky.
Our light is a voice:
We make a road
For the spirit to pass over."
-  Algonquin Song of the Stars  

"There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind." 
-  Annie Dillard   

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow."
-  Helen Keller    

"There are no limits to either time or distance, except as man himself may make them.  I have but to touch the wind to know these things."
-  Hal Borland  

"Of course you don't make any noise in space, because there's no air."
-  Kevin J. Anderson

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."
-   John Ruskin   

"Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
Tomorrow be today."
-  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow   

"twisting inland,
the sea fog takes awhile
in the apple trees."
-  Michael McClintock   

"The wind shows us how close to the edge we are."
-  Joan Didion   

"The ancient Greeks regarded air as one of the four elements, but the first scientific studies of atmospheric composition began in the 18th century. Chemists such as Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) and Henry Cavendish made the first measurements of the composition of the atmosphere.  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries interest shifted towards trace constituents with very small concentrations. One particularly important discovery for atmospheric chemistry was the discovery of ozone by Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1840.  In the 20th century atmospheric science moved on from studying the composition of air to a consideration of how the concentrations of trace gases in the atmosphere have changed over time and the chemical processes which create and destroy compounds in the air. Two particularly important examples of this were the explanation by Sydney Chapman and Gordon Dobson of how the ozone layer is created and maintained, and the explanation of photochemical smog by Arie Jan Haagen-Smit. Further studies on ozone issues led to the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry award shared between Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Frank Sherwood Rowland.  In the 21st century the focus is now shifting again. Atmospheric chemistry is increasingly studied as one part of the Earth system. Instead of concentrating on atmospheric chemistry in isolation the focus is now on seeing it as one part of a single system with the rest of the atmosphere, biosphere and geosphere. An especially important driver for this is the links between chemistry and climate such as the effects of changing climate on the recovery of the ozone hole and vice versa but also interaction of the composition of the atmosphere with the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems."
-  Atmospheric Chemistry

"The fog is rising."
-  Emily Dickinson's last words   

"Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air."
-  Georges Bernanos

"Although the wind is very powerful and you can feel its presence, in and of itself it cannot be seen.   You know it is there by its effect on others.  The great trees, the grasses and waves on the sea bend with its force.  If you are aware of your surroundings, you know it is there long before you feel it.  So it is with the ineffable." 
-  Author Unknown  

"Zeus, the father of the
Olympic Gods, turned
mid-day into night, hiding the light
of the dazzling Sun;
and sore fear came upon men."
-  Archilochus (c680-c640 BC), Greek poet
    Refers to the total solar eclipse of 6 April 648 BC.  

"Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads.
The wind is passing by."
-  Christina Rossetti 

"Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies."
-  Swedish proverb   

"We all like to congregate at boundary conditions. Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where bodies meet mind. Where space meets time.  We like to be on one side, and look at the other."
-  Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless  

"The wind blows hard among the pines
Toward the beginning
Of an endless past.
Listen: you've heard everything."
-   Shinkichi Takahashi, Zen Poems of  China and Japan,
    Lucien Stryk, p. 125 

"No issue is more compelling than the air we breathe,
be it hot or cold, be it hawk or human."
-  Jack Nicholson  

"Rainbows apologize for angry skies."
-  Sylvia Voirol  

"The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist."
-   Rabindranath Tagore  

Water and Rain - Quotes for Gardeners

"Don't knock the weather, nine-tenths of the
people couldn't start a conversation if it
didn't change once in a while."
-  Kin Hubbard   

"But on the twenty-fifth of May, at sunset, a violent wind howled madly,
Battering and rending my plants;
Rain poured down, Pounding the vines and flowers into the earth.
It was so painful
But as the work of the wind, I have to let it be ..."
-  Ryokan  

"The shell must break before the bird can fly."
-  Alfred Tennyson  

"The inner - what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds
and deep with
the winds of homecoming."
-  Rainer Marie Rilke  

Wind is the loving
Wooer of waters;
Wind blends together
Billows all-foaming.
Spirit of man,
Thou art like unto water!
Fortune of man,
Thou art like unto wind!
-  Goethe, 1789  

"What ideal, immutable Platonic cloud could equal the beauty and
perfection of any ordinary everyday cloud floating over, say, Tuba
City, Arizona, on a hot day in June?"
-   Edward Abbey  

"Through woods and mountain passes
The winds, like anthems, roll."
-  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Midnight Mass for the Dying Year, 1839.  

"You know the Zen question, 'The Bodhisattva of Great Mercy [Avalokitesvara,
or Kannon] has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes; which is the true eye?'  I
could not understand this for a long time.  But the other day, when I looked at the
pine trees bending before the cold blasts from the mountain, I suddenly realized
the meaning.  You see, all the boughs, branches, twigs, and leaves simultaneously
bend to the wind with tremendous vigor."
-  Two Zen Classics, Translated by Katsuki Sekida, Case 37, Joshu's Oak Tree  

"When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world.
When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world.
The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless.
We say "inner world" or "outer world" but actually,
There is just one whole world."
-  Shunryu Suzuki  

"To garden is to open your heart to the sky.
The grandest view from the garden is the open sky.  
To garden in the rain: irresistible fragrances and fresh air."
-  Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions  

"We saw the strong trees struggle and their plumes do down,
The poplar bend and whip back till it split to fall,
The elm tear up at the root and topple like a crown,
The pine crack at the base - we had to watch them all.
The ash, the lovely cedar.  We had to watch them fall.

They went so softly under the loud flails of air,
Before that fury they went down like feathers,
With all the hundred springs that flowered in their hair,
and all the years, endured in all the weathers -
To fall as if they were nothing, as if they were feathers."
-  May Sarton, We Have Seen the Wind, 1938 

"The pleasant air and wind,
with sacred thoughts do
feed my serious mind."
-  Rowland Watkyns, The Poet's Soliloquy  

"The existence of the five elements can also be found in India, predating their use in Greece. The pancha mahabhuta, or "five great elements", of Hinduism are kshiti or bhūmi (earth), ap or jala (water), tejas or agni (fire), marut or pavan (air or wind), vyom or shunya or akash (aether or void). Hindus believe that all of creation, including the human body, is made up of these five essential elements and that upon death, the human body dissolves into these five elements of nature, thereby balancing the cycle of nature.  According to one of the principal texts of Hindu philosophy, the Tattwa Kaumudi authored by Vacaspati in the 9th century A.D., the Creator used akasha (ether), the most "subtle" element, to create the other four traditional elements; each element created is in turn used to create the next element, each less subtle than the last. The five elements are associated with the five senses, and act as the gross medium for the experience of sensations. The basest element, earth, created using all the other elements, can be perceived by all five senses - hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell. The next higher element, water, has no odor but can be heard, felt, seen and tasted. Next comes fire, which can be heard, felt and seen. Air can be heard and felt. "Akasha" (ether) is the medium of sound but is inaccessible to all other senses."
-  Classical Five Elements - Wikipedia

"The substance of the winds is too thin for human eyes, their written language is too difficult for human minds,and their spoken language mostly too faint for the ears."
-  John Muir 

 "I hear the wind among the trees
Playing the celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Day of Sunshine   

" This is what I have heard
at last the wind in December
lashing the old trees with rain
unseen rain racing along the tiles
under the moon
wind rising and falling
wind with many clouds
trees in the night wind"
-  W. S. Merwin  

"When remaining in awareness itself, every thought movement, no matter what kind, is like a drawing in air."
-  Tulku Urgyen

"We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and
the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat."
-  Mark Twain 

"Everything passes away — suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence.  The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth.  There is no man who does not know that.  Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?" 
-  Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard  

"The winds gives me
Enough fallen leaves
To make a fire"
-  Ryokan  

"Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky.  When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, 
but the sky actually begins at the earth."
-  Diane Ackerman  

The Spirit of Gardening Website

Over 3,800 Quotations, Poems, Sayings, Quips, One-Liners, Clichés, Quotes, and Insights
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       From January 1, 1999 through March 1, 2011
This webpage has been online since January 1999 
Compiled by Karen Garofalo and Mike Garofalo from Red Bluff, California
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Last Updated: July 7, 2012 

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