Odor Quotes - Page 2

• It smells terrible in here.' Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.

  John Kennedy Toole

  Meaningful, Lying, Writing

  John Kennedy Toole (2004). “A Confederacy of Dunces”, p.70, LSU Press

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• The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine. "In return for the odor of my jasmine, I'd like all the odor of your roses." "I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead." "Well then, I'll take the withered petals and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain." the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself: "What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?

  Antonio Machado

  Flower, Garden, Wind

  Antonio Machado, “The Wind, One BrILLIant Day”

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• Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Art, Rain, Color

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• It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one's bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to bury even one's head under the cover, giving one's self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship.

  Marcel Proust

  Sweet, War, Lying

  Marcel Proust (1957). “Pleasures and days: and other writings”

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• What delights us in the spring is more a sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any visible reality. There is something in the softness of the air, in the lengthening of the days, in the very sounds and odors of the sweet time, that caresses us and consoles us after the rigorous weeks of winter.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Sweet, Spring, Winter

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1882). “The Sylvan Year: Leaves from the Note Book of Roaul Dubois. [Also The Unknown River. An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery]”

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• ... if you desire to marry you must realize that a mistress
  is won by the good temper and grace displayed while dancing...
  for dancing is practiced to reveal whether lovers
  are in good health and sound of limb,
  after which they are permitted to kiss their mistresses
  in order that they may touch and savor one another
  thus to ascertain if they are shapley
  or emit an unpleasant odor as of bad meat.
  Therefore, from this standpoint, quite apart from the
  many other advantages to be derived from dancing,
  it becomes an essential to a well-ordered society.

  Thoinot Arbeau

  Dance, Kissing, Order

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• We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature. ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells.

  Norman Mailer

  Life, Nature, Cancer

  Norman Mailer (1968). “The idol and the octopus: political writings, on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations”

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• From the great trees the locusts cry
  In quavering ecstatic duo-a boy
  Shouts a wild call-a mourning dove
  In the blue distance sobs-the wind
  Wanders by, heavy with odors
  Of corn and wheat and melon vines;
  The trees tremble with delirious joy as the breeze
  Greets them, one by one-now the oak
  Now the great sycamore, now the elm.

  Hamlin Garland

  Summer, Distance, Boys

  Hamlin Garland (1961). “Boy Life on the Prairie”, p.178, U of Nebraska Press

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• Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.

  William Butler Yeats

  Blood, Discipline, Tolerance

  Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Butler Yeats (2001). “YER”

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• Books for general reading always smell bad; the odor of common people hangs around them.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Success, Book, Reading

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• And for a disciple thus freed, in whose heart dwells peace, there is nothing to be added to what has been done, and naught more remains for him to do. Just as a rock of one solid mass remains unshaken by the wind, even so, neither forms, nor sounds, nor odors, nor tastes, nor contacts of any kind, neither the desired, nor the undesired, can cause such an one to waver. Steadfast is his mind, gained is deliverance.

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Freedom, Heart

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• Meat is not agreeable to the wise: it has a nauseating odor, it causes a bad reputation, it is food for the carnivorous; I say this, Mahamati, it is not to be eaten.

  Gautama Buddha

  Wise, Buddhist, Meat

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• Moved by their selfish desires, people seek after fame and glory. But when they have acquired it, they are already stricken in years. If you hanker after worldly fame and practise not the Way, your labors are wrongfully applied and your energy is wasted. It is like unto burning an incense stick. However much its pleasing odor be admired, the fire that consumes is steadily burning up the stick.

  Gautama Buddha

  Selfish, Fire, Years

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• I love crystals, the beauty of their forms and formation; liquids, dormant, distilling, sloshing! The fumes, the odors good or bad, the rainbow of colors; the gleaming vessels of every size, shape and purpose.

  Robert Burns Woodward

  Science, Color, Rainbow

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• There are other people on the Internet. It's awesome. You get all the benefits of 'other people' without the body odor and the eye contact.

  Rainbow Rowell

  Eye, People, Benefits

  Rainbow Rowell (2013). “Fangirl”, p.106, Pan Macmillan

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• Apart from the faint odor of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real.

  Jasper Fforde

  Real, Ink, Might

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• The odor of bowel wind is known to every human, but the fragrance of book glue has crossed only a fraction of mortal nostrils. And yet it behooves us not to judge the unlettered too harshly. We must stay the impulse to write CHUCKLEHEAD above their doors and carve DOLT upon their tombstones.

  James K. Morrow

  Tombstone, Book, Writing

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• In junior high P.E., I was way too shy to take a shower in front of the other kids. It was a horribly awkward time - body hair, odors... So I'd go from my sweaty shirt back into my regular clothes and have to continue the day.

  Will Ferrell

  Kids, Hair, Clothes

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• Union Rule 26: Every employee must win 'Worker of the Week' at least once, regardless of gross incompetence, obesity or rank odor.

  Homer

  Winning, Unions, Obesity

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• From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.

  Rita Dove

  Children, Book, Pages Turning

  Rita Dove (1993). “Selected Poems”, Vintage

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• The hungrier one becomes, the clearer one's mind works— also the more sensitive one becomes to the odors of food.

  George S. Clason

  Mind, Sensitive, Richest Man In Babylon

  George S. Clason (2013). “The Richest Man In Babylon”, p.76, Lulu.com

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• The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Example, Ruts, Influence

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• The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets after summer rain on maples and sycamore.

  Jack Gilbert

  Summer, Rain, Night

  Jack Gilbert (2013). “The Dance Most of All: Poems”, p.23, Knopf

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• Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.

  Edward Abbey

  Philosophy, Lying, Mean

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• Odors can be highly transitory, depending on the air currents. If this is happening in your house, ask if there are any possessions of that deceased loved one still around. If it happens elsewhere, consider just how many millions of people use the same perfume or smoke the same brand of cigar as someone you knew.

  Seth Shostak

  Air, People, House

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