Smell quotes
1.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside smell — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground."
"Coffee on an airplane always smells bad. Whenever it is served, suddenly the whole cabin stinks of it."
"And now I've got to explain the smell that was in there before I went in there. Does that ever happen to you? It's not your fault. You've held your breath, you just wanna get out, and now you open the door and you have to explain, 'Oh! Listen, there's an odor in there and I didn't do it. It's bad."
"Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers."
"If you can't smell the fragrance don't come into the garden of Love. if you are unwilling to undress don't enter into the stream of Truth. Stay where you are, don't come our way"
"Those herbs which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but, being trodden upon and crushed, are three; that is, burnet, wild thyme and watermints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread."
"I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen."
"Magic is really only the utilization of the entire spectrum of the senses. Humans have cut themselves off from their senses. Now they see only a tiny portion of the visible spectrum, hear only the loudest of sounds, their sense of smell is shockingly poor and they can only distinguish the sweetest and sourest of tastes."
"I loved every second of Catholic church. I loved the sickly sweet rotting-pomegranate smells of the incense. I loved the overwrought altar, the birdbath of holy water, the votive candles; I loved that there was a poor box, the stations of the cross rendered in stained glass on the windows."
"Can anyone remember love? It's like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume."
"It is easy to love people when they smell good, but sometimes they slip into the manure of life and smell awful. You must love them just as much when they smell foul."
"Why this cult of wilderness?... because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger."
"If you don't smell nice before the game, it's going to be pretty bad during and after."
"If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?"
"The other dry shampoo I was using was wet feeling but I love Prive's smell and how light and airy my hair feels afterwards!"
"Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings."
"I cannot smell mothballs because it's so difficult to get their little legs apart."
"Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel."
"I want you to know who I am: what the streets taste like, feel like, smell like. What the cops talk like, walk like, think like. What crackheads do - I wanted you to smell it, feel it. It was important to me that I told the story that way because I thought that it wouldn't be told if I didn't tell it."
"When from a long distant past nothing subsists after the things are broken and scattered, the smell and taste of things remain."
