Quotes & Sayings About Coughs

Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,
never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tick's strategy for dealing with lying adults is to say nothing and watch thee lies swell and constrict in their throats. when this happens, the lie takes on a physical life of its own and must be either expelled or swallowed. Most adults prefer to expel untruths with little burplike coughs behind their hands, while others chuckle or snort or make barking sounds. When Mr. Meyer's Adam's apple bobs once, Tick sees that he's a swallower, and that this particular lie has gone south down his esophagus and into his stomach. According to her father, the man suffers from bleeding ulcers. Tick can see why. She imagines all the lies a man in his position would have to tell, how they must just churn away down there in his intestines like chunks of indigestible food awaiting elimination. By the Tick suspects, lies seek open air. they don't like being confined in dark, cramped places. — Richard Russo

Often children came in with minor colds or coughs or diarrhea and then suddenly, they were dead. — Barbara Demick

Yes, Doc, I'm not feeling too well.'

Which was true enough, Kwang Meng considered.

He had honestly not been feeling too well since he contracted poverty, loneliness, boredom, sexual frustration and periodic coughs and colds. Not to speak of his dreary job. — Goh Poh Seng

Nick? Any idea?"
Nick coughs too. "Nope. No idea at all."
Wilbur gives him a stern look. "So what was the point in doing all the Jane Austen stuff if she doesn't know about it, Poodle-bottom? — Holly Smale

Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness. — Willa Cather

The parlor was where you were tongue-tied, the parlor was where you itched and couldn't scratch, the parlor was dictatorial commands, boring conversation, relatives pinching cheeks, aches, sneezes that couldn't be sneezed, coughs that couldn't be coughed, and above all, yawns that must not be yawned. — Stephen King

Chance. Stupid, dumb, blind chance. Just a part of the strange mechanism of the world, with its fits and coughs and starts and random collisions. — Lauren Oliver

Baby, Andy once said that beauty is a sign of intelligence.'
She turns slowly to look at me. 'Who, Victor? Who? Andy who?' She coughs, blowing her nose. 'Andy Kaufman? Andy Griffith? Who in the hell told you this? Andy Rooney?'
'Warhol,' I say softly, hurt. 'Baby ... — Bret Easton Ellis

senseless, senseless coughs of emotion — Allen Ginsberg

He works at the kennel with Nana," Ben piped up. "And I think him and Mom are dating."
At that, a stillness fell over a throng of admirers, punctuated by a few uncomfortable coughs. — Nicholas Sparks

I turn my face and force the corners of my mouth up. There may even be a bit if eyelash fluttering going on. He just rolls his dark blue eyes at me, obviously not impressed - or maybe I just look like I have something stuck in my eye. Sometimes it would be nice to make use of some feminine wiles. I sigh and drop my shoulders. "Out."

"You're going to have to do better than that. You know I'm not supposed to let you out without an escort."

"Please. I can't breathe in here." I step forward, stare up into his face, and lower my voice. "Do you know Emily wanted me to come to sewing circle this morning? Can you even imagine?"

Flint's mouth rounds up into a smile and he coughs to cover his chuckle. "No, Jax. I can't possibly imagine you doing anything remotely feminine. — Theresa Kay

The Crone tires quickly and reaches out for the velvet draperies, sits on the divan, breathing heavily. She's too ancient to have a name any longer. When she coughs you can hear the ages rattling inside her shrunken frame. No human names can cling to her any more- they slip from her dusty shriveled flesh like a young girl's whimsies. — Tom Piccirilli

You know how in every heist movie they get past the security cameras that show the hallway leading to the diamonds by jamming the screens with a fake signal of everything looking safe and quiet? Usually a guard coughs so they don't notice the blip from switching to the bogus feed. — Adam McKay

When a film's heroine innocently coughs, you know that two scenes later, at most, she'll be in an oxygen tent; when a man bumps into a woman at the train station, you know that man will become the woman's lover and/or murderer. In everyday life, where we cough often and are always bumping into people, our daily actions rarely reverberate so lucidly. Once we love or hate someone, we can think back and remember that first casual encounter. But what of all the chance meetings that nothing ever comes of? While our bodies move ever forward on the time line, our minds continuously trace backward, seeking shape and meaning as deftly as any arrow seeking its mark. — Lucy Grealy

He brings the cigarette butt to his mouth and lights up. He breathes in, and coughs; a rattling helicopter with a broken blade crashing into a herd of trombone playing sheep falling off a cliff into a DIY shop with a discount on spanners. — Craig Stone

...grabbing failure by the throat and squeezing it until it coughs up a hairball of success. — Scott Adams

Vegetarians, dropping meat, tend to fill up with too much starch. This leaves them no more healthy than meat-eaters, with constipation, indigestion, colds, catarrhs, coughs and chest complaints to plague them. Eating sparingly of breads, cakes, crackers, cookies, macaroni, spaghetti, anything largely starch, is a far step on the road to good health. — Helen And Scott Nearing

Kitty has no discretion in her coughs," said her father; "she times them ill. — Jane Austen

Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy. — Stephen King

OLD MARX He can't think. London is damp, in every room someone coughs. He never did like winter. He rewrites past manuscripts time and again, without passion. The yellow paper is fragile as consumption. Why does life race stubbornly toward destruction? But spring returns in dreams, with snow that doesn't speak in any known tongue. And where does love fit within his system? Where you find blue flowers. He despises anarchists, idealists bore him. He receives reports from Russia, far too detailed. The French grow rich. Poland is common and quiet. America never stops growing. Blood is everywhere, perhaps the wallpaper needs changing. He begins to suspect that poor humankind will always trudge across the old earth like the local lunatic shaking her fists at an unseen God. — Adam Zagajewski

Gazzy: (Hugging himself and jumping up and down) "I'm brilliant! I'm a genius! I can blow up the world!"
Max: (Raises her eyebrows)
Gazzy: "Not that I would want to, of course," (coughs) — James Patterson

Sadly, as with so much about history's heroes, it's the spotting of potential fame that's the difficulty, whether it's publishing their poems, hanging their paintings, or buying their old underwear. Think of the great men whose lives passed in penury and hacking coughs due to public unawareness that their littlest possession would end up at Sothebys or the basement at Fort Knox. — Alan Coren

We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The demon coughed nervously. Demons do not breathe; however, every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life. And this was one of them as far as the demon was concerned. — Terry Pratchett

There is a rustle of dead leaves. Dried sap, a branch crack, the whirring teeth of Mr. Omaru's saw. My father
my real father
is a limb that got axed off the family tree a long time ago now. My mother coughs and cleans phantom juices off her silver with a cloth doily. My sisters clench their knives. — Karen Russell

Meanwhile a certain amount of moaning and groaning was coming from upstairs. Sophie kept muttering to the dog and ignored it. A loud, hollow coughing followed, dying away into more moaning. Crashing sneezes followed the coughing, each one rattling the window and all the doors. Sophie found those harder to ignore, but she managed. Poot-pooooot! went a blown nose, like a bassoon in a tunnel. The coughing started again, mingled with moans. Sneezes mixed with the moans and the coughs, and the sounds rose to a crescendo in which Howl seemed to be managing to cough, groan, blow his nose, sneeze, and wail gently all at the same time. The doors rattled, the beams in the ceiling shook, and one of Calcifer's logs rolled off onto the hearth.
"All right, all right, I get the message!" Sophie said, dumping the log back into the grate. "It'll be green slime next". — Diana Wynne Jones

The borderline Queen experiences what therapists call "oral greediness". The desperate hunger of the borderline Queen is akin to the behavior of an infant who had gone too long between feelings. Starved, frustrated, and beyond the ability to calm of soothe herself, she grabs, flails, and wails until at last the nipple is planted securely and perhaps too deeply in her mouth. She coughs, gags, chokes, and spits, eyeing the elusive breast like a wolf guarding her food. Similarity, the Queen holds on to what is hers, taking more than she could use, in case it might be taken away prematurely. — Christine Ann Lawson

Our best chance of contentment lies in taking up the wisdom offered to us in coded form through our coughs, allergies, social gaffes, and emotional betrayals, and avoid the ingratitude of those who blame the peas, the bores, the time, and the weather. — Alain De Botton

And while from inside we would hear coughs and stirrings, there was never a rustle in the listeners out the door. — Corrie Ten Boom

Mohammad's face is serious. He takes another puff of his cigarette and coughs out dead air which, after leaving his lungs and hitting the outside world, takes its first breath on a journey to a fresher life. He drops his cigarette into the snow, places his foot over the burning end, twists his shoe to make sure it's out, and tells me he's trusting me. I have no idea what he's trusting me with, but whatever it is, it's so dangerous or evil he can't bring himself to speak of it out loud.
Hitler has just shared with me his plans for the final solution, and I've been subtly informed I have no choice but to come along for the ride. — Craig Stone

Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled down hats and quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; fly cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; cookies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work. But they come out early, when the wide cracked sidewalks are empty and still have dew on them. (from) The High Window — Raymond Chandler

He pats his way around the bed and slides back in. 'Ow,' he says.
'Yes?'
'My belt. Would it be weird ... '
I'm thankful he can't see me blush. 'Of course not.' And I listen to the slap of leather as he pulls it out of his belt loops. He lays it gently on my hardwood floor.
'Um,' he says. 'Would it be weird - '
'YES.'
'Oh, piss off. I'm not talking trousers. I only want under the blankets.That breeze is horrible.' He slides underneath, and now we're lying side by side. In my narrow bed. Funny, but I never imagined my first sleepover with a guy being, well, a sleepover.
'All we need now are 'Sixteen Candles' and a game of Truth or Dare.'
He coughs. 'Wh-what?'
'The movie, pervert. I was just thinking it's been a while since I've had a sleepover.'
A pause. 'Oh. — Stephanie Perkins

Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life. — Terry Pratchett

The violence interferes. It sticks its fingers into everything and tears it open. It all comes apart, and I loath myself for waiting this long to end it. I despise myself for taking the easy options night after night. A hatred is wound up and let go in me. It hacks at my spirit and brings it to its knees, next to me. It coughs and suffocates me as my own hatred for myself becomes overwhelming. — Markus Zusak

Actually, yeah, I did buy a few new things," she confirmed, then she teased a little more by adding, "I think Pete is going to really enjoy my outfit tomorrow night."
"Pete seems to like you no matter what you're wearing," Luke grumbled. "So, what did you buy for good ol' Pete?"
Darn, if he didn't sound jealous! Could it be possible? It'd mean she meant something to him. Something more than Dr. Doolittle anyway. "I bought a mini skirt." She wouldn't tell him about the hair and the shoes. Or what she bought to wear under the skirt.
She heard him cough. Hard. As if having a spasm. "Luke? Are you okay?"
A couple more very tense seconds of coughs, and then, "Did you say a skirt?"
She wanted to smack him. — Anne Rainey

It?" "Friday, April fourth, ma'am." She coughs. Then she doubles over and coughs — Christina Baker Kline

Many in the audience consider leaving.
If anyone leaves, let them leave.
The theatre is not a prison.
If anyone coughs, cough also.
The Theatre is not a sickbed.
We minister to the audience.
We revere the pains of the audience. — Lem Doolittle

I knew I recognized your voice from somewhere.' He coughs. Blood bubbles out of his mouth. 'Been a long time. So long I thought it was a torture dream. — Susan Ee

I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either ... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle. — John Green

At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. — Joshua Bell

He coughs. Not a good sound. Too deep, too full of coffins.
Why is mankind so fucking cruel?
Why? — Sally Gardner

I just love having little vocal snippets like laughs and coughs, not necessarily stuff that has huge significance, just little human qualities. — Ryan Hemsworth

Do you have anything from the geographic profile yet?" "No, it hasn't finished running. I was looking at the map myself, I think you're onto something. Problem with this software is it takes at least eight points to be accurate. So whatever it coughs out is going to be incomplete at best. I'd plan on working without it." "Right. — J.T. Ellison

And in bed, deep inside the building, are all the headaches that won't go away. The failed kidneys, the rashes, the ragged-edged moles, the lumps on the breast, the coughs that have turned nasty. In the Marie Curie Ward on the fourth floor are the kids with cancer. Their bodies secretly and slowly being consumed.
And then there's the mortuary, where the dead lie in refrigerated drawers with name tags on their feet. — Jenny Downham

Coughs seem very common here, especially among the children, though people look strong and healthy, but in the absence of proper statistics one cannot undertake to say whether the district is a healthy one or not. — Edward Burnett Tylor

Every time a book opens, an angel coughs up a hairball. — Bart Yates

James, you'd like Lou Reed," Michael insisted. "He was bisexual."
Their laughter turned to coughs. They were all staring at me when I turned around. I told myself to relax.
"Oh, yeah?" I said. "He doesn't sound bisexual."
Michael just shook his head, but Ronan and Glenn smiled.
"They did electroshock therapy on him when he was a teenager," Michael said.
"Electro-what?" said Glenn. "They electrocuted people?"
"Kind of. They zapped their brains to alter their personalities. That's how they tried to make gay people straight back then."
They all looked at me for a response.
I shrugged. "So, he was bisexual? It worked halfway? — Kenneth Logan

Our muddy machine gun pits were transformed into Courage Clubs when bombs fell or Japanese warships pounded us from the sea. There was protocol to be observed, too, and it was natural that the poor fellow who might break into momentary terror should cause pained silence and embarrassed coughs. Everyone looked the other way, like millionaires confronted by the horrifying sight of a club member borrowing five dollars from the waiter. — Robert Leckie

When your eyes are fixed in the stare of unconsciousness, and your throat coughs the last gasping breath - as one dragged in the dark to a great precipice - what assistance are a wife and child? — George Bernard Shaw

All us kids had found out by now that all teachers had a sore spot; some went crazy over gum chewing, others insane over behind-the-back giggles, still others nuts over the repeated squeaking and scuffing of shoes on the linoleum. Machine-gun coughs, donkeylike snorts, a fusillade of throat clearing, spitballs stuck to the blackboard: all these were arsenals in the battle against Hitlerian teachers. — Robert McCammon

You done a number on him, Colt. He needs a doctor, or he ain't gonna make it." "He tried to rape her, Split. Then he punched her." "To be fair," Nell puts in, "he only punched me after I put a knife to his throat." Split coughs a laugh. "You what? Girl, you crazy. — Jasinda Wilder

And the City, in its own way, gets down for you, cooperates, smoothing its sidewalks, correcting its curbstones, offering you melons and green apples on the corner. Racks of yellow head scarves; strings of Egyptian beads. Kansas fried chicken and something with raisins call attention to an open window where the aroma seems to lurk. And if that's not enough, doors to speakeasies stand ajar and in that cool dark place a clarinet coughs and clears its throat waiting for the woman to decide on the key. She makes up her mind and as you pass by informs your back that she is daddy's little angel child. The City is smart at this: smelling and good and looking raunchy; sending secret messages disguised as public signs: this way, open here, danger to let colored only single men on sale woman wanted private room stop dog on premises absolutely no money down fresh chicken free delivery fast. And good at opening locks, dimming stairways. Covering your moans with its own. — Toni Morrison

What's going on here?" Buck asks just as loudly, gesturing wildly with his giant, hairy knuckled hands.
"I'm sucking his dick," I say sarcastically. Sometimes I wish my mouth didn't have a faulty connection to my brain allowing everything to come out unfiltered.
Alex coughs, his fingers twitching on my hip, and Buck's face turns an unnatural shade of red. This is such an odd situation; the awkwardness causes me to continue to spew idiocy.
"Fine, you got me. I wasn't sucking his dick. We were fucking each other's mouths with our tongues. This is otherwise referred to as kissing, but mouth fucking sounds way dirtier, so I'm gonna go with that. — Helena Hunting

A layer of fine powder coats his skin.
"My lungs are turning to concrete," Rob wheezes, hacking and spitting.
"So are my eyes. How do I always get roped into these things?" Avery coughs and pats Rob's back in sympathy. A poof of dust billows from the contact. — Laura Kreitzer

What hurt him most of all, made him feel like a sick child aware of terrible wrongness and yet incapable of explaining it to anyone who might help, was that in spite of the evidence around them, in spite of what their eyes and ears reported-and sometimes their flesh, from bruises, stab wounds, racking coughs, weeping sores-these people believed their way of life was the best in the world, and were prepared to export it at the point of a gun. — John Brunner

This is what life is about: seeing new places, meeting new people, grabbing life by the balls and squeezing until it coughs up a story worth telling. — Ruth Cardello

Every thought, every word is impressed upon it and carried out in amazing detail. It is like a singer making a record on the sensitive disc of the phonographic plate. Every note and tone of the singer's voice is registered. If he coughs or hesitates, it is registered also. So let us break all the old bad records in the subconscious mind, the records of our lives which we do not wish to keep, and make new and beautiful ones. Speak — Florence Scovel Shinn

Annabelle coughs and glares at Blue. "What did you do? Did I just swallow something?"
Blue pulls her into a hug. "You're my best friend in the whole world."
"Get off me, leech," she says, smiling. — Victoria Scott

Very slowly Royce pushed the door inward, peering through the gap. He looked left and right, then closed it once more and replaced the bolts.
"What is it?" Hadrian asked.
"He's right," Royce said dismally. "No one is getting through."
Thranic smiled and nodded until he was beset by another series of coughs that bent him over in pain.
"What is it?" Hadrian repeated.
"You're not going to believe it."
"What?"
"There's a
a thingy."
"A what?"
"You know, a thingy thing."
Hadrian looked at him, puzzled.
"A Gilarabrywn," Thranic said. — Michael J. Sullivan

There are moments on stage when everything comes together. Then the kid in the front row coughs. — Connie Brockway

Where are we - " Kyungsoo yelps as Jongin practically throws him over the window pane of a filthy-rich looking convertible, a treacherous little thing parked up against the curb, all black exteriors and plush white interiors, not even bothering to open the door, "going?"
"To see fireflies," Jongin says muffling coughs in his sleeves, and it's only when Kyungsoo buckles up and looks over does he realize that the boy is grinning from ear to ear, "Real ones. — Changdictator

I haven't been one since I did a film called (coughs) Encino Man (laughing). After two or three runs with Pauly Shore, I had enough. Watching this film in 3D as far as rollercoasters go really fills it for me. — Brendan Fraser

Werner and his younger sister, Jutta, are raised at Children's House, a clinker-brick two-story orphanage on Viktoriastrasse whose rooms are populated with the coughs of sick children and the crying of newborns and battered trunks inside which drowse the last possessions of deceased parents: patchwork dresses, tarnished wedding cutlery, faded ambrotypes of fathers swallowed by the mines. — Anthony Doerr

It was one of those problematic occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying isolated things like, Well, isn't this nice. — Terry Pratchett

Morning exercise, walking in the free, invigorating air of heaven, or cultivating flowers, small fruits, and vegetables, is the surest safeguard against colds, coughs, congestion of the brain, inflammation of the liver, the kidneys, and the lungs, and a hundred other diseases. — Ellen G. White