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MUSCLE, PAIN, BREATH, ESCAPE, SUFFERING, SHAKING Great pain urges all animals, and has urged them during endless generations, to make the most violent and diversified efforts to escape from the cause of suffering. Even when a limb or other separate part of the body is hurt, we often see a tendency to shake it, as if to shake off the cause, though this may obviously be impossible. Thus a habit of exerting with the utmost force al the muscles will have been established, whenever great suffering is experienced. As the muscles of the chest and vocal organs are habitually used, these will be particularly liable to be acted on, and loud, harsh screams or cries will be uttered. But the advantage derived from outcries has here probably come into play in an important manner; for the young of most animals, when in distress or danger, call loudly to their parents for aid, as do the members of the same community for mutual aid. Charles Darwin, Expression of The Emotions In Man And Animals
ORATORY, ELOQUENCE, IMAGERY "Thoughts that breath, and words that burn." Gray
Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Thich Nhat Hanh
BREATH, AIR, ENVIRONMENT Courage is a matter of the red corpuscle. It is oxygen that makes every attack; without oxygen in his blood to back him, a man attacks nothing-- not even a pie, much less a blank canvas. Elbert Hubbard
FREEDOM, LIBERTY Liberty is the breath of progress. R.G. Ingersoll
"There is very little difference between one man and another," he said,"when you go to the bottom of it. But what little there is , is very important." And the remark certainly applies to this case. The general over-contraction may be small when estimated in foot pounds, but its importance is immense on account of its effects on the over-contracted person's spiritual life. This follows as a necessary consequence from the theory of our emotions to which I made reference at the beginning of this article. For by the sensations that so incessantly pour in from the over-tense excited body the over-tense and excited habit of mind is kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away. "If you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit it, but always keep your leg and body muscles half contracted for a rise; if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breath out at that,-- what mental mood can you be in but one of inner panting and expectancy, and how can the future and its worries possibly forsake your mind? On the other hand, how can they gain admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled, your respiration calm and complete and your muscles all relaxed? James, William, 1899, TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY: And To Students On Some of Life's Ideals, Chapter 1-The Gospel of Relaxation
"Invention and imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the warp and woof of human life, in so far as it is social. The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological, phenomena. They are bad habits, nothing more or less, bred of custom or example, born of imitation of bad models and the cultivation of false personal ideals. James, Wm.
"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." Keats, John 1795-1821/hl
MEMORY, CHANGE, BODY There is what I call the long body. That body is the present history of all the bodies we have lived from the egg-sperm implosion, through all the embryonic stages, through childhood to the present. ...our past lifestyles can still be seen in the present shape of our bodies. ...If, for example, we have lived a competitive life, the scars of competition, like raised shoulders and fighting upper chest breathing, may still be present. Stanley Keleman, Somatic Reality
SINGING, THRILLS "There is something exceedingly thrilling in the voices of children singing. Though their music is unskillful, yet it finds its way to the heart with wonderful alacrity. Voices of cherubs are they, for they breath of Paradise; clear liquid tones, that flow from pure lips and innocent hearts, like the sweetness of a flute, or the falling of water from a fountain." LONGFELLOW
PERSPECTIVE, MEMORY, HORIZON, VISION, ATTITUDE "It is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breath in freedom." Maeterlinck, Maurice, WISDOM and DESTINY
Perhaps the final outcome and consumation of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy hearted human creatures. Our modern wealth, I think, has rather a tendency the other way. John Ruskin, Unto This Last
Youth will never live to age unless they keep themselves in breath with exercise, and in heart with joyfulness. Sir P. Sidney
OPTIMISM, DELIGHT, JOY, ENERGY To breath the air, how delicious! To speak, to walk, to seize something by the hand!... To be this incredible God I am!.. O amazement of things, even the last particle! O spirituality of things! I too carol the Sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting; I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth.... Walt Whitman
Memories thrill, Like a breath from the wood, like a breeze from the hill. Holmes, O.W.
He that waits for an opportunity... may breathe out his life in idle wishes, and regret, in the last hour.. Johnson, Samuel, Idler
TRUTH, SINCERITY "Thou art full of love and honesty, And weigh'st thy words before thou givest them breath,-- Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more: for such things, in a flase, disloyal knave, Are trick of custom; but in a man that's just, They are close denotements working from the heart, That passion cannot rule." Shakespeare
MEMORY "But thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in its shade. When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breath or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee." William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 sonnets/os
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