Quotes about Breath

There were in her at the moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration, the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears. But gradually the captive's gasps grew fainter, or the other paid less heed to them: the horizon expanded, the air grew stronger, and the free spirit quivered for flight.

To live is in itself a value judgment. To breathe is to judge.

O heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath: guard them from all evil and let them sleep in peace.

The breathing into Adam (Genesis 2:7) has become the breathing out of Jesus (John 20:22)

As I said, this Spirit has two jobs. First, she creates diversity, as exemplified in the metaphor of wind—just breathing out ever-new life in endlessly diverse forms. But then the Spirit has another job: that of the Great Connector—of all those very diverse things! All this pluriform life, the Spirit keeps in harmony and "mutual deference"267—"so there shall be one Christ, loving Himself," as Augustine daringly put it.268

As I'm coming to realize more and more, God holds everything together in a mysterious quantum entanglement. With each breath we participate in the life-death-life pattern that always ends in resurrection. My hope is that each of us will choose to participate consciously, aware of this privilege and delight in being co-creators with God. Just pray that I can do whatever God wants me to do.

Every time you take in a breath, you are repeating the pattern of taking spirit into matter, and thus repeating the first creation of Adam. And every time you breathe out, you are repeating the pattern of returning spirit to the material universe. In a way, every exhalation is a "little dying" as we pay the price of inspiriting the world.

Prayer is to the Christian what breath is to life, yet no duty of the Christian is so neglected.

Prayer is the vital breath of the Christian; not the thing that makes him alive, but the evidence that he is alive.

Prayer is the breath of the new creature.

Prayer is the breath of life to our soul; holiness is impossible without it

Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.