Air Molecules Quotes

[S]uppose you make a hole in an ordinary evacuated electric light bulb and allow the air molecules to pass in at the rate of 1,000,000 a second, the bulb will become full of air in approximately 100,000,000 years. ~ Francis William Aston

Every cup that passes through a single person and eventually rejoins the world's water supply holds enough molecules to mix 1,500 of them into every other cup of water in the world. No way around it: some of the water you just drank passed through the kidneys of Socrates, Genghis Khan, and Joan of Arc.

How about air? Also vital. A single breathful draws in more air molecules than there are breathfuls of air in Earth's entire atmosphere. That means some of the air you just breathed passed through the lungs of Napoleon, Beethoven, Lincoln, and Billy the Kid. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The surface of the moon is like nothing here on Earth! It's totally lacking any evidence of life. It has lots of fine, talcum-powderlike dust mixed with a complete variety of pebbles, rocks, and boulders. Many pebbles, fewer rocks, and even fewer boulders naturally make up its surface. The dust is a very fine, overall dark gray. And with no air molecules to separate the dust, it clings together like cement. ~ Buzz Aldrin

Just before the Clear Air Turbulence went back into warp and its crew sat down at the table, the ship expelled the limp corpse of Zallin. Where it had found a live man in a suit, it left a dead youth in shorts and a tattered shirt, tumbling and freezing while a thin shell of air molecules expanded around the body, like an image of departing life. ~ Iain Banks

Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt and his mouth tasted evil and his eyes were too tight in his head and all his teeth twinged and his stomach burned and his back was aching in a way that started around his knees and went up to his forehead and his brains had been removed and replaced with cotton balls and needles and pins which was why it hurt to try and think, and his eyes were not just too tight in his head but they must have rolled out in the night and been reattached with roofing nails; and now he noticed that anything louder than the gentle Brownian motion of air molecules drifting softly past each other was above his pain threshold. Also, he wished he were dead. ~ Neil Gaiman

Air has very little viscosity. That is, it's not gooey. That means things flying through the air experience drag because of the momentum of the air they're shoving out of the way - not from cohesion between the air molecules. It's more like pushing your hand through a bathtub full of water than a bathtub full of honey. ~ Randall Munroe

The neuro-biology of playing a musical instrument is completely scientific, but it's also an absolute miracle, that you're taking basically a calcium bucket filled with salt-water that's run by a weak electrical signal, and you're using it to move your flesh around in order to manipulate an instrument which disturbs air molecules between you and the listener, and then the listener's ears picks up those disturbed air molecules which generates a weak electrical signal to their calcium bucket full of salt water, and they feel a feeling. That's miraculous, and that's where I live. ~ Bob Brozman

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians. ~ Frank Zappa

Jim Crow repeated the old strategies of the reptilian powers of the air: to convince human beings simultaneously and paradoxically that they are gods and animals. In the Garden, after all, the snake approached God's image-bearer, directing her as though he had dominion over her (when it was, in fact, the other way around). He treated her as an animal, and she didn't even see it. At the same time, the old dragon appealed to her to transcend the limits of her dignity. If she would reach for the forbidden, she would be "like God, knowing good and evil." He suggested that she was more than a human; she was a goddess. ~ Russell D. Moore

From the air Anguilla looked narrow, flat, and scrubby, but that was only part of the picture. ~ Melinda Blanchard

I am convinced that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish. ~ D.H. Lawrence

He sees me staring and raises his hands in the air like what the shit, dude? "I will use a wheelchair if and when the following conditions are met. One, I ain't got no fucking legs. Two, I'm paralyzed from the waist down. Three, I'm ninety-six years old. None of those apply to the current situation. You try to put me in that thing, and I will put you down. ~ C.M. Stunich

They were amazed by each other, stunned silent, all in the circle of cypresses and night wind. The world outside was gone, nothing. Inside that circle the air was unfurling new colors, it was changing to something that cascaded and fountained pure gold and dazzle, and every breath changed them too. ~ Tana French

There was a languid feel to the night air the following evening. The breeze was ~ Nicholas Sparks

Season late, day late, sun just down, and the sky
Cold gunmetal but with a wash of live rose, and she,
From water the color of sky except where
Her motion has fractured it to shivering splinters of silver,
Rises. Stands on the raw grass. Against
The new-curdling night of spruces, nakedness
Glimmers and, at bosom and flank, drips
With fluent silver. The man,

Some ten strokes out, but now hanging
Motionless in the gunmetal water, feet
Cold with the coldness of depth, all
History dissolving from him, is
Nothing but an eye. Is an eye only. Sees

The body that is marked by his use, and Time's,
Rise, and in the abrupt and unsustaining element of air,
Sway, lean, grapple the pond-bank. Sees
How, with that posture of female awkwardness that is,
And is the stab of, suddenly perceived grace, breasts bulge down in
The pure curve of their weight and buttocks
Moon up and, in swelling unity,
Are silver and glimmer. Then

The body is erect, she is herself, whatever
Self she may be, and with an end of the towel grasped in each hand,
Slowly draws it back and forth across back and buttocks, but
With face lifted toward the high sky, where
The over-wash of rose color now fails. Fails, though no star
Yet throbs there. The towel, forgotten,
Does not move now. The gaze
Remains fixed on the sky. The body,

Profiled against the darkn ~ Robert Penn Warren

If the air is jam-full of sounds which we tune in with, why should it not also be full of feels and smells and things seen through the spirit, drawing particles from us to them and them to us like magnets? ~ Emily Carr

If a giraffe starts eating an African acacia, the tree releases a chemical into the air that signals that a threat is at hand. As the chemical drifts through the air and reaches other trees, they "smell" it and are warned of the danger. Even before the giraffe reaches them, they begin producing toxic chemicals. Insect pests are dealt with slightly differently. The saliva of leaf-eating insects can be "tasted" by the leaf being eaten. In response, the tree sends out a chemical signal that attracts predators that feed on that particular leaf-eating insect. Life in the slow lane is clearly not always dull. But ~ Peter Wohlleben

Solitude matters, and for some people, it's the air they breathe ~ Susan Cain

In classes, the more lively and uninhibited ones will "suck away the air" from those with a more passive nature, despite all the efforts of the teacher. It is also a special danger in large groups that you will hear your fellow students' bad pronunciation more than the teacher's perfected speech. ~ Kato Lomb

Her outflung hand turned over in the air. The gesture it described was infinitesimal, but it made Corrie draw in his breath and for the first time consider the possibility that perhaps the final emotion he might feel for his wife was hate. -Life Sentence ~ Rebecca West

On July 13, Louise felt a wave of urgency. She penned a letter to Major General Willis Hale, commander of the Seventh Air Force. In it, she begged Hale not to give up searching; Louie, she wrote, was alive. Unbeknownst to Louise, on that same day, Louie was captured. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

Illugastadir, the farm by the sea, where the soft air rings with the clang of the smithy, and gulls caw, and seals roll over in their fat. Illugastadir, where the night is lit by fire, where smoke turns in the early morning to engulf the stars, and in ruins, always Illugastadir, cradling dead bodies in its cage of burnt beams. ~ Hannah Kent

There was an idea in the air, becoming clearer and stronger, an idea not just in the theories of Karl Marx but in the dreams of writers and artists through the ages: that people might cooperatively use the treasures of the earth to make life better for everyone, not just a few. ~ Howard Zinn

Once an air squadron commander, he knew there were many things one could not control when engaged in battle, and that knowledge dictated an iron-willed insistence that what could be controlled must be brought to perfection. ~ Mary Doria Russell

Once I thought ideas were exceptions not the rule. That is not so. Ideas are so plentiful that they ride on air. You have only to reach out and snatch one. ~ Rod McKuen

In some men compassion for a woman goes beyond all conceivable limits. Their responsiveness places her in unrealizable positions, not to be found in the world, existing only in imagination, and on account of her they are jealous of the surrounding air, of the laws of nature, of the millennia that went by before her. ~ Boris Pasternak

The prince set her down and dismissed his valet. The latter left with a bow and closed the door. Leaning against the wall, the prince pulled off his stockings. As he walked toward the amethyst tub, he yanked his shirt over his head.
He was lean and tightly sinewed. Her little bird heart thudded.
He glanced at her, his lips curved in not quite a smile. The next thing she knew, his shirt had flown through the air and landed on the cage, blocking her view toward the bathtub.
"Sorry, sweetheart. I am shy."
She chirped indignantly. It was not as if she would have continued to watch him disrobe beyond a certain point. ~ Sherry Thomas

When you're held underwater, you think only of air. I remember how I felt about Shanghai in the days after our lives changed - how streets that had once seemed exciting suddenly stank of nightsoil, how beautiful women suddenly were nothing more than girls with three holes, how all the money and prosperity suddenly rendered everything forlon, dissolute and futile. The way I see Los Angeles and Chinatown during these difficult and frightening days couldn't be more different. ~ Lisa See

Suddenly she hated them all because they were different from her, because they carried their losses with an air that she could never attain, would never wish to attain. She hated them, these smiling, light-footed strangers, these proud fools who took pride in something they had lost, seeming to be proud that they had lost it. ~ Margaret Mitchell

... he ran across the road and began to walk at breakneck speed down the hill. He hardly knew where he was walking. Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours of maddening incense before the eyes of his mind. He strode down the hill amid the tumult of sudden-risen vapours of wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire. They streamed upwards before his anguished eyes in dense and maddening fumes and passed away above him till at last the air was clear and cold again. ~ James Joyce

Ruthless destruction of an ego is a rather simple matter. Preserving the host deprived of an ego is a more delicate affair. How does a person engage in momentous battle with the self while simultaneously struggling to maintain their cerebral, emotive, and spiritual equilibrium in the thin air of consciousness? How assiduously does an agitated mind need to work in order to achieve the elusive degree of emotional and mental quietness that I seek? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I loved him so much, more than any moment or event could ever render. He was my air, my water, my blood pumping through my veins. I gave him every hidden spoke in my wheel. Every little thing that meant anything to me was nothing compared to him. To see him in so much pain cracked my soul. ~ Gretchen De La O

She listened to the soft splashing sound when the water met the bank. It took just a few moments before she was able to completely fade out the smell of pollution and inhaled the salty air. The soft breeze mingled with the swooshing and splashing of the waves, with the rustling of grass, the tictac as long undressed twigs of the tree met each other, composing a gentle melody like wooden wind-chimes. The whole concert of nature calmed her down like nothing had ever been able to. ~ Jessica Werner

I did the pilot, and when they came through and said they were going to put it on the air, I had already some dates in the book with my band and so on. So Barry did the first one, he may have done a few more than the first one in the series, and I took it up from then. ~ Humphrey Lyttelton

The air was alive with yellow wasps. We must have stepped on a wasps' nest in a rotten branch as we walked. And while I was running up the hill, my dad stayed and got stung, to give me time to run away. ~ Neil Gaiman

The Light and the Darkness both flow in to Delhi. Gurgaon, where Mr. Ashok lived, is the bright, modern end of the city, and this place. Old Delhi is the other end. Full of things that the modern world forget all about rickshaws, old stone buildings and Muslims. On a Sunday, though, there is something more: if you keep pushing through the crowd that is always there, go past the men clearing the other men's ears by poking rusty metal rods into them, past the men selling small fish trapped in green bottles full of brine, past the cheap shoe market and the cheap shirt market, you come great secondhand book market Darya Ganj.
You may have heard of this market, sir, since it is one of the wonders of the world. Tens of thousands of dirty, rotting, blackened books on every subject- Technology, Medicine, Sexual Pleasure, Philosophy, Education, and Foreign Countries - heaped upon the pavement from Delhi Gate onwards all the way until you get to the market in front of the Red Fort. Some books are so old they crumble when you touch them; some have silverfish feasting on them- some look like they were retrieved from a flood, or from a fire. Most shops on the pavement are shuttered down; but the restaurants are still open, and the smell of fried food mingles with the smell of rotting paper. Rusting exhaust fans turn slowly in the ventilators of the restaurants like the wings of giant moths.
I went amid the books and sucked in the air; it was like oxygen after the stench of th ~ Aravind Adiga

I do not know what dust is, I do not know where it comes from, I only know that it settles on things. I cannot see it in the air, or watch it fall. Sometimes Im home all day but I never see it sliding about looking for a place to rest when my back is turned. Does it wait til I go out? Or, does it happen in the night when I sleep? Dust is not fussy about the places it chooses, though it seems to prefer still objects. Sometimes, out of kindness, I let it lie for weeks. On some places it will lie forever. However, dust holds no grudges and once removed it will always return, in a friendly way. ~ Ivor Cutler

The ability to get on the air, which was crucial to any reporter's career, grew precisely as the ability to analyze diminished. ~ David Halberstam